Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Chapter1

Chapter 1: Mens Sana in Corpore Sano…or Something Like That

Part 1

September 18.

It was still morning and the sun was shining.

Frenda Seivelun was using social media on her phone while waiting to meet up with her 1st grade little sister.

The fluffy-haired blonde girl hummed happily and leaned against a decorative column at the train station.

“Hm, hm♪”

The summer heat had withdrawn and the sky shined a beautiful blue as the city below had become an alternate time-space belonging to a certain event. The shopping district and train station area were strung up with national flags much like Christmas lights in December and fireworks were going off in the sky, making pleasant popping noises. Food stalls and trucks were set up wherever there was space and the scent of cooking sauces and mayonnaise reached Frenda’s nose even here. With so many visitors from outside the city, the population density was unusually high. If the 80% of the 2.3 million who were students each had their parents, brothers, and sisters here, how much more would that be? …The correct answer may have been “I don’t even want to think about it”.

To efficiently transport all those people, a fleet of self-driving buses had been sent out into the streets. You did have to pay attention because some of the ordinary streets could be blocked for the sporting events, but those mild inconveniences were greatly outweighed by the festive atmosphere.

Frenda wasn’t interested in the events themselves.

She was only thinking about her family.

(Oh, how fun. I can’t believe I’m looking forward to a meeting. Is this really Academy City? Hard to believe this is the same dangerous place where a serial killer and a corrupt corporation fit in so well.)

It seemed out of place for a dark side bomber to be saying that, but people had a way of making special exceptions for themselves.

“Onee-chan.”

Hearing that, Frenda looked up from her phone.

Something was there.

A 7-year-old in a red headband and athletic bloomers was striking a pose with hands on her hips and a smile on her face. Again, a 7-year-old in athletic bloomers.

“What do you think, Onee-chan!? This is a special Daihaseisai outfit. In the first place, I’m going to get first place like this. Pretty cool, right!?”

“Sooooo cuuuuute! Are you trying to kill me, my sister!? Kyah, in the end, kyah, kyah!!”

“In the first place, this is not the reaction I was expecting.”

Part 2

At present, it was September 19. So a full day later. Item gathered at a movie theater that morning, but only three of them were there.

Nothing happened on the first day of the Daihaseisai. The dark side had been on edge during the opening ceremony, but against all their expectations the event remained peaceful.

The first move was only made on the 2nd day.

Right away, the big screen displayed some gruesome footage. A hanged woman swayed below an overpass. The corpse was an adult, not a student, and her clothing made her look like the scientist type.

The audio-only voice on the phone sounded carefree.

“She was discovered three hours ago. There are some unnatural aspects to the body, so there was a request for someone from the city’s backstage to investigate separate from the ordinary Anti-Skill.”

“It was a hanging. Isn’t that super just a suicide?”

“It’s always like this with you. What if I told you she was injected with a tryptophan-based pain stimulant beforehand? It’s hilarious, really. 350 times the ordinary level would mean feeling the kind of pain you normally wouldn’t get by slicing yourself down the middle with a chainsaw☆”

So she had been made to take a large quantity of a pain-causing substance?

While suicide was wrong, it did take quite a bit of courage, so a lot of people would fail to go through with it due to pain or fear. Taking something to shut off the pain would make sense, but trying suicide after amplifying your pain was certainly odd.

“Mugino, something else is odd too. She suffocated from constriction to her trachea. And the nails on both her hands are broken, so she didn’t die right away. It looks like she was fighting the rope around her neck for quite a while.”

“Huh? She was hanged, so of course she died from constriction to her neck.”

“Death by hanging can also come from breaking the neck or constriction of the carotid arteries. And if the length of the rope is wrong, they can gather too much momentum and decapitate themselves. It’s actually pretty unusual for it to only cut off their breath, forcing them to suffer for a long time.”

“Hm? But in movies they struggle for a super long time after the chair falls out from under them.”

“The nooses used for filming are made to not put any weight on the neck.”

So said Takitsubo.

Which made sense since doing it for real would kill the actor.

“The point is there are different ways for hanged people to die. Not breaking the neck and suffering for this long is an unusual type.”

“You’re on the ball today, track suit girl. Most likely, this was designed to intentionally let her struggle until the very last moment. It’s always like this with those people.”

And again, the unnaturally long suicidal suffering had been amplified 350 times by a pain stimulant made from tryptophan. That was one unnatural aspect atop another.

Yes, this was sounding a lot like the cruelty found on the dark side.

Track suit girl Takitsubo tilted her head.

“So this is officially being handled as an ordinary suicide, but it was actually a ceremonial punishment based on some complicated rules?”

“Tryptophan itself is a necessary amino acid used to preserve health. So finding it in the human body isn’t going to raise any red flags, right? So it threads the needle where word of this won’t spread among ordinary people, but the dark side will take notice and tremble in fear.”

This made them curious about the victim and why she had been killed in this complicated fashion. After all, this had been a punishment that had to be kept hidden. That was a much greater level of bad luck than angering a drunk and getting beaten to death for it.

There was of course a file on her.

It had likely been pulled from the Bank or something like it because it only listed her official history.

Mugino scanned through it.

“Matsuba Sarina, age 29. Lives in District 3 and works as a pharmacist, but currently volunteering as a Daihaseisai drug testing official?”

“Even if she lived a clean life and did everything above board, that position could make her some enemies in the elite schools, don’t you think?” said the voice on the phone. “The festival’s official drug tests are too sensitive. No one wants to spend a full year training up an athlete only to have them disqualified because some cold medicine or mouthwash triggered a false positive.”

Ordinary people saw the Daihaseisai as no more than a large scale athletic festival, but the elite schools were different. For them, it was more like a technical skill expo where the results of their esper development theories – that is, their high-level espers – competed to show who was best. The results greatly influenced how many student applicants the school received and it could determine whether or not they could land large sums of research funding from the city’s higher ups.

Specifically, in values counted by the billions of yen per year. And they would receive that each year as long as their school’s position in the rankings didn’t shift too drastically. That was more than enough money to kill over. After all, even a prestigious school that got first place each year would be counted as last if they were disqualified. That would mean disaster for their funding.

But Mugino had a question.

“Hah. You expect me to believe the proud teachers at Tokiwadai, Nagatenjouki, or some other fancy school would go to the effort of carrying out this ceremonial punishment?”

“If they didn’t want to dirty their hands, they might have gone through a middleman to hire someone like you to do it. It’s always like that with them.”

So that was a possibility too.

Also, there was no guarantee an elite school was behind it. Someone else might benefit from the killing somehow.

“Anyway, I want you to leave behind all your preconceptions and gather whatever information you can to objectively work out who the killer was. And since the Daihaseisai is this week, watch out for the outside reporters who are in the city with all the guests. We’d have a harder time pressuring them.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“By the way, where’s the other girl? The bomber. That little scientist knows a lot about chemistry and can play at being a forensic investigator, so I would think you would want her on this case. It’s always like this with you.”

Part 3

“What a pain.”

It was 10 in the morning as Frenda breathed a heavy sigh.

She had been like this ever since leaving the peaceful world and joining the others in the shadows.

She had been doing nothing but complain on this sunny morning.

“In the end, is that all the evidence you have? If you know we probably aren’t gonna find anything, then could you not call me in!? Ugh, my sister’s 50-meter dash is startiiiiing.”

Complain all she wanted, a job was a job.

It had only been three hours since discovery, but the yellow tape had already been removed.

Was that because it was being treated as a suicide with no sign of foul play?

“By the way, don’t you have to compete, Mugino? You’re the Level 5 representing your school. In the end, shouldn’t you be changing into athletic bloomers, tying on a headband, grabbing a baton, and running with all your might?”

There was a “bfh!!” of escaping air.

Mugino glared over at Kinuhata, who made sure to be looking somewhere else.

“I don’t like to make official appearances cause of idiots like that.”

Frenda didn’t respond to that low, brooding comment.

But she did speak while crouching on the ground playing at forensic investigation. With her head drooping.

She must have really wanted to see her sister running in athletic bloomers.

“We’re not going to find any new evidence. Even if it was ruled a suicide, it would have been in the public news. In the end, I’m sure Anti-Skill already did all the basic stuff.”

“What about the nearby security cameras?”

“Anti-Skill definitely checked those.”

So if this was a murder disguised as a suicide, the murderer must have been confident they couldn’t be caught by those ordinary methods. Then what was that confidence based on? Where was their secret loophole located?

Track suit girl Takitsubo swept her blank gaze side to side.

The passersby were a motley crowd. In addition to the track suits and gym clothes were a cluster of girls in school swimsuits. They may have had a swimming event at an indoor pool. Everyone displayed a bright smile and showed no particular sign of stopping here, so they likely weren’t here to steal a look. They may not have even known this was the site of a suicide(?).

A distinctive tone sounded as several children watched something on a single phone. They appeared to be watching a streaming quiz show.

Takitsubo looked to them and then expressionlessly narrowed her eyes a bit.

“Mugino, this place might be below an overpass, but it still gets a lot of traffic. Foot and car traffic.”

“So? That’s probably why the place was opened back up so soon.”

“The body was found three hours ago, which would mean shortly before 7 AM. Even during the Daihaseisai, the students will gather at their schools in the mornings and the parents from outside will be out early competing for the best spots on the schoolyards. You could call that rush hour. It wouldn’t have been as bad as the train stations, but there must have been even more traffic here than there is now.”

“What’s your point?”

“With so many eyes around, it would have been difficult to hang a struggling person without anyone noticing.”

The four exchanged a glance.

When disguising a murder as a suicide, nothing would be more foolish than being spotted by a crowd in the moment you set up the disguise.

Something didn’t add up.

“But there super weren’t any witness reports, were there?”

“Which means that’s where the trick lies,” readily stated Takitsubo. “I wonder if a small accident happened in this area near the estimated time of death. 10 or 20 minutes would be enough. If the overall flow of foot and car traffic was altered, there wouldn’t be any witnesses.”

Part 4

“Hey, hey. In the end, do you know what this symbol means? My phone’s map updated and now it’s covered in these weird icons. And the thing is…”

Someone casually stopped passersby and changed the subject in only five seconds.

She did this with girls her own age and even with salarymen in suits and sports reporters who come from outside the city.

Frenda’s ability to make friends with anyone meant this questioning was primarily her job. Kinuhata was instead wandering around trying to see whatever she could see.

“Huh? I’m asking if anything happened around here. No, I’m asking! Don’t answer my question with a question. C’mon, there are tons of things that could change the flow of pedestrians and cars. Like a speed trap or the street being closed for an event. Was there nothing like that?”

Elsewhere, Mugino was speaking in obvious annoyance while switching between different phones.

She was likely speaking to the support team that knew a lot about cars. But Takitsubo was pretty sure her effort would be in vain. The examples she gave sounded plausible, but the murder(?) happened before 7 AM. That was too early for any of that.

With her back against a concrete wall below the overpass, Takitsubo Rikou watched it all play out from a short distance away.

“Phew,” she sighed.

The sound expressed the weight of the atmosphere.

She was picturing some of the ordinary people who had ignorantly passed through here. Specifically the small children who had been huddled around a single phone to watch a streaming quiz show.

The distinctive tone of a correct answer wouldn’t leave her mind.

(A streaming show…)

She pulled her rectangular mobile device from her pocket.

She tapped the video site icon and the initial screen displayed some video titles in large text. Was the selection based on an analysis of her preferences, or was it simply what was trending?

She had the phone in her hand. She could bring up the quiz show with a single finger.

But she didn’t move.

That dream was already over.

“I’m back. In the end, I’ve gotten all the information I think I’m going to get. Huh? What’s wrong, Takitsubo?”

“Nothing.”

Frenda approached with a smile and Takitsubo shook her head.

With her usual lack of expression.

“Because I belong here.”

Part 5

Their investigation revealed a simple answer.

A large number of cardboard boxes had been thrown out onto the street near a refrigerated truck parked on the curb to refill vending machines. And instead of the worker, it was a pedestrian passing nearby who ran into the stack of boxes and sent them tumbling into the street.

That had stopped the flow of traffic and rubberneckers had created a wall blocking the sidewalk, greatly changing the flow of people.

Takitsubo gave a quiet snort with no change of expression.

“See, I told you.”

Kinuhata looked puzzled by this.

“You seem…uncharacteristically motivated today, Takitsubo-san. You’re usually more super zoned out and act like nothing that’s happening matters to you.”

“That’s cause this is about a disguised killing and doping. With dangerous chemical research that can get you destroyed by false accusations, the reaction is understandable.”

“?”

Mugino and Frenda didn’t seem to need anything more than that, but Kinuhata felt like that wasn’t enough of an explanation.

It was convenient the products knocked into the street were vending machine drinks. If they had been convenience store bentos, they would all have had to be thrown out, possibly turning it into a major incident, but plastic bottles inside cushioned cardboard boxes wouldn’t be damaged by a fall to the ground. And unlike metal cans, there wouldn’t be any permanent dents either.

This had been designed to just barely avoid leaving a record as a public incident.

However, this just meant they had to find the culprit’s face in the video recorded by the refrigerated truck’s drive recorder.

And once they did…

“Yamazaki Urika. Age: 17. Sex: Female. In the end, that’s her.”

“She’s asleep.”

Frenda and Takitsubo were alone.

And the track suit girl was correct. A high school girl wearing an absurdly bright neon cheerleader outfit made of a tank top and miniskirt was fast asleep with her head down on a table in the outdoor space of a cafe in District 13. Even though the cafe was receiving a lot of business at this morning hour. Was that really a coffee on the same table as the blonde twintails girl?

Of course, catching the blond twintails girl wouldn’t end this. A disguised suicide using a pain stimulant was clearly too much for someone acting alone. Yamazaki whatever-her-name-was was only a low-level lookout or something similar, so the job wasn’t over until they used her to track down the mastermind behind the killing.

So even if their target was peacefully sleeping, moving in and capturing her wasn’t necessarily the right move. The voice on the phone would not be happy with them if they brought her a lizard’s tail. And so they were continuing this the Item way.

“Take this before we get started.”

Behind cover, Frenda gave Takitsubo fake glasses with special lenses that obstructed security camera facial recognition and a mask with something like a QR code printed on it that accomplished the same thing.

Since this would require vigorous movement, the glasses had a sports strap.

The track suit girl seemed to like them since she began adjusting the glasses with her right hand on the earpiece.

“Hee hee. Glasses make me look smarter.”

“In the end, take this too.”

Frenda shoved something into the track suit girl’s hands. It was a sporty bag too small to even fit a bento or water bottle.

It contained a 9mm automatic handgun. And a few magazines.

“?”

Takitsubo only tilted her head at it. The unnaturally bright color of the military plastic had signs of being filed down, so it was probably a handmade firearm Frenda had assembled from parts made from a thermosetting material poured into a mold like she was making taiyaki.

Takitsubo flipped it over a few times and stared at the object like she didn’t know quite what to do with it. Frenda sighed at the girl’s lack of tension.

Mugino and Kinuhata were not here.

…Times like this were a problem for Kinuhata who could boost her athletic ability with Offense Armor. Because she could easily catch a fleeing target in mere seconds. And needless to say, Mugino would one-shot the target with Meltdowner before she had any chance to run away, which was useless here.

Item was a team, so they knew who was suited for what roles.

There were times when they needed the team members who wouldn’t overdo things.

(But in the end, this isn’t a job we can trust the delinquents of the support team to handle. Their appearance makes them stand out too much.)

“How do you use this?”

“Please, Takitsubo, do not look own the barrel. Anyway, you don’t need to think too hard about how to use it. In the end, just aim it forward with your right hand, aim at the fleeing enemy’s back, and pull the trigger whenever.”

Frenda wasn’t saying pulling the trigger whenever would hit or that she didn’t care where any stray shots might fly.

There was a more fundamental issue here.

“It’s loaded with blanks. We need to scare that idiot half to death so she’ll run to her hideout and tell us where the criminal group is, but we lose if she actually dies. So don’t fire too much and focus on conserving ammo.”

“I see. You’re so nice, Frenda.”

(Am I? In the end, her mistake will give away the entire group’s hideout, so she’ll probably just end up with her accomplices trying to kill her.)

Not that Frenda would be shedding any tears for the enemy.

“In the end, let’s get to it.”

They had equipped their special glasses and masks, so they didn’t have to worry about staying out of view of the security cameras inside the cafe which was covered in windows. Frenda and Takitsubo approached the outdoor table.

Since their target was asleep, they first had to wake her.

And then make her run.

Frenda and Takitsubo aimed their handguns toward her ears.

“In the end, on your mark.”

“Get set.”

Bang, ba-bang!!

Far away, Azumi and Fremea were leaning forward in their gym clothes.

They were at the starting line of the 50-meter dash.

“Whoa, what?”

“In the first place, what was that? What happened?”

They made a false start thanks to a loud sound at an odd time. A stir ran through the 1st graders whose serious race had been interrupted, so their female teacher formed a megaphone with her hands and addressed them.

“Okay, everyone, calm down. Return to your starting positions. That was probably just a prank someone pulled since this is such a big festival. Anyway, we’ll be redoing that from the start, so don’t relax just yet!”

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.

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.