Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter5

Chapter 5

Part 1

There is a certain story.

There were two girls who were good friends. Girl 1 got a boyfriend. As a present, the boyfriend gave Girl 1 a necklace that had a very lovely stone in it.

Girl 1 was overjoyed by the present and wore it at all times.

But odd things started happening to her from that time on. Her face turned sickly, her health deteriorated, she was unable to fall asleep, and finally her hair started coming out. Girl 1 should have been happy with that necklace she loved so much, but instead she was cursed with bad luck. It was not much longer before she died.

Girl 2 inherited the necklace when Girl 1 died. According to an acquaintance of hers, the stone in the necklace was a uranium crystal. The details were unknown, but Girl 1’s boyfriend had given her a uranium crystal as a present. Girl 1 had been killed by the radiation.

“…Wow. That story’s in horrible taste as usual,” said Saten Ruiko, a girl who loved rumors.

She had been looking through a website dealing with urban legends. She had been chasing after the rumor of the Level Upper that sounded like a lie, but she still wished it was true. She had come to a dead end in her search and after a few twists and turns had finally ended up reading that completely unrelated urban legend.

Urban legend websites generally had two objectives.

The first was to gather together and introduce urban legends that were either circulating or had been circulating in the past. However, most people seemed to think that was not enough to warrant the site’s existence. Generally, those sites were only seen as proper sites if they also gave their own commentary or explained whether it could actually happen.

Most of the time, the opinions on the urban legends said they could not actually happen.

(They start by making you think it could actually happen, but then they search out all sorts of things denying its possibility and say it all with such a sense of superiority. It feels like they have their priorities backwards to me.)

However, she did at times understand the feeling of wanting to crush an urban legend because it was impossible if you thought about it scientifically. Urban legends could be incredibly creepy to the point of not being able to relax until you were able to utterly prove them wrong.

The story of the necklace of death had the following piece of additional commentary with it:

A crystal small enough to fit on a necklace would not have enough radiation to kill someone in such a short period of time. As such, the dramatic change shown in this story would not actually occur.

This urban legend has spread quite a bit in the past as well, but it seems to have been coming back recently. We are currently investigating what has caused this revival, but we can say that this is a very common pattern.

“…This may be an urban legend, but I prefer the more enjoyable kinds that have more dreams in them,” Saten muttered as she closed the browser window.

She had not been able to find the Level Upper that day either.

When she eventually found it, Saten intended to brag about it to Uiharu.

Part 2

“Yes, yes!! I checked, and it’s become a rather popular story especially on the internet! But that story really is in bad taste!!” Shirai Kuroko yelled into her cell phone as she rushed out of her dorm.

It was past curfew, but she could enter and exit fairly easily by teleporting. Also, it was hardly the time to worry about the curfew.

“Do you think Anti-Skill will do anything?” said Misaka Mikoto’s voice from the cell phone.

“With only this much information, I doubt it. And if I tell them, they would likely prevent me from taking action.” Shirai went over the information again in her head. “Essentially, Uiharu and I are the only ones that can take action.”

“Uiharu?”

“Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know her, onee-sama. She’s a colleague of mine. She’s the kind of Judgment member that mainly spends her time in front of a computer.”

“…That’s not much help.”

“Onee-sama, that kind of assessment is more than a little bit hurtful.”

“Anyway, it seems what I explained to you really is going to happen. I think the enemy is planning to use the urban legend of the necklace of death to carry out some kind of terrorist attack on Academy City.”

“I see. To be honest, this just does not feel real to me, but I will trust you, onee-sama.” Shirai frowned a bit. “But it feels like we need to tell that cooperative shopping mall to not get carried away. I can’t believe they would suspect you.”

“I’ve had about enough of it myself. But I’m being sheltered by some strange occult convenience store, so I’m managing for now.”

“Occult?”

“Well, here I’m having trouble for a different reason with the weird people like Lessar and Lancis.”

“…O-onee-sama! My bad feeling antenna is up to three bars! There isn’t someone other than me at your side, is there!?”

“Umm, there is. She’s really annoying, so she’s more or less the same as you. Anyway, you know what you have to do, right?”

“I have to go out and make sure there aren’t any suspicious necklaces showing up anywhere.”

“It doesn’t have to be a necklace,” said Mikoto cutting in. “Basically, it just has to be an incident that appears to be the same. It doesn’t even have to use any radioactive materials. Now that the urban legend has been spread in preparation, they could take action at any time.”

Whether electromagnetic waves were visible light, microwaves, or whatever else was determined by the wavelength. If they could produce electromagnetic waves with extremely high frequencies, they could produce the same results as the necklace of death.

“But would they even be able to get a team into Academy City with how heavily guarded it is?”

“I doubt it’s impossible,” Mikoto responded after thinking for a bit. “After all, I’m currently running around in a cooperative institution. …They have some kind of plan occurring right now.”

“…I first need a list of all the people from the shopping mall who are in the city after going through the proper procedures.”

Shirai hung up and called a different number.

She called Uiharu Kazari, the other Judgment member she had mentioned before.

“Have you finished the search!?”

“I’m still working on it. I know that 52 people from the shopping mall are here in Academy City. I have found a list of where they are staying, but 5 of them are listed as private, so I can’t locate them.”

“Private?”

“It isn’t too surprising. They are participants in a forum in the international conference hall in District 3. They’re being treated as VIPs, so their locations are probably being kept a secret as a means of preventing any terrorist attacks on them.”

“…Hm.” Shirai thought for a bit. “Uiharu. If someone was going to carry out a large scale terrorist attack that would utterly destroy all functions of the city, how many people do you think they would need?”

“I-I don’t know anything dangerous like that. Wait…what is going on? You told me to look that up, so I helped you, but is this some kind of dangerous situation?”

(…Well, I doubt they could do it with only 5 people.)

After that arbitrary conclusion, Shirai asked another question.

“How many groups of visitors are there?”

“Um…3 or 4. They’re things like staff for a cargo jet and dispatched groups of researchers…”

“Give me a list,” Shirai ordered. “If that’s all, it would likely be faster to just work without thinking too much about it.”

Part 9

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