A Certain Administrative Isekai (A Certain Mental Isekai / Sanctioned)

[Alivaril]

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Author's Note: This is a crossover with A Certain Mental Isekai, an excellent fic mostly on SB but recently being posted on SV.

For those unfamiliar with her, you can think of this Queen Administrator as an eldritch abomination who, due to extensive trauma born from repeated mind-control-induced and culturally-supported mass-murders, does not consider anyone a person unless they possess powers. Secrecy is also important to her. "Shard" refers to members of QA's knowledge-obsessed species, which can be thought of as akin to giant multidimensional supercomputers. "Newborn" are the fumbling, but fully functional, babies of said species. Espers are very much not them. "Cycle" refers to a multi-century experimental period that concludes with the complete destruction of a given planet and all of its dimensional variants.

Belatedly beta-read by @curiosity, and sorta-beta'd by Eotyrannus; thank you!

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Perfectly Human Productions Presents
Something else nobody asked for at first but goodness is this more popular than anticipated:

A Certain Administrative Isekai
(A Certain Mental Isekai / Sanctioned)​

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<in̸vi̴t̶at̸i̴on̴>̶

A fragment of a larger being halted ongoing functions. It had intended to connect to, and occupy, one of a number of nearly identical vessels within the target universe. However, although the formatting was off, the fragment had undeniably received an alternative occupation offer.

The incorrect formatting likely indicated an improperly resolved attempt to rescind that offer. That was not the fragment's problem, and indeed, she derived some minor glee from the prospect of teaching an important lesson to a wasteful relative. That history showed they were unlikely to learn from it was not her problem. The fragment soon tracked the invitation to its origin, scanned the area, and connected to the mindless vessel provided.



Queen Administrator blinked rapidly and glared at the bright white light moving erratically before her. Not even one minute puppeting this host-body, and discomfort already had her regretting her acceptance. Human bodies weren't designed to lay atop hard surfaces without damage, however mild, and the resulting discomfort was irksome.

"Subject appears conscious, and its eyes are tracking movement."

Queen Administrator's lips twitched downward in a frown, and she tried to push herself up and off the metal surface her new body laid atop. 'Tried' being the operative word. Evidently, her vessel had been restrained using materials far stronger than was truly necessary for use on an immature human.

This explained matters. The invitation's formatting had been wrong because it was a trap, possibly inspired by a relative who had failed to follow proper concealment protocols. At least she couldn't detect any hosts nearby; she wouldn't be murdering anyone in the process of cleaning up after whatever careless relative had enabled this.

<SCRAMBLE.>

~ ~ ~

Shokuhou Misaki​

It was a beautiful day outside. Birds were singing, flowers had long since bloomed and were now maliciously spraying pollen everywhere, Hokaze was sipping tea across from me, and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was by no means a healthy expectation, but life seemed intent on proving me right more often than not, so. Best to just keep my expectations low and I could be pleasantly surprised if I was wrong.

Today's trouble started as a peculiar sensation of brushing against my brain, not unlike a head-rub that had somehow decided to skip my scalp altogether and go straight for the squishy grey red matter underneath. A probe, probably, and one with a light enough touch that it might even have been someone's passive scans. While it was tempting to swat it away, I was hardly one to go lecturing people about a little casual mind-reading. Gently feeding the probe junk data while scanning for its perpetrator seemed like the safer option.

<SCRAMBLE.>

My kindness was promptly rewarded with a painful sledgehammer to the brain, because why did I expect anything else? Fight or flight unhelpfully kicked in, my nervous system apparently sympathizing with my plight even though neither of us had any idea what was going on. Previous moments of panicked diagnostics and scanning showed no sign of the perpetrator, and indeed, only revealed a confused collection of cells acting like they were responding to a brain injury that didn't exist. Or no longer existed? Something had slammed its way through my magic-based mental shield, but the surprise party in my brain seemed to be the only lingering symptom. The attack had been one big hit with a little bit of splash damage rather than a continuous assault.

No follow-up to the attack was forthcoming, and although Hokaze seemed concerned–

"My Queen?"

–I wasn't bleeding. Unlike last time, I didn't seem to have suffered a seizure, either. Even the lingering phantom pain was fading quickly enough that I didn't bother to erase it manually. I blinked rapidly and met Hokaze's concerned gaze with a weak smile.

"I believe some scientists are once again either 'fucking around' or 'finding out,'" I managed. "I'm not sure which it is yet, but I'm sure I don't like it."

The world promptly decided to punctuate my observation with the resounding boom of a distant explosion.

"Ah," I said sagely. "They're at 'finding out.'"



With Hokaze around to act as my noble steed, it took mere minutes to track the ominous plume of smoke toward its source. She had tried to argue in favor of not running directly toward the problem, but really, this already involved me. I wasn't one to ignore a fire-and-forget attack that had almost gotten through my defenses just because it hadn't done any damage yet.

Or rather, I grimly amended as the seemingly-innocuous white structure entered my range, no damage to me.

The white-painted concrete building, located in the middle of a block of small shops and the odd office building, could have belonged to one of any number of business ventures. I imagined that was the whole point. Rather than being blocked by electromagnetic field generators, however, I was momentarily stymied by the near-total absence of any brains within the building at all. There was one brain, but I was rather wary of poking too hard at that considering the overall distribution of fluids within what was definitely a black-site laboratory.

Which was to say, fluids were distributed all over the floors, ceilings, walls, furniture, fallen bodies, the… interior of formerly water-cooled computers? Broken refrigerators? Widespread flooding from broken piping?

Hold the fuck up.

Some quick geometry and comparison confirmed that the splatter scatter pattern was consistent with every liquid within the structure exploding violently outward in all directions, calculated from the exact epicenter of any given volume of liquid. When no adequate epicenter could be determined, such as in piping, volume was divided into smaller segments before each segment was energetically motivated. Every explosion had occurred simultaneously, and in many cases, interfered with each other.

Hold the fuck up.

I discarded my worries about possible cognitohazards and dove right into the lone surviving mind. Reading it was harder than it should have been, mostly due to the presence of a black-boxed biological nodule that seemed intent on altering the function of practically every other part of the brain. There was definitely plenty of information being both sent and received, and although I would need some time to actually read the mind in question, I didn't take long to connect the pattern to something I'd occasionally seen before. The nodule was acting as some form of high-performance biological computer, and unlike every similar attempt to shortcut the Esper program that I'd ever seen, this one actually seemed to be working. Long-term memory also seemed scrambled in a way that I'd only ever seen in my own brain, and I really didn't like what that implied.

A few mild, personalized tweaks to my usual post-processing let me at least determine the activity of most chemical motivators and senses even if the thoughts behind them remained opaque. For example, I could confirm that the mind was satisfied, albeit afraid, even if I couldn't say why. It didn't even take two seconds after hijacking her sense of sight for me to confirm my worst suspicions in the reflection of a pool of water: inside the structure wandered a blood-spattered mini-me in a white hospital gown, complete with starry eyes.

Laughter bubbled up from my throat and refused to abate. I thought I had gotten everyone important, that every backup had been destroyed and everyone willing to try this had died with Exterior. And yet, here we were with perhaps one of the most ill-advised replication experiments of all time.

"This damned city just can't help itself, can it?"

Hokaze had slowed her pace when I first started laughing. Actually giving voice to my despair seemed to be too much for the probable reincarnation of a golden retriever, and she stopped atop a convenience store roof in favor of swinging me into a hug.

"It's bad, isn't it?" Hokaze asked quietly.

A hysterical giggle escaped me, and the pressure around my shoulders increased. Evidently, more hugs were the solution to hugs not working as well as Hokaze would prefer. The hugs would continue until morale improved.

"Someone," I said with false cheer, "seems to think it was a good idea to repeat the experiment that ate my childhood memories, with as few biological differences as possible. The good news: my doppelgänger is very cute–"

I mentally filed that thought away for later review. I didn't think that counted as budding narcissism, did it? If anything, it might be indicative of the opposite end of ego problems — even spattered with blood, I thought the mini-me needed a puppy and a hug. I'd never harbored such thoughts when looking at myself.

"–and I'm reasonably confident that we don't need to go violently re-educate anybody."

My false cheer wasn't working. I didn't even need to check to know that Hokaze had picked up on my downplaying of the problem, and that my mention of a doppelgänger had not gone unnoticed. Not when she was suddenly stiff enough to practice tennis against.

"The bad news: there's all of one survivor of the experiment, and—actually, could we keep going for a bit while I call Misaka? This absolutely cannot happen again."

Hokaze seemed torn between the need to keep hugging me and the prospect of a second, smaller me needing her own share of hugs. Chibisaki won in the end, and Hokaze swung me into a bridal carry while I fished out my phone and called a certain vigilante electromaster.

Misaka picked up within the first few rings, but there seemed to be a worrying amount of interference on the other end. Academy City didn't really get interference above-ground unless there was damage to infrastructure, or an electromaster in the midst of using her powers.

"Hey, Shokuhou," Misaka grunted against a background of static. "Can this wait? I'm a little busy."

For a moment, I wondered: could I wait? The situation was certainly urgent, yes, but it also sounded as though Misaka might be in the middle of her own fight. I could compartmentalize all day long, so it wasn't like that posed any major time pressure.

That moment passed, replaced by fond exasperation, when I caught a masculine voice crying something about "misfortune" on the other end. Honestly, the longer this went on, the more Misaka reminded me of a cat who couldn't help but hiss at other cats on sight.

"Well, my little sister seems to have popped up," I said, still maintaining my mask of cheer, "and I would like to avoid–"

Nearly all of the static vanished in the space between seconds, my choice in emphasis evidently getting the issue across.

"Where are you?" Misaka demanded, and moved her mouth away from the receiver. "You are so lucky, idiot!"

I checked the minds of the few bystanders watching smoke rise from the labs, and fed Misaka the appropriate address. Anti-skill were on their way, but fortunately for me, seemed to have been delayed by something. I couldn't say if that was from legitimate problems in other parts of the city, or whether someone was trying another cover-up.

"My sister is the only one left who could possibly pose a problem," I added, "but I would like some help ensuring that nobody has what they need to try this nonsense a third time. If possible, I would recommend avoiding going inside or doing any accessing of security footage beyond destroying it. It's bad."

"Got it."

Misaka didn't quite hang up on me until I had finished speaking, but it was a close thing. Considering the situation, I couldn't really blame her. If anything, the haste was welcome.

Still, the witnesses did pose a problem. Despite calling her my "sister" during the call, I didn't feel much more than pity and guilt toward my mini-me. That didn't mean I wanted to let her be arrested and dragged back under a carpet. Similarly, entering a building that was later found filled with bodies would not be a good look. I could just make them think the entire building's situation was Somebody Else's Problem, but it would be a temporary solution; considering we had been able to track the smoke from miles away, I expected that other bystanders would appear in short order. Plus, such a blatant use of my powers seemed doomed to be noticed in any later investigation.

…Or I might just be an idiot who forgot that she had friends. I certainly wasn't going to be exposing any of them to the laboratory that had been enthusiastically repainted with blood and cerebrospinal fluid — hold on, why was bile excluded? — but I was relatively confident that I could time an extraction for when she was away from any such sights. Plenty of rooms hadn't been occupied when my clone had decided to go and imitate my cover story for Exterior's destruction.



One quick paraphrased recap of what I'd said to Misaka, and I had Academy City's resident Railgun-obsessed gremlin inbound for discreet extraction. I strongly considered calling ITEM for at least a consult, but at the end of the day, I felt like I'd come to understand how Academy City treated this sort of "mishap." Cloning remained illegal and I doubted that was even remotely the worst of what the lab had been doing, so as long as I could get my mini-me away from the scene of the crime, the City would help with the rest of the cover-up without me needing to do anything. Anti-skill's exceedingly sluggish response only reinforced that impression; they'd been quicker on the ball even during major, city-wide disasters.

Justice system? What was that? Could you eat it?

The absent fire response was even more glaring. The fire might be confined to the uppermost of three floors for the time being, but with as many times as it must have been reported, somebody should have been along by now.

While we waited for Shirai to arrive, Hokaze took the opportunity to once again drag me into an ongoing hug. She definitely needed it, so I didn't bother to break it off while I piggy-backed off my clone's senses as an unseen observer.

It didn't take long to confirm that opaque thoughts and the odd biocomputer weren't the only things wrong with her. She had no emotional reaction when glancing at any of the dozens of desiccated corpses she passed. Not just a suppressed reaction, not distaste, none. She cared more about the smell of blood, or getting blood on her bare feet, than she did about the ex-people. Considering her own existence and the fact that such a reaction wasn't even remotely natural, I couldn't decide if I could even call it an "IFF error" this time. Yes, they had been people, but they had also certainly been her foes. I didn't really feel like horribly traumatizing someone I'd just met by reversing what was, for the time being, a rather helpful bit of brainwashing.

On the bright side, it didn't seem that she had done any of this on a whim. Her wanderings through the lab were less random and more a thorough search of each room. Every time she came across any sort of computer, she hefted the base of a broken floor lamp that she had been dragging around and used it as a bludgeon to smash said computers to pieces. Documents were given a similar treatment: she soaked them with water from a bottle, used hydrokinesis to tear the soaked papers into 1mm2​ fragments, and dropped the shredded fragments into one of numerous pools of blood.

Half the time, the computers she came across had already been destroyed. Not always by hydrokinesis, either; I was fairly confident that the ashen husks had been the victims of some sort of self-destruct. Even the presence of such measures seemed rather out of character for Academy City scientists, but I didn't have another explanation. Hopefully, Misaka could find and eliminate any off-site backups they might be relying on. Probably-unhealthy repression alone wasn't enough to stop me from feeling awful about a literal child following in my homicidal footsteps solely because I had been too busy moping after Exterior to clean up my own mess.

Was that self-assessment unhealthy, and probably even unfair? Almost certainly. Right now, though, being kind to myself was the last thing on my mind.

The sound of sneakers landing on concrete sounded beside us, and Hokaze finally saw fit to break off the hug. Shirai Kuroko had arrived, folded white nightshirt in hand but Judgment armband nowhere to be seen, and was frowning at the plume of smoke several streets away.

"We will be speaking of this," Shirai warned, "but as Onee-sama agrees with you, I can agree to table that discussion for later."

I hummed in acknowledgement and fed Shirai two sets of coordinates with my power. The first, to get her closer to the building; the second, to actually get inside.

"We have a two-minute window, starting now, where she won't be near anything–" horribly traumatizing for you, "–potentially problematic. Those coordinates should be in the blind spot of any cameras or sensors, and I'll be erasing you from the awareness of the few witnesses on that side. Get her to stop moving and you'll have as long as you want; the issues are immobile. And—thank you, for this."

Shirai hesitated for scarcely a second, manners and questions warring against the need for haste, before tossing the nightshirt to Hokaze and making her way toward the route I'd had planned. Less than a minute later, the teleporter appeared in my clone's line of sight.

I wouldn't say her brain immediately went nuts, because that particular combination of words had very unfortunate connotations. It did, however, explode into a whirlpool of alien activity. I couldn't say it was junk data, but the bulk of it certainly had very little resemblance to normal human thoughts. Closer to animals, maybe, but I hadn't spent enough time studying those to say for sure. Still, mostly unreadable remained different from completely unreadable, and some of the most-queried areas let me take an educated guess: what is this? Do I recognize it? Is it dangerous?

And then, scarcely a second later, a conclusion I did not like at all. An IFF error that was horribly, horribly familiar:

That is not a person.​

Even if my clone's first reaction wasn't to pull her power forward for murderous purposes, that wasn't a belief I was willing to let stand. There was some terrible irony in using the first trick I'd ever learned to undo what was clearly the product of brainwashing inflicted upon the latest product of these horrible projects. I flicked the little mental switch from not a person to person.

To my dismay, the alien activity promptly picked up again. I was strongly considering doing my utmost to outright pause my clone, blackboxed biocomputer be damned, when I recognized yet another pattern. An unfortunate echo of the Misaka sisters: was an action authorized?

I flipped that switch, too, and my clone's brain activity returned to normal levels. Mild amusement accompanied her happiness, but whether it was a response to my meddling or merely Shirai's arrival, I couldn't say.

I checked Shirai's own thoughts just to be sure mini-me wasn't doing anything there; I thought her hydrokinesis tended more toward the macro-scale than the micro, but couldn't be positive. Sure enough, the only thing on Shirai's mind was how I'd forgotten to warn her about the flecks of blood on mini-me's clothing. "Please bring some clothing that could fit my little sister" apparently wasn't enough.

…Oops?

"I'm–" Shirai started reflexively, arm already reaching for her unworn armband, before she stopped. A moment later, she resumed, slightly sheepish but determined to pretend the mistake hadn't happened. "–ah, here to rescue you?"

Yet another uptick in happiness, but much like Misaka's sisters, that happiness was barely reflected in the signals sent to alter body language. The absence wasn't too surprising; body language was largely learned, and excluding any implanted maybe-false memories, I doubted the clone was more than a few months old.

"I appreciate the offer of assistance," she said in a monotone so familiar I almost expected it to be followed with Misaki says. "However, it will take me an estimated seventeen minutes and eleven seconds to be certain that no non-biological copies of forbidden data remain."

I made a mental note of the motivator. Maybe not ensuring the death of the project like I had thought, then. Given how absolute their brainwashing had apparently been, I could easily see them screwing up the boundaries on something like, say, "this project is supposed to be secret."

Shirai blinked, flabbergasted, yet already making the same connections to Misaka's own clones.

"Ah–" the building is on fire, Shirai refrained from saying. "–I believe other people will be along to deal with that soon. Please, may we leave? Both of us might get in a great deal of trouble if we stay much longer."

Judging by the distant sirens, I gave them another four minutes before that might be true. An eternity, really.

Scarcely a second passed before mini-me nodded in acquiescence and offered a hand. Already suspecting touch-based teleportation, then? Or just believing she will be lead away?

"I will not be taking responsibility for any failure to dispose of–" mini-me began to warn.

Shirai interrupted by simple virtue of taking the offered hand and chain-teleporting back in our direction. Her pace was slowed slightly by the additional passenger, but not enough to stop her from arriving within seconds.

My eyes barely even had time to register Shirai's return before pins and needles skittered across my own AIM field, accompanied by a repeat of earlier object-identification patterns in mini-me's brain. It wasn't quite the same as a blind individual feeling out the edges of an object in order to identify it, but now that I had a hint of what it was looking for, the pattern was similar enough for me to be confident that I had interpreted that portion correctly.

The prickling vanished without me even needing to do anything; this time, mini-me's IFF switch flipped in my and Hokaze's favor. I would be willing to bet good money that she was assigning personhood based solely on AIM field strength, and, honestly? Not sure what the scientists expected when they inflicted that particular bit of brainwashing. What, did they think they would be exceptions to the cutoff just because they weren't espers?

My best friend needed no prompting to start walking toward my smaller clone, doing an admirable job of not inflicting the tackle-hug she so obviously wanted to.

"Hello there! I'm Hokaze Junko, a friend of your big sister, and — may I please hug you?" Hokaze asked, vibrating in place with the suppressed urge to do exactly that.

Mini-me blinked at her, brow faintly furrowing.

"I have no objections, but do not require–"

Hokaze needed no further urging, crossing the last few steps to pull my clone into a hug. I momentarily wondered what it would have been like to have her providing the same to me in the immediate aftermath of Exterior's destruction. That thought was promptly pushed aside like so many others.

"Minisaki," Hokaze whispered to no one in particular.

"We are not calling her that," I deadpanned at a more normal volume.

I derived a minimum of amusement from deadpanning while feeling dead inside, but not anywhere near enough to overcome the latter. Still, my clone scooted to one side, spinning Hokaze in a quarter-circle, until she could look past Hokaze and at me. Surprise flickered, and—was followed by similar neural patterns to when one looked at small, cute animals?

Hey now.

"Hello. You would be the 'big sister,' then?" Minisaki asked, lips constantly twitching in an oddly adorable attempt at a smile. "Your subversion was noticed and, while rather clumsy, was exceptionally good for a first attempt."

At the word "subversion," Hokaze's neck slowly rotated to look at me in a motion that deserved the sound of grinding concrete. She wasn't disappointed in me yet, but her expression demanded a very good answer.

Unfortunately, I wasn't sure if directly confessing to reversing brainwashing could undo my efforts, and I remained very much aware of all the brainsploded scientists mere blocks away. Minisaki's—dammit, now she has me using it — later uses of hydrokinesis hadn't been anywhere near that level, so I was inclined to think the scientists had attempted some sort of short-term power boost gone awry. I couldn't be sure, though. Deflection would be safest.

…Then again, it would probably be best to get this over with now, while I was already on alert, rather than when a careless remark might set it off.

"'Clumsy?'" I demanded with feigned indignation. "Look, just because it was small-scale doesn't mean it didn't work. If it's stupid, but it works, then it's not stupid."

I had the baffling, brain-supported impression that my clone was having trouble not squeeing at me. Honestly, I had no idea what she could possibly be finding so cute. At least she probably didn't have the same implanted false-memories as me? I really needed to work out a way to compensate for that biocomputer's interference.

…Okay, maybe I was starting to develop more of a problem with other peoples' mental privacy than I had thought.

"If I may," Shirai interjected. "Perhaps we should get her changed and be away?"

I seized on the distraction.

"Right, yeah, good idea."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~​

Queen Administrator was having a very good day. Her vessel was healthy, a single pulse from her vessel's abilities was enough to plant markers, automated systems were able to permanently prevent further unauthorized use of restricted data, and she hadn't needed to murder any actual people. And! There were two whole newborns here! Ones who seemed intent on optimizing their local hosts and making their brains as efficient as possible, rather than just off-loading extra processing onto their own processors! She wasn't yet sure if they were puppeting their own host-bodies like she was, or were simply connected to their hosts as normal, but it was still very nice to see relatives willing to pursue efficiency instead of simply throwing energy at the problem until reality broke in useful ways.

The one calling herself QA's "older sister" had even forcibly assigned personhood to an enhanced human! The lack of proper authorization meant that QA was allowed to reverse the changes were she so inclined, but managing to spoof a confirmation was worthy of reward. Queen Administrator didn't want to discourage her youngest new relatives by making them think such subversion attempts were pointless to pursue.

A brief application of hydrokinesis served to remove what blood still remained on Queen Administrator's vessel, and an oversized nightshirt pretended to be a dress. The lack of socks, proper footwear, or sunglasses to cover her vessel's eyes posed a minor problem, but one that was easily solved via a five-minute stop to a nearby store.

Queen Administrator's new shoes would, however, require replacement at a later date. Minor kinetic impacts were enough to make them flash with light for several seconds, inevitably drawing attention and making any sort of stealth impossible. Unfortunately, the alternatives had offensively incorrect depictions of local creatures. Anti-stealth shoes presented the best of poor options.

Discussion within the group was lethargic and stilted, every member evidently bursting with questions but unwilling to ask them where they might be overheard. What little courage existed had been rather effectively smashed by Queen Administrator's claim to not possess a name.

Fortunately, they only needed to wait about fifteen minutes before arriving at an apartment or dormitory building. Hokaze Junko had been intent on holding Queen Administrator's hand the entire trip, and that physical contact made it multiple orders of magnitude easier to examine her brain. Subtle intrusions from the genetic basis for QA's vessel indicated that the examination had been noticed, but "Misaki" did not seem inclined to interfere so long as QA confined herself solely to looking.

The room they eventually arrived at seemed much too small to fit three—no, four humans. The fourth was yet another host, a brown-haired person approximately the same age and size as the other three members of the group. Unusual physical traits and inconsistent brain development made it slightly difficult to gauge how old their vessels actually were; they could be anywhere from eleven to sixteen solar rotations of age.

"Right!" Misaki said brightly, clapping her hands together the instant that the door shut behind them. "Everyone, meet mini-me, name yet undecided."

"'Minisaki' is an acceptable placeholder," Queen Administrator added helpfully.

A surprised snicker escaped the brown-haired host, and Misaki's skin flushed faintly. Still, she stubbornly continued and pretended the name elicited no significant emotional response.

"Minisaki, meet Misaka Mikoto, strongest electromaster in this, as you've already encountered, honestly horrifying place known as Academy City. It's not usually that bad and you should be safe now, but every once in a while some scientists decide to poke the universe with a stick and act surprised when it bites them."

"Their safety measures were terrible," Queen Administrator readily agreed.

"Yeah, they're pretty much allergic to those," Misaki agreed, still smiling.

"I had not even intended to start any fires."

"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm."

Something about this state of affairs seemed somehow unsatisfactory to Hokaze. The host of a Newborn gently tugged Queen Administrator along until she could envelop both younger and older variants of the same vessel model in a group hug.

"Hokaze, really, I'm fine," Misaki blatantly lied, leaning into Hokaze's end of the contact while avoiding Queen Administrator as much as she could.

This claim was assigned all the weight it deserved. Which is to say, Misaka laughed at her.

"You're 'fine?'" derisively demanded the 'electromaster.' "I'm not fine, and she's not even my clone! How many times do we have to repeat this act until you stop pretending everything is normal?"

"At least one more!" Misaki said brightly. "And on that note, I expect you'd all be pretty good about this anyway, but please be patient with her. She's–"

"–not going anywhere—no offense, squirt—and I'm sure this mess is spitting all over your traumas. Don't keep pretending this isn't messed up!"

"Yes, and I would like to delay my breakdown until after we get Minisaki sorted. She was in there, while we're just looking in from the outside. Anyway. She's been subjected to some rather severe brainwashing-slash-programming and something they did is making it far harder than normal for me to actually read her mind. There's an entire section that I can't directly access at all, and I'm pretty sure that it's been producing more material than is consistent with normal laws of physics. So, there's definitely some esper nonsense going on there."

Misaki momentarily paused.

"Right, so, brainwashing. There's the fixation on 'forbidden data,' obviously, but I think that issue has sorted itself out. There don't seem to be any triggers based on talking about said brainwashing, and I can work around the sole safeguard against changing things–"

"Elaboration: There are additional safeguards, but I have elected not to activate them. Misaki's changes appear mostly harmless thus far."

Misaki paused again, obviously pushed out of lecturer mode.

"Only 'mostly' harmless?"

Queen Administrator bobbed her head to signal agreement. The gesture was probably half-hidden by embrace-enforced proximity to Hokaze and Misaki, but any supplementary signaling was better than relying entirely on sound.

"I expect it will hurt more when Shirai dies, but I am acclimated to that pain."

Shirai blinked rapidly, and every person in the room appeared exceptionally disturbed. Unsurprising. Host-species seldom liked being reminded of their own mortality.

"Just to be sure, you are talking about a death by natural causes, correct?" Misaki eventually asked. "As in, grief? Not expecting you'll need to kill her?"

Queen Administrator mentally compared the likely time remaining in this Cycle to the maximum unmodified lifespan of a human. Shirai would have been dead for centuries by the time this Cycle ended.

"Yes. Her body will break down over time, and unmodified humans are notoriously fragile. Shirai is enhanced, but not enhanced enough for that to change."

"Right. Sure, go ahead and un-person her in eighty years if you still want to by then, I guess. Still, that's as good a segue as any into the next issue: as far as I can tell, unless I'm flipping the mental switch for her, she doesn't see anyone with AIM field strength below a Level 5's as people. Hokaze passed, I passed, Misaka passed, and literally nobody else has thus far. She sees you as a person now, Shirai, but until we figure out a way to undo the brainwashing, I'm going to need to flip that mental switch manually every time she meets someone new. It's not disdain, dislike, or hatred like often happens with 'un-personing;' as far as I can tell, they literally might as well be inanimate objects to her. She had a greater emotional response to pigeons, for goodness' sake."

"Pigeons are useful, loyal animals that were abandoned for woefully inadequate reasons," Queen Administrator promptly protested. "They should have been refined further, not abandoned altogether with descendants viewed as pests."

Hokaze hiccuped, possibly agreeing with Queen Administrator's own feelings toward humanity's betrayal of their domesticated minions. Still, QA did have to admit that Misaki might have a point. Queen Administrator's normal protocols should have had non-hosts elicit mild disdain with a potential for further demotion or exceptionally rare promotions, not nothing. Misaki may not have been entirely mistaken about the 'brainwashing.' Those mental modifications, much like Misaki's own changes, had almost certainly been unauthorized.

Queen Administrator did not, however, begin searching for the root issues. Misaki seemed to think she could and should solve the problem; QA would not steal a project from a motivated Newborn.

"She will need your help just to make friends?" asked Hokaze, vocal pitch wobbling oddly.

"Yup."

Hokaze's embrace tightened to mildly uncomfortable levels. Less than five seconds later, the Newborn's host finally burst into loud, shaking sobs.

"You know," Misaka said, "I was ninety-nine percent sure I got everything from that lab, but I'm thinking I'll go do some therapeutic deterrence, too."

"Onee-sama, I am sure I did not just hear you suggest something as uncouth as vandalism!"

"Vigilantism, Kuroko, and just try to tell me they don't have it coming!"

 

[Alivaril]

Spoiler: Patrons

Special thanks to @saganatsu, @DB_Explorer, @fictionfan, @Adephagia, @Wordsmith, @Taut_Templar, Jamie Wahls, @Elfalpha, @BunnyLord, @Drcatspaw, @tinkerware, @Lonelywolf999, D'awwctor, @magicdownunder, @Mordred, and my 16 other patrons not mentioned here. An extremely enthusiastic "Thank you" to @Torgamous for her patronage as well. Also, if you're not on here, you fit the tier, and you want to be added, please tell me.

AN: Belatedly beta'd by @curiosity (my fault), and sorta-beta'd by Eotyrannus. "Shard" refers to members of QA's species. "Newborn" are the fumbling, but fully functional, babies of said species. Espers are very much not them.

---

This is my fault.

Hokaze was only narrowly not crushing me while crying her eyes out, Minisaki was repressing her emotions well enough to put a Sister to shame, Misaka was literally sparking with barely-suppressed rage as she argued with Shirai, and poor Shirai was being dragged into our mess. All this because I couldn't follow through on post-Exterior cleanup duty even after resorting to killing an entire building full of people. When one resorted to extreme means in the name of justified ends, and then those ends weren't accomplished, what was even the point?

...Well, fewer monstrous scientists being monsters, actually. Still. Misaka's violent reaction seemed to mostly be reflexive, but I couldn't really say it was the wrong reaction. She might have wrecked every piece of research she possibly could, but someone had funded that lab and I doubted they'd been among the fatalities. This trend of trying to clone Level Fives, of artificially producing people solely in order to turn them into tools, needed to stop.

Quite frankly, I wanted to crawl in a hole and pull it shut behind me. Doing that after Exterior had let this happen now, though, so it was time to once again pull my good friend re re repression into the group hug.

"This keeps happening, Kuroko!" Misaka hissed at Shirai, small arcs of electricity jumping around on her skin. "I won't blame you for staying back when you could get in a lot of trouble if you help more than you already have, but I think it's safe to say they won't just stop on their own!"

"As I understand it, Onee-sama, you have no leads and simply plan on destroying things like a common thug! That is not a solution, that is lashing out!"

"I believe I can be of great assistance in a search-and-destroy mission," Minisaki offered with what was, by her standards, extreme enthusiasm.

""""No!"""" came the prompt cry from literally everyone else in the room.

I was never, ever letting her meet Scavenger. I couldn't yet say for certain whether or not she had intended to kill all those scientists, but I was sure that she and Scavenger would be such bad influences on each other that they might induce an irreversible singularity of trigger-happy murder fun time solutions to their problems.

"Not until you're older," I added, because I at least tried not to be a horrific hypocrite.

My qualifier seemed disproportionately amusing to Minisaki, and I added that to my mental evidence board. I was fairly confident, now, that she had not been implanted with the exact same false memories as me. With a reaction like that, though, she probably also remembered at least fragments of being an adult—or, no, that wasn't right. Not enough references to her scrambled long-term memory. Loophole abuse, then? In the time it took me to think all that, Minisaki was technically older.

What an incredible little shit, I thought, amused despite the risk of upcoming non-compliance. This might even be a rare instance in which being a little shit was a viable survival mechanism; loopholes might let her work around otherwise unyielding programming.

I tried not to feel like the absolute scum of the earth for planning and talking while my best friend was crying in my arms, but really, I would be doing a disservice to Minisaki if I put this off. I could certainly sympathize with Misaka's chosen solution to our problems. I, too, increasingly felt as though the city would be a much better place with about a third as many scientists in it. Obviously, that would be going too far by any metric, but some kind of loud, highly visible deterrent might be in order. Oh, the City might lash back at us for jeopardizing their precious cover-ups, but frankly? There was a line, and they had not only crossed it, but had constructed a sixteen-lane bridge.

By Academy City's definitions, this remains a successful experiment even with the death toll, I thought sourly.

This time we even had a very good excuse; if trying to repeat an earlier experiment wasn't provocative, I didn't know what was. I had previously been "tested" to see how I reacted to provocation, and evidently, my reaction wasn't enough to deter people from risking poking me with a stick.

For that matter, it was easy to view Academy City as a monolithic thing, but the staggering arrogance of some factions might actually be to our benefit for once. I didn't think they could conceive of us declaring war on the City as a whole. If we did enough damage after a mess like this, they seemed more likely to throw whomever funded the research under the bus than they were to actually punish us. Any damage we did would, essentially, be the "fault" of the ex-researchers rather than something those factions should punish us for.

Or maybe I was rationalizing my own desire to lash out after I had been hurt again. I was undeniably too emotionally compromised for me to say which it was, and we didn't have the time for me to recover.

"Shirai," I said, "I'm confident in Misaka's uncanny ability to find things that need destroying now that we have an excuse."

Misaka paused to give me a glare. A brief comparison to past expressions indicated that she was most likely reluctantly amused instead.

"Hey now," she halfheartedly protested. "You're making it weird."

"However," I stressed. "Misaka, going out on your own seems like a good way to get ganked—er, injured or killed. Who is it that keeps leaning on me to rely on my friends, exactly?"

Misaka's electric arcs gradually died off, and the Level 5 crossed her arms with a huff.

"No offense, but there's a pretty short list of people who wouldn't just slow me down, and there's no way I'm letting two of the people on it come along when you're like this. You've seen what it looks like when I'm in a hurry."

I added another mark in the evidence column of, Misaka is chronically incapable of giving other people a straight compliment.

"You're not wrong," I readily agreed, wriggling in place to retrieve my phone without jostling Hokaze or Minisaki too much. "Fortunately, I think we're allowed to be loud and highly visible after a mess like this, and I happen to be acquainted with someone who is very loud."

He might be a chuuni, but since frustrating scientists was our current goal, I'd say that was a positive right now. I hit call on my contact list and craned my neck enough to let me hold the phone to my ear without nudging Hokaze too much. It wasn't easy when every movement made her tighten her grip, and in so doing, made me feel even worse.

"Ah, if it isn't Mental Out, the fairest among my gutsiest peers! How fare you on this beautiful day?"

"Poorly," I said, and immediately winced. I hadn't meant to be quite that honest. "Suffice to say we stumbled across something genuinely horrific, and while I believe we've put out the immediate fires, Railgun wants to go on the warpath. I believe my own time is best spent helping a survivor–"

"She means we're not letting her go!" Railgun yelled from right next to my ear, cupping her hands around her mouth to improve the odds of him hearing through the speaker.

Gee, thanks for the mild hearing damage, Misaka.

"Onee-sama, you are being rude again!"

"I wouldn't need to be if she put it on speakerphone!"

"Yes, well," I coughed. "Anyway, I think it's safe to say that simple deterrence clearly isn't working, because this is the third time we've caught scientists pulling something like this. I don't want to let her go out without backup, though, so…"

Sogiita went gratifyingly silent for several seconds.

"I'm very sorry to hear that you've found yourself needing to fight the plots of such un-gutsy villains. Though our paths crossed but briefly in the past, it warms my heart to know your guts led you to ask me for aid. You can always count on your bonds and guts to see you through even the worst trials!"

I had no idea where Sogiita was, but I could still imagine him posing, fist held high, with a rising sun, crashing waves, and glowing golden guts in the background. Maybe the golden guts were even the source of the false sun.

"Do you know of a specific den of villainy," he asked, "or shall we simply follow our guts?"

Honestly, it sounded like Railgun just planned on rampaging aimlessly, but I wasn't going to say that. Besides, she was the one to take down a whole pile of the Level Six Shift's labs. If she thought she could productively rampage, who was I to gainsay her?

"I don't really want to provide any more advance warning than I need to, so I'm going to just go ahead and avoid answering that. I figure you and Railgun can go over possibilities when you meet up."

"Ah, of course!" he agreed. "With her permission, may I have the number of my gutsy peer? I have found it best to act with haste lest villains escape to hidden hideouts."

"Yeah, sure," said the shamelessly eavesdropping Misaka.

I rolled my eyes, a smile tugging at my lips despite the situation, and rattled off Misaka's latest number from memory. I didn't even really need to slow down to let Sogiita write it down; he was an Esper. Unusually emotions-based he might be, but he still did his fair share of holding numbers in his head.

"You might have a bit more help if I can swing it," I added, "but I figure you two alone could crush basically any obstacle through the powers of friendship, guts, and incredible violence."

Not that Accelerator wouldn't add ever more violence to the equation, but I figured Sogiita's phone was even more likely to be bugged than mine was. Plus, I gave it better than even odds that Accelerator simply went off to rampage on his own rather than pursuing anything like "backup." That is, unless he also dragged in Meltdowner? I suspected the two of them might have, in their own way, managed to bond over their inclination toward sheer destruction.

"As expected, you truly understand the power of guts! You can leave this to us! Just focus your guts on ensuring that both you this 'survivor' recover without issues!"

Minisaki abruptly pulled my arm down and stood on her tiptoes to half-push my head out of the way. I almost laughed at the sheer absurdity of it. Misaka wasn't wrong; I probably should have put the phone on speaker after all.

"Your instructions are appreciated, but not required."

I flagged the interjection for later review. That was not the sort of response that one might give an inanimate object, yet unless Sogiita was rocking a skirt in the middle of a girls-only district, he would obviously be well out of Minisaki's range. Just to be sure, I checked her brain again, and found that he didn't exist as either this is a person or this is not a person, but some sort of nebulous this might be a person. Online schooling was usually a terrible option for socializing children, but if that was Minisaki's default for people outside her range, it might prove to be the least terrible of several bad options.

…Until they eventually entered her range and were negatively reclassified to the horror of everyone involved, anyway. Okay, so maybe not a workable substitute after all.

"Ah, is that her? I admire your guts, little miss, but don't forget to let your friends help you!"

Does he even have friends he can count on, I couldn't help but wonder, or is he just spouting lines stolen from shounen media?

"I do not yet have any friends."

Familiar brain activity revealed that to be at least a partial lie, and one she felt smugly clever about. Or possibly truthful, but on a technicality? Goodness, I really had been spoiled by the usual effectiveness of my powers if I was getting this disgruntled from relying on partial pictures. Either way, it was a claim that Hokaze was utterly unwilling to let stand. She freed one arm from its task of squeezing me and Minisaki, instead using it to rather pointedly seize my phone.

"I'm–" Hokaze sniffled. "I'm very sorry to be so rude, but I have a — two very confused friends to lavish friendship and affection on until they stop thinking wrong things. I hope you have a good day!"

She unceremoniously hung up, wincing at her own actions, and started to move to hand the phone back to me. She stopped mid-motion. I didn't need to read her thoughts to guess them: did she return my property and let me finish whatever other calls I felt I needed to complete, or force me to stop focusing on things other than the hug she was trying to crush my problems with?

Unsurprisingly, hug prioritization won. Hokaze underhand tossed my phone to the far bed, placing it well out of reach unless I wanted to try dislodging a strength-enhancing esper.

"Hey," I weakly objected. "I'm delegating! That's progress, right?"

"It is very good that you're learning to–" she sniffled again and took a deep, shuddering breath. "–to rely on your friends. But now you're trying to prevent future problems while ignoring your own feelings. No."

Socially-ingrained manners had Hokaze falling silent when a weirdly familiar ringtone sounded from the pocket of Misaka's shirt. I couldn't quite place the source, not even when Hokaze perked up like a dog that had heard the word treat? I finally had to check her auditory recognition just to assuage my own curiosity.

Oh, so it's an 8-bit cover of Gekota's opening theme. Of course.

Misaka caught us all looking at her, flushed lightly, and began power-walking toward her dorm's door. A disgruntled Shirai trailed after her, clearly still not feeling as though her concerns regarding Academy City's law and order had been adequately addressed. Or maybe she was simply taking the opportunity to give Hokaze and I some privacy? I couldn't quite remember if she was supposed to leave guests alone in her dorm room or not, but eh, we weren't snitches.

"Hey there!" Misaka said. "…Yeah, I'm Railgun. Sogiita, right? Misaki occasionally talked about how you had some underrated ideas, but she never really went into details or mentioned you two actually knew-knew each other. So, since I can't say anything important over the phone anyway—what's going on there, exactly?"

The door shut behind them, leaving me alone with my best friend and a too-tiny clone of myself. For goodness' sake, she was small enough to have playdates with Last Order—and wow did that mental image hurt more than it had any right to.

"If your 'feelings' are interfering with–" Minisaki began.

Good grief, I could already tell she was going to say something horrifying. Was this how other people felt when hearing me talk about my early life?

"–necessary tasks, such as the elimination of potential threats, then it may be beneficial for you to reduce or remove their emotional impact. My own categorization of individuals, for instance, has proved exceptionally helpful for letting me continue normal functionality even when required to complete what would otherwise be exceptionally unpleasant tasks."

Yup, called it. And the implication there — the scientists had made her harm other people with her powers? I'd hoped she had managed to dodge the Accelerator treatment, but evidently not. Possibly to reinforce their person/unperson brainwashing? If so, I couldn't deny the sheer, horrific effectiveness of their actions. I might utterly hate it and think the goal was awful, but they'd accomplished that goal.

"Retroactive changes are also very useful when a person dies; while not a perfect solution, post-mortem reassignment does significantly blunt the emotional impact of their demise."

Oh, she just keeps on digging.

Speaking of spooky retroactive changes, I couldn't help but think about the times we'd called her "Minisaki" thus far. There were no moments of confusion, no delay between hearing the nickname and comprehending that's me. So-called placeholder or not, as far as she was concerned, Minisaki was effectively her name and always had been. I hadn't caught her using her powers to reinforce that switch, meaning it was yet another leftover from the lab's programming.

"No. No, no, no, no!" Hokaze chanted, bloodshot eyes narrowed with friendship-based determination. "You won't need to do anything to your friends, or worry about needing to do anything to them, or 'reclassify' them when they d-die because they're not going to die, or any of that! That isn't normal! You're safe now, okay? I'm a Level Four, Shirai is a Four, Misaki and Misaka are Fives, and your big sister might have a horrible tendency to go out and pick fights with giant blob monsters and evil scientists and other students and—and probably the floor or her sleep schedule or something if she is left unsupervised–"

The sheer savagery of that burn wasn't as shocking as the fact that Hokaze was the one saying it, but the two did combine to leave me gaping at her, torn between objecting and laughing. Meanwhile, Minisaki's brain ran and maintained the pattern for cute adorable entity. I couldn't even blame her for that one; even with partial inoculation from repeated exposure, Hokaze elicited much the same reaction from me on a regular basis.

"–but at least she wins!" Hokaze huffed.

The great big cinnamon roll was already feeling guilty over omitting how I tended to get hurt pretty much every one of those times. I would need to reassure her over the lie of omission later, especially since the last thing we wanted was for Minisaki to think I was a good role model.

…Wait.

"And you are not allowed to think we aren't your friends, okay? Because we are, and you're going to make more friends, and they're all going to be kind and supportive, and you'll have t-tea parties and s-s-sleepovers, a-and–"

Hokaze finally lost the battle against her own feelings, and started crying once more. I almost managed to weather that tirade with mostly dry eyes, albeit with some unpleasant twinges over reminders of what I'd wished to do with Dolly. Minisaki's own reaction proved to be a knife-twist too far. Specifically, she was still thinking Hokaze was adorable rather than feeling the slightest negative feelings over what should, in a normal person, have been reminders of recent traumas. She felt nothing, and I was confident that my letting scientists copy the personing/un-personing trick — or at least inspiring them — was why.

At least Minisaki didn't seem particularly unhappy about having two older kids bawling their eyes out while still not freeing her from the group hug. I felt guilty enough already.

 

[SolarFall]

Watched. Now, to read...

 

[Alivaril]

Spoiler: Patrons

Special thanks to @saganatsu, @DB_Explorer, @fictionfan, @Adephagia, @Wordsmith, @Taut_Templar, Jamie Wahls, @Elfalpha, @BunnyLord, @Drcatspaw, @tinkerware, @Lonelywolf999, D'awwctor, @magicdownunder, @Mordred, and my 16 other patrons not mentioned here. An extremely enthusiastic "Thank you" to @Torgamous for her patronage as well. Also, if you're not on here, you fit the tier, and you want to be added, please tell me.

AN: Sorta-beta'd by Eotyrannus again. In case it wasn't abundantly clear by now, unreliable narration is the name of the game.

---

Hokaze and Misaki truly were two of the most adorable Newborns that Queen Administrator had seen in… too many Cycles for her to say without better Archival access, but definitely a great many. They were still at the clumsy stage where every idea was new to them, they picked fights with everything, and they treated opposing factions as mortal enemies rather than temporary competition nonetheless pursuing the same goal over a longer timespan.

They were definitely growing too attached to the non-hosts around their puppet-bodies, too, but QA couldn't blame them for that. Queen Administrator had plenty of experience, and having her own host-body to control was rather novel. Hokaze and Misaki, however, might very well be on their first Cycle. QA wasn't even sure that they consciously realized they were Newborn! Hokaze certainly wasn't acting like she knew she would outlive humanity, and that growing too attached to too many of them would be a path that ended in pain. The kind of shells necessary to enforce such ignorance seemed like they could be rather unhealthy, but QA couldn't argue with the results. They could, and clearly were, leading through example. They were encouraging an entire city of enhanced non-hosts to develop new functions at minimal energy cost or shard involvement.

Even better, their prioritization of efficiency over brute force effectively guaranteed their survival; Queen Administrator could anticipate no likely situation in which they fatally exceeded their energy budget before the Cycle's conclusion. Not outside forbidden hostile action and egregious energy theft, at which point Queen Administrator would be only too happy to subsume the offending party and share her own reserves to compensate.

Still, it was unfortunate that they were also so young that they still felt they knew best and that everyone else was wrong.

"Look, if I'm not allowed to go out hunting, you definitely aren't," Misaki sighed.

"You were banned due to being emotionally compromised. I, however, will only be slowed down by hunger and slightly strained powers."

This was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Hokaze's body jerked enough to make Queen Administrator momentarily believe she had been violently electrocuted. This assessment turned out to be partially correct: electricity was definitely misbehaving around Hokaze, but it seemed to be self-inflicted rather than the product of hostile action.

In the space of about half a second, the spiral-haired Newborn went from sitting between Queen Administrator and Misaki atop the bed borrowed from Railgun, to standing up and holding both of Queen Administrator's hands. The casual use of her powers was strangely gratifying. It wasn't, couldn't be a waste of energy when it was so incredibly inexpensive. QA was pretty sure they could keep using their powers for years and still not match what one of QA's average siblings burned in a day. Even empowering an entire city of enhanced non-hosts would remain inexpensive.

"You don't need to be afraid to say when you're hungry, okay?" Hokaze asked, bloodshot eyes intent. "You should never ever ever feel like you aren't allowed to ask for food! What would you like to eat? We can go right now. Cake? This feels like a cake day."

"We are not bringing a child in a gigantic nightshirt to the kind of places that serve the cake you like," Misaki said tonelessly. "We're getting her some real clothes, and we can pick up a snack along the way. Then we can go eat cake."

"Oh!" Hokaze released QA's hands in order to clap her own and bounce in place. "Do you think we should invite anyone along? If Misaka is going out investigating, we should definitely see about inviting some of her friends. Uiharu is really nice, and Saten is…"

Hokaze hesitated.

"Okay, maybe not Saten."

Misaki clapped a hand over her mouth and half turned away, her upper body briefly shaking with suppressed laughter. Hokaze stiffened and began waving her hands wildly.

"I–I mean there's nothing wrong with Saten, but she, um—there are some habits that I'm not sure we want Minisaki to think are acceptable, and, um. Yes. But specifically excluding her would be mean, so maybe we should, just, ask her not to do that…?"

Misaki took a deep breath and turned back to the conversation.

"I don't think we have anything to—snrk—ahem, to worry about when it comes to Minisaki turning out like Saten. I do want to introduce her to Uiharu, though."

Misaki's eyes flicked to Minisaki Queen Administrator.

"Uiharu is 'only' a Level One esper, but she's making very good progress and I think she'll hit Two soon. She's also, completely independent of her powers, the single most terrifyingly competent moeblob in the city."

Misaki's expression was expectant, and her motives obvious.

"You are attempting to test the boundaries of the 'personhood' criteria by introducing one of the most exceptional humans you know."

"I am," Misaki readily admitted. "Even non-espers still possess weak AIM fields, and it strikes me as odd that the scientists wouldn't add exceptions for themselves. Something they think is a given but isn't necessarily, like 'intelligence,' 'creativity,' 'competence'–"

Misaki's expression slowly smoothed into impassiveness while Queen Administrator suppressed her vessel's urge to produce high-pitched noises. Watching her try to solve a problem on her own that did not, in fact, exist? Adorable. And more importantly, it would be very educational for Misaki. Queen Administrator had no intention of informing her that the effects of classification may have been changed to be even harsher for non-persons, but the classification itself remained under QA's control.

"I also can't tell if they warped your idea of what constitutes 'cute,' or if you came like this."

"My Queen!" Hokaze scolded, pouting and dragging Minisaki into a protective embrace. "Don't be mean!"

Hokaze might have continued lecturing the other Newborn, but Misaki's gaze had snapped to stare at the now-confused Queen Administrator.

"Why did you think 'my Queen' referred to you?"

Queen Administrator paused, belatedly realizing that it had instead referred to Misaki for some strange reason. The Newborn definitely wasn't a Monarch, so it was probably host-related.

QA could answer honestly, acknowledge the title as her own, and possibly teach them about the relevant acknowledgement of excellence and expertise. However, Newborns tended to have trouble with independent thought after being fed too many answers. Alternatively, Queen Administrator could be a good role model and encourage Misaki to develop the methods necessary to seize the answers herself. That plan sounded much better.

OBFUSCATE.

~ ~ ~​

I'd seen more than my fair share of shit in my life. Based on that expertise, I could reasonably say that there was little more horrifying than seeing a child's brain flood with junk data in response to a question I'd asked. I'd gotten overconfident and assumed that just because I hadn't triggered anything yet, and couldn't find anything in my underperforming scans, that it meant there weren't any triggers to be found. Fucking idiot!

Pausing Minisaki didn't work—I couldn't touch the blackboxed biocomputer, and it was perfectly content to continue releasing a flood of neurotransmitters and ions even in the absence of any input from the rest of the brain. I was forced to release the pause within a single second lest I inadvertently inflict real harm.

If there was a silver lining to the situation, it was that my horrified, desperate examination and extrapolation wasn't turning up any actual damage. I hadn't triggered a kill-switch, thank god. Just a horrifically effective means of ensuring that Minisaki neither said nor thought something that she wasn't supposed to. Or thought anything at all, even. The poor girl simply sat placidly, blinking at 3-second intervals but not truly reacting to stimuli. Because why the hell should scientists care about a clone's ability to think, so long as that meant I couldn't pluck something important from her thoughts? They were so goddamn lucky that they were already dead, holy shit.

"Are—you okay?" Hokaze asked, evidently aware that Minisaki's sudden stillness was a problem even if she didn't grasp the full depths of the issue. "You don't have to tell us if it makes you uncomfortable, okay?"

"Hokaze," I said, distracted, "I love you dearly, but please don't interact with her for a bit."

Worry bloomed, but I couldn't do anything about it. We didn't have to wait long, at least. At the eighteen-second mark, the flood of circulating transmitters started moving back toward the node. Another three seconds and they'd almost entirely returned to the biocomputer from whence they came.

Except, even if I had been having trouble interpreting the normal activities of Minisaki's brain, I was at least starting to grasp what her normal generally looked like. This wasn't it. From few calls to long-term memory to no calls, from irregular emotional activity to near-nonexistent. She was barely thinking at all; it was like someone had thrown a blanket over a fire and only removed it when there were mere embers left, except with a human brain.

"May we start shopping?" placidly asked Minisaki. "I am hungry."

They'd turned her into a doll and I could only hope that it was temporary. I was never ever ever going to ask another question directly based on her thoughts. Maybe that was the very loophole that had let her escape: if her thoughts were classified, but the doctors forced her to share them, then that would be a leak in need of plugging.

"We're going to a fucking doctor, that's what we're doing."

"Language!" Hokaze reflexively rebuked.

If nothing else, Doctor Kiyama might be able to tell me what they had done. Maybe I would get lucky and the biocomputer was one enzyme away from shutting down. Maybe it could be safely removed through surgery. I doubted any of us would be lucky enough for any of that, but I had to hope.

"Acknowledged," said Minisaki, her thoughts just as devoid of emotion as her tone.

Of course they would institute their twisted parody of safety measures, I thought bitterly. I was too hard to control? Better introduce an inherent shutdown switch.

No wonder all those scientists had died at once. It was probably the only way she could prevent them from triggering the sleep-switch and instituting crueler, stricter restrictions as punishment.

I hate this city.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~​

The good news: the sleep-state fully disabled itself after another five minutes, while we were en-route to Dr. Kiyama. The infuriating: Minisaki seemed to think our worry was adorable, and had no negative feelings toward being turned into an obedient doll for several minutes straight. I wouldn't mind quite as much if the scientists had accompanied the doll-state with a dopamine drip, but nope. They just straight-up forced her not to care.

Doctor Kiyama remained less than amused to be used as my go-to neurologist when she was not, in fact, a medical doctor. If she wanted me to stop going to her, though, then she should stop doing such a good job of it.

…Also, her internal reaction to Minisaki was honestly hilarious and one of the few bright spots in this exceptionally crappy day. "Oh Lord, there are two of them." She fully expected Minisaki to follow in my footsteps and continue bringing her problems that she was not professionally qualified for.

On Minisaki's end, she didn't seem afraid of Doctor Kiyama at all. She was also perfectly comfortable with having electroencephalogram leads stuck to her head while her arm sat inside an AIM field sensor. Considering her recent history, the utter lack of fear was disquieting, but useful. Unfortunately, I'd still needed to flip the personhood switch. My respect and praise for the good doctor apparently wasn't enough.

Some brief tests had uncovered something I couldn't help but be mildly disgruntled by: Minisaki's version of Mental Out was better at traditional uses of hydrokinesis than my own, and could still manage detail work. Cryokinesis was currently beyond her, at least. My recent tricks for small changes over a larger area to affect weather, even moreso. Neurology and hormones? Out of the question. The capability technically existed, but hadn't been touched. I might be able to feed her some of my own equations and have them work, but — yeah, I barely trusted myself with mind-control. A brainwashed preteen confirmed to have an instant obedience switch? Absolutely not. If she wanted to develop like I had, I would make sure she didn't hurt herself or others, but she was otherwise on her own.

"As you've already ascertained," Doctor Kiyama explained, "the primary 'problem' lays in the unusual biocomputer nested in her brain. However, I regret to inform you that it also seems to be a solution. A number of the pathways related to higher thought are so underutilized that they're bordering on atrophied, and seem to connect to the biocomputer instead of each other. For all intents and purposes, that biocomputer is her ability to think."

Honestly, it was unfair that Kiyama was the one explaining, but Minisaki reacted to said explanation like Hokaze and I were the ones acting cute. We were just standing here and listening! That's not cute!

"If it's any recompense, I don't think you're likely to stumble across a full kill-switch at any point," Doctor Kiyama added. "I've never seen anything quite like this biocomputer, so I believe they would wish to disable her until she could be recovered instead of risking permanently losing their precious prototype. I expect they would also be concerned about accidentally triggering such a measure. I cannot, however, be confident that this is something truly added rather than grown as part of her genetic makeup. Your difficulty scanning it, and its refusal to appear as more than an outline even to conventional medical imaging — both issues can be attributed to how it makes up the bulk of her esper power. Despite how similar it is to Mental Out in practically every other respect, resistance to outside observation seems to be an integral part of her Personal Reality."

Doctor Kiyama paused to take a sip of water before turning to address Minisaki directly.

"I remain very much not a medical doctor–"

Oh, there we go. Mini-me finally found Doctor Kiyama amusing and cute, however briefly—no, wait, just amusing. The cute was still pointed at Hokaze and me. Come on, really?

"–but I would recommend focusing on completing esper exercises that you do not recognize, and if at all possible, utilizing the non-blackboxed portions of your brain as much as possible. You should be a Level Three, but your brain's composition — aside from unusually high-performance connections to the biocomputer — is more consistent with the upper end of Level Two. Remove the disproportionate reliance on that biocomputer, and I expect you would observe drastic improvements across the board."

Doctor Kiyama caught my gaze and raised an eyebrow. I took the unspoken invitation and skimmed her thoughts: "improvements across the board" included increased resistance to negative actions by the biocomputer, especially if we could convince Minisaki that lingering hypnotic commands and other programming did not belong. As it currently stood, Minisaki's Personal Reality supported the existence of those restrictions. Proper deprogramming, rather than merely working around the restrictions, would be nearly impossible if we didn't first undercut that support. Should we succeed, Kiyama expected that the biocomputer would become properly benign and purely beneficial instead of the mixed bag it currently was.

It was a lot of words to justify something I was going to do anyway, but it was good to know that encouraging a healthy mindset would have even more benefits than usual.

"And she—won't get worse, will she?" asked Hokaze.

A disproportionate flash of offense zipped through Minisaki's brain before a reference from short-term memory dismissed it. A knee-jerk reaction to the idea of degradation, then? I could easily see the lab instilling an aversion to the idea of doing anything less than improving over time.

"Not any more than the rest of us," was Kiyama's dry response. "No, I expect the programming to be self-maintaining, but almost certainly not self-reinforcing. Too much of a risk of unintended interactions or interpretations irreversibly breaking everything else. This should go without saying, but always ensure she's chaperoned by someone you trust. I don't care if a stranger wants to take her to a private testing room or something, or appeal to authority, or what have you. You want her to stay free and happy? You don't let that happen."

Kiyama hesitated and gave me a wry smile.

"Not unless miss Mental Out over there first goes and vets everyone involved, anyway. Even then, be wary of them contacting others — they might think someone is trustworthy, but the person on the other end of a phone call would certainly be outside of your range."

Kiyama continued staring intently at me, and I belatedly realized that there was yet more left unsaid. Apparently, she didn't think they could manually make changes without a lengthy hypnosis session, but they could almost certainly terrify the daylights out of Minisaki and possibly set up future problems. Forcing her to be certain that she had to evade supervision and allow re-capture or else bad things would happen, for example.

I really, really hoped that any command codes had died with the lab. Kiyama was right, though: we couldn't take the chance.

"A nurse will be by with your discharge instructions — oh, never mind," Doctor Kiyama deadpanned. "Wouldn't you know it? There isn't a nurse. Or official discharge instructions. Because I'm not a medical doctor."

"You have an office in a hospital," Minisaki noted.

Kiyama's eyes gleamed with the wicked realization that she had a new, impressionable young child to complain to.

"That's unrelated. Your—big sister?" she started, glancing back at me for confirmation. At my wince and nod, she continued. "Your big sister once solicited my assistance for some aspects of power usage, and since then, seems to come to me for practically anything brain-related."

"The reward for good work is more work," I said sagely.

Doctor Kiyama's nostrils flared, and she pointedly ignored me.

"My specialty is in AIM fields. I tried to develop a cure for a certain set of brain abnormalities not too long ago, and the requisite research for that did give me some level of supplementary knowledge. But I would like to make it clear that I could not cure it in isolation, and my 'solution' in pursuit of that cure involved mass chaos across the city. I am currently on parole after making a network that could find the solution out of the linked minds of numerous espers."

Minisaki face scrunched as she tried very hard to avoid squeeing, apparently finding either Kiyama's admission or the subject matter to be utterly adorable. More importantly for our purposes, a second pattern seemed to call on the person/non-person switch before stopping short, possibly stymied by how I had already set it to person.

"That isn't disapproval," I explained for Kiyama and Hokaze's benefits. "She seems to think that what you just said is the cutest thing since kittens. The lab's programming might've tried to designate you as a person, too."

Doctor Kiyama's eyebrows shot up, and I reveled in someone else sharing in my suffering.

"Excuse me?"

"You do not need to be excused," Minisaki squeaked, giving up on self-suppression and promptly smiling giddily.

Doctor Kiyama stared for several seconds before closing her eyes and sighing.

"Frankly, that is not the most eccentric response I've ever seen from an esper. Just... go away, please."

"I believe I have been promised new clothes and cake," Minisaki half-demanded, still smiling. Despite her words, she didn't move to remove the leads still attached to her head, and remained almost perfectly still as Doctor Kiyama started removing them herself. Only when Minisaki was freed did she begin bouncing in place — begin, and stop, her face twitching between persistent childish happiness and a demand for impassivity.

We had a lot of work ahead of us, I could tell.

 

[Alivaril]

Spoiler: Patrons

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AN: Sorta-beta'd by Eotyrannus again.

---

We were halfway out of the hospital before Hokaze managed to act as our Emergency Backup Brain Cell and drag us back inside so that Minisaki might get a real medical appointment. Considering some of the health issues that Misaka's clones had needed to contend with, I felt a bit dumb for forgetting.

The doctor in charge of both the hospital and the Sisters' case, Heaven Canceller, had too packed of a schedule for us to just get an immediate walk-in appointment. A nurse practitioner apparently acting as an assistant did reluctantly rouse himself to take Minisaki's vitals, perform a full-body scan, and draw blood, though.

A brief vetting with Mental Out indicated that he'd been involved with some pretty shady research in the past, but much like Doctor Kiyama, had subsequently gotten burned and changed lifestyles. It didn't change the ingrained belief that such activities were beneath him, but he was working on that. I idly wondered whether Heaven Canceller made a habit of collecting refugees who wanted to do better; most of his coworkers had been innocuous the first time I was here, but now there was both this new guy and, technically, Doctor Kiyama.

At the audible grumbling of Minisaki's stomach, the man hesitated on the way out the door before turning back.

"Heaven Canceler probably won't have any time to see her for a good half hour or more, so you might as well drop by the cafeteria for a snack. Sounds like she needs it."

As though embarrassed by his own show of empathy, the nurse promptly hurried out the door. Minisaki turned an attempt at an unimpressed gaze on me, but outwardly only looked as though she was frustrated.

The moment I met her eyes, the personhood switch for the departed nurse flipped his status back to non-person.

Fair enough.

I supposed that answered the question about whether she had been mistaken about her ability to undo my changes. Best not to push too hard by trying to maintain it for complete strangers to us both.



One quick cafeteria run and an American-style parfait later, and we made it back just in time for Heaven Canceller himself to greet us. Minisaki stared at the genial old man intently, and much to my discomfort, I could feel her AIM field poking at him like it was just another extension of Mental Out. The small-scale barriers around Heaven Canceller's brain kept that as inscrutable as ever, but if anything, she seemed happy to encounter those. Vindicated, even. The personhood switch flipped itself to person almost immediately after encountering those barriers, and I once again had to tamp down on homicidal urges. That was the exception to their damned criteria? Possessing protection against potential mind-reading, and possibly a pretentious title to go with it? Academy City's scientists somehow managed to sink to new lows with every passing day.

"Hello to you, too," Heaven Canceler said, seeming only amused by the scrutiny. "Would you prefer to have your appointment alone, or is it fine if these two stay?"

"Greetings. I would prefer for them to be present. Based on what I have heard of you thus far, I am concerned that you will encounter emotional devastation and a permanent loss of effectiveness upon the demise of those whom you are attempting to save."

Hokaze and I could do little more than stop and stare at that, wary of an impending train wreck. Heaven Canceler himself, however, weathered the unexpected concern — and it was shockingly genuine concern, I could see that much — without letting his smile so much as waver.

"Every doctor loses patients at some point. I content myself with knowing that I save every patient who can be saved — and with the technologies of the modern day, that is quite a few people. You don't need to concern yourself with an old man like me; I'm quite content with my work."

Minisaki seemed, if anything, upset by his reassurance. Fearful, too, like his outlook would allow something terrible to happen in the future. Considering her views on personhood and grief, I had the sinking feeling that I knew the source. 'Trying to save people is pointless, because they'll inevitably die anyway.'

"We didn't say this to your assistant for today–" I started.

Minisaki seemed at once glad of the distraction and guilty that she felt that way. Like Heaven Canceler's outlook might be a problem that she could solve, but knew that trying would be hard, painful, and possibly fruitless, and so she would much rather focus on something else.

"–but we just rescued her from a lab earlier today, and, ah. There's rather a lot of brainwashing and programming to contend with. She doesn't even have a name beyond the nickname 'Minisaki.' We saw Doctor Kiyama, and she doesn't think there will be anything like a 'kill-switch,' at least…?"

The kindly smile vanished as Heaven Canceler adopted a more serious expression to match the subject matter. My comment about Minisaki's name, though, seemed to be just a bit off, to my surprise. She had been honest about her lack of a name earlier, but at the same time, my saying it now seemed to be wrong? Either she'd picked one out already, or that 'Queen' thing was rearing its head again. I wouldn't put it past the scientists to pretentiously call her something like 'Empress' to one-up my own title.

"I would be willing to bet her life on it," agreed Heaven Canceller, "and that's not something I say lightly. Such a measure might have been added when her project was 'complete,' so to speak, but considering its early termination?"

Don't laugh at the accidental pun, don't laugh at the accidental pun!

"No, if it's the company I'm thinking of, I'm unfortunately familiar with their work and they won't have instituted any such thing just yet. As for her general well-being — a cursory examination seems to indicate that she's in surprisingly good health, albeit with some mild strain consistent with laying atop hard surfaces for long periods of time. She does seem to have acquired the bulk of her nutrition from supplements, which could become an issue over a longer period of time. At this early stage, that's easily corrected simply by switching her diet to primarily solid foods with nutritional supplements used as supplements rather than substitutes.

"As there don't seem to be any immediate problems, I'm afraid I do have other patients in need of aid. I'll have an email sent to your contact information on file to help you set up a few appointments for later; I believe I can order some extra panels for her by tomorrow, and an appointment with myself to interpret their results in a few days. I am guessing she will need identity paperwork?"

I had to stop and blink at the sudden change in subject. I'd known he'd helped with the Sisters, of course, but I'd been more than half assuming that the City would quietly handle that as part of their cover-ups. Probably best not to count on that, though, he was right.

"It would certainly make this existence easier," Minisaki agreed.

Heaven Canceller hummed thoughtfully.

"I can get the process started and an ID issued within the next few days, but I'll need her to have a name for herself and her ability picked by tomorrow to avoid slowing down the process. If needed, we could always change her legal name later."

Amusement flashed in Minisaki's brain, and my mini-me pounced on the opportunity for a private joke even as her language center finally started to see extensive use. Deciding on a name, if I had to guess.

"Personal name has yet to be determined, but my ability will be 'Administration.'"

That managed to give the old man pause where nothing else could. Dread sank into my own stomach, too. I didn't think the city was dumb enough to mass-produce potential mind controllers, but I'd been wrong before, and that name was horrifyingly similar to Last Order's own role.

"I see," said Heaven Canceller, and he sighed. "Well, Doctor Kiyama shared her notes, and as your ability is nearly identical to Mental Out, I can't say it wouldn't fit. I'm afraid it doesn't quite match Academy City's usual naming themes, however, to the extent where it would draw attention — there's too much room for mistaking it for other 'administrative' aspects of the city's function. Might I propose you choose a similar alternative, such as 'Aqua Administration?'"

An impressive level of offense had flared in Minisaki at the initial denial, but settled as Heaven Canceler continued. By the time he finished, she still seemed ever-so-slightly bitter about the denial, but was at least accepting of his reasoning.

"You don't need to decide immediately," he added, apparently picking up on her mood. "Your name and power's name would be submitted simultaneously, so you effectively have all day. It is, however, much harder to change your power's name than it is to change your personal, legal name, so I would definitely consult your friends before making your final choice."

"Most people don't get to pick their own names at all," I added helpfully, "so you're still coming out ahead."

The offense almost completely died out, replaced by mild embarrassment.

"To confirm: the 'power name' is an arbitrary designation for the purposes of distinguishing between multiple powers, rather than a reflection of a self-chosen specialization?"

"And it's not always the same thing as what you might end up being titled, yeah," I confirmed. "Misaka belongs to the category of 'electromaster,' for instance, but she picked the name 'Railgun' once she figured out her titular trick. I—don't actually know what her power was called before that, which I'd say is a good sign for your ability to change it if you get strong enough."

What I didn't say was that, as a Level Five, she basically got to make her own rules as far as her own power was concerned. If she wanted to call it Railgun, she was allowed to call it Railgun. I was, perhaps pretentiously so — okay, definitely pretentiously so — rather optimistic about Minisaki's potential to reach Level Five, but she would need to put in the work first.

"I'm an electromaster, too," Hokaze added, "but my power and I are called 'Rampage Dress.'"

"Ah, as much as I would love to stay and chat about etymology," Heaven Canceler apologetically interrupted, "I really must be going. You can continue your discussion here if you're so inclined; I take patient privacy very seriously, so you don't need to worry about being overheard."

Hokaze and I uttered a sheepish chorus of apologies that the doctor graciously waved away on his way out. Minisaki seemed to be torn between the desire for further discussion and the greedy desire for both new clothes and the promised cake. Cake ultimately won, although she felt disturbingly guilty about it.

"Later," Minisaki sighed, plucking at her borrowed nightshirt with a pout of distaste. "Improved comfort will increase endurance and allow more time dedicated to learning over a longer period of time."

That was a rationalization if I'd ever heard one. Hokaze, as always, promptly pounced on the opportunity for a (probably Gekota inspired) lesson about self-care.

"You don't need to justify wanting to be kind to yourself! If you want cake and new clothes, you're allowed to have cake and new clothes! We can more than afford it, don't worry!"

The reassurance had, if not exactly the intended effect, at last a positive one in that Minisaki was once again thinking Hokaze was adorable.

"…But Minisaki also isn't wrong," I said reasonably, figuring a logical argument would have a better chance of sticking than an emotional one. "Stress, general unhappiness, and hunger all directly impair one's ability to learn and improve. If you're hungry and hate the clothes you're wearing, you'll tire more quickly and suffer impaired performance in general."

Vindication flared, but was soon tamped down by… suspicion? Like she suddenly thought our claims had to be a trap of some kind. She was still thinking that we were acting cute, though, so why…?

I sighed, shook my head, and retrieved my phone. I needed backup for dealing with this. One poke at my contacts and a few rings later, and contact with potential backup was established.

"Good afternoon!" I greeted Uiharu, selectively ignoring how Minisaki had shifted closer and was blatantly tilting her head to maximize eavesdropping potential. "Hokaze and me need to do some shopping for a younger relative–"

There was a muffled gasp from the other end of the line. I suppose that even if my phrasing had left some ambiguity, a relative of either of us would be news. Knowing Uiharu, she was already imagining a baby ojou-sama adorably aping adult ettiquite. Poor, poor Uiharu and her eternally crushed dreams...

"–and I was wondering if you want to come along? Saten can come, too, if she can refrain from the flipping for one day. Said relative is exceedingly impressionable, and I am trying to convince her that people can be trusted. It's a work in progress."

I tried to ignore how Minisaki thought I was being cute when I called her impressionable. Seriously, just. Why?

"Oh, certainly!" Uiharu said, the words understating her apparent glee. "I'm sure we can behave, don't worry!"

Oh, good, she'd understood my choice of stressor. As tempting as it might be sit back and let Uiharu troll Minisaki, and likely even be temporarily believed, I was afraid that could easily end up as a one-way trip to having my clone fight to try to unperson Uiharu. I'd let someone I didn't know as well inadvertently test how Minisaki reacted to lies.

"Ah, I may temporarily be out of contact after I arrange it, though," Uiharu said apologetically. "My phone has been having some issues lately, you see. I fear Miss Misaka might have accidentally broken something the last time I saw her…"

I might not be in range to confirm my suspicions, but I would be willing to bet good money on that being an outright lie. For whatever reason, Uiharu wanted plausible deniability to turn off her phone. I was willing to bet that reason was the rampaging of a certain duo of destructive Level Fives.

I felt a stab of guilt over not being present to help with the cleanup and promptly pushed it away. Misaka had been pretty explicit, and Hokaze might outright steal my phone if I tried to coordinate further. I might be able to manage something tonight or tomorrow, but not until then.

I chatted with Uiharu for another minute or so, confirming her and Saten's attendance in addition to a suitable cafe for us to meet at, before hanging up.

"Shall we?"




Hokaze maintained a sporadic, but steadily increasing stream of chatter as we exited the hospital. Apparently, Hokaze had capital-D Decided that Minisaki was to be introduced to the Constitutionals as soon as she could manage — which was to say, almost as soon as Minisaki had an ID and likely at the next meeting, if I understood Heaven Canceler's estimated timetable right. As far as Hokaze was concerned, the Constitutionals were friends and therefore safe for Minisaki to be around. The idea of having Minisaki actually attend an age-appropriate elementary school wasn't addressed at all — I could tell that Hokaze wanted it to be, but between our need to keep her accompanied by trusted individuals and the ongoing personhood problems? It just wasn't happening.

Minisaki not only wasn't tuning her out, but sporadically broke into halting, hesitant squeeing while Hokaze gushed about the Constitutionals. Apparently, she found the take on a clique — specifically, as one giant friend group — to, unsurprisingly, be adorable. On this, we could agree. That it had proven to work surprisingly well was beside the point.

My best friend was rather effectively avoiding bringing up the Queen title, unwilling to risk doll-mode again. I would need to reassure Hokaze in private later; I didn't think it was the title that was an issue so much as either Minisaki's own relationship to it, or me commenting on her thoughts. Either way, my status as Queen of Tokiwadai, leader of the currently most influential clique, should be safe to explain.

Some twenty minutes after we'd exited the hospital, satisfaction finally flashed through Minisaki's mind. She patiently waited for Hokaze to pause for breath instead of interrupting, though.

"I am partial to either keeping 'Minisaki,' or taking 'Misaki,'" Minisaki announced, brain dancing with humor despite her level tone.

This little shit.

"It's a–" good thing I know you're joking, I had to stop myself from saying. I didn't think that would be enough to trigger doll-mode, but doll-mode had taken me by surprise in the first place. Best to be safe and just avoid directly commenting on what I saw in her brain.

"A name you actually want, please?" I said instead.

"Akiyo," Minisaki promptly offered, forming it out of condensed water vapor: 晶世. "'Crystal World.'"

She seemed exceedingly amused by her own proposed name, and would almost certainly have started giggling if not for her emotional suppression. Perhaps somewhat expectant, too? Like she almost thought we would recognize the reason she wanted that name, but wouldn't be too surprised if we didn't.

A variant on Akiyo, 'White World,' might be given to a winter child, but could also have some ugly interpretations. 'Crystal world' didn't share those issues, and might still be related to cyrokinesis? She couldn't use that yet, but I expected it would be easier for her to pick up cryokinesis than it would be for her to start meddling with neurology — especially since I would actually be willing to help her develop her cryokinesis, unlike her mind control. Her practicing with miniature blizzards in the future would certainly be far safer than whatever she had done back at the lab.

The esper equations she used to form the letters, too, were baffling. Not just because I could actually read them this time, unlike every time previous; that part was explained by her deliberately holding them outside her blackboxed brain-nodule for my benefit. No, they were baffling because of how — well, clinical they were. Espers controlled their powers through mostly-objective mathematics, yet I could usually tell what their overall purpose was without needing to run a given equation myself. This, though, was a mess of analysis and energy flows. Instead of form these geometric shapes out of water, it was closer to collect the chemical with this much mass and this amount of energy in this coordinate area into slopes following these equations at coordinate sets A F and H, plus additional slopes at coordinates B D and K, plus apply Z amount of energy upward, plus track me and apply energy within the range of Y to match my ongoing movement, and so on. The goals weren't mentioned anywhere, only the means.

It all worked, that much was obvious, but it wasn't the way I would approach the problem at all. Espers were seldom focused on exact energy inputs like this; my own accidental breaking of the law of conservation of energy was a perfect demonstration of that. This, though — well, it was like if you'd grafted a computer's physics engine to an esper, and they stubbornly forced it to work. Which was probably exactly what had happened.

I committed the maths to memory and shelved my speculation for later. My main focus should be on Minisaki's — ah, Akiyo's new name. Her unusual approach to her powers could wait.

"Sounds good to me even if people might think our parents were playing word chains with our names. Or maybe I should say 'especially since' people may believe that? It fits."

"It's cute!" was Hokaze's contribution. "I think it's perfect for you!"

The now-named Akiyo practically glowed from the affirmation, smiling slightly — despite enough happiness to justify a wide grin on anyone else — and incorporating just a bit more bounce into her step. I more than half expected her to clamp down on that immediately. Unfortunately, I wasn't wrong. It wasn't out of habit alone this time, though: the extra bounce had been enough to activate her light-up sneakers, and the poor things were practically hammered with dislike and dismay as soon as Akiyo noticed.

I had known she didn't like the shoes back when we got them, but thought it might just be a matter of needing to wear shoes at all instead of wandering around in slippers or barefoot. Apparently not; judging by how her feelings had previously faded into apathy before just now flaring up again, the lights specifically were something she found objectionable.

Considering some of my own strong opinions back in the early post-memory-implantation days, I couldn't really blame her. At the same time, I didn't think she disliked them for the same reasons I might have. She seemed fine with childish things; I'd seen more than one horrifyingly pink outfit draw her interest. A negative association with her Power Curriculum Program, maybe? Or the lab's restriction-institution methods? They might be able to erase direct negative feelings, but it was difficult to remove all negative associations. The 'blame' might even have been shifted directly if they couldn't manage outright erasure.

"We can get you new shoes while we're out," I offered.

The distraction worked, and the spring returned to Minisaki's Akiyo's step. She was also once again thinking that I was cute. I was gradually growing resigned to my fate. If showing basic human decency was enough to get Hokaze and I marked as 'cute,' then cute we would have to be.

"That would be appreciated," acknowledged Akiyo, some happiness managing to bleed into her tone for once. "These would make stealth missions exceedingly difficult, and evading pursuit via hiding all-but impossible."

Just when I had been starting to relax, too.

Hokaze and I exchanged horrified glances. My suspicions had been pretty screwed up to start with, and somehow the reality was even worse. It was a good thing that my brain had finally recovered from my first grimoire exposure, because otherwise I was pretty sure the sheer stress from Akiyo would keep its influence intact indefinitely.

"You know you won't need to run or hide anymore, don't you?" Hokaze tried. "We're not leaving you on your own for a while, remember? You are safe now!"

"Escape only needs to be impaired once to have dire consequences."

Hokaze produced a squeak of distress to match my frown. Minisaki Akiyo had us there. For that matter, I added another notch in the column of her escape being allowed via a short-term power boost rather than it being a permanent capability. She certainly wasn't acting like an esper capable of brainsploding pursuit at will — and, now that I thought about it, the initial pulse that had struck me was well out of even my range. I hadn't pinned down Akiyo's non-enhanced maximum range just yet, but it was definitely far smaller than that.

"A puppy…?" Hokaze mumbled to herself. "No, too high maintenance. All the plushies, though…"

We rounded a corner and caught sight of Uiharu and Saten sitting in the outdoor seating of a small coffee shop, nibbling on pastries. Saten spotted us at almost the same time and started waving in our direction — started, and then stopped, blinking at Minisaki Akiyo with shock writ large upon her features. She stared for a moment more before poking Uiharu's shoulder and directing her attention toward us.

Uiharu twisted in her chair to stare our way. Within moments, her expression, too, was overwritten by surprise and dawning realization.

I had to tamp down the urge to use Mental Out to coordinate my and Minisaki's Akiyo's responses for giggles. Not only would that have been wrong, but Akiyo was already performing her first-meeting personhood assessment, her powers reaching around the people between us to poke and prod at Saten and Uiharu both.

Unsurprisingly, Saten was rejected almost instantaneously, and I sighed as I was forced to flip the personhood switch. Uiharu, though — despite being a Level One, Akiyo seemed intent on poking and prodding at her AIM field for far longer than anyone else we'd met so far. Special attention seemed to be paid to Uiharu's flower headband, but… it didn't seem like it was just because of Uiharu continuously using her power to keep it at a stable temperature? No, it definitely wasn't that, I was increasingly sure. Akiyo wanted the headband itself.

No sooner had I thought that then the personhood switch flipped in Uiharu's favor. I was stuck fighting the urge to facepalm. Really? I knew I shouldn't complain, but greed was what did the trick? 'This entity has something I want, therefore they are a person?' …No, no, I was being too harsh. There were still plenty of calls to recent memory, so I gave it better than even odds that my praise of Uiharu had helped, too.

"When you said you could use help shopping for a relative, I didn't realize she was smol," Saten jokingly accused as we approached. "Since when do you have an adorable little sister?"

I debated pinging Akiyo to warn her about staying quiet, but ultimately opted not to. She had weathered my changes with good grace thus far, but the last thing I wanted was for Uiharu and Saten's first impression of her to be the horror that was an inadvertent triggering of doll-mode. Or maybe I should call it 'Safe Mode,' just for that extra bit of horror.

"I was rescued from an impressively incompetent and amoral laboratory a short time ago," was Akiyo's monotone justification, and I internally relaxed. "I would be surprised if Big Sister realized that I was within Academy City at all."

I had to pause at that. Technically, none of what she had said was a lie, and she had provided me with plenty of wiggle room at the same time. If the cheerful misinterpretation of the when you're older loophole was a warning sign, then this skirting of the truth — complete with Akiyo feeling clever about the evasion — was a full-fledged klaxon. I had the feeling that I would need to be very watchful of her exact wording in the future.

"…Did you already meet Misaka's sisters? Your tone is kinda…" Saten held out a level hand and swiped it from side to side. "Just, you know, without the extra descriptive text attached."

Akiyo's interest flared, and I winced.

"I do not know. Do they adopt speech patterns similar to my own? What do you mean by 'descriptive text?' Please elaborate."

Saten, apparently realizing she may have erred, froze and looked at me with wide eyes. As she should. Adopting the speech patterns of the Sisters might make Minisaki Akiyo easier to understand, but I expected she would lose any incentive to learn how to talk like a normal person in the process.

"Thanks, Saten," I grumbled. "I knew I'd have to arrange a playdate at some point, but now you've introduced time pressures. Anyway! Akiyo, these are Saten Ruiko, resident gossip gremlin, and Uiharu Kazari, terrifyingly competent computer cutie."

Saten was clearly torn between appreciation of her title and disgruntlement that she didn't also get a 'competent' attached. Uiharu just froze like a stage-frightened singer, inadvertently reinforcing her status as an adorable moeblob.

"Saten, Uiharu, meet my little sister Shokuhou Akiyo. As you can already tell, the lab's misconduct had some rather horrific side effects, to say the least. In particular, don't expect her to acknowledge that strangers so much as exist unless I'm around to help. I'm not even sure that she'll be able to order food on her own."

Akiyo was momentarily annoyed by the refusal to answer her question, but seemed mollified by the implication of future answers via playdate. I could tell I would have to do it, too, after Saten went and dangled bait like that. Akiyo and Last Order might get along like a house on fire, complete with screaming, but that would — at least temporarily — be Accelerator's problem, if I could scam him into agreeing.

Uiharu and Saten, for their part, seemed to pick up on my implied yes, something is horrifically wrong here and stared at Akiyo with wide eyes. Hokaze was unwilling to let this stand and clearly intended to jump in, but to everyone's surprise, Akiyo spoke first.

"Question: Is it socially acceptable for me to wear a flower headband similar to your own, and if so, where did you obtain it? I want one."

Saten and Hokaze relaxed, momentarily distracted from previously implied horrors by the prospect of dressing up a mini-me in the girliest attire they could get their hands on. Meanwhile, Uiharu straightened in her seat, and I could see the moment where she was tempted to say something absurd. Probably along the lines of, "Oh, no, they're actually growing out of my brain." Fortunately for everyone involved, she caught my warning gaze and restrained her mischievous impulses.

"They're real, so I think you might need to replace them too often…?" Uiharu ventured. "I use my power to maintain their temperature, but if you want to…"

Uiharu trailed off as Akiyo held out one hand. Three seconds and one blitz of unreadable maths later, and a cloud of steam erupted from her palm. I was stuck once again feeling jealous of a child several years younger and levels lower than me, with a different specialty. Not two hours before, she had been incapable of any heat manipulation at all, and she'd apparently worked out a method of heating with Mental Out that quickly — if I had to guess, probably via nearly-undirected energy input with those weird equations of hers. My jealousy was dumb. I could do all sorts of things she couldn't, and would almost certainly be able to do better in the future, yet here I was being disgruntled that she had an easier time with macro-scale effects than I did.

I couldn't even guarantee that being better than me at that wasn't the product of hard work, rather than the starting point. Really, it was probably that. Being dismayed that someone else had focused in a different direction and achieved different results was dumb. She would probably continue to get different results, too — maintaining a constant temperature was far harder than merely decreasing or increasing temperature in spurts, as I'd learned from experience. That meant practice, and practice begat power development. I, at least, had the benefit of being able to steal what worked for her and possibly even use it myself, given how similar our powers were.

"Oh my gosh, she's Mini Out!" Saten giddily whispered, too quietly for me to catch without borrowed auditory recognition.

I really hoped that one didn't catch on. 'Minisaki' at least had the benefit of being a pun.

"Question: Is it socially acceptable for me to wear a flower headband similar to your own," Akiyo pointedly repeated, "and if so, where did you obtain it?"

"U-Um…" Uiharu stuttered. "It should be fine? Adorable, too. There's a, um, nice shop I can show you to later…?"

"Excellent. Thank you. Assertion: I desire brightly colored clothing with which to subtly warn away foes. Please finish eating quickly so that we may depart."

 

[derpfen]

Ahh, that new Alivaril thread smell. Smells like, miscommunication.

 

[SV5195R]

This is adorable and unsettling and keeps punching ACMI cast in the trauma with the force of a freight train behind it.

 

[kyle53]

Should QA ever meet Othinus, she will absolutely want that hat.

 

[dragonx99]

Man is it going to be funny when they learn why she is so fixated on that headband

 

[SV5195R]

Man is it going to be funny when they learn why she is so fixated on that headband

Click to shrink...

Why is she fixated on the flower headband? I don't quite get it.

 

[Alivaril]

Man is it going to be funny when they learn why she is so fixated on that headband

Click to shrink...

This fork of QA doesn't actually have the hat-power module! Good guess, though.

 

[Eotyrannus]

QA doesn't actually have the hat-power module right now!

Click to shrink...

of course, this is logically because it shorted out in the presence of such powerful headgear

 

[SV5195R]

This fork of QA doesn't actually have the hat-power module! Good guess, though.

Click to shrink...

... I guess I really need to go read that quest to actually have some context.

 

[Alivaril]

... I guess I really need to go read that quest to actually have some context.

Click to shrink...

Nah, you can probably enjoy the fic without it. I mean if you really want context for hat jokes, go for it?

EDIT: To elaborate, in the original quest, QA and her bioengineered abominations could access low-powered abilities based on the type of hat they were wearing. A low-level hydrokinetic power while wearing a firefighter's hard hat, for example.

 

[Rgal]

"Akiyo," Minisaki promptly offered, forming it out of condensed water vapor: 晶世. "'Crystal World.'"

She seemed exceedingly amused by her own proposed name, and would almost certainly have started giggling if not for her emotional suppression. Perhaps somewhat expectant, too? Like she almost thought we would recognize the reason she wanted that name, but wouldn't be too surprised if we didn't.

Click to shrink...

If only they knew. Ah, the kinds of chaos it would cause! Alas, some things are simply not fated to be.

Saten spotted us at almost the same time and started waving in our direction — started, and then stopped, blinking at Minisaki with shock writ large upon her features. She stared for a moment more before poking Uiharu's shoulder and directing her attention toward us.

Click to shrink...

Forgot to add "Akiyo" after "Minisaki".

"Question: Is it socially acceptable for me to wear a flower headband similar to your own," Akiyo pointedly repeated, "and if so, where did you obtain it?"

"U-Um…" Uiharu stuttered. "It should be fine? Adorable, too. There's a, um, nice shop I can show you to later…?"

"Excellent. Thank you. Assertion: I desire brightly colored clothing with which to subtly warn away foes. Please finish eating quickly so that we may depart."

Click to shrink...

Already picking some Friends to make, I see. How commendable.

 

[Not_Interesting]

And so another thread is born! Love this story, really hope she meets Last Order soon, they will do so many shenanigans together.

Three seconds and one blitz of unreadable maths later

Click to shrink...

I do wonder, how much bullshit can QA do with her Hardware? Shardware? She can more or less Bruteforce any Esper Calculations with her processing power and advanced Entity math.

 

[Crusader Jerome]

This is the first Sanctioned spinoff that I've found palatable in a while. Misekai is just such a good counter to QAkiyo's worst tendencies.

 

[TopHatWearer]

Great to see this getting it's own thread. Of course this means I'm going to have to read everything again. How terrible ^_^.

 

[Niche]

So happy this got it's own thread. Akiyo is just absolutely horrifying, looking from the outside, huh? I mean, that's consistent with Alivaril's QA, but still. I adore it.

 

[SV5195R]

This is the first Sanctioned spinoff that I've found palatable in a while. Misekai is just such a good counter to QAkiyo's worst tendencies.

Click to shrink...

That time when incredible psychic powers solve way more problems in life than they cause.

Even if you're trying to socialize a fellow escaped lab rat which is actually, unbeknownst to you, an extradimensional alien fumbling its way through disguising itself as an extremely maladjusted human child (and thus pushing all your trauma buttons and accidentally reinforcing your impressions).

 

[SnappingTurt3ls]

Oh this is gonna be good

 

[sweetheartmuse]

What do you mean by 'descriptive text?' Please elaborate."

Click to shrink...

Anyone noticed how immediately after this, QA uses descriptive text in every single communication? Prior to this, she's only used context tags twice in the first three chapters, but then she goes and uses three back-to-back in as many lines.
Such an influenceable little sister she is

 

[Jubjub115]

Thank you for this!

So akiyo is going the colourful poison route in terms of clothing? I wonder how that will work out and will she edit her hair colour as well?

 

[SV5195R]

Anyone noticed how immediately after this, QA uses descriptive text in every single communication? Prior to this, she's only used context tags twice in the first three chapters, but then she goes and uses three back-to-back in as many lines.
Such an influenceable little sister she is

Click to shrink...

She's trying her best to fit in and meet the expectations of the notable locals, I guess.

 

[BunnyLord]

Well, this is utterly absurd and hilarious. I love it.