Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Railgun Chapter4 (section)

===Part 4===

“Sigh. I haven’t been at this branch in forever.”

“But Branch 003 is the Tokiwadai branch, Shirai-san. It’s the one you actually belong to, for crying out loud. You shouldn’t spend so much time at Branch 177.”

“Come to think of it, doesn’t Shirai-san’s favorite teacup live over at Branch 177 nowadays?”

They complained while Shirai unlocked the door and they all walked in. The lost girl was among them.

The small girl’s name was Yugure Tsumebakei.

She wasn’t wearing a uniform and she was only 12. That meant she was in the 6th grade, which made it obvious what she was doing at the School Garden today. She was here for an exam interview at Tokiwadai.

Even though the School Garden was about the safest place someone could be, the children showing up for their crucial exam would normally be accompanied by a female family member like a mother or sister or some private bodyguards hired by their family. Bringing family was apparently popular because they were so rarely allowed inside Academy City. Tsumebakei was supposed to have had her sister Yugure Kanaria looking after her since she was a 2nd year at Tokiwadai.

“Oh, hey. So you’re Canary-chan’s sister, Yugure-san?”

Mikoto realized she recognized those flaxen bangs cut straight across like that. But Kanaria had long hair that fell to her hips.

“You are in the second year too, aren’t you, Misaka-san?” said Uiharu. “So is that sister a friend of yours?”

“A classmate. You do not want to mess with her.”

Her stupid mouth let that slip with a smile.

Just as the younger girl’s face had lit up at finding a friend of her lost family member – and one who knew her well enough to call her by a nickname – she was hit by that harsh comment. Clear drops were growing in the 12-year-old’s eyes.

Shirai Kuroko was in justice mode right now, so she shouted in a way that made one imagine a pair of horns growing from her forehead.

“Ugh, Onee-sama!!”

“Eh? Oh, I didn’t mean it like that! I meant you wouldn’t want to fight her because of her power, but she’s a nice person so it’s not like that would ever happen!!”

Mikoto quickly retracted her statement while pulling out her phone and trying to contact the girl in question. But she didn’t receive a response. Saying things looked bad would only have made the younger sister cry, so Mikoto made eye contact with Saten instead.

She couldn’t reach her classmate’s phone.

That meant it was either turned off or deep underground. But in Academy City, it was actually hard to find places that didn’t get a signal.

Saten took the hint and casually changed the subject.

“But you’re #3 in the entire city, Misaka-san. What kind of power makes you not want to fight her? Tokiwadai is crawling with monsters, isn’t it?”

“Micro Dying,” said Mikoto with a fair amount of exasperation in her voice. “Basically, Canary-chan’s power lets her kill all microscopic microbes with a touch. She’s ranked at Level 3, but she’s definitely stronger than that. You realllly don’t want to fight her.”

Yugure Tsumebakei fidgeted on the sofa, unsure how to react to this. She could tell this was meant as a compliment of her beloved big sister, but she clearly didn’t like how Mikoto’s compliments were so focused on fighting.

“Huh? But, Misaka-san, how is that any different from medicinal soap?”

Saten sounded confused by the explanation, so Mikoto smiled and clarified.

“Because she can rub her palm against your belly and wipe out all of your intestinal bacteria, both the good and the bad. We can only stay healthy because of the barrier of microbes protecting us. What do you think would happen to us if all of those microbes were suddenly taken from us? To be blunt, we would start growing mold inside our bodies and then it’s game over. We’d even have mold all over our skin and in our mouths.”

“Ew,” groaned Saten.

That girl could eliminate microbes at a touch, so she wouldn’t need a hazmat suit or a mask to protect against germs. She could even suicidally scatter all kinds of killer viruses around while remaining entirely unharmed herself. If she put her mind to it, she could become an assassin or cause devastation on an international scale. Mikoto honestly thought that power was more dangerous than her own Railgun if you looked just at how deadly it was.

''Yugure Kanaria’s power could be unimaginably dangerous when combined with the right kind of cunning, but the girl herself was peaceful and afflicted with a super slow-motion curse, so none of those possibilities had ever occurred to her.

Saten tilted her head.

“So, um, Tsumebakei-san was it?” asked Shirai. “Do you have a similar power?”

“No.”

Yugure Tsumebakei wasn’t obligated to answer since it wouldn’t help find her sister, but she must have been the trusting type. She answered the casual question with a shake of her head and went on to explain.

“My power is Macro Dying. It’s very different from my sister’s.”

“Macro?”

“I can pull the data from the Bank.” Uiharu looked like she was unsure if she should, but she had already completed the search. “Macro Dying. Level 4. She can increase the size of and control the red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, plasma, macrophages, cholesterol, amino acids, and other components in her blood. For example, she can cause a white blood cell to grow to 2m across and have it swallow and digest an attacker nearly instantly. Huh, that is an extremely rare type of power. Even more so than Shirai-san’s Teleportation.”

Even Mikoto couldn’t believe her ears.

How many of those components were in a single drop of blood? She was pretty sure there were 5 to 10 thousand of the white blood cells that fought foreign invaders. If that explanation was accurate, then she was the type of high-level esper who could basically command an army. That contrasted Mikoto or Shirai whose strengths were as an individual. It was certainly a different category from her sister Kanaria, but it was similarly difficult to rank on the Level scale. Mikoto could think of a number of clever ways to make use of that power. One idea even made her hold a hand to her forehead. If that power still applied with transfusions and dialysis, couldn’t that girl basically bring about the end of the world?

Saten, being Saten, was focused squarely on the Level system.

“So this cute little thing is secretly a monster on the inside? Ugh, and she’s a Level 4 at her age? It feels like I’m in a bicycle race and someone just passed me using a rocket engine. But I guess she is the kind of genius girl who gets recommended to apply to Tokiwadai.”

“I really don’t like my power.”

“Why not? It’s Level 4!”

“I don’t like needles, but I have to extract some of my blood every time I use my power.”

Come to think of it, she would need to do that, wouldn’t she?

In that sense, her power required a lot of setup in a way Mikoto’s didn’t.

Shirai Kuroko started to recommend the girl converted to the Church of Onee-sama so she could trigger a nosebleed at will using her fantasies, but Mikoto smiled and shut her up with a solid punch.

“So what makes you say Canary-chan has ''gone missing''?”



It was finally time to get down to business.

When they had first approached Yugure Tsumebakei, she had said her sister had “gone missing”. It didn’t sound like she had just been waiting at the wrong time or location or they had gotten separated in a crowd.

“My sister is missing,” said Yugure Tsumebakei with her small fists clenched in her lap. “We were supposed to meet up right away, but she called to say she was searching for something. She said she couldn’t let someone find out she was searching for whatever it was, but she promised to come meet me as soon as she was done. I waited and waited, but she never showed up.”

That meant the girl was ''up to something'' during the entrance exams.

Mikoto and Shirai exchanged a glance and Shirai formed an X with her index fingers in front of her lips. The look in her eyes said, “I know, but don’t you dare say anything that would worry her.” Very forcefully said it, at that.

There were three general possibilities here.

1. Kanaria’s disappearance had nothing to do with the suspicious circumstances. For example, she had made a quick detour for a snack and forgotten all about her promise to meet with her sister, or she couldn’t answer her phone or meet her sister because a teacher was getting after her over some minor infraction. There were any number of peaceful possibilities like that.

2. Kanaria’s disappearance had everything to do with the suspicious circumstances. For example, she had tried to reveal some of the data theft common during entrance exam season and got herself into trouble.

3. Yugure Kanaria herself was stealing secret information.

Mikoto sighed.

“It doesn’t prove much of anything, but Canary-chan is in the newspaper club. And for how easygoing she is, she’s a stickler for keeping promises and has a strong sense of justice.”

“Oh? If she has an overabundance of justice, she should come join us in Judgment.”

“She’s afflicted with a super slow-motion curse, so apparently she failed the physical exam when she tried to join.”

“She fai- she couldn’t get past that? I-I thought it was just for show. I mean, it’s so insultingly easy even ''Uiharu'' passed.”

“Shirai-san…” groaned Uiharu, but everyone ignored her.

Shirai had avoided using the word “fail” after remembering Yugure Tsumebakei was here for an exam.

Mikoto sighed.

“She apparently joined the newspaper club to help create a civilian group that could increase transparency by keeping an eye on both Anti-Skill and Judgement. So I’m guessing this is option number 2.”

But that wasn’t enough to put her sister at ease. Even if Kanaria was innocent of all wrongdoing, they still couldn’t get in touch with her. The presence of a separate villain removed all suspicion from her, but it did nothing to guarantee her safety.

What had she found and who had she been pursuing?

If she had been so busy she had left her little sister all alone, she must have been approaching the climax of whatever story she was pursuing for the newspaper. But then someone had gotten in her way and now she had gone missing.

Mikoto concluded that learning what story she was working on would be the fastest way to figure out how to help her.

“But, Misaka-san.”

They weren’t in the familiar Branch 177, but Saten had already figured out how to use the kitchenette and had made herself some cocoa with warm milk. But after some thought, she passed it to young Tsumebakei instead of drinking it herself.

“This is the School Garden. It’s the ultimate educational environment funded by Tokiwadai and four other fancy schools. Is there even crime here? And we’re talking about an entire person disappearing without a trace.”

Saten would be aware that, if you wanted to keep a worried witness’s trust, you could never bluntly reject what they told you, no matter how absurd it might sound.

So her question was meant to lead into a response from an expert.

She had stepped on the landmine herself by immediately rejecting the idea and saying it wasn’t possible because she hoped to ease some of lonely Yugure Tsumebakei’s worries.

So she started sweating when Mikoto didn’t immediately respond.

The look on her face said she really wanted someone to follow up on her question.

“Um, uh, Misaka-san? Shirai-san? Hello?”

She tried to get an answer out of them again, but both the Tokiwadai students were reluctant to speak.

Mikoto looked to Shirai.

“What do you think, Kuroko?”

“I have my doubts about those stories, but I suppose it is a possibility.”