Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 5===

At midnight, Item met back up.

Takitsubo tilted her head.

“Frenda’s all shiny.”

“Oh, you can see this joyful aura, can you? Yes, it’s impossible to live a healthy life without soaking up the occasional sun. And I got a generous dose of the bright and shining sun known as my sister!”

Their job was to capture the counterfeiter making the HoloAu79 gold bars, but they had no information on the counterfeiter. So they needed to first contact someone who might have that information.

That meant a visit to the base of Army Ant who they had fought during the day.

“But isn’t that a mystery of its own? You see low-level Army Ant grunts around a fair amount, but does someone know where their headquarters are? Their loan shark base super might not even be in Japan.”

“Kinuhata, you’re looking at it wrong,” said Takitsubo.

“?”

“Army Ant has no fixed base. So investigating real estate to track down a building won’t work.”

As they spoke, Item waited for the crosswalk signal before crossing the street despite the lack of other pedestrians or cars at this late hour.

Apparently image was everything. Not long ago, tall signs displaying missing people posters or warnings about heading out late at night had been attached to the wind turbine poles with wrapped wire, but all of those appeared to have been removed for the Daihaseisai. Quite the merciless choice.

The unnatural cleanliness of not properly alerting people to the danger didn’t seem like it would lead to safety.

“I don’t know how good a counterfeit this HoloAu79 stuff is, but Mugino saw through it on sight, right? Is it really that super good?”

“Only because gold appraisal is almost entirely automated in Academy City. …If you let people do it, you’ll have no end of idiots who scrape a little off the surface and steal it. So in this day and age, fooling mechanical sensors matters more than fooling people. A few people might not be fooled, but most people will trust what the neatly-organized data tells them.”

“In the end, HoloAu79 doesn’t have a sign, right?”

Ordinarily, counterfeit money would include a minuscule sign that only the creator would know to look for. Because once the money was in circulation, there was a risk of it returning to the creator’s own wallet. Nothing would be sadder than being arrested for unwittingly trying to pay at a store with your own counterfeit money.

However, HoloAu79 lacked a sign like that.

If the creator had decided a petty bourgeois like them would never do business in anything as fancy as gold bars, they didn’t need a sign to avoid reacquiring it.

That had made this a lot more difficult for the Academy City higher ups.

“So Army Ant doesn’t have a fixed base, huh?” muttered Mugino.

By then, Takitsubo had already found the answer.

“Those shiny things.”

“Hm? In the end, aren’t those meant to keep crows away? These ones look homemade, though.”

“There’s a pattern, Frenda.”

Takitsubo viewed something like aluminum foil tanzaku hanging near a trash dumping site.

“If they move locations a lot, they need some way of communicating with their people. Without relying on corporate social media that is so easily traced.”

“Takitsubo-san, you’re super good at this kind of thing, huh?” Kinuhata sounded impressed.

“I used to want to make quizzes. Again, used to.”

No one really looked into who made these sorts of things. The four girls followed the signs that were clearly homemade yet wouldn’t rouse suspicion when hung up in the streets.

Between two buildings late at night, they found a tall fence blocking the way. The chain link door was locked with a thick chain and a padlock while a man in baggy pants leaned against it and boredly messed with his phone. He wasn’t keeping an eye on his surroundings, but was he supposed to be a guard?

When Mugino approached in obvious annoyance, Mr. Smartphone finally looked up.

“I have business with Army Ant’s boss.”

“Don’t make me laugh. You think I’m letting an outsider in? I’m sure you worked yourself to tears gathering up all the money, but you can wait until tomorrow to pay back your debt. With the interest for the extra day, idiot.”

He became much more cooperative once she grabbed his face with her entire palm. His bent knees and back had him pressed fairly compactly against the ground, though.

Frenda cackled.

“It’s a miracle he didn’t get his upper half vaporized for that.”

“Mugino really is kind.”

Past the filthy fence door, they found a square space of plain concrete.

White beams of light pierced straight into their heads. Those were headlights.

Quite a few vehicles were gathered here.

Was there a larger entrance somewhere?

Several large trucks were parked at the center. But their boxy storage containers had the sides opened straight upwards. Giant speakers, stage lightning from directly above, electric instruments, and a DJ booth… Those were surprise concert stage trucks meant to throw a party anytime and anywhere.

There were also a few vans modified into food trucks to serve alcohol and snacks to the members. (Even though they had all gathered here in cars and motorcycles!)

More than 100 scantily-clad boys and girls filled the space.

The ant masks were a strange sight when there were this many of them.

That explained the great number of vehicles.

Frenda whispered in partial exasperation, although the “Boom! Boom!! Boom!! Baboom!!” of giant woofers threatened to drown her out.

“Army Ant. …In the end, those ants don’t have a fixed anthill and wander the jungle as a group, right?”

“Every one of these people are illegal debt collectors? What has the world super come to?”

At least it sounded like Army Ant only bared their fangs against dark side people who borrowed money and then failed to pay it back.

They were also known for turning people into small diamonds if they couldn’t pay, so was a device for that running in one of the trucks?

Also…

“Super wait a second. Aren’t we missing someone? Where did the two with huge chests go!?”

“We got separated in the crowd. In the end, we need to get going, Kinuhata.”

Frenda showed no intention of actually trying to search for the other two. She grabbed Kinuhata’s thin arm, parted the crowd, and continued on.

The crowd density was a little better than a packed train and she appeared to have found her target already.

“The area with the most guards and the best escape route is, in the end, over there.”

“Are those two super alright?”

It had probably started out as a long limousine, but it had been modified into a convertible. With the movable walls and roof open, it looked something like a VIP table at a sketchy club.

The sofa was as large as a bed and a light green cocktail sat on the side table. Probably a mint-flavored drink called a grasshopper. Did the queen see that as eating grasshoppers like army ants did?

But…

“No one here?” asked Kinuhata, blinking.

Then she used a single Offense Armor boosted arm to flip over the entire 2 ton limousine.

There was a square metal panel on the ground.

They appeared to be borrowing power from an underground mall, so the surface was connected to the underground space.

After the queen escaped, someone else must have moved the limo to cover it up.

“She got away!? Super when did she notice us and run off!?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Large men began slowly surrounding Kinuhata and Frenda.

Were they trying to buy time?

But Frenda didn’t seem particularly bothered.

“In the end, this is all going according to plan☆ Oh, and one other thing, Kinuhata.”

“Super what do you want!? This isn’t the time!”

“Can you use this wall?”

“…”

Was this why Frenda had stayed with Kinuhata and her Offense Armor?

Kinuhata briefly considered leaving Frenda here, but Item was supposed to be a team. She frowned as she grabbed the back of Frenda’s collar and ran straight up the wall to the roof of the 15 floor building. She had to use the windows as footing in some places, but her ability to concentrate nitrogen in a single location allowed her to remove the air between the sole of her shoe and surface of contact, letting her shoe act something like a suction cup.

“Man, that’s convenient. With a Level 4 around, I don’t even need any reverse bungees or rocket boosters.”

“Is that super all I’m worth to you?”

Were the popping sounds from below gunfire? Kinuhata and Frenda ignored the commotion down there and instead jumped to another building.

“What about the other two? Where are we going after super abandoning them?”

“Well, in the end, we’re doing our jobs.”