Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 6===

Their job began with guns in hand.

They had quite a few eyes and phone cameras on them, but that wasn’t an issue since Frenda and Takitsubo were hiding their identities with special glasses and masks. Plus, it was the Daihaseisai, so the people watching would assume a peaceful reason for this, like they were streamers or performers of some kind. Thanks to that, they could chase someone through the streets while firing their guns without causing a major commotion.

“Eek, eek. Eeeeek! No, no, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, please no, someone help!!”

The blonde twintails cheerleader ran down the main street sidewalk in such a panic she wasn’t just pumping her arms – she was swinging her entire body around. And she was in tears. Some small children who thought it was a joke were laughing.

She ran faster than expected since the soles of her shoes were customized in an Academy City fashion, but their expectations had been spot on that she was a minor villain who wouldn’t fight back. …Of course, if she had fought back, they would have just changed tack to the live bait course where they hit her, let her go some, hit her again, and so on.

Glasses girl Frenda sounded somewhat exasperated as she pursued the girl.

“Wow, she’s running full tilt… I can see her fancy rich girl panties. How indecent of her.”

“Frenda, that’s part of the cheerleader uniform. It’s supposed to be seen.”

Liar. You wouldn’t have the courage to remove your skirt in public if you were wearing that, would you, Takitsubo?

The track suit girl must have had plenty of lung capacity and endurance left over because she kept talking while running so fast. With an expressionless face that showed no sign of tiring.

“The victim was in charge of the drug testing, right? What would lead someone to kill a pharmacist?”

“Maybe she did something that threatened her own life.”

“Like checking an elite school athlete’s blood and finding a mysterious new drug that slips past the previous tests?”

“In the end, it could’ve been the opposite.”

That question was met by silence.

As she ran, Frenda raised a finger on her empty hand.

“What if the tester ''adds something'' to clean blood after the fact? Then she could get any elite athlete she wanted disqualified. She could even manipulate the outcome after seeing what place everyone gets in the events.”

Takitsubo tilted her head. While firing blanks.

“That would be physically possible, but why do it?”

“I can think of a dark side reason for it. But in the end, if there was a reason to go to such lengths in the fight over first place, it would also create a motive for killing the unscrupulous tester.”

Why was doping wrong in the first place? The harm the drugs did to the athlete’s health was the most popular explanation, but as members of the dark side, Frenda and Takitsubo tended to take a more cynical view and that righteous explanation felt about as genuine as a wax food model. It wasn’t only the dangerous drugs that were banned and, if you suggested that researching the drugs to determine how much could be taken without causing any harm, most people would probably reply in the same way: not even a single drop is acceptable.

In the extreme, there were time-delayed blood transfusions (storing your own blood and returning it to your body at a later date) to boost the amount of oxygen being transported by the blood. ''That method didn’t use any drugs at all, but it was still banned as a form of doping.'' To put it another way, there was some other reason why it had to be banned.

(In the end, you can say time-delayed blood transfusions aren’t healthy since they increase your blood pressure. But on the other hand, you aren’t disqualified for consuming too much sodium or being too nervous.)

That meant the primary issue was not the mystery drug labeled with a skull and crossbones. Even if a drug was invented that could safely boost muscle growth or muscle explosiveness without any negative health effects – of course, even air can harm your health through hyperventilation if you breathe too much of it, so it’s impossible to create a substance that is truly harmless – it would likely still be banned.

Frenda and Takitsubo felt a lot more comfortable with the explanation that sports would no longer function as entertainment if technology could easily manipulate the outcomes regardless of talent or effort.

With special talent and untiring effort, anyone had a chance to win and you never knew the outcome until the very end.

…Even in an age where super expensive corporate AIs could analyze breaking ball patterns and calculate out a solution to an opposing pitcher, people still sought bright and shining dreams in sports. Possibly even more than they did with idols. Even though money and technology were already creating disparities in several areas: uniforms, shoes, diet, training facilities, trainers, etc.

Takitsubo tilted her head while running and vaulting over a bollard and chain.

“Hmm. If the athlete didn’t do anything, wouldn’t any tampering done after the fact be found out? I mean, they really didn’t do anything.”

“Haven’t you heard the Daihaseisai drug tests are overly sensitive? In the end, the athlete can’t fully deny it if they’re told it could have been an unfortunate accident from some cold medicine or an artificial additive in some snack they ate. There’s no way to definitively prove that everything you ate, touched, and breathed over the past few days was clean.”

“The devil’s proof?”

“Right. In the end, sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?”

Aside from that, once an official test came back positive, the athlete under suspicion would sound like a liar no matter what they said. Whether they were a popular athlete or a club ace, overturning such a result would be highly unusual. You could call that an abuse of material evidence.

(But in the end, if we’re right about this, we already have a general picture of the whole case.)

Frenda frowned as she sporadically fired blanks.

That Yamazaki cheerleader was still running like mad, but there was little risk of losing sight of her in that bright outfit. In an armpit-baring tank top and fluttering miniskirt, she couldn’t even manage a costume change where she removed a coat or something to change her appearance mid-flight.

“Y’know, in the end, it bothers me how nice that ass is below her skirt!”

“…”

Takitsubo Rikou usually acted as Item’s moral compass and applied the brakes when they were being unreasonable, but she declined to comment here. However, two large objects in the chest of her track suit were jiggling with every step she took.

''Jiggle, jiggle☆

“It bothers me!!”

“Kyah.”

It was important to look like they were only playing around.

Because if they did, the crowd would put themselves at ease and reject the possibility of this being a serious incident.

That said, even a low-level villain could get clever when running for her life. Such as running into an underground parking garage with multiple exits or crossing a concourse plaza with a lot of ups and downs. That she didn’t seek help at an Anti-Skill station suggested she knew she was involved in something illegal. And once the blonde twintails girl entered a large train station, she dashed right toward the ticket gate.

“Oops.”

“Frenda, those stairs lead to the inner track of the belt line. The purple line.”

Did the cheerleader intend to board a train just before it departed? Frenda and Takitsubo were using the glasses and masks to hide their identities while breaking the law, so they couldn’t use the smart cards linked to their names, but they would be too late if they turned aside and bought tickets at the machines.

Pursuing the girl on foot would be difficult like this. Frenda focused on the wireless earphone she had in one ear.

“You’re up, Madam Silk!!”

“Are you super kidding me?”

They’re brute forcers weren’t suited for this kind of sensitive and delicate job, but they had no choice. Being able to swap out tailers when the situation called for it was one advantage of a team.

Waiting in front of the ticket gate wouldn’t solve anything, so Frenda and Takitsubo turned back and ran outside. Just as the train in question was departing.

(I saw the target’s face in the train window. In the end, it doesn’t look like she pulled the “stay on the platform and let the train leave” trick.)

Frenda watched as Kinuhata jumped (using her power of course) from the station roof to the departing train’s roof, landing with a dull “thud!”

“This train follows a single route, so in the end we can get ahead of it. We can’t wait for the support team to arrive with a car, so…I know, there’s a bus stop two stations from here, so we’ll wait there. Keep an eye on the target until then.”

“Super acknowledged.”

Then someone intruded on the friendly four-person group call.

The annoying adult had something to say.

“What do you think you’re doing shooting up a storm out there!? It’s always like this with you! You’re supposed to be keeping Academy City safe right now!!”

“Mugino, you handle her.”

Shout, yell, growl.

The angry argument was too noisy, so Frenda turned the volume down to near silence as she and Takitsubo boarded a large bus at the bus stop. It was one of the self-driving buses without anyone in the driver’s seat which were so common during the Daihaseisai. The bus may have just passed a large event site because the only passengers were two or three girls about Frenda’s age. They were wearing bikinis and sun visors, so was there a beach flags or beach volleyball event happening at an indoor facility somewhere around here?

Despite what the simplified route map suggested, the belt line was not actually a perfect 360-degree circle. The railroad had a lot of sharp curves and tended to zigzag, so there were plenty of areas requiring deceleration. The bus, however, followed a main street directly to the destination, allowing it to arrive sooner.

“Phew.”

The track suit must have been too hot for all this running around because Takitsubo remained standing and tugged on the neck of the garment to create a tunnel to capture the air conditioning blowing down from the ceiling.

Frenda gave her an exasperated look.

“My, how indecent of you, Madam Waterfall.”

“No one can recognize me with the glasses and mask, so it’s fine.”

It didn’t even take a few minutes.

They left the self-driving bus and walked to a smaller train station than before.

This time they bought tickets in advance (with quite a lot of money) and elegantly walked right on through the ticket gate. The cheerleader might not get off at this station, so they needed to quickly locate her on the train from the platform and then decide whether they would board the train or stay on the platform. If they couldn’t decide before the train departed, the two of them would split up.

But…

“In the end, where’s the train?”

“Report, report,” said Kinuhata’s voice in Frenda’s earphone. “That super twintails forced open the window and jumped out while the train was moving. I’m in pursuit.”

“What the hell did you do!? You threatened her too much, Madam Silk!!”

She jumped from a moving train? That blonde twintails girl wasn’t dead, was she?

Regardless, it sounded like they would have to pursue on foot.

Leaving this to the girl who didn’t know how to tail someone properly would only lead to more trouble.