Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item6 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 6===

The silver-haired dark-skinned girl was Information Broker Norsitro.

Were the large burly men surrounding her illicit firefighters?

More importantly, Kinuhata had picked up on a curious word in their brief conversation.

''The call center''?

“(Kinuhata, anything the enemy freely says in front of you should be taken with a grain of salt. Don’t accept it at face value.)”

“Information you think you researched on your own can be externally controlled too, you know? All I have to do is manipulate what order you find the relevant data in, so it’s not hard at all,” pointed out Norsitro in her neon green bondage outfit.

Then what about the vulnerability they had just found? Using the fact checking file extension? Maybe they had to doubt the entire idea of freely communicating across the city wall. Were they back to square one?

“Kinuhata, what did I just say about things the enemy says in front of you?”

“Ugh.”

Kinuhata Saiai groaned at having to be told a second time.

The silver-haired girl smiled elegantly at how easily manipulated Kinuhata was. She even covered her mouth with a hand despite how that clashed with her outfit.

“So instead of leaping at the documents and information you find, you should be working out how and why they turned up here and then dealing with them accordingly.”

The Information Broker.

Norsitro’s job involved more than just gathering information. She had to decide how to use it. When was the best time to reveal it or hide it? She was an expert at using information as a whole.

“That said, get the balance wrong and you can end up paranoid and doubting everything you see, so hiring an expert at information management is the best thing to do for your mental health, if you ask me.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kinuhata saw Frenda stir.

She stuck a hand in her pocket.

Kinuhata had been working with Item long enough to know what Frenda was planning.

Norsitro was still talking when Frenda pulled an explosive from her pocket and threw-



“''I’m not done talking.''”



''Boom!!'' A dull explosion rang out.

Unsure what had happened, Kinuhata Saiai was thrown through a tempered glass window. In other words, she was tossed out from the third floor. That was about the same as the top floor of a school.

On the other side, the inner wall behind Norsitro broke through and a black Eastern dragon emerged.

No.

That was actually thousands or tens of thousands of flying objects about the size of paper airplanes made from fliers.

“In the end, is that a drone swarm!? Kinuhata!”

“Ohhh? Are you sure you should be focusing on her?”

A “zap!!” of bursting air rang out.

Along with a flash of light.

Frenda Seivelun fell to her knees.

“Kah…”

(Lightning, a high-voltage current? What the hell? In the end, does she have more than just next-gen weapons?)

Frenda collapsed to the floor and couldn’t move. She couldn’t even lift her head. The most she could manage was some trembling of her limbs. She could only thank her lucky stars that none of the delicate fuses and explosives hidden on her person had gone off.

The silver-haired girl glanced over at the only one left: Takitsubo.

“You’re dropping like flies. Which makes it easier for me, so I’m not complaining.”

The drones were black devices. They were the size of 10x20cm paper airplanes, but their jagged and distorted silhouette looked something like a Christmas tree. Would their precise classification be canard double delta?

And Takitsubo spoke quietly.

“Is this why?”

“?”

“Drone swarms can’t be defended against by existing missile defense systems because there are just too many of them, so in a way you could call them an even greater strategic weapon than a nuclear warhead. But the problem is the manufacturing and operating costs. The price has to be multiplied across the number of drones in the swarm, so building a thousand of them increases the cost a thousandfold and creating ten thousand increases it ten-thousandfold. Same for the fuel and maintenance costs. That isn’t something an individual can use.”

“Yeah, I do use around 250 thousand of them at once. And the number goes up to 1.75 million if you include the spares, so the final sum is nothing to sneeze at. Keeping them in top condition isn’t easy.”

“Khah. In the end, even if it’s fully automated and it only takes a minute per drone, how much effort are you putting into this? Did you buy an entire huge factory with multiple production lines?”

“Didn’t I just say keeping them in top condition isn’t easy? Besides, a single stealth fighter costs 20-30 billion yen. And that’s just buying it. When you think of this as a super weapon superior to nukes, it’s honestly a pretty good deal.”

Her neon green bondage outfit had silver threads woven in. Was that glittering getup actually a highly conductive full-body antenna?

Norsitro chuckled and spread her arms.

The word drone apparently originally referred to the buzzing of a bee’s wings and the drones surrounding her lived up to that origin. They were surprisingly nimble and reminiscent of killer bees or of flies buzzing around something dead. Some drones would come to a stop in midair, so they may have been capable of vertical takeoffs and landings using a lift fan or something.

Also, she had the high-voltage power that had hit Frenda.

“Committing perfect crimes in Academy City is a challenge. But not so outside the city’s walls. Isn’t that right? Especially if you can use Academy City tech out there. Then it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“You aren’t going after the parents, are you?”

“What, something like this: ‘Hey! If you don’t pay up soon, we’ll threaten your precious kid over and over and over again until they’re part of the blackmailer group themselves! Then they’ll be a criminal and your whole family will be in the news!’ ”

A grin split across the silver-haired girl’s face.

That was the devilish face of someone who knew how to cash in on people’s misfortune and tragedy with maximum efficiency.

“The towering wall surrounding the city prevents the parents outside from rescuing their child no matter how much danger they’re in. What, you think they should call Anti-Skill? Heh hee hee. You know better than that. The higher ups of this city are all corrupt, so they won’t allow anything to threaten the city’s public image. Oops, and now that report is being suppressed. There won’t be any kind of official record it ever even happened.”

The parents would be helpless while knowing their child was in trouble.

The only option left would be to pay a sum of money larger than they could hope to make in a lifetime.

They could always refuse.

But it was this girl’s job to give them ''a very good idea'' of what would happen then.

The large men – firefighters? – closed in on Takitsubo.

“Now, then. Your bodyguard went skydiving and your bomber was zapped into submission. The search expert remains, but what can you hope to do on your own?”

“I can do this.”

Takitsubo was quick to make up her mind.

She grabbed paralyzed Frenda’s collar and immediately jumped out the broken window.