Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 7===

Frenda and Takitsubo returned to the ticket gate and tried to leave the station, but the gate wouldn’t open. Unlike with something called a platform ticket, the train ticket produced an error if you tried to use it to exit from the same station you entered through. They didn’t have time for that and they had paid, so they jumped the gate. It wasn’t like they could be identified.

Once outside, they ran back along the train tracks until they spotted Kinuhata.

And Mugino approaching from a different direction.

Both of them were wearing the same masks and glasses.

“In the end, where’d Miss Panties go!?”

“Super Twintails went that way!”

“Where does that cheerleader even think she’s going? An American football locker room?”

“Can someone please just use her name.”

Don’t expect that kind of thoughtfulness from the dark side, Takitsubo.

The cheerleader may have been breathing a sigh of relief after thinking she had escaped. When she came to a stop, they fired more blanks to send her into a panicked run all over again. Miss Panties sure could run fast for someone who had just jumped out of a moving train. …That may have been thanks to an esper power, so they had to keep their guard up.

The cheerleader fled while showing a preference for extremely short streets, pedestrian zones, and stairs. A car from Item’s support group wouldn’t have been much help.

“?”

Soon, they found themselves among District 3’s famous office buildings.

However, what they approached didn’t seem like a tidy office. It must have been some time since a cleaner had been called in because the higher windows were covered in dried raindrop stains. The cheerleader’s blonde twintails whipped behind her as she rushed into the basement of what appeared to be an abandoned building.

“Mugino, that’s the villain’s hideout.”

“Huh? How do you know she isn’t just passing through? Like you could with a pool or amusement park.”

“That basement only has the one exit.”

“Super when and how did you get the layout?” asked an exasperated Kinuhata.

Takitsubo appeared to have gotten the information from a disaster prevention panel pasted on the building’s outside wall for firefighters to check. According to the diagram displayed on her phone, the base was an underground studio for a video broadcast station that had been abandoned since the company went out of business. That would make for a large, soundproofed hideout set up for high-speed fiber optic communication.

There was only one exit.

So Item descended the narrow stairs with high firepower Mugino and solid defense Kinuhata in front.

“Phew, I can finally remove these,” said Takitsubo.

They no longer needed the glasses and masks meant to fool ordinary people. During strenuous exercise, the glasses would fog up and the masks were a little hard to breathe through. So they removed them.

The four reached the bottom of the narrow stairs but didn’t find the cheerleader there.

There was a single door, thick and bulletproof. The thin slide-open slit suggested a doorman on the inside would check to see if an unexpected visitor was familiar and unlock the door if so.

They had finally found what they wanted, but the cheerleader would have reported what happened when she entered. If the enemy was on guard, they wouldn’t open the door no matter what.

Mugino’s instructions were simple.

“I want to keep any of them from escaping while also learning the full scope of the incident. So leave one survivor and kill the rest.”

“Super acknowledged.”

Either way, a merely “bulletproof” door or wall couldn’t stop an attack from a Level 5 or Level 4.

All they had to do was break in, cause trouble, and kill.

But just as they thought that, the track suit girl spoke up.

“Mugino.”

“Hm? Whoa!?”

With a dull “thock thock!!”, sharp objects burst from the thick wall next to the door. They were sharp metal rods about as thick as a ballpoint pen and just the portion emerging from this side of the wall was more than 30cm long. If Item had been pressed against the wall, they would have been pinned to the wall in several locations. Plus, these were the people who used a pain stimulant that increased the human sense of pain by 350 times.

Mugino clicked her tongue by retaliating with multiple Meltdowner blasts through the door and wall.

The doorman directly on the other side would have been vaporized by the first blast, but this was a group. It wasn’t over yet.

“Tch. Was that a semi-auto crossbow!?”

A bow might seem old-fashioned, but each bolt was bigger and heavier than a bullet and the tip was sharpened. It was a lot like swinging a heavy pickaxe full force into a bulletproof vest. It produced an effect different from an ordinary bullet.

Grasping the situation, Mugino’s lips curled into a fierce smile.

Her battle freak side was coming out.

(Interesting. I like the way you don’t let my level hold you back. Battle is never boring because you never know what’s going to happen. They say a cornered animal is dangerous, but let’s find out just how hard this one can bite back!!)

“If you don’t surrender, Mugino will fill you with holes. We can either get the story out of you or leave no stone unturned to gather the information ourselves. Either is fine by us, but which would you prefer?”

“Okay! You’ve made your point!! We’ll explain everything, so please be peaceful!!”

A very reasonable male voice came from within.

Mugino Shizuri had lost her chance to attack.

“…”

She silently turned to look at Takitsubo. With her mouth forming a small triangle.

The track suit girl feigned ignorance.

They were pros, so they had to prioritize their job. If that battle freak went nuts and slaughtered everyone, they wouldn’t even know how many people had been in the murderous group, which would make closing out the case a pain. So asking first made more sense.

The four girls walked in.

They found a dimly-lit space. It was large. The underground space was the size of a small public pool.

“W-welcome, honored guests.”

This was the man who had announced their surrender before. He was probably one of the leaders, making him the mastermind behind the killing.

He looked to be in his late 20s. He was wearing a tuxedo for some reason, but Mugino had seen enough tuxedos for a lifetime at her family home and this tuxedo’s fabric and stitching looked somehow cheap to her. It may have been a factory product instead of tailor made. …The place looked something like a strange cafe.

Bunny girls and dancers had abandoned their jobs to crouch down and tremble. Some expensive-looking bottles of ’18 or ’25 vintage something-or-other lay shattered on the floor. Some burly bodyguard types were watching from a distance, but most of the people had their hands over their heads with meek looks on their faces.

The interior design was clearly meant for people of that sort.

The large underground space was lined with sofas and tables that looked borrowed from fancy clubs with poor taste and large LCD monitors were set up all over. The monitors displayed numbers, numbers, numbers, and videos of students wearing track suits and gym clothes. They were apparently showing the status of different Daihaseisai events.

The structure of the numbers on the screens was extremely reminiscent of horse racing and cycle racing. Or casinos. Was the leader wearing a tuxedo because he was also the manager?

“Is this the toy you scared us with?”

They finally saw the semi-auto crossbow for themselves where it lay at the feet of a man in black with his hands up.

The Chinese Zhuge crossbow was the most famous, but weapons like this had existed since ancient times. Although the ancient version had been so complex its power had been reduced and it hadn’t seen all that much use.

The Academy City version had a large boxy sealed magazine attached directly atop the bow. Perhaps that was to prevent the user from accidentally touching the poisoned bolts. That seemed like it would get in the way of aiming, but picking it up and aiming it showed it had a dot sight attached on the side of the latch that attached the giant magazine. So was it aimed something like a shoulder-fired rocket launcher? The bowstring was pulled back with electrical power. Since it had penetrated a concrete wall, it likely was too much for human strength to pull back.

“?”

Frenda petrified when she checked one of the monitors.

One of the contestants was a smiling blonde-haired, blue-eyed 1st grader.

Frenda very nearly cried out loud.

(I-in the end, they’re involving my innocent sister in this?)

“Are you stupid? This isn’t something you should be ''gambling'' on!!!”

The manager in the cheap tuxedo rubbed his hands together and smiled.

He was sweating profusely. His thin smile was plastered to his face and wouldn’t leave.

“Th-th-this is about investment. Yes, investment. We only engage in clean and legal business transactions here. We wouldn’t dream of running an illegal online gambling casino.”

“Then what is this place?”

“I-I should have mentioned it earlier. We are known as the Investment Club.”

“So a casino going by that name, huh?”

“We are a venue for business transactions!”

He corrected her with dizzying speed.

Was that why they had needed the high-speed fiber optic communications in addition to the soundproofing?

They would predict which school would win an event, pay money, and, if their prediction was correct, receive an adjusted payment in return. The words they used and the means of putting in and taking out money had changed, but what they were actually doing was no different from sports betting.

“Is this the dark side reason you mentioned before, Frenda?” asked the blank-faced track suit girl.

“That’s right. In the end, it’s dark trading.”

“Super what’s that?”

“Something like illegal online gambling, Kinuhata.”

The Investment Club’s manager looked like he badly wanted to say something, but Takitsubo expressionlessly continued her explanation.

“I call it gambling, but betting money isn’t legally allowed, so they use different words like ‘investment’ and ‘speculation’ to place their money on entire schools instead of individual athletes. But the profit the gamblers receive depends on which schools win the events and which esper development theories are accepted as correct.”

The only guaranteed way to profit off of stocks was insider trading, but the next best thing was market manipulation. Of course, many different grownups were carefully checking for those illegal acts. But unlike ordinary corporations, the distribution of profits from public institutions – in this case, school management – tended to not be monitored. Did that come from the assumption that Academy City’s schools were sacred institutions of learning with no connection to worldly moneymaking? If so, that was even more naive than a belief in sportsmanship.

And so this was entirely possible during the Daihaseisai, where the results could greatly change the value of a school’s esper development theory or patents. This ''profit margin gambling'' worked by paying money up front and then receiving a distribution of the intellectual property.

A vicious smile formed on Mugino’s face.

“Well, the Daihaseisai is basically a motor show or race featuring human bodies. If you see it as an exhibition of each school’s esper development tech, you can imagine all the sketchy researchers and investors watching on among the spectators, can’t you?”

“Ugh, is that really super acceptable?”

“It’s just barely allowed under Academy City’s rules. And since it isn’t gambling, they don’t have to consider an upper rate limit. …But of course that’s only when no one ends up dead.”

The track suit girl’s piercing words made the Investment Club’s manager tremble.

“I thought it was odd,” continued Takitsubo, expressionless. “The initial data on the victim said she was a pharmacist who lived in District 3, right? This district is full of tall office buildings and doesn’t have many homes. At most, it has luxury apartments for investment.”


'''A Certain Dark Side Item 5 will be released on September 10.