Hokaze was still suffering from jet lag; whatever her plans were, today was not a good day for them, and she mentioned she'd need time to organise them besides. In the meantime, I did still have prior obligations that mostly had Hokaze as lynchpin. She was going to go have a doze and read through various documents I'd printed off after we'd gotten back to the dorms, and in the meantime, I'd have to figure out what to do with myself.
It was probably a good idea to make sure everyone was doing okay, as much as I'd like to just go play video games or something. Michan had gotten permission to visit her family in Tokyo, and a lot of other people I knew were in school or presumably sleeping off the jet lag on their day off. Of the remainder, that made it fairly obvious who I'd visit- the Misakas were still in hospital. Given that they'd be dropping the intensity of their health care and dispersing across the city soon enough, that made it a good idea to spend some time with them while they were all in a single convenient location.
The hospital's doctor also had Doctor Kiyama's contact details, being the one to bail them out, so it'd be a good place to check the actual reason I was technically off sick today.
After stopping at the dorm to drop off anything I didn't need, I took the bus to the hospital. It was almost lunch time, so I decided to call ahead. Rei answered readily enough. "Hello, asks Misaka as she picks up the phone?" she said.
"Hi Rei, it's Shokuhou," I said. "I've found myself with an unexpected day off; did you want to meet up in the cafeteria?"
"Unfortunately Misaka 10046 has assigned Misaka Rei to monitor Accelerator, and so is currently held up by ensuring he does not flee his bed again, Misaka explains with a bored expression," she replied. "Misaka thinks her sister is a worrywort, adds Misaka."
"Ah," I said. On the one hand, I had my reasons to dislike him. On the other hand… well, 10046 wasn't entirely wrong to be concerned about him being liable to clamber out of his bed and find new and interesting ways to heroically sacrifice the integrity of his brain matter, given his track record thus far. I still disliked him, but I was willing to not be an ass towards him. "I am willing to buy snacks for your vigil, and am willing to grant him a portion as a peace offering."
"...Misaka has not had many snacks, but has a nutritional allowance for junk food that she is yet to exploit, comments Misaka, attempting to sound cool and composed despite her excitement," she said. There was a brief pause as she spoke away from the receiver, which was responded to by vague Accelerator-sounding growling. "Misaka is yet to form any preferences and so would like anything that you would recommend, while based on Misaka Last Order's observations of Accelerator's ramen-eating habits, Misaka would assume that he likes the yoghurt and candy pots whose containers allow for them to be easily mixed together, Misaka informs Shokuhou."
Accelerator made some indignant shouty noises in the background, presumably about the cutesy assumptions being made about his preferred food choices, while I nodded understandingly. "Right, right," I said. "Arbitrary snack choices for us, and candy yoghurt pot things for the tsuntsun you're babysitting. See you when I get there!"
"Enjoy your trip, says Misaka," Rei replied, and hung up.
Now with a relaxing goal in mind, I hopped off at the next bus stop, and had a look around for the nearest shop I could buy such things in.
The bus route was something of a flanking one relative to the hospital, passing by the outer dorms and Kamijou's high school, near the underground mini-city of School District 22. The wind turbine towers here were much less graceful than the more conventional, windmill-shaped ones through the rest of the city, being all industrial scaffolding and giant turbine blades, so the property values weren't too high in this subsection of District 7.
A quick Mental Out search showed that there was a small convenience store down one of the smaller streets that would take me most of the way towards another bus stop. That was convenient enough for me, so I decided I'd go do my impromptu shopping there, and walk the rest of the way to the next bus stop, for the sake of not having to backtrack.
There were closer stores, admittedly, but any Academy City native knew that if you wanted reliability, most stores weren't good enough. Mental Out was a bit of a cheat in this regard.
Academy City's experimental nature continued to its food, and any unwary shopper would soon find themselves beset by flavours such as jerky and lemon soda (basically just a cold-drink broth, not bad if you were craving it actually) or mint and avocado sherbet straws (a crime against human decency and evidence of the twistedness of Academy City scientists). The city had something of a vendetta against chain stores, with most shops being subsidiaries of other Academy City companies who were using the city as a testbed for exported goods. If you wanted reliable shopping from a common company, you'd often have at least a few parts of the store that were off their rocker- usually snacks and drinks.
Because of this, the corner shops, off-licences and convenience stores that reliably sold consistent, standard snacks sort of filled a similar role in Academy City culture to asian food shops in a western city. They varied widely in size and location, were generally independent businesses following independent business strategies, and often had to cater to multiple target audiences that nevertheless had similar goals of finding goods that weren't available in standard stores.
…Granted, it wasn't quite the same thing, but access to strawberry laces and other such wonders was important, damnit.
Said strawberry laces were obtained easily, in both chewy and sherbet-covered variants, as were some white and dark chocolate bars, and chocolate-crunch yoghurt pot things. I recalled there being lots of canned coffee when we'd looted his house to get his stuff back to him, so he probably preferred more bitter flavours; otherwise I'd be satisfying my sweet tooth, and seeing if Rei had one too. I'd probably eat a bit of the dark chocolate, but the yoghurt pots were all his unless one of the sisters committed a heist.
My well-gotten gains obtained, I paid for them, and hung the bag on my bandaged shoulder- the bandages would be coming off in a few days, and I hadn't bought anything particularly heavy. It did mean we'd have to rely on the hospital vending machines for beverages, but oh well.
Though perhaps I hadn't made the best choice of where to stop off. After all, a Tokiwadai student hobbling around on their lonesome in the middle of a school day was sure to attract attention, and not necessarily the good kind.
A passive alert was quick to inform me of this while I walked to the next stop. I sighed, and glanced over at the group who'd noticed me, skulking in an alley. A few of them had somewhat incredulous expressions at my casual meandering.
For a moment I debated just wiping their minds of the affair and carrying on, but I shook the thought out of my head.
Superficially, it would solve the problem, but I didn't really think it was appropriate. Memory removal was something I considered 'an injury', for various reasons, and thus at this point it would be like bludgeoning someone over the head unprovoked. Appropriate for dangerous mercenaries I was actively screwing with? Yes, certainly. Appropriate for random teenage delinquents? Definitely not. Leaving someone unconscious for a while (via pause or mind control) was more ethically sound to me, relatively, as most people spent a significant chunk of time unconscious anyway.
They didn't approach immediately, though, which was odd- instead, they phoned it in, and trailed me via the parallel alleyways. That was… somewhat concerning. They didn't have any plans that would realistically hurt me, but this wasn't just rowdy delinquents making noise.
A gang of Skill-Out was actually… hunting me, for lack of a better word. Mostly due to just how completely out-of-place and isolated I was right now.
Fundamentally, it was exactly the same thing that DA had tried. Their plan was to close in hard and fast, and make an example of me before I could react- though they didn't actually know who I was, only seeing that a bratty ojou-sama thought it was reasonable to disrespect them by… strolling through a public street, I guess? I giggled at the pettiness of it, and then quickly stifled it, because I was still being watched and I didn't really think it was a good idea to escalate whatever happened in the aftermath by mocking them.
That probably meant that… actually, they'd probably take basically any manner of being beaten up as a humiliation. And they weren't really going to give me an opportunity to talk them down beforehand. Hmm.
As much as I kind of wanted to use 'anything that happens is definitely going to escalate the Skill-Out issue' as an excuse to point out how ridiculous they were being… this was only ridiculous because I was a Level 5. If I was a low-grade Level 4, or god forbid a Level 3, then getting beaten down and being left cringing on the floor might have been something to outright hope for in comparison to anything else they could do.
On the one hand, that gave me even more motivation to make them regret going after me like this. On the other hand, I really wanted to minimise the chances that there'd be a repeat incident, and that meant making a legitimate effort to deescalate.
I sighed, and brought the man who was running at me from an alleyway with intent to knock me down to a skidding halt.
He was using something called hardening tape, a kind of strength amplifier. It meant that straight-up pausing-him wouldn't work. He'd been moving too fast for that, and stopping his muscles mid-action like that probably would have caused enough recoil in the tape to hurt him, besides. It was hard to get, but not impossible for a particularly notable street gang, and much easier to obtain than firearms. I turned to him.
"I'd like to deescalate," I said to him. There wasn't much point in beating around the bush, given that being blunt was about as diplomatic as anything else right now.
He was a large, burly man, whose face was curled into a snarl of indignant hatred. Many graduated espers held a grudge against the newer, more successful generation of espers, after new methods had suddenly been able to produce Level 3s in the tens of thousands and Level 1s in the hundreds of thousands. Some said it was being withheld from them unfairly now that they'd graduated; others said it was a conspiracy. EIther way, there was a non-negligible demographic within Skill-Out of grown men, and it wasn't surprising that they'd send someone physically-tough as the vanguard to try and make an esper regret their life choices. "Go to hell," he hissed.
The four other assorted boys and teenagers behind him also stopped in their tracks as they attempted to run up behind him and get into the action, or lack thereof as the case may be. Their leader was on the phone to the group across the street; after giving his orders curtly, he strolled up languidly behind and around his followers.
"Morning, missy," he said. "Sorry for the bother, but… you know where you are, right?" When I didn't respond, he told me, "This is a Skill-Out territory, of the Earthquake Rejects, y'see. It's a name with history…"
According to Mental Out, the gang leaders were trying to expand and radicalise with socialist imagery. The titular 'Earthquake' of this particular Skill-Out group was referring to the 1923 Kanto earthquake, which had resulted in… certain very negative events happening afterwards, governmentally-planned, to the socialists who tried to organise relief and the foreigners who were victimised by vague association.
"...but I don't think an ojou-sama like you would be all that interested," he finished, incorrectly. "Any particular reason why you're wandering through here, in the middle of the day? Aren't you supposed to be in school, missy?"
…Clearly, something was changing in Academy City. It was not for the better, or at least, not for the more stable. I'd seen plenty of delinquent gangs before, but none of them had ever had… well, a cause or a goal, to put it bluntly. From what these people knew of their competition, movements like this had started springing up recently. The gangs had first become agitated in the aftermath of Level Upper, as it had drawn the lines between levels into stark contrast amongst the city's disaffected youth.
I'd been too busy getting my ass kicked by Accelerator and DA to see the Level 0 gangs going into crisis mode. Level Upper had been their one chance to get even- it had become known that lower-levels benefitted more than higher-levels- and in the wake of the comas and seizures, that chance was gone… and while I'd been busy, they'd been asking why that was the case. Why nobody was trying to restart the research, or what they'd do about the people who abandoned Skill-Out in favour of trying to get in with the 'real' espers, or why something that had attracted Level 0s like flies to honey had turned out to be so dangerous.
The footage from yesterday, and the rumours of what DA had stood for, couldn't have created groups like this. But, for the Earthquake Rejects at the very minimum, those rumours were starting to light a fire.
I was not exactly the best person to put out that fire, given I was apparently the embodiment of everything that was wrong with Academy City, so all I could do was use a slightly more serious version of the usual 'be polite until they go away'. "There's a bus stop over there," I said, gesturing with my head. "I'm going to the hospital, and bringing snacks for a few friends. The nearest shop was over there when I got off the bus."
He laughed, and looked me in the eyes. "Look, girly…" he started.
He did not get to finish that sentence, as for once, eye contact was enough for him to recognise that yes, he was picking a fight with a Level 5.
To his credit, he didn't panic. Unfortunately he didn't decide that this was a good moment to surrender; his eyes flicked across the other people I had on pause.
One, two, three, four, five, he counted. Then he turned back to me with a grin. "...You know, I just noticed how many of us there are," he said. "And who you are. You're Mental Out, aren't you? I read up on you, when I saw the video clips last night. Fancy girl, runs a fancy club up in a fancy school…" He paused for dramatic effect. "Can control five people at once, if you look at those fancy test reports. That's interesting, isn't it, girly?"
"You may test that," I said-
He threw the punch he'd planned to interrupt that sentence with. It stopped, hovering right over my injured shoulder; hitting an esper where it hurt was a classic way to disable their abilities, after all, and I'd seen the punch coming before he even consciously realised it was his plan.
"-at your earliest convenience," I concluded.
For a moment, his heart was in his mouth as he realised he'd fucked up.
Then, when he realised I wasn't following up on, he abruptly laughed it off. The sound was real enough to convince a few distracted gang members; he patted me on the shoulder instead. I was healed enough that I didn't really feel the need to wince. "Guess that one's on me for underestimating you, eh?" he said. "Ah well. I heard the other Level 5s leave people on the floor; I'll take what I can get." He doffed his non-existent hat. "Good on you for not being a psychopath, missy. Just for that, we'll let you through. Spare a thought for the people in your shadow once in a while, though, will you?"
He turned around, back into the alleyway; one by one, his followers went after him. The man armed with the hardening was last to leave, but the glare didn't leave him even after he turned to follow the rest.
I frowned down the alleyway, then resumed my walk to the bus stop. The gang leader had me watched as I left, the last person to do so being a young girl- a little younger than I was- staring me down from the bus stop on the opposite side of the street. I was glad to take my seat and leave.
…Either my luck was really that bad, or there were more problems in this city than just the ones coming top-down. Hokaze was probably going to be even more frazzled tomorrow.
__________
"I got held up a bit, but I have the snacks," I announced, barging into Accelerator's hospital room like I owned the place.
"Snacks?! exclaims Misaka exclaims Misaka, wondering what wondrous new foodstuffs have arrived?!" said a high-pitched voice in return, and the Minisaka promptly inserted herself into my personal space. She received the headpats that were obligatory for any child who did so, the long tuft of hair in the middle of her head being ruffled messily in the process.
Her elder sister quickly arrived to get her out of the way. "Shokuhou can't put the bag down if you're too close, observes Misaka, in an effort to convince Last Order to behave," Rei said blandly, though I could tell she was feeling rather exasperated even without using my powers for it.
"We have enough for extra- could you help me with the bag a moment, Rei?" She pulled the bag off my shoulder, and I leaned on the side of a desk while I started to rummage through it with my free hand. "Okay," I explained, "I got the yoghurt pots for Accelerator, but I'm sure he won't mind sharing. Take one and pass him the other, won't you, Last Order?"
Her hair prickled with overexcited static electricity, the tuft on her head sticking straight up in response. "Misaka will perform this important task with relish, says Misaka says Misaka, as she retrieves the yoghurt pots from the bag!" she narrated. Having taken the yoghurt pots, she dashed over to Accelerator.
Currently, the Rank 1 appeared to be doing his best to ignore the get-together in his room. He was reading something on a tablet, laying on top of the blankets with his knees up, occasionally thumbing the screen he was staring at to the exclusion of all else. When Last Order appeared in his cone of vision, making cheerful puppy-dog eyes, he remained completely unmoved.
Last Order was somewhat more persistent than that, however, and she crawled onto the bed to start waving her hand in front of his screen. "Hellooooo, says Misaka says Misaka as she tries to get your attention!" she said.
He made an audible noise of frustration, and twisted the device- he must've had a backup, given yesterday's model had been destroyed- and looked at her irritatedly. "What?" he sighed, though it would be more of a growl for anyone whose voice wasn't as scratchy as his.
"Shokuhou got us yoghurt, and she said I could have some too, declares Misaka declares Misaka as she passes you a portion of your own!" she jovially informed him, and after resting the tablet on his knees, he gave me a look of utter disgust. I shrugged back at him.
However, he did proceed to open the lid, crack the plastic between the two pots, and upend the smaller pot of chocolate stuff into the larger yoghurt. I'd take that as a victory.
Last Order watched his movements carefully, and as he started to stir with the small plastic spoon that came with the yoghurt, she peeled off the lid and began to mimic what she'd seen, with all the seriousness of handling a bomb. Rei took a moment to watch the two of them, briefly, before standing up to pull a seat over for me.
"Misaka is very curious about the contents of the bag, says Misaka as she tries not to sound too excited," Rei said as I held open the bag for her to rummage around in. She pulled out a bar of white chocolate, and looked at it consideringly. After a moment, she decided, "Misaka's sisters know what white chocolate tastes like, so she shall save it for later and instead decide on…" She pulled out another pack of sweets. "...fizzy strawberry laces, Misaka decides, wondering how a solid can be 'fizzy'."
"They're basically long strawberry gummy sweets covered in extremely sour sherbet," I explained. Last Order perked up at that, though she was too busy digging into her yoghurt pot to beg for some. "There's also something of a popping sensation on your tongue when you eat them, though it's not as intense as something like pop rocks."
Accelerator was still stirring his snack pot with the little mini-spoon.
"Misaka is intrigued, notes Misaka," Rei said, and opened the pack. Then, somewhat tentatively, she retrieved a strawberry straw from the pack, and bit into it.
In what was perhaps the greatest show of expression that any sister save Railgun, Last Order and Dolly had ever made, her face scrunched up like she'd just bitten into a lemon.
Last Order made a startled, amused noise; Accelerator paused in his stirring, before continuing a moment later, apparently unbothered. After a moment, her face managing to slacken, Rei started chewing. She managed to swallow it once her face had returned completely to normal. "...The strawberry flavour is quite pleasant, says Misaka," she said.
After a moment, she took another bite of the straw, making the exact same face this time, too. "There's plain laces if you want them," I offered- she just shook her head, clutching the packet protectively.
…If 'give me more' was her response to eating something that sour, when the vast majority of what she'd eaten in her life was probably bare-minimum industrial food, I was practically obligated to see what would happen if she ate something spicy. I was happy enough to let her repeatedly nuke her taste buds, and pulled out some white chocolate for myself.
Accelerator was still stirring his yoghurt by the time Last Order finished her portion. "Hey, how come you're still mixing the chocolatey goodness, asks Misaka asks Misaka, wondering if she's missing some vital technique?" she asked.
"Food's no good if you don't mix it properly, damnit!" hissed Accelerator, and then- ignoring the spoon- proceeded to use his powers to down the entire pot of yoghurt at once.
Clearly, he'd either been prompted to decide it was ready, or had done it purely out of spite. I raised an eyebrow. Clearly, whoever had taught him manners (or lack thereof) had also taught him his table manners (or lack thereof).
Last Order seemed utterly amazed by the feat, and quickly grabbed another pot of yoghurt from the bag. Accelerator managed to take the initiative in preventing her from trying to mimic him with it. "Aww, no fair, complains Misaka complains Misaka…!" she muttered, a restraining hand on the base of the pot the moment she finished mixing it and started to tip it, as the One Way Road used his incredible powers to keep a small child from trying to swallow an entire pot of yoghurt at once.
"Just eat it like a normal person," he growled, completely immune to his own hypocrisy.
Between the three of them, I was pretty sure that I had single-handedly caused Accelerator's room to dissolve into chaos. I was content with this outcome.
Surprisingly, Accelerator was the first to speak up- though perhaps this was because he was unwilling to get another portion of his own accord. "Oi," he said. "How the hell did you kill that freaky bastard?"
"Ah- Mental Out was compatible enough with the energy that I managed to take the emergency shutdown signal from the knife, and hack Taowu with it," I told him. "From there, it was just deleting the sisters' memories from it. I'm not really sure how the magic-control works… something to do with AIM, maybe, I suspect there's something compatible about Mental Out with that too, otherwise my psychometry wouldn't make any sense."
He considered. "AIM manipulation… That was the weird glowy shit you tried to punch me with?" he asked me.
I frowned, not really appreciating the memory of our fight being brought up, but nodded. I was more surprised he remembered it than anything. "It was what I was trying, yeah- though I think I was too concussed to do it properly," I commented. "I'm not sure if I actually managed it, or even what exactly I tried, really, but my best guess is that the glow was the poltergeist from your own ability…"
"Figure it out when you're back in that crappy school of yours, then," he demanded. "You could ignore a whole bunch more idiots if you could pull bullshit like that."
"...If it does work, it might be pretty useful, but a lot of the people who pick fights with me don't really have any powers that can block me," I commented. "Really, it's only yours it'd work on, and maybe Railgun, too. It's the magic and electricity that's…" I paused in my conversation, hearing the door creaking open.
Another Misaka was peeking her head through through the door, eyes slightly narrowed. "Watch your language around our little sister, Misaka 10044 demands of Accelerator, having overheard the conversation via the Misaka Network and expressing her disapproval with a well-practised glare," she muttered.
"Fuck off," Accelerator replied.
"...You should be glad that Misaka is still in training for Judgment, says Misaka ominously, as she slips back out of the room with a menacing glare," 10044 commented as she did exactly that. The door creaked again as she closed it behind herself.
"...Misaka's sisters are too nosy, Misaka sighs," said Rei. She dipped her hand back in the bag. "Hmm. What is the difference between 'white chocolate' and 'dark chocolate', asks Misaka?"
Upon tasting dark chocolate for the first time, she immediately pulled an entirely new 'why did I try to eat this' face.
And she also refused to give up her dark chocolate in favour of something she'd find more edible. Fair enough.
__________
Hokaze and I met up to sort out some of my problems at dinnertime. I assumed that she slept at some point, but she still seemed rather worn out; she was also wearing trainers instead of her normal neat Tokiwadai shoes, and I'd most likely be taking a second day off purely so she could borrow my shoes while she got a hold of a temporary pair of her own. ...That I'd forgotten to book any reviews with Kiyama while I was at the hospital was completely unrelated.
While relaxation this evening sounded very good, it didn't change the fact that I had a massive to-do list, and good reasons not to procrastinate. For the sake of having an easy life, Hokaze had volunteered to do the cooking… By this, I meant that she'd volunteered to have me piloting her while I borrowed her limbs to do my own cooking, as she had as little idea on how to cook as most of the other girls in the building.
I'd picked up the ingredients for a sausage casserole, and she'd chopped them up and thrown them in the pressure cooker, along with some homemade stock I'd had in the freezer. It wasn't something she'd had before, apparently.
But more culinary adventures for another of my friends was a thing for later; it needed time to cook, and we had a to-do list. For now, while the pot sat silently in the background, we needed to review all the assorted deadlines I had with the Constitutionals.
"So," I said. "We can confirm that all the Daihaseisai stuff, we can mostly leave for next week and let the Standard-Bearers figure things out in the meantime."
"Yes," agreed Hokaze, sipping a can of dubious black bean drink as she looked over what we had.
"Great, lovely," I said with a nod. "Next order of business- what do we say about DA? I think information about Scavenger's identities has been restricted, and I haven't seen any ground-level or decent-resolution footage of the Taowu fight, so we can probably still hide the details about them and Mental Upper…"
"Anti-Skill's leadership is doing a press conference tomorrow," Hokaze revealed. "If we contact the newspaper club to assist us, we may be able to get some details from Anti-Skill in advance to make sure everything matches. Should we send them both an email from the clique's address?"
"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," I agreed, and shifted myself from the bed to the computer and its desk. The club had some official contact details, partially for convenient official contact, mostly because it let me keep semi-official emails out of my personal and official accounts. It booted up smoothly, and the emails loaded quickly enough. "...Oh, there's an offer to speak at the Daihaseisai opening festival," I said. "Opportunity to let the world blah blah blah, fame blah blah, respect of your peers, blah blah blah, fellow Level 5s blah blah… Oh, it's only reading a pre-written speech. I'll defer that for the Monday meeting, but it sounds reasonable enough."
Hokaze already had the emails prepared, so I wrote out something quick and professional for each- wanting to ensure I didn't say anything that went against the official story for Anti-Skill, and being willing to provide additional details for anything that Anti-Skill wouldn't disapprove of for the newspaper club. Hopefully they both actually read their emails.
Next was the matter of the Nihilists.
"...According to Hanabi's maths," she said, "it should be safe for yourself and Miss Sakibasu to use most spells unattended as long as you use the right techniques, my Queen. And there's potential for others- myself and Miss Onizuki in particular- to do it safely as well, if we learn how to use similar backlash-dampening techniques, or if we can learn how to make sure the damage only takes place in the body. And the safety was… adequate. With the improvements they've suggested, we should be able to minimise the risk of accidents..."
I hummed. "I'm sensing a 'but' here," I commented from my place on the computer chair.
She shook her head. "...No," she replied. "Perhaps ordinarily, I would say it was too risky to be worthwhile, but… if not for already having known the risks, and if not for fortune being on your side, then your encounter with either the Taowu intelligence or Miss Index could have killed you." She stared at the paper. "I would rather we know how to deal with it safely, if we have to deal with it. We're learning how to deal with it safely enough, already. I hope we are, at least."
…Hokaze's experiences in Clone Dolly hadn't been the same as mine. My experiment had been fucked from the start. Hers had gone horribly wrong as a complete surprise to the researchers involved, though I couldn't say for sure if it was an accident.
Unlike Doctor Kiyama, the woman who'd cared for Clone Dolly: Ideal had been able to give up her life for that of most of her kids. She'd taken that opportunity, right in front of Hokaze, and after that there'd been nobody to ask questions in the aftermath.
Regardless of whether it had been an accident or not, the idea of something going terribly and unexpectedly wrong was an idea that hit too close to home for her. But the idea of something going so wrong because she wasn't strong enough was similarly terrible for her, and she'd felt that on the day Ideal ended, too.
Doctor Toomine had only needed to sacrifice herself because Rampage Dress failed Hokaze in a critical moment. She'd accepted it wasn't her fault, but that didn't mean she couldn't fear it happening again. Sometimes life was cruel enough to try and take someone from you with no rhyme or reason. Hokaze was an optimist and an idealist in the strongest terms, but it was the sort of optimism that came from preparation and strength, not from blind faith; her hope was a dreadnought, and she knew from harsh experience that anything less was far too easy to sink.
I took my seat next to her again, and she leaned against my shoulder. "We'll do the best we can," I reassured her. "And hopefully, we won't get any more necromantic godlings to justify it! Maybe we'll get a few grumpy priests butting their noses in, or something."
She smiled a little at that, and moved onto the next part of the plans. "Miss Mugino would like to visit the lab?" she asked me, for confirmation.
I nodded. "Yes," I agreed. "They're trying to take down the guy who was funding DA, and they don't want to get caught out by surprise magic attacks if he and his men picked anything up from them; they gave me their liaison's phone number so we can organise the time, if you and Tatsuki agree."
"It would be nice if they were… less violent," she said, "but it would be nice if everyone was less violent. And they're only trying to help! So I think we should let them."
"We can check with Tatsuki tomorrow morning, then," I said, nodding along. It would be best to check in person, I thought. An accident in the lab was one thing to share over the phone, but another Level 5 taking a dedicated interest in the lab during their mission to take down a board member was another thing entirely. "And then we can call their liaison; that should be a secure enough line that we don't get any snooping, according to them, and I'm guessing they know their stuff."
"Was there anything else for the science club?" asked Hokaze.
"...We're both agreed that magic is dangerous and it's going to be a horrible terrible no-good time for anyone without the proper safety precautions, right?" I started. She nodded at me. "And we've had break-ins from the other factions once or twice before- there was the big one just before the Sha Clique broke down, and I haven't heard anything about the other factions, but Iori and Inubushi are pretty likely to be at each others' throats, and given that Inubushi's faction is one of the larger and more competitive ones…"
"Then you think another clique might see it as an opportunity… I don't understand why they can't just get along," said Hokaze, a little melancholy. "Most of them aren't very different from each other…"
"Yeah, but getting along clearly isn't on their to-do list," I sighed. "And that's not the only problem- Mugino certainly thought that the Nihilists' lab would have been a soft target if they hadn't been worried about Ai's power turning it into an ambush on our end rather than theirs, and a bunch of Skill-Outs legitimately tried to ambush me earlier-"
"Misaki!" said Hokaze, worriedly.
"Don't worry, they're fine, Junko," I reassured her. "There weren't any Judgment around since it was school hours, so I made an effort to only metaphorically kick their collective asses instead of semi-literally."
"And were you fine?" she said, frowning.
"Level 5," I pointed out reasonably. She sighed frustratedly; I shrugged. "...Well, there's clearly a lot of people who may or may not like me, and the Nihilists by extension, at the moment. And we do have a bunch of children in need of authority figures and a reasonably-safe distraction, who're probably quite used to researcher-esque figures, and who are experienced enough in a fight to take most sorts of people down non-lethally at minimal risk if they have the motivation for doing so…"
Hokaze sighed again, this time less frustratedly. "I'd much rather they go to school, but from what you've told me, they'd likely run away if we attempted to force the matter," she said. I nodded. "And there's no other issues with doing so…?"
"I checked the laws- they'll be in a better spot if they're legitimately employed," I said. Which was… really weird to think about, but it would give them a lot more autonomy and a much more obvious legal presence even without being in a school. Nobody was likely to try and turn them into a bureaucratic error for something evil, given that they had the direct attention of one madame Mental Out, but I didn't really feel like risking it given their prior employers' treatment of them. "And it's a lot easier to tell a bunch of preteens to calm down versus trying to heal magically-induced organ damage without a bunch of pre-prepared espers on hand… It's not ideal, but it's not an ideal situation any way we try and solve it, as far as I can think of."
"I'm afraid I can't find a better solution either, my Queen," Hokaze agreed. "I suppose we should set up a job interview between them and Tatsuki as well, while we're talking to her tomorrow."
I nodded. "Hmh," I said, making a vague noise of agreement. "So that's… The news, Tatsuki, Mugino, Scavenger… What else did we have to cover? Esper revision sessions, right?" We were still waiting for the Autumn roster to be ratified, so the official sessions weren't on this week. "I promised Onizuka a session, and I haven't seen Saten and Uiharu in a while; I could get Kinuhata and Saten in the same room together, possibly, but I'm not sure that would be a good idea. Uiharu and Onizuka, I want to compare, for sure; perhaps see if there's any side uses for Saten's power we could look into, and call Uiharu to set up a convenient time?"
"Uiharu might be asleep from the jet lag at the moment," Hokaze pointed out. I hummed in acknowledgement.
"Do we have Onizuka's contact details on us?" I asked. Hokaze nodded. "We can send her a text or something to let her know we haven't forgotten about her, then, and call Uiharu in the morning. That seems fair… Did we have anything else to organise? Work-related stuff, anyway, I know Michan was interested in spending some more time with Railgun."
"She's quite pleasant when you get to know her," Hokaze replied. "I found we even have a few shared hobbies! Though… I was also wondering," asked Hokaze. "Would you… perhaps have any slots free? For the esper revision sessions?"
I outright stopped for a moment in response to that one- confused, briefly. She'd made an active decision to stop pushing her limits.
…But she wasn't one to stop when she thought people needed her.
"...Breadth or depth?" I asked her, when I made up my mind.
She understood what I was getting at. "Either," she replied. "...Both, if we can. Tatsuki and her group… what they've been putting together is based on using powers to avoid harming the brain. Do you think…?"
The biggest flaw of Rampage Dress was physiological in nature. In short bursts, Hokaze's attacks were as destructive as any shot or lighting blast from Railgun, and her speed and power combined with the amplification of her brain were as effective a defence as Mugino's counter-blasts. She'd once had migraines because of her power, but while her brain was still under immense stress at the practical limits of her power, those limits pushed the boundaries of what a Level 4 could achieve.
But only in short bursts, as those same stresses clouded her judgement and her mathematical ability. Up to a point, the amplification of her brain was a positive feedback loop; her hard limit was at the point where that amplification kept her from leveraging her power, both mathematically and emotionally.
All of a sudden, though, Tatsuki and her team were being motivated to answer how different powers could protect themselves from even greater stresses within the body and brain- not as something to avoid, but as something to mitigate, as a fundamental assumption about that power. The parallels between the Nihilists' problems with magic and Hokaze's inability to hit her truest limits weren't hard to miss, in that light. If the principles of both were cross-compatible…
And besides, I'd still have a favour from Mugino once I organised a session. Her electron phase manipulation might not quite be valid, but I doubted anyone had been able to cross-pollinate her own mathematics with an electromaster as strong and skilled as Hokaze.
"...If there's a path that might be open, I think it's worth a try," I said. "Just… don't try and push yourself through the eye of a needle, okay?"
She smiled. "I know my limits, Misaki," she replied. "Thank you. …I don't believe there's anything else we needed to prepare before the next meeting."
I sighed in relief just hearing those words from her mouth. "Thanks, Junko," I said. "That's a massive load off my back, then."
Hokaze chuckled. "Not having work isn't the same thing as having relaxed, though," she commented. "We could start organising something with our friends tomorrow evening, perhaps?"
I hummed. "Sure," I replied. I'd given her my word on that one, after all. "...Hey, is the casserole almost done?"
