Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item6 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 2===

Judgment and Anti-Skill were slowly and quietly completing their perimeter.

They likely weren’t directly after Item, but with so many illegal actions in their past, they would be in trouble if they were caught in this big arrest.

They needed to escape and quick.

And they had to do so quietly and inconspicuously instead of mowing down those arbiters of justice and making a break for it.

“So who are these overzealous Judgment and Anti-Skill people actually after?”

“Mugino, probably her.”

Takitsubo indicated a distant point with her gaze alone.

A girl with a ponytail was sneaking around there. And her shopping cart contained…

“That’s a lot of insecticide and bleach. More than a normal household would ever need.”

“That’s gotta be for sulfur dioxide. It’s an ingredient for sulfuric acid.”

“Yeah. In the end, hasn’t there been a recent thief who keeps dissolving the dials and levers to safes? They’re known as the Bubbly Burglar.”

“So are we super going to create an opening there?”

They didn’t need to arrange a detailed plan.

The four of them got to work.

Frenda grabbed a high-end mobile battery from a shelf of phone products and slipped it into the fugitive’s pocket. While her hand was still in the girl’s pocket, she yanked on a loop of thin wire.

A shrill roar sounded. It was a shoplifting alarm.

The criminal herself had to be the most surprised.

“Dammit. Why, why, why!?”

“Warrant posted. This is Anti-Skill! This is not voluntary. If you resist, it will only add to your charges!!”

They must have decided the criminal would panic and take some other customer hostage if they stuck to “slowly and quietly”. Judgment and Anti-Skill rushed toward the source of the noise.

None of them were paying any attention to Mugino and the rest.

The perimeter had collapsed.

“(This way.)”

Mugino guided the other members to one of the seven exits.

Clairvoyance allowed its user to see through objects and view what was on the other side, so staying behind cover wouldn’t work. …Or so one would think, but that wasn’t actually true.

“It comes down to the number of layers.”

“?”

Kinuhata tilted her head, so their leader elaborated.

“Clairvoyance has to be focused just like ordinary vision. If it could truly see through everything, it would also see through the person on the other side of the wall. That would be no different from not seeing anything at all, right?”

“Oh, I get it. So she has to super focus it on whatever she’s trying to see.”

“We can use that to our advantage. If she has it set to view things through one wall, we can remain hidden behind a wall if we make sure there are three layers of cover between us and her. Takitsubo.”

“I can tell generally how far she’s viewing based on her posture and her center of gravity. It looks like she isn’t paying any attention to anything other than the decorative column in front of her. That means she has it set to see through one layer.”

The discount shop provided plenty of obstacles. The section with cheap licensed character T-shirts hanging everywhere would be perfect for use against Clairvoyance. The one small space contained a large number of “layers” arranged haphazardly.

The security cameras were operating.

Mugino and the rest moved from cover to cover while making sure their actions remained natural enough to not arouse suspicion if the security footage were later reviewed.

And as they did…

“Mugino.”

“?”

Mugino immediately raised her guard.

This was one of Takitsubo Rikou’s “oracles”. Those were never good news.

“The glasses girl has shifted her center of gravity forward a bit. She’s looking farther away. I can only guess, but I would say she’s changed to view through two layers if not more.”

“(Nothing’s scarier than when they act on a meaningless whim like that! There’s no way to predict it!!)”

Mugino clenched her teeth and got moving.

But not to hide behind the shelves. Instead, she walked right out in front of the Judgment’s Busty Glasses. At close range.

The Judgment girl’s Clairvoyance was set to view through at least two layers.

That meant Busty Glasses was currently ''seeing straight through any object that wasn’t hidden from her by at least one layer.''

The Judgment girl shifted her focus elsewhere without any apparent suspicion, so Item took that chance to walk past her. Less than a meter away from her.

They reached the exit without being noticed.

They found the ordinary evening outside.

However, that nostalgic and gentle scene was disturbed by restless red lights.

Parked just outside were several special vehicles painted white and black and decorated with red lights and speakers. The four girls kept away from those as they took the sidewalk away from the store.

Frenda looked down in her hand.

“Oops. In the end, I brought the ear pick with me.”

“Super why do you care after they caused us so much trouble?”

“There was an incident. One caused by Anti-Skill themselves. We had to leave in a hurry. If there’s a fire while you’re in the fitting room, they won’t arrest you for theft if you evacuate without changing back into your original clothes, right?”

That said, did this mean they had finally escaped to safety?

Takitsubo Rikou was as expressionless as ever.

“We made it.”

“I get the feeling Takitsubo-san has more super guts than any of us,” said an exasperated Kinuhata. Her heart was still pounding.

“Of course she does,” said Mugino like it should be obvious. “A while back, we had some traitors in the support team. Some pieces of shit were leaking information. Threats and torture aren’t always enough to track someone like that down. In the worst case, ''I was thinking I’d have to eliminate all of them to make sure we got the traitors'', but then she comes along and solves the entire case on her own. …Takitsubo identified the traitors after asking the support team five questions. She got every last one with a measly five questions.”

Kinuhata looked at Takitsubo again, but the girl’s expression was still blank.

Frenda sighed.

“So Clairvoyance, huh? As the Academy City Bomber, that’s one of the last powers I want to tangle with. On the other hand, it ranks pretty high on the powers I’d love to have.”

“We don’t know the exact conditions of that Judgment girl’s power, though.”

Still, it couldn’t hurt to be cautious.

It likely came from being raised as a born gangster, but Mugino Shizuri didn’t seem to have relaxed her guard even after escaping.

“This doesn’t smell right to me. I mean, do you really think we’d be caught up in this by chance?”

“Mugino. They were trying to arrest some other fugitive, so it isn’t like any of us made a mistake.”

“I didn’t say you did. But someone could have led that fugitive to our location. Without her even noticing.”

“In the end, are you trying to say someone else secretly sent Anti-Skill and Judgment after her? In order to harass us?”

They had to find out who had done it.

The fastest option there was to start by learning why they had done it and what they gained from it.

“In the end, has there been any real conflict within the dark side recently?”

“I don’t know. There’s always someone fighting somewhere.”

Frenda and Mugino began trading thoughts while Takitsubo kept her position a step removed and listened expressionlessly to the debate.

And.

Someone else had sweat dripping down her face.

That someone was Kinuhata Saiai.

An unseen villain had encouraged Anti-Skill and Judgment to attack a target. While the villain themselves watched on from safety.

That sounded far too familiar to her.

Wasn’t that very similar to how the blackmailers operated? She had thought that was over after defeating the “legitimate” VIP who acted as a Board member’s wallet, but could it be?

(O-oh, no. ''Could that still not be super over''???)