Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel Volume SS2/Chapter 5

Synopsis
Looking right at home in the city of Rio, Misaka Tabigake has approached a young Latin girl by the name of Ines from the shadows. She initially assumes he is here to mug her for some money, but Tabigake brushes those accusations off, before pointing out that Ines was holding a handgun in her bag. While she tenses up, Tabigake further predicts that she was planning on committing a murder-suicide with a debt collector to help out her family. Ines questions how he could have figured that out, but he claims he simply has a good eye.

She bluntly asks him if he has any money, but then ridicules him as useless when he replies that as a consultant, his job was to make money and not save it. In return, Tabigake attempts to convince her that the a way of breaking out of poverty existed all around her, yet Ines points out how there is nothing but trash around here. He reveals that is in fact exactly what he had been trying to say: the trash overflowing everywhere was in fact the key. He also admits that he is not here solely out of a virtuous spirit and was hired by somebody to take care of all the illegally dumped trash in Brazil. Tabigake's job deals with pointing out "what the world lacks", and he asks Ines a question: what does this little slum lack right now? She replies the answer is obvious: it lacks money.

The scene then shifts a period of time later to the lounge of a high class hotel. Ines is revealed to have become immensely wealthy due to the success of her rare metals business, having taken Tabigake's advice to use the trash around her to her benefit. Narrating her story to a reporter, Ines mentions how she had initially taken apart the electronics by hand in order to harvest its gold materials from the internal circuits. However, using the money obtained from exchanging the gold to buy equipment, she was able to increase the efficiency of her operations and continually expand until she had developed a business.

By taking advantage of the system set in place, Ines had managed to cross the boundary between the poor and the rich. Additionally, as the reporter points out, illegal dumping of trash had gone down by 70% in all of Brazil thanks to her efforts in spreading the idea that trash could be converted into money. At these words, Ines realizes the true meaning behind Tabigake's words earlier in the year. The world could change as long as the people living within it acted to change it, and it was his job to give them the power that they needed to act.

Characters
By order of appearance

New Characters

 * Misaka Tabigake
 * Ines