Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item6 Chapter3 (section)

===Between the Lines 2===

An hour before, when the call to Kinuhata Saiai’s phone was made.



There were many different types of plastic pools out there and they were not all meant for little kids. The more expensive ones were as large as 15 meters across.

This one was usable in October thanks to the dozens of tons of water being warmed by the large external pump that was constantly circulating hot water. Although that seemed to make it more of a large open-air bath than a pool.

A girl with silver hair and dark skin lay on one of the nearby beach chairs.

She was around 14 and wore a two-piece swimsuit.

“The Voice on the Phone? I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Wouldn’t that be the dark side intermediary and point of contact who is partially considered a legend? I don’t know if they really exist. Could she have been making that up to buy time?” asked the large man standing next to the beach chair.

The brown girl shook her long hair and chuckled.

“I don’t actually need to track down their identity. All I need to know is if they’re getting involved in ''this''.”

She was not alone.

She ordinarily did not dirty her own hands. So she did have some burly soldiers to do her bidding.

She tugged down her sunglasses with a finger and glanced up at the person standing right next to her.

“More importantly, we are now a step away from completing our criminal infrastructure. This is always when trouble decides to present itself. I need your Dark Rescue Squad on standby for some rough work.”

Dark Rescue Squad.

Armories, drug factories, garages for repainting or swapping the plates on stolen cars – criminals tended to handle dangerous objects a lot more often than ordinary people. One mistake and they could be caught in a fire or explosion. But even if they were engulfed in flames, their life was over if they called the ordinary fire fighters for help. They might be rescued from the burning building, but they would then be handed over to Anti-Skill.

''Which was why'' the dark side had its own rescue squad that specialized in dangerous disaster sites.

The Dark Rescue Squad would rescue any criminals who had a contract with them, use the flames or explosion to destroy the evidence, and transport the criminals to safety before the actual fire fighters or Anti-Skill arrived.

Their origins were similar to that of black market doctors. That illegal industry existed because hospitalization would lead straight to arrest for certain types of injuries. This was the same idea but for fire fighting.

They were the girl’s pawns.

Instead of simple destructive power or lethality, their were experts in enacting a safe and sure withdrawal. They were the trump card for survival rather than death. That she had chosen them in particular hinted at one aspect of the girl’s personality.

(Well, they seemed sick of charging into disaster sites full of fire and toxic gas for no more than the cheap contract fee those thugs pay. It wasn’t hard to get them to follow when I took advantage of that displeasure.)

She would complete a new criminal system before long.

Then each member of the Dark Rescue Squad would receive plenty of money. Unlike a bank robbery, this wouldn’t be a one-time payment. They would regularly receive that money for life. None of them would be hurting for money ever again.

The Dark Rescue Squad members were all itching to get started, but the girl alone smiled icily.

The girl with long silver hair and dark skin sang softly.

“Watch out overhead.”

“?”

“It’s hard to pick up by ear, but the mechanical sensors can tell. I can hear rotors far overhead. …And given how quiet it is, it’s probably a Two Wings attack helicopter.”

The Two Wings was an aerial weapon with a complicated development history. The official adoption competition had been won by another model, so it had no official model number. …But some VIPs must have decided to take advantage of that because it was seen in ''unofficial'' use like here.

Nothing would be recorded in the official records, so no authorization was needed to make an attack.

The higher levels of the dark side operated almost exclusively through paper documents and digital databases, so it was said a lot of them didn’t even know it existed.

Did that qualify as a sort of stealth?

Still lying on the beach chair, the girl whispered in a singsong voice.

“A VIP blackmailer’s obvious crimes made for nice camouflage, so it’s a shame really.”

The Information Broker girl sighed in exasperation.

By voicing the image in her head, she gave concrete form to the vaguer parts of her thoughts.

“But with that shield broken, our top priority is keeping our names and appearances hidden. Which is why the most troublesome enemy at the moment would be Kinuhata Saiai and Takitsubo Rikou who broke that blackmailer shield and are now trying to track down our identities.”

“You mean…?”

“Yep. Now we crush them to keep ourselves safe. That’s our top priority.”

The most comforting thing for servants was clear direction from their superior. The more succinct the better.

Mincing your words because of the danger would not earn trust. Trust was born by being open and honest even in a dangerous situation.

…Even if you were actually hiding the real truth below that.

If you were going to be dishonest, you had to stick to it.

As long as they never found out, that trust would remain intact.

“We need to make sure the blackmailers remain the ''only'' new social problem plaguing Academy City. We can’t allow them to look past that and discover our business.”

The girl removed her sunglasses and got up from the beach chair.

Slowly.



“Now, let’s get started. First stop: a certain luxury hotel in District 5.”


<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Item6_Chapter2|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Item6_Chapter4}}
</noinclude>