Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item3 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 1===

“It’ll be alright. We took care of the Sadistic Dolls.”

“You say that. But you didn’t. Leave any signs. Pointing back to us. Did you?”

“I promise you I didn’t.”

The boy smiled bitterly while listening to the cheerful artificial voice coming from his phone. It sounded a lot like a female voice actor.

Their discussion was as suspicious as could be, but they weren’t stupid enough to just use the ordinary call feature. They were instead using an avatar clerk app. That was an industrial service that allowed boutiques or cosmetics shops to display a 3D clerk on a tall LCD screen and answer customers’ questions, but it wasn’t well known that anyone could use the service with their phone or tablet as long as they went through the correct process. By using throwaway accounts, it was easy enough for both sides to feign ignorance if the contents of the communications were ever discovered.

A service that let both sides communicate without revealing their real faces or voices was extremely useful.

For ''members of the press'', seeking out a variety of ways to contact people was a part of the job. It let them create an environment where whistleblowers felt comfortable sharing their information and it gave them the means to contact various publishers themselves.

The boy was in District 4.

The district was already unique for its focus on food, but he was in the even more unusual Chinatown.

To help them blend into the scenery, even the three-bladed wind turbines were painted red here.

There were colorful flowers planted in dark soil around him, but the location couldn’t quite be called a small park. He sat inside a roofed gazebo where anyone was free to get some rest. It was chilly there since it was still early in the morning, but sensors would automatically detect the heat during the day and activate the spot cooler on the ceiling.

It was a public facility meant for people to enjoy the flowers, sip on some Chinese tea, and maybe play some go to enjoy a relaxing break. But no one would be using it before the trains even began running for the day.

It was early in the morning of August 30.

Specifically, it was 4:30 AM.

A middle school boy named Kagiyama Sasuke was using the avatar clerk app to communicate with someone while crouched down and performing some kind of work.

He was digging a hole in the dirt.

He held a smooth white blade in his other hand. The blade was more than 30cm long. The nonmetal knife appeared to be ceramic, but it was not.

“Using an esper power. To kill can be tracked back to you. After a search of the Bank. But adding in a weapon. Creates physical evidence.”

“We thought of that, of course. Ah ha ha. There won’t be any evidence left.”

The term “biodegradable plastic” might sound like some kind of cutting-edge technology, but it could even be created from cream.

And as long as you had the material, you could make just about anything out of it.

For example, you could create a large knife with a 3D printer and then hone it with a whetstone. If you killed someone with it, the knife would be the greatest piece of evidence, but if you simply buried it far away from the crime scene in District 9, it would degrade underground as various microbes consumed it.

“We’re on the side of justice, so we aren’t supposed to be resorting to these exceptional measures,” said Kagiyama. “Our specialty is civilly killing people with photos, after all.”

“Civilly?”

“What, do you have a problem with that?”

They called themselves the Frees.

A ''free''lance writer, a ''free''lance photographer, and a ''free''lance drone operator.

The three of them worked together as a no-pressure press group.

They undoubtedly worked on the side of justice.

Ideally, they could capture a decisive enough photograph to eliminate the evils of society. But as proud journalists, they wouldn’t push too hard or pursue their enemy too far. However, in the face of an evil powerful enough to cover up the decisive photograph they presented, “exceptional measures” were necessary.

That meant directly killing that evil themselves to end it.

The photos allowed their target to turn over a new leaf after losing everything. Killing truly took their life. The Frees paid careful attention to that distinction when choosing their target’s fate.

Kagiyama patted the dark soil down and wiped his hands off with a wet tissue. He noticed a bit of soil under his nails, but he figured that wouldn’t be enough to keep him from handling his camera equipment.

Now the evidence was gone.

As time passed, the knife itself would be completely eliminated by soil bacteria, so he could ignore any and all risks, including any fingerprints that may have been left on the knife.

“In that case. You need to continue. Working on the main job.”

“We’ll keep working on the case you were interested in. And I mean supplying information, not killing.”

Kagiyama logged out of the avatar clerk app and stomped down the black soil with the sole of his shoe.

The buried knife would disappear on its own.

And now…

“If we do everything that noble bunch wants us to do, we’ll be out here the rest of the summer. So what’s Item up to?”

“I’m monitoring them.”

He was answered by a girl in a gaudy suit.

Her name was Saetani Melusine.

The blonde high school girl was part French. She held a 30cm plastic tube, but it was not the kind of skinny water bottle that capable businesswomen in tight skirts used to carry around coffee.

It was another tool of their trade: a highly-directional shotgun microphone.

“In the end, the Sadistic Dolls’ guitarist was killed by someone else on their justice side, right? And not even the voice on the phone knows who on the justice side it was?”

The device was meant to get high-quality recordings of bird cries from a distance because wild birds were so cautious. By placing the shotgun microphone on the wooden table and pointing it in the right direction, it could accurately pick up on the voices through the thick tempered glass of the convenience store more than 30m away.

For whatever reason, Item appeared to have no set hideout and instead frequently move between different businesses with 24-hour service. They were behaving like summer break runaways and they were currently occupying a convenience store eat-in section.

The one seated in a stool by the window and resting her cheek against the long counter in obvious boredom was Frenda. She was staring lazily over at her phone which was resting on its side so she could watch something on it. She really did look like a harmless girl who didn’t want summer break to end so she ran away from her strict dorm to spend her time anywhere that had free internet service.

But what she said was far from harmless.

“Do you really think someone could outdo that voice on the phone on the intelligence front? In he end, I feel like she’s manipulating us.”

“''Wrong,'' muttered Saetani with a chuckle.

Kagiyama Sasuke and Saetani Melusine went to different schools, but they were both in their school’s newspaper club.

As was the third member of their group.

“Our funds are drying up.”

“What about our usual uploaders? Fumiaki is getting pretty dull, so what if we send them a few of our stocked photos?”

Newspaper clubs were mostly a thing of the past.

In an age where people could see anything they wanted on their phones, who would bother stopping in the hallway to read a school newspaper on the wall? And even if they tried to force a shift to a digital edition online, there wasn’t much they could do. The new rules meant to prevent students from starting secret school message boards tended to hinder the school reporters too.

But that made the clubs the perfect camouflage.

By creating a secret network of school newspaper clubs, they could use each school’s infrastructure to pursue the scandals of corporate executives and celebrities and deliver the finishing blow by anonymously sending the photos to the editorial department of a weekly photo magazine.

“Any news on recruiting ''Tokiwadai’s newspaper club''?”

“No, but they wouldn’t wait this long to respond if they weren’t seriously considering it. They definitely have some latent rebelliousness at their school. It sounds like things are chaotic there, so who knows if they’ll eventually join with us or not.”

The pursuit of the truth was everything for journalists.

Which meant they couldn’t just report on criminals. They had to dig up everything they could find on the victims as well.

Kagiyama started up the recording app he used to take memos and played a recording of an elderly man’s voice.

That man was the father of the scrapyard worker who was thought to have been caught in the mass murder perpetrated by the Sadistic Dolls.

“Please go away. I don’t know who you are, but we just want to be left alone. I beg you not to use our son’s death as an excuse to justify your own crimes!!”

With the recording app still open, Kagiyama gently shut his eyes.

And reflected on what he heard.

“''It hurts us as much as it hurts you.''”

“Yes. But if we tell them that, we would be making those parents into our accomplices.”

“''That is how the victim’s relatives tell us to do it without openly saying it. True justice knows how to pick up on those hints and act on them.''”

The Frees believed in acting on the victims’ behalf.

They would do anything if it would avenge the people who couldn’t take direct vengeance themselves.

They weren’t looking for thanks. In cases of apparent revenge, the relatives were always the top suspects, so it was best if those relatives said nothing at all. ''It was enough to know they appreciated it deep down where no one could see it.

The Sadistic Dolls task had been completed without incident.

It was time to face the next tragedy.

Saetani adjusted the position of her shotgun microphone.

Her power was Electro Reading.

With it, she could accurately detect the sound of static electricity crackling on the surface of people’s bodies, allowing her to predict the movement of their muscles and joints. While it would allow her to predict someone’s next action with perfect accuracy and set up a cross-counter, the sound of the static electricity was so faint she couldn’t hear it without her ear pressed up against her enemy’s chest. That made her power impractical without a shotgun microphone to support it.

(Of course, ''my power'' isn’t much better in that regard.)

“There’s definitely ''something'' going on with the rumored #1, Accelerator, but reaching him right away would be difficult.”

“Right.”

“So we need to prove ourselves first. Once we’ve proven we can freely kill a Level 5 with the power of mass media, the adults should be more willing to cooperate with us. Fortunately, the #1 has earned himself a lot of enemies. We can deal with him later.”

Kagiyama peered through the viewfinder of his SLR camera. It was equipped with a telephoto lens so large it looked like it could snap a photo of the footprints on the lunar surface.

“First, we need the upper hand when it comes to information. Specifically, we need to know exactly how much information Item has on us.”

“Then what?”

“If they do have our information already, there’s no point in hiding. We’ll just be assassinated when we least suspect it like a certain someone was.”

“And if they don’t have anything on us, we peacefully go into hiding?”

“Right.”

“Don’t make me laugh. We both know you’ll be spreading their photos and voice recordings online as efficiently as you can. They have no future either way.”

Just then, Kagiyama heard a dull thud and felt a vibration.

(What was that?)

He looked away from Saetani seated next to him and then froze.

“Ugh, that convenience store’s air conditioning is too strong. I can’t get any sleep there. I’ll freeze solid if I don’t get some fresh air first.”

It was Mugino Shizuri.

That extremely dangerous girl was approaching another bench in the gazebo, putting her only a meter away.