Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 5===

For the time being, they decided to leave District 6, but Hamazura Shiage was already out of breath. His running legs came to a stop.

And as out of breath as he was, he still had enough left to shout.

“Gasp, pant. Th-this stupid district is too big!!”

“The amusement park ''is'' about the size of a small town. Maybe we should have rented a cart.”
He wondered if the half-hardened snow was giving them a hard time, but the hakama girl did not seem at all bothered despite her attire being much less suitable for running than the other two.

“Hamazura.”

His girlfriend called his name, so he moved to the far edge of the path. Several Anti-Skill officers passed by not far away. Their eyes might have met without the Christmas crowd.

Takitsubo’s temperate was noticeably high even through her track suit. Too high. The moxibustion had dealt with the pain and suffering to an extent, but it was not a fundamental cure.

Moving to the side of the street to hide brought them toward the food stands lining the street.

Confusion replaced the service industry smile on the face of the worker at the closest stand, so to make sure they were not reported to Anti-Skill, Hamazura pulled out his wallet without even checking to see what this one was selling. He ended up with paper plates containing donuts piled high with whipped cream. Those things were the current fad and this one had the amusement park markup. He had not wanted to spend much money, but it would have looked unnatural to order one donut for a group of three. He was forced to tearfully purchase three of them.

“Ahh, I can feel it soaking into my body. I know it’s bad for me, but nothing’s better when you’re exhausted☆”

The hakama girl smiled and used a spoon to make short work of the whipped cream.

Was she a beneficial after all?

Hamazura chose to view it like the tubes of condensed milk that mountain climbers carried with them. Otherwise he could never even attempt to eat something so absurdly sweet.

Takitsubo occasionally breathed a heavy sigh, but she did have an appetite. It was possible her condition could be improved using dialysis, which could be done in hospitals outside the city, so they could not give up yet.

“No way. You’re lying. I’ve never seen a mascot like that before.”

“I-it’s true, I swear. I really did see a blonde girl riding on a white rhino beetle! It must be a Christmas-only secret!!”

That conversation caught his interest, but by the time he turned around, whoever-it-was had vanished into the crowd.

“So what do we do now?” asked the mascot-pattern hakama girl.

“We run away.”

She may have been an optimist, but Hamazura had to sigh.

“But the question is where to go. We still don’t know what that ''Academy City’s Greatest Taboo'' thing is.”

The card-sized hard drive they had found in Perfect Film’s tent was in his pocket. It was labeled Lifeline, but Aneri said she could not read in the data or decrypt it. She instead sent his phone to an extremely niche online tool shop.

“A special screwdriver???”

He flipped the hard drive over to see that it did indeed have a few small screws at inconspicuous spots on the side. But instead of Phillips or flathead, these had a special design resembling a distorted snowflake.

And instead of being hand-turned, these apparently had to be loosened by exposing them to minute ultrasonic vibrations.

He had never seen anything like it.

“You could get screwdrivers to open commercial phones in the back alleys, but this is even more specialized.”

To decrypt it, they first had to get it open. The circuit board apparently had a special physical switch that would erase all the data until it was unrecoverable if the decryption process began without first flipping the switch. The necessary tool was not available in ordinary shops. And since it was so hard to get your hands on, anyone who had one would treasure it. Sneaking in and borrowing one would definitely end in a fight.

“Why not go to District 23?” asked the curly silver-haired hakama girl while using the edge of a spoon to slice apart the donut soaked in maple syrup.

Hamazura did an incredulous double take.

“Did you not see what ''just'' happened? A paparazzi named Benizome blew off the head of the counterfeiter! We can’t get a passport, so getting anywhere near a plane will get us captured by an army of Anti-Skill!!”

“Not for an airplane, dummy.” She shrugged with her twin horns of hardened bangs swaying. “Academy City is a mass consumption community. We put a lot of effort into recycling, but that isn’t perfect. So what happens to the stuff that can’t be recycled? There isn’t room for a landfill in the limited space within the walls.”

“Oh.”

“District 23 has the airport and District 11 has a land route, so there’s a giant temporary storage area on the border between them. In other words there’s a giant pile of trash. I think they call it the Urban Mine, but there are a lot of people who dig through it looking for electronic trash they can sell. And from what I’ve heard, a lot of them will also extract whatever data they can get from thrown-out computers, so they would probably know a lot about the special tools needed to pry open the hardware.”

“…”

“Yes, yes. As you can imagine, that will most likely end in a fight. Those trash collectors don’t even want other people to know about the business they’re running. But since it’s a business, you might be able to settle it peacefully. As a well-paying customer, I mean.”