Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item2 Chapter1 (section)

===Between the Lines 2===

Different hotels had different names for a room fancier even than the suites, but this one called it the Princess Suite.

“Hm, the big beads are so bright they’re kind of boring. How about I tie your hair back with a scrunchie and then add in an unusual loop for some extra impact? That’ll make you real cute.”

“…”

Tachiuo Mary looked displeased while she let the 10-year-old brown gyaru mess with her hair. She was decent looking, but her thoroughly gloomy personality meant the gyaru look didn’t suit her at all. She was so gloomy she preferred to hide her face behind her mask even inside the private space of the hotel room.

Ainame Caroline looked puzzled while using the older girl as her toy.

“What’s that look for? You got a problem with this?”

“I-I was just wondering why you were doing this.”

“You’re too plain.”

“You already tore up and modified my uniform… Wh-what am I supposed to do when the break ends?”

“Go to school like that. Everyone’ll love it and it’ll do wonders for your social life. I mean, what are you thinking going through your schoolgirl days without even putting on any makeup? Lame. It’s August – summer break – you’re supposed to be living it up.”

When she realized Ainame Caroline wasn’t being sarcastic or teasing and really did mean all this, the tall loner fixed her modified hairdo and grumbled under her breath.

“I-it’s not like it matters…”

“?”

“This is meaningless. I don’t have any friends and no one pays me any attention in class. Whenever we have to split into groups, I’m always the last one chosen. In fact, they all play rock-paper-scissors to see who gets stuck with me.”

“The boys are just too intimidated by those miracle tits to approach you.”

“Gh!?”

It was written plain on her face that didn’t make her feel any better.

But the little brown gyaru continued regardless.

“And the girls are just jealous of those miracle tits. …The correct play is to laugh in their face. But you loners take it all at face value and miss out on so much in life. You’re like a cute little sister to me, so stand straight and push that chest out with confidence. Flaunt those miracle tits no one – not even you – asked for!”

Tachiuo Mary groaned, unsure what to say.

She was also blushing a bit, probably from all the talk about her chest.

Not that the genius girl cared one iota.

“Anyway, Tachiuo-chan, can you strip down and lie on the bed for me? Face down this time. I want to get today’s maintenance over with.”

“O-okay.”

“…You don’t have to take off that cute underwear.”

“Y-you could have specified how much I needed to take off, Lady Carol!!”

Tall Tachiuo Mary quickly held her plain unhooked bra in place with her arms and nervously lay down on the bed.

“Hm. You still won’t take off that mask? That’s the one boring thing about you.”

“Ugh… Once I put it on, I get used to it and find it hard to take it off. Besides, it’s not like anyone wants to see my face.”

“Hwa ha ha. You do know lying on a hotel bed in your underwear with only your face hidden makes this look extremely naughty, right?☆”

“Why are you being so mean today!?”

Ainame Caroline laughed some more and approached the audio equipment in the corner of the room. Instead of a device that accessed a modern music subscription service, this was a record player.

“M-Mozart?”

“Oh? You recognize it? Ah ha ha. And I thought most kids only knew Mozart as the guy they scribble on in their textbooks and make up ghost stories about his portrait in the music room.”

It wasn’t uncommon to play music in an operating room. Was this supposed to help her relax in the same way?

That was Tachiuo Mary’s theory, but…

“Hm? Tachiuo-chan, is this classical music enough to put you to sleep?”

“Eh? Oh.”

“Ha ha ha. This song’s tempo was designed for young men and woman to ballroom dance to. So you could call it ''dance music''. Composers like Mozart and Beethoven only wrote these really cool songs and then had an orchestra play them, so were they something like the modern Vocaloid producers? Learning about the origin of the songs and the culture at the time goes a long way toward letting you view them in a different light.”

Researcher Ainame Caroline snapped the suspenders holding up her miniskirt and pulled a baton-shaped handheld scanner from her bag.

She passed it directly above the back of the high school girl lying face down on the bed, slowly moving a blue light source that looked a like a fluorescent light. It almost looked like a girl getting the untanned portion of her skin touched up at a tanning salon.

The little researcher glanced over at the wirelessly-connected flat screen monitor.

“Good, good. #1-150 are normal. #380 was causing trouble, but it’s in acceptable bounds now. I can let natural healing handle this one. Since I don’t need to rely on drugs or the corset, I’d call this a success.”

[[Image:Item2_BW2.jpg|thumb]]

What was she talking about? Bones.

Humans had around 206 bones. #380 might not seem to fit there, but it was no mistake.

The process was called metaplasia.

The differentiation between different bodily tissues was surprisingly fuzzy. For example, the boundary between the stomach and the intestine could be altered by disease. The tissue was replaced by a different type on the cellular level. In the same way, it wasn’t unusual for muscle fibers exposed to constant, powerful vibrations to turn to bone. As seen in the bones of horse riders, new bones could be created.

Where did Tachiuo Mary get her superhuman strength or the ability to jump farther than any normal human?

The answer was plain and simple: her body’s movement system had been newly designed to give her greater use of her body by using a grand total of 503 bones and a unique arrangement of muscles. Measuring her strength required a barbel measured in tons.

But that simple strength wasn’t all. Her creator had demonstrated her skill by giving the girl smooth and beautiful bodylines as well.

“I-is everything alright? With the plan, I mean?”

“Of course.”

She had actually been sweating on the inside when Tachiuo Mary showed up without being asked, but saying so would probably make that loner faint. The truth was she had only just barely managed to stay in control of when she announced her results.

But that still meant Researcher Ainame Caroline remained in control.

“The trick to scamming people is to isolate them and shut off their access to information. That can mean telling them you’ll secretly let them, and only them, know about a great deal on an apartment or private equity. Or it can mean threatening to embarrass them by letting everyone know they fell for an obvious scam.”

“Y-your point?”

“You know exactly what I want to hear, don’t you?☆ My point is we don’t need to settle this all at once. As long as we stir up the hornet’s nest, they’ll be too agitated to think straight. Ha ha ha. And once the tunnel vision sets in, they’ll be so easy to control it cracks me up☆”

Superhuman strength?

The loner with zero self-confidence had far more than that.

Her creator had said as much, so it had to be true.

''She was worth far more than Mugino Shizuri.

“There, all done. You can get dressed now.”

“Lady Carol, what should we do for dinner?”

“Hm? I already ordered something cute.”

Ainame Caroline looked puzzled and Tachiuo Mary glared at her while sitting up in the bed (in only her underwear and mask).

The 10-year-old brown gyaru pulled some room service from a boxy receptable that prevented her from ever having to directly interact with the hotel staff. That may have been a feature exclusive to rooms this nice. She placed candy apples, cotton candy, shaved ice, and a variety of other sweets on the table. She also prepared a collection of colorful supplements she supplied herself to provide the nutrients the food lacked.

“Um.”

“What? I have all the necessary nutrients right here. I won’t get too much or too little of anything. Theoretically speaking, this is a healthier diet than the food given to a monk training at a Buddhist temple.”

“But, Lady Carol, you promised to stop relying so much on drug store supplements. If you ingest too much of a nutrient at once, your body can’t absorb it all and it can put a strain on your kidneys and liver.”

“Oh, shut up. I’ll eat plenty of vegetables with all this watermelon. And they’re from the same Cucurbitaceae family as squash, so don’t tell me that doesn’t count as a vegetable. Hee hee. Watermelons really are the best melons☆”

“…”

“What? A balanced diet is what matters, so if I make the right selection of these chemically-designed supplements, the end result is exactly the same. What’s your obsession with it having to be vegetables that grew in the dirt? Some nonsensical belief that eating tons of vegetables will give you 100 years of healthy living? I mean, they ate nothing but grains and vegetables in the olden days when the human lifespan was 50 years. How’s that for a Q.E. D.?☆”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

Tachiuo Mary got off the bed and crossed the large room in only her underwear and mask.

This was only a hotel room, but it did have a kitchen past the trendy bar counter. However, the nervous loner was not reaching for a kitchen knife to impulsively stab the other girl like a scene from a thriller on TV.

“Eh? Wait, what is that you’re placing on the cutting board? Cucumbers, carrots, and – no, not a radish.”

“I will cook you some vegetables in olive oil. If it doesn’t feel like a salad, even a vegetable hater with an extreme sweet tooth can eat them, don’t you think?”

“Wait, wait, if you know I hate them, why would you force me to eat them!? You could at least say something! Don’t just do it in silence! Ugh, why are the pieces so big? If you must force me to eat vegetables, you need to chop them up a lot smaller and mix them into fried rice or a hamburger steak! No, no, I can’t do it! Can’t you see how pale my face is!? You need to stop! Don’t shove them in my mouth! Agh, they’re too hot- mgh, mgh, mghhhh!?”

Ainame Caroline struggled as the super strong girl of her own creation forcibly shoved the food into her mouth.

“Great job eating it all, Lady Carol. Now, where’s your ‘thank you’?”

“Urp. Th-thank you…and all the farmers…who grew it.”

It was like wanko soba. If she didn’t say it now and end this immediately, she knew from experience she would be attacked by an endless supply of extra helpings. She slumped limply onto Tachiuo Mary’s lap pillow on the floor and let her gaze wander aimlessly for a while.

And eventually…

“Bleh. Anyway, your regular maintenance is complete, so it’s time we left this room.”

“Eh? Right now? But it’s the middle of the night. Won’t we have a hard time finding another hotel to check into?”

“Lame. Didn’t I tell you at the start that we have to move onto the next phase once Item is aware of us? So we need to move to a different hideout.”

They were in a luxury resort hotel made to look like a fairy tale castle. It was located in District 6, where the entire district functioned as an amusement park.

But that important information didn’t mean a thing anymore.

However…

“I see. Then we need to get everything ready to go. I can take the vegetables that didn’t end up in the oil and make a smoothie out of them. We can’t let them go to waste.”

“Eh?”

“Soy milk, yogurt, and honey should work. Hee hee. If it’s mild enough, you can drink it with me, right, Lady Carol?☆”

“Urp. No, no, no, no. Stop that! Don’t pin me down like this! The vegetable part doesn’t even matter here! If you hold my head like you’re about to resuscitate me and pour a smoothie down my throat, it’s going to get in my windpipe and- bwahhhhhhhhhhh!?”

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