Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item5 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 6===

It had been reduced to a pile of rubble.

The human bagworms and their creator DIY Garage were below it all.

Really, it was a miracle Takitsubo and Kinuhata had survived after staying in the lab.

“Kinuhata, are you alright?”

“This is super my role. Let me be the tank when I can.”

Kinuhata shoved the crumbling wreckage out of the way with a single thin arm.

The Academy City fire fighters would arrive before too long. Or maybe it would be a special rescue squad since this was District 23. Either way, they didn’t have time, but they couldn’t head back empty handed.

“Mugino. In the end, let me know if you need a throwaway SIM. If you weren’t kidding about retrieving their bones, shouldn’t you start making some calls? In the end, even if the public officials discover them, it’s not too late as long as the dark side hasn’t eliminated the bodies yet.”

“Yeah…”

As those two conversed and completed a few tasks…

“Look what I found.”

Takitsubo held out a stamp-sized white chip.

Nothing was written on either side and no metal pins or magnetic tape were in evidence. It may have looked like a small plastic cover from some other machine. To an ordinary person anyway.

After adjusting the angle, holding it up in the sunlight, and such, Mugino snorted with laughter.

“Invisible printing, huh?”

“Super what is that?”

“It’s a type of paint used for cheating on tests. You normally can’t see anything, but when the unscrupulous test-taker views it through spectroscopic glasses, small writing appears.”

Kinuhata’s mouth formed a small triangle.

Entrance exams hadn’t really been a part of her life, but were there really things like that in Academy City?

“Ordinarily, it’s done on their pencil or thumbnail instead of on an obvious chip like this,” added Takitsubo, staring blankly into the distance.

What do you mean “ordinarily”?

“He did it on this noticeable chip because he didn’t want to lose it among all the other junk in his home, Kinuhata. I’m guessing this contains important data for DIY Garage. He probably chose to use this inconvenient analog medium so it couldn’t be hacked.”

When Takitsubo arrived at a correct answer, she would say it like she had seen it herself.

Mugino’s shoulders shook with laughter.

“A full A4 sheet of paper can be compressed down to the size of a stamp, right? Well, you can use that to hide some kind of list or diagram.”

“But, Mugino, this doesn’t do us much good without the corresponding lens,” said Takitsubo.

“Frenda.”

“You got it,” replied Frenda. She truly didn’t even take a second to respond. “In the end, there is something painted on here even if we can’t see it. There are only so many chemicals used for invisible printing, so I can intentionally make it deteriorate enough to see what it says.”

Item hid behind some kind of container when a fire truck arrived. Then they approached a luggage cart that had been stopped for safety purposes. They hid among the many suitcases while the caterpillar-like vehicle took them to the international airport that wasn’t part of any of this.

They were dyed red with blood thanks to the battle against the human bagworms, but Academy City had plenty of effective technologies for getting out stains. A detailed forensic analysis would still detect the blood, but they soon looked presentable enough.

When someone died, all trace of it could easily be erased.

“…”

Once at the airport, they only had to take a large bus to leave District 23. People gathered from all around the globe during the Daihaseisai, so these buses were decently crowded and no one took any real notice of Item.

After renting a rental conference room in a convenient building, they focused on the white chip.

First, Frenda poured some kind of clear liquid into a thin container and then dipped the chip in using pincers. She measured the time with a kitchen timer, removed the chip from the liquid, and dried it with the warm air of a dryer.

“Ohh, that’s incredible, Frenda. It’s just like revealing a secret letter written in lemon juice.”

“Please no, Takitsubo. Don’t reduce Super Genius Frenda-chan’s specialized chemistry knowledge down to the level of my sister playing ninja.”

This was a method of intentionally deteriorating a transparent chemical in order to give it enough color to be visible. So really it was the same basic idea!

Takitsubo’s piercing replies were always so precise it gave Frenda a headache.

“(In the end, maybe I make it all look so easy they can’t appreciate what this genius girl is doing for them. Like how you can’t just take supermarket frozen foods for granted.)”

“Hm? But you are amazing, Frenda. You have real skills that let you do what the rest of us can’t. You’re as amazing as the old man next door who quits his office job and serves humankind by attempting to invent a quasar pulse interference communicator to talk with aliens.”

“I beg you, Takitsubo. That isn’t helping at all.”

Anyway.

Something more brown than black appeared on the surface of the chip.

However, an A4-size sheet of paper had been compressed down to the size of a stamp, so reading it with the naked eye wasn’t easy. One would normally read it through a loupe (or a pair of glasses with that function built into a portion of the lens), but the four of them wanted to share this data. It would be faster to zoom in with a phone camera and take a photo.

“Hm? It’s kinda blurry. How do you set it to close-up mode?”

“Mugino, change your camera settings and you’ll end up with a phone that wont do what you want. If all you want is to prevent camera shaking, it’s easier to fix it in place with a tripod or other support. You could tie it to that table lamp.”

Anyway, it was finally time to view the important document.

The phone screen displayed DIY Garage’s personal account book. What materials did he buy, how much of them, what did he use them for, and who did he sell the results to? It was all listed up here.

“Hm? But wait. In the end, wasn’t there a separate list with the much more dangerous human trafficking stuff? The one using the brandy grades.”

“This analog medium can’t be searched or copy-pasted, so he wouldn’t be using it regularly. I bet this is a backup of his usual records kept as insurance in case someone betrays him. So the really spicy stuff will be recorded elsewhere.”

The document was full of alphanumeric strings, but that was no real problem for Mugino.

She had been born into organized crime, so she had learned at a young age how to read secret account books.

“HoloAu79 was it? Looks like the voice on the phone was overthinking things with the fake gold bars. From the way he was spreading it around, that messed-up scientist probably had no idea the Investment Club or Army Ant even existed.”

“Then in the end, the conflict between the two groups wasn’t planned at all? It was a complete coincidence?”

“That’s right.”

All of DIY Garage’s products were homemade and he appeared to have “invented” plenty of products beyond the fake gold bars. Scanning the list, Mugino saw what might as well have been the invention of a bored housewife, things that would qualify as illegal weapons, IDs and uniforms accurately copied down to the smallest detail, and more.

Kinuhata tilted her head.

“The conflict caused by DIY Garage’s fake gold bars may have been a sad coincidence, but we were still attacked by those weird sisters. And they went to the trouble of disguising themselves as Academy City’s #1. Super what was up with that?”

“Even if it was a coincidence, someone must not have wanted us looking into it. This just means we were poking around where we were not at all welcome.”

But the way those sisters had withdrawn as soon as they lost their advantage made them seem not all that concerned by it all. In other words, it didn’t feel like those sisters would lose their lives if their misdeeds came to light. They were likely assassins or eliminators sent here by a client.

The question was whether or not people who attacked others as casually as picking up some fast food would call it quits after just the one attack. It would be a pain if they only saw this as a detour and Item was subjected to more attacks with different people or methods.

Item needed to shut off that tap. They wanted information on the secret client behind the attack, not the low-level soldiers who actually made the attacks.

Someone didn’t want a product sold here to be discovered.

What on this list of inventions and sales was someone so reluctant to have come to light?

Mugino laughed in delight.

“Now this is going to be fun.”

“?”

“Law-evading murder infrastructure.”