Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 8===

The waterfront.

At 4:30 in the morning, the sea had a blade-like chill to it. Maybe because it was a mixture of the deadly night sea and the summer sea that made people change into swimsuits.

When really attacking someone under the cover of darkness, you would avoid the middle of the night.

It was best to attack at a time linked to biological functions, like dawn when people’s sleepiness was at its maximum or around mealtime.

Frenda could not walk straight to her destination.

There were surveillance cameras everywhere long before reaching that destination. For some reason, the home security cameras were pointed at the road, not at their front door or garage door. Since those weren’t public security cameras, that was classified as setting up a hidden camera. Frenda slipped past more and more of the defense network that was layered like the rings on a stump.

When it came to pure technology, Frenda’s life in Academy City gave her the upper hand.

After easily clearing that obstacle, she climbed to an emergency stairs landing attached to a nearby multi-tenant building wall.

She observed the building she was interested in from the safety of a blind spot in the cameras.

The Mugino Family.

That was their mansion. Of course, it was technically owned by a shell company.

“Nhh…”

Frenda placed her hands on the metal pole vertically connecting levels of the emergency stairs.

She tangled her legs around it and squeezed with the back of her knees to spin around it. The mansion showed no sign of noticing her upside-down pole dancing, confirming this really was a blind spot.

“Oops.”

Holding her hat in place with a hand, she continued observing while upside down.

That prime coastal real estate had to cost more per square centimeter than platinum, but the front yard contained inside a tall fence looked large enough for an official soccer match. The mansion actually looked odd to a foreigner like Frenda. As a product of the Meiji and Taisho eras, its design was a mixture of Japanese and Western. It didn’t even obey the standard of symmetry and it was split into several buildings which were linked by walkways, creating something like a giant maze.

But that aside, there was something wrong with someone’s house being bigger than a school.

It was three floors tall…or four, or maybe even more? The heights of the different rooms must have differed because she had trouble working out the number of floors by counting the windows.

(Ugh, isn’t the waterfront full of reclaimed land? In the end, keeping a mansion this old would mean constantly refusing to cooperate with national-level urban development projects.)

And that may even go beyond the one country. Why had that house alone been spared the bombings during the war? That showed tremendous power, but it was even scarier that no one ever talked about it.

Yokohama had been as involved in opening up the country as Hakodate and Kobe. A Western mansion brimming with foreignness wasn’t all that out of place here, but it still felt wrong for the big boss of an illegal criminal organization to be living out in the open here. They could brazenly break the law without getting arrested. They didn’t run or hide. Because they didn’t need to. It really emphasized their power as a criminal organization.

The patrolling guards in black were well trained.

It was 4:30 in the morning.

Nothing would have happened yesterday or the day before that, yet they didn’t even yawn during this early hour.

(If I charged in through the front gate, I’d end up riddled with bullets. And climbing over isn’t a great idea either. But with the entrance that strictly guarded, the people who go in and out will have invented a secret back entrance to bypass the annoying process.)

“There it is. They’re hiding it with a green shrubbery, but there’s a square hole open in the thick wall.”

But why would the mansion’s troops want to leave and return on their own like that? Was there a supermarket or discount store nearby?

It looked like Frenda wouldn’t have to traverse the smelly sewers to get in.

And now it was time to act.

Flipping upright from her upside-down pole dancing, she set her feet on the emergency stairs landing and silently but swiftly descended to the ground.

She followed a route that avoided the surveillance cameras to approach the Mugino Family’s tall wall, parted the green shrubbery, and slipped through the square hole.

It didn’t matter how many guards they had posted when she could use a blind spot like this.

She was finally inside.

And she sensed a gaze.

Like a sharp pressure.

This was still the large front yard. Frenda hadn’t even set foot inside the maze-like mansion.

This person hadn’t been here when she investigated just a bit ago.

Had a guard just so happened to walk by, or had they predicted where Frenda would be spy on them from and hidden in a blind spot?

“In the end, did you lure me in?”

“This trap would only work on a pro. You can pat yourself on the back for that, Frenda Seivelun.”

Frenda found herself facing a maid in a long skirt.

But that long skirt had a large slit on either side. And it looked unnaturally heavy. The maid reached inside one slit and pulled out a wine bottle full of gasoline, detergent, etc. And the empty bottle used for this was from one of the finest French wines.

“Does that mean, um, in the end…”

“If I am being honest, I do not think pole dancing in a miniskirt is the best idea. Let’s just say you showed your stripes with that one.”

She had seen it all.

And being told that directly and with such seriousness was really awkward.

The maid began to move. She used the kind of old match that could be struck on the sole of a boot to light the English-language newspaper shoved into the mouth of the Molotov cocktail.

Was her weapon so powerful she couldn’t actually fight inside the mansion?

Frenda glared back at the busty maid who looked to be about the age of a high school upperclassman and smiled a little.

“I see the Mugino Family has Western tastes in all things. Is a Molotov cocktail maid their idea of hot?”

A Molotov cocktail was fire plus a flammable substance.

And this maid had been waiting here after predicting what Frenda would do.

Frenda noticed an electronic device that didn’t fit the classic maid look.

“In the end, is that a music player?”

“The Chinese ones are nice. They’re cheap and you can easily buy them in bulk. I’m not interested in sound quality or ease of use. The best part is how easy they are to dismantle and repurpose.”

It sounded like this was an explosives expert on the Mugino Family payroll.

That meant she was the one who had used the pressures of that truck driver’s personal life to lure him onto the path of evil and then killed him with a remote-controlled hopping bomb once he became an inconvenience.

The air electrified.

Frenda Seivelun spat out a growling voice.

“You piece of shit. In the end, the title of bomber is too good for you.”

“Writhe in pain and carbonize, villain. This sticky flame cannot be put out by a fire extinguisher.”

This left Frenda with only one option.

The fire on the English-language newspaper vanished.

“Wha-!?”

The maid’s expression changed.

There were several methods of making Molotov cocktails, but those that used fire for ignition were not a threat when thrown if that fire had gone out.

And every part of the world had long had methods of extinguishing candles from a distance. It was a standard illusionist’s trick and a classic way for bogus religions to fake miracles.

Frenda had to make the most of her opponent’s brief stiffening in shock.

And so she had already begun a sharp run.

Forward.

Toward the maid.

“Was it an issue of moisture or humidity? Or did I cut off the oxygen supply with a colorless gas? In the end, did you really think I was going to reveal the trick to you, you spoiled thing? Bomb experts are also experts at securing a safe location and time to act on the battlefield!!”

“Kh.”

“You looked into my identity before laying this trap for me, right? Ha ha. Are you just stupid? In the end, challenging me in my own field is suicide!”

Frenda’s shout was immediately followed by an explosion.

But Frenda hadn’t done this.

It was something else.

Had that expert bomber been caught unawares in her own field?

Her eyes widened in surprise as she just barely managed to jump outside the lethal range.

To be fair, she couldn’t be blamed for not expecting this.

This wasn’t a hidden bomb, a grenade, a shoulder-fired rocket, or any other toy used by guerrillas and criminal organizations. It had sliced through the dark sky, slipped through the valley between skyscrapers, and flown accurately toward her.

In other words…



“A cruise missile? In the end, did they attack me from the ocean!?”