Honey Queen Arc

The Honey Queen Arc is the second story arc of Toaru Anbu no Item. Taking place in early August, one year prior to the main story, it focuses on Item's battle with the data thieves Honey Queen, lead by the former head researcher of the Meltdowner research lab.

Background
By August 4th, Typhoon 11 (台風一一号) had formed in the Pacific, and was on course to make landfall at eastern Tokyo then hit Academy City. During the events surrounding Item's battles with Honey Queen, the city would feel the meteorological effects of the approaching storm, with it finally arriving on August 6th and the eye passing over as the date changed to August 7th.

Around early August, Academy City was holding its high school girls baseball tournament.

Item
Item had its beginnings when Mugino Shizuri saved Takitsubo Rikou, who had been falsely accused and imprisoned, supposedly done by unscrupulous researchers with the goal of obtaining her as a lab rat, with Nakimoto Rizou having apparently engineered the situation. At some point afterwards, Frenda Seivelun joined them under unknown circumstances. On the night of June 30th, while eliminating the Dark May Project ahead of an Anti-Skill raid, they revived Kinuhata Saiai from cold sleep to become their fourth member. In July, Item had gone up against another group claiming the name Item, which had resulted in the supposed death of a prospective fifth member Hanano Choubi, who was actuality their liaison who had joined in disguise and faked their death in order to ensure that Item would cause the Enemy Item's destruction.

By early August, Item was apparently the strongest of the elite four-person teams in the Dark Side of Academy City and their success was prompting others to create similar teams, though the liaison considered the project to still be in its test phase. Aside from Item's surface purpose, it was also secretly intended as a cage and a test for Mugino and Takitsubo, two espers with the potential to become a Level 5 capable of creating more Level 5s (Mugino through Project Angelica's electron-based industrial DNA editing and Takitsubo potentially reaching the point of rewriting Personal Realities via AIM Diffusion Fields), with the intent of having them push one another to greater heights until one wins out, with the other to be 'pruned'.

Honey Queen
Despite her young age, Ainame Caroline had previously worked as the head researcher at the Meltdowner research lab, having falsified her credentials, and had also been working on the connected Project Angelica, which aimed to create a perfect electron microscope and electric scalpel combination for industrial-scale genetic manipulation and esper production. Following the death of her older sister, she also sought to find a scientific definition of life and the soul, and prove that her sister's soul made it to heaven. With Mugino's power having grown too powerful and destructive for Angelica's requirements, Ainame sought to develop another similar esper but ended up breaking multiple individuals, resulting her expulsion from the lab, an event which the #6 might have been involved in behind the scenes.

In order to steal back the data and means to continue Project Angelica after it had been taken from her, Ainame Caroline formed a group of secret data thieves, Honey Queen. This included Tachiuo Mary, an electron beam esper that Ainame intended to replace Mugino for Angelica, remodelling her body and quickly raising from a Level 0 to a Level 4 using data derived from her time working on Meltdowner, which Ainame also used to develop her own ability. Over the next six months, the group employed various methods (including an online marriage scam) to steal pieces of information that help to achieve that goal or strengthen themselves to that end, with Academy City’s official industrial espionage countermeasure group estimating losses of more than 250 billion yen by early August.