Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item Ending
“Mugino.”
“Yeah, I just heard about it from the support organization too.”
“On July 14, only two charred corpses were found at the super site of the explosion. It took so long to report back to us because the remains were burned and blown into so many pieces they had super trouble determining how many people they belonged to.”
“In the end, they finally finished salvaging the records from the AI air conditioner that tracks people’s locations. Inoue Laspezia and Waniguchi Nokoba entered the room they were using as a cell at 8:21 PM on the 14th. And the explosion was seen from the outside at 8:30.”
“So there was a super lag of about 10 minutes until the explosion?”
“That’s more than enough time for someone to slip out before the explosion.”
“But in the end, Hanano was being confined there. And both Inoue and Waniguchi were in the room with her. She couldn’t have won in an esper battle, so how could she have taken them out?”
“I can think of plenty of methods. Remember, there’s no rule saying she had to detonate the bomb as soon as she pulled it out. If she used the wires around the faucets to remove her handcuffs and then combined the wires with the outlet to give herself an electric attack, she could have placed a time bomb in front of the incapacitated pair and then snuck out.”
“…”
“So, Mugino, is that also why her coffin was empty?”
“Hold on. In the end, who were the couple crying at her coffin?”
“According to the support organization, they super can’t contact them. It’s super unknown if they were even ordinary people.”
“Hanano Choubi. Who were you really?”
The date was July 31.
The location was District 3, where a world-famous construction company had its headquarters. Most recently, the company was gathering attention for cooperating in the construction of the Endymion space elevator. A girl entered through the staff entrance and took a special elevator up past the 50th floor to reach the very top floor.
That girl was Hanano Choubi.
Her short-sleeve sailor uniform was unusual for the building, but no one stopped her.
Not even one.
Well more than 10 secretaries were working on the top floor, but there was a secret passageway to the back of the floor which couldn’t be seen from their front office. In fact, the army of beautiful secretaries didn’t even know who it was who paid them.
The entire construction company was an elaborate front.
It wasn’t uncommon for an impressive-looking HQ building to only perform work like performance appraisals and general affairs without doing any actual work. For example, a construction company would hire an external design office for its design work, store their cement, steel beams, and other equipment in a giant warehouse, and let all the hard work take place at the construction site. In other words, there was surprisingly little to do at the giant HQ building. On the inside, it had become a place that existed solely to make the company look impressive. And when there was such a massive gap on the inside, it was perfect for hiding things.
For example, the entire president’s office could be remade into an office for a dark side executive.
Of course, doing that required threatening the real president into never being around.
“Nyan, nyan, nya-nyan, nyahhn♪”
Hanano Choubi had finally arrived to the safety of a closed room.
She nyan-ed a popular song as she walked across the large space like she owned the place.
“Phew, I’m exhausted.”
She reached a hand to the top of her head and grabbed her hair. No, she grabbed a wig, threw it off like a hat, and removed her eyebrows and eyelashes as well. She exposed a smooth face like an incomplete doll as casually as removing her clothing. Then she removed a different premade set from a small bag and applied this new face.
That transformed her.
Although in this case, it may have been more accurate to say she returned to her original appearance.
She was short, but she lost the color of an adolescent girl. She now looked older – in her mid-20s. The woman with shoulder-length flaxen hair looked horribly out of place in the sailor uniform. She cheerfully reached into a minifridge like you would find in a hospital or hotel, pulled out a tall 500mL can of beer, and pulled over the small paper box and ashtray sitting on the desk. The box was a pack of menthol-flavored cigarettes.
Yes. Technically speaking, Hanano Choubi wasn’t even a Level 0.
Everyone in Academy City knew adults could not use esper powers.
She opened the pull tab, took a sip, and glared at the side of the can.
(Oh, damn. This isn’t the kind without any sugar or purine. I didn’t even notice when I bought it. And I’m getting old enough I need to start paying attention to that.)
But she had already opened it, so it was too late.
With the chilled beer, she wished she hadn’t cooled off so much in the air conditioning.
Then she shook the pack of cigarettes, pulled one out, and lit the oil lighter with her thumb.
The refreshing summery menthol flavor once more took over in her mouth. She could acquire the most luxurious products if she wanted, but she preferred this cheap chemical deception. If this flavor couldn’t make her smile, she could never have gotten along with the dark side of Academy City, which had taken science well past a lethal dose.
And the cigarette held in the corner of her mouth tasted all the better when it had been a month since she had last indulged.
To ensure her character remained intact, she had made sure to keep up the act even when no one was around to deceive.
(I even spent three months in a random school’s theatre club to get in character and prepare the necessary paperwork, but unlike that rehearsal, I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes when performing for real.)
She had also prepared a small incident.
With everything from the school life to the molester angry at getting called out, it hadn’t been easy setting up a profile that raised no eyebrows after ending up in the dark side. But when the setup was done right, everything else would go smoothly.
“Bwehh… This canned beer and smoke are exactly what I needed. Every year, my tastes are more like an old man’s. I could see myself playing golf at this rate.”
She puffed the cigarette with obvious familiarity, leaned back in the leather chair, and looked up toward the ceiling.
All she did was stare blankly like that. Waste was the greatest recreation and it tasted all the sweeter when it was time you were wasting. On the dark side, death was a constant companion and everyone was always trying to work out each other’s powers in esper battles, so they could never imagine someone throwing pieces of their lifespan into the fire for their own enjoyment.
(I used that tracking perfume because I thought it would look unnatural if I didn’t make any attempt to resist, so I was sweating a little when she pointed out it was too grownup and expensive. But everything else gets a passing grade, I would say.)
She grabbed the beer can and chugged the rest.
While she felt the intoxication catching up to her, she grabbed her phone in order to face reality a little.
“I see, I see. Wow, I got a lot of messages while I was away. I keep scrolling, but the list of new emails never ends. Sob.”
She had the makings of a nightmare there.
She could only pray the intoxication didn’t make her violent.
Several colors of cellphone were lined up atop the heavy ebony desk. They were more than just 10 and they were connected to the many cables attached to a power strip. Each of them had an anti-trace device and a voice changer program included.
She rapidly scanned through the information provided on the small screens and focused in on one of them.
That one reported a death.
“One of my decoys has disappeared. Heh heh. How thoughtful of you, Mugino-san.”
A link of the command chain had been destroyed, but the damage didn’t reach this high.
That was how the dark side worked. If you failed to question the answer you worked so hard to acquire, you would never move past that point.
“But not thoughtful enough. Letting the blood rush to your head when a friend is killed is only a virtue in the sunny world. Eh heh heh.”
You earned quite a few grudges in this line of work. If the on-site workers could discover your identity with just a bit of digging, you could never truly serve as a voice on the phone. A go-between was an expert at controlling access to information and preserving its safety.
The real one was elsewhere.
Yes, they should have been suspicious from the moment Hanano Choubi made it through the elevator and front door to hesitantly step inside the Fifteen Bells apartment.
Not many people had access to top secret data like Item’s handprints and eye scans. Her ability to spoof them meant she came from somewhere very, very deep in the dark side.
Her greatest weapon was these phones. She grabbed one of them, unplugged its cable, and called someone. She naturally sank lower into the chair. …Although that was a minor violation of etiquette compared to the cigarette in her mouth and the alcohol in her system.
“Yes, yes, Hello, hello. I have settled the entire incident we were talking about. I was right to infiltrate the team personally. The odds were admittedly low, but there was always the possibility the two Items would talk it out and join forces. So I thought it would be best to kill one of their own to motivate them with anger.”
That was why she had asked Frenda Seivelun for the liquid explosive.
And it was why the most powerless girl had shouted from the ceiling of the Colosseum to get the fighting started before either Item could do anything else.
And it was why she had triggered that final explosion.
The 5th girl – the odd one out – had set it all up.
“Yes, of course Mugino Shizuri’s Item won. They were the one with a real Level 5, after all.”
There was only one person she could be speaking with now.
Was it an honor to directly speak with that person, or did it feel like being the poor department head who had to babysit their superior? Each of the few real voices on the phone had their own interpretation.
“I won’t ask why this had to happen. I never do. But I’m sure it wasn’t just anything as common as stepping on someone’s toes or violating a taboo. Yes, yes, I know. No looking into it. Academy City is supposed to be a city of science, but the people at the very top sure do have a mythical quality to them. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Will I end up dead if I poke my nose into that any further? Ah ha ha.”
Her flowing report continued without delay.
She was not interrupted by any questions. She guessed this report wasn’t really necessary and the person she was speaking with already knew it all. By using a mysterious surveillance technology beyond just the cameras and security robots. Whatever it was, it was much nastier and covered every nook and the cranny of the city.
So this was less a report and more a test.
If she hid anything important, she would lose their trust and immediately lose her job, if not her head.
Maintaining the dark side’s excellent infrastructure had some very high maintenance costs. And in this case, the cost was in lives rather than money.
The menthol cigarette wiggled in the corner of her mouth while she laughed and finished her report.
Her eyes were on the Windowless Building located several districts away.
“Yes, I await my next instructions.”
After finishing the report as planned, she hung up and tossed the phone onto the desk.
With all of that done, she had finally completed one cycle.
She leaned back into her executive chair, raised her arms as high as they would go, and stretched.
As long as she remained reliant on this chair, she would never reach the actual top.
“Ugh. I appreciate being trusted, but it’s not great when success is simply expected. I work my ass off and don’t get anywhere closer to a promotion.”
She didn’t know what a promotion from her position would mean. It was possible she was already on the edge of the cliff and one more step forward would send her tumbling down.
(Would the next step up put me the Board of Directors? Now there’s a funny joke. I’m sure they have unimaginable power, but I’d never want to be one of them.)
But she was glad Mugino’s Item had won.
If she was being honest, Ibotanokikouji Kaede’s Item had been good at what they did, but they had thrown money around a little too indiscriminately. Villains of that sort made connections with the corrupt adults of the dark side behind the voice on the phone’s back, so there was always a risk of them working their way into the adult chain of command and striking back.
That was what she had meant by stepping on people’s toes and violating a taboo.
That wasn’t a pleasant thought for the voice on the phone who controlled all of the dark side by sending out instructions from a position of safety. Once the connection went both ways, her life could be threatened too. She was the only one who should be sending out terrifying surprises. She couldn’t have them coming back up at her.
(But. I doubt that was the only reason they had to be killed. Hm, did I feel the need to get some alcohol in my system before making that report because I still have some lingering attachment to those four? What is wrong with me? Do I want to start drunkenly analyzing my actions until I’m so depressed I get an urge to jump off the building?)
But she was through with that sentimentality.
Now was the time for rational analysis.
For example, the Dark Matter appeared to be plotting something in secret.
For example, the Mental Out had one foot in the dark side yet showed no sign of being corrupted by it.
Those monster children were getting involved in the adults’ plans, but no matter how useful they could be, that wasn’t her style. She preferred her pawns to be cut off from the network and isolated. Just like Item.
The isolated strongest was the best form of the dark side. It was incredibly cost effective.
It was a laughably good deal for her.
(In that sense, the Item member who frightens me most is Frenda Seivelun because she’s so sociable and unpredictably makes friends in just about every industry. I have a much better feel for her now that I’ve met her in person. I need to add a ‘caution’ tag to her file and I may have to do something about her eventually.)
But what to do now?
Hanano Choubi crossed her legs in the executive chair like she belonged there.
She shoved the shortened cigarette in the ashtray, making sure to put it out.
She wouldn’t allow a single ember to remain.
No, this was only someone who had used that name for a while. And now she whispered alone with a thin sneer on her lips.
“Honestly, it’s always like this with you.”
