Editing Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item6 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 7===

Kinuhata Saiai hurried back to the District 5 tourist hotel and arrive just as Mugino Shizuri and Frenda Seivelun were leaving.

“Where’s Takitsubo?”

“What? Does this job super require her searching skills?”

She couldn’t answer that question, so she avoided it with a question of her own. The trick was to avoid pausing too long. (A lesson she learned after screwing it up earlier.) Then she went on to lay out her own rules.

“Since you super called my phone instead of Takitsubo-san’s, I assumed you needed strength for this job.”

“Fine, whatever.”

Mugino brushed it off as unimportant.

Frenda sighed while hefting a bag that seemed to be full of various heavy items.

“So how are things outside? That bank robber is still at large, right? Is Anti-Skill still out in full force? In the end, I’ve been intercepting their radio signals and spying on the street cameras on video sites, but as a dark side bomber, I’m pretty curious what things are really like out there.”

“Nothing special. They super seem to be in a lull.”

“It’s 3 in the afternoon. After searching around without finding anything, they must have gotten bored and decided to stop for some afternoon tea. The higher ups will notice soon and yell at them, so the patrols will find a new store of motivation before long. Let’s get this job over with before that happens.”

They left the grown-up District 5 to reach the more eclectic District 7.

On the way, Kinuhata received an overview of the job.

This time they would be destroying something rather than someone.

It was a sabotage job.

“Since we aren’t just killing someone, I get the feeling there’s some nasty link between different villains here.”

“The higher ups have their own issues.”

“In the end, it’s about adjusting the power balance. There are a lot of skilled people at the top, but one of them has gotten carried away and started infringing on other people’s turfs. So those others are going behind the scenes to smack him and bring him back in line.”

(If this isn’t an urgent case of saving a hostage or stopping the imminent leak of a biological weapon, couldn’t this have super waited until later?)

Kinuhata kept that thought to herself.

If she acted natural here, Takitsubo would be free to do her part with Sudori Sayu, so she had to remember she was accomplishing something here. She feared the impatience would overwhelm her if she didn’t find her own motivation like that.

In any case, it was time to get to work.

The work wasn’t confined to District 7. They also went around to other districts.

They performed some quick work at each stop.

“Super what is this? What are we doing?”

“In the end, we’re doing something important enough to ruin a certain someone’s life☆”

After somewhere between half an hour and an hour of work, there was a ringing from a fossil of a pay phone remaining on the side of the road.

Mugino Shizuri grinned and picked up the receiver.

“Is ‘hello’ the right thing to say with a landline phone? Was my data security too good for you to find my personal phone number?”

“Damn you!!”

“Yes, it was us. We’ve been busy going around destroying a few of your factories and warehouses for eco-friendly dishware. But we made sure the damage was light enough to recover from in a few days, so you don’t have to worry about bankruptcy. Still, food isn’t the only important supply for restaurants. This should be a significant problem for a chain that needs to supply these things as cheaply as possible. The knives and forks can be washed and reused several times, but your group as a whole must still have to dispose of quite a few each day. And without new supply, you can’t open your doors.”

Kinuhata couldn’t believe her ears.

That’s what they had been doing?

Just thinking about the extent of the losses terrified her.

Mugino Shizuri took on a singsong voice with the receiver against her ear. The man on the other side was shouting shrilly.

“Do you understand what you’ve done!? Including my artwork and real estate, my personal assets amount to more than 100 billion yen. That isn’t the company’s money – it’s all money I am free to use however I like! I can keep sending in assassins until all of you are dead without having to lift a finger myself!!”

“Oh, really? Then how about we cover your wonderful golf course with agrochemicals next? Or what about sending bomb threats to the shopping mall owned by your group? Being famous does have its drawbacks. Even if you’ve done nothing wrong, everyone around you will be demanding answers. Sooooo if you don’t surrender now, you’ll just have to watch as the value of those assets plummets.”

“No. Do you really think that absurd reasoning will work!? I am known as a Board member’s purse. I am a big deal in the public world! If you filthy dark side dogs try to bite me, you will regret it!!”

“Frenda.”

“Sure thing.”

The ground shook. As if jutting up from below.

Followed by a chain reaction of distinctive electronic tones coming from all the phones in the area.

Mugino smiled and continued.

“That was an artificial earthquake.”

“…”

“Humans can indeed cause earthquakes. Do you know the primary cause of them? Roadwork? Subway trains passing by? Oh, wait. Isn’t the answer nuclear tests in labs built deep underground?”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………No, you couldn’t have.”

He was speechless.

Frenda Seivelun smiled maliciously.

As the Academy City Bomber.

“In the end☆ That was☆☆ A pencil nuke☆☆☆”

Cold sweat poured from Kinuhata Saiai’s body.

Frenda…wasn’t joking.

And the object she was twirling in her hand like a pen was exactly what she had described. Did nuclear weapons that small really exist!?

“In the end, that’s a bomb that uses a rare radioactive material called californium instead of uranium or plutonium. It’s what’s known as a super heavy element bomb. The nuclear material itself is a sphere with a diameter of only one centimeter, but I think it’s powerful enough to blow away about a district’s worth of land when used in an open space? Although they’re being developed to be bound together and stuffed inside a larger cluster bomb.”

The blast had been contained because Academy City had many different research labs, both legitimate and illegitimate, which weren’t found on the map.

Otherwise, it would have badly contaminated the land, and the 2.3 million people living there, even if detonated deep underground.

“How far are you willing to take this, Mr. VIP?”

Mugino Shizuri snorted with laughter.

These people really weren’t normal. Kinuhata Saiai was certain of that now. Trying to fight them and win was crazy. Who knows what you would be forced to lose even if you won in the end!

“That isn’t our only trump card, by the way. Chemical weapons? Biological weapon? Anti-ship EMP bombs? Take your pick. We’re willing to keep it up until you give up, but it’s you and your public position that will suffer as this continues. The complaints will start rushing in. Scandals are generally graded with a demerit system. It doesn’t work like a poorly-written success story movie where a single good deed turns everything around. By the end, the average people out there will probably be ready to kill you.”

“…”

“Listen, you corrupt VIP. Once you’ve been stripped of the power your money gives you, you’re nothing more than a naked ape. Are you ready to sleep under a bridge? And once you’re wandering the streets with nowhere to go, that’s when Item will hunt you down and kill you. Once you’re attempting a no-gear challenge run of life, we can bide our time and kill you in whatever gruesome way we like. If that doesn’t appeal to you, then you should give more thought to how you behave yourself. This was a major blow, but you still have some money left. For now anyway.”

“…What are you saying I should do?”

“Look deep inside yourself and consider all the misdeeds you’re involved in. Then pull out of them all. That’s the bare minimum we’re asking for. Oh, right. And if you don’t go through with it in even one case, your money and your life are forfeit, so keep that in mind.”

At that point, Kinuhata Saiai frowned. She had worked this job without knowing whose life they were ruining, but she was feeling some déjà vu here. She had noticed Mugino Shizuri using some familiar terms.



A higher up in Academy City.

Someone famous in the public world.

A corrupt VIP.



(Wait. Could it super be…???)