I headed down to the breakfast hall early. I was in a bit of an odd mood, and I wanted a change of scenery. It wasn't a bad mood, not necessarily, just… odd.
To my surprise, Hokaze was down at the lunch table already, with a full English breakfast on her plate.
"Morning," I said. Her head swivelled towards me, having been too focused on her food to notice I was coming.
"Ah! My queen," she said, grinning broadly- I couldn't help but smile back, as while she frequently smiled, she very rarely smiled widely enough to see her pearly-whites. "You're up this morning. Are you okay?"
"...Yes," I replied, with an honest nod. "What about you? You- oh, right," I said, noticing the slight slouch she wore when she'd overexerted herself, and realising why she was down here. If she still wasn't in top form, her burst of activity yesterday must've taken more out of her than I thought; I felt a little bad for not having noticed yesterday. "You must have burned a lot of calories yesterday. Hungry?"
She nodded, slightly sheepish about it. She'd mostly trained herself away from cutting calories when it was the opposite of her biological needs, but social pressure died hard, so I wasn't too surprised she'd rather eat most of her meal before too many people came down to see her. "Yes, I'm quite famished…" she agreed. "I put myself under a lot of physical strain yesterday! I'm starting to integrate some of what I learned from Miss Mugino, thanks to you and Miss Tatsuki, but I'll need to adjust some things. It's less taxing when it works, but it takes too much effort to stabilise it right now to use for more than shorter exertions"
Hokaze was all about efficiency, so I could see why boosting her endurance was her top priority. "Ah," I said, nodding. "Something to do with brain stuff?" Was it something I could help with?
"That would be a matter of fine-tuning rather than stability," she commented. "I've made a little bit of progress, but quite slowly. Instead, it's… did you know that Miss Mugino's powers function on a chemical scale, in addition to larger scales?"
"Mhh? It's not something I really thought about," I replied. "Do you think it's something she's aware of?"
"It is! She decided to contact me- she wanted clarification on a few of the finer points of electro-biokinesis," Hokaze said. "It's quite novel to the both of us, so even if she was somewhat disappointed with what she learned initially, and even if she's still standoffish, discussing what we learn is very useful… She can use her power to alter chemical and atomic structures at range- manipulating the bonds and orbits of electrons- but given her speciality is in macro-scale electron effects, I think she'd usually consider it more of a party trick."
I hummed, figuring out where she was going with this. "Right, right," I said. "But you're mostly familiar with cellular and chemical scales, so you've got more reason to explore those tools now you have them…"
"Exactly!" she said, nodding along. "There's a lot of potential uses- using it to 'lock' the probability space of a hydrogen bond, for example. That will let me bypass a number of thermal limits on my power if I can sustain it," Hokaze offered. "She's used similar techniques to 'scramble' important materials that aren't structurally or thermally vulnerable, but she hasn't explored how precisely it can be used."
Hokaze's idea made sense. Hydrogen bonds were the weakest bond that you could find in most enzymes and other important proteins- a little thermal energy or alkalinity would make the proton so excited it would drag its single electron back out of the molecule, breaking the link and ruining the molecule.
This meant your proteins' hydrogen bonds would snap if they overheated, and the useful protein machinery would basically 'cook'. (This was only one of a number of problems, but it was an easy one to describe.) Hokaze's Rampage Dress had a lot of ways to manage this already, which was a given for any high-level regenerator who didn't use more esoteric physics like Onizuka, but chemical limits weren't normally something you could outright refuse like this.
"I was using that technique yesterday, to deal with temperature spikes from burst movements- I'm quite certain that I broke my previous speed records by a significant margin- but until I develop more finesse, I'll be burning a lot of calories repairing the structural damage, and I simply don't have the skill in number-crunching to reach the newfound limits of my Personal Reality yet," she said, making little pointy hand gestures as she explained some of the science. "And while I've been studying my neurology to try and manage which pain receptors need to be active more effectively, which has helped with mental degradation, I don't have any means to manage any mass lost from more… ah, explosive techniques…"
I saw where she was going with this. "...You were rocket-jumping yesterday, weren't you?" I said.
She blinked. "Rocket-...? Oh! Yes, that's correct," she agreed. "It's within acceptable mass loss thresholds- I already have to be aware of them in case I have to deal with issues like heat or friction. I don't want to know how much biomatter I've left on the streets, running around as often as I have…"
I scratched the back of my head, recalling the various reasons she'd been running around like a headless chicken… perhaps a headless roadrunner was a better analogue. "Ah. Sorry…" I responded.
She immediately shook her head. "No, don't worry about it, I've done that without prompting from you before," she said, quickly waving it off. "Sometimes, I must choose between straining myself with my power, and Gekota…" She sighed fondly, presumably thinking of the sweet Gekota merch she'd obtained by legging it that one time. …And quite probably other times that I hadn't noticed, because she did actually have a life of whatever extroverts did when I wasn't in their general vicinity, like going to cafes and study clubs and Gekota merchandising opportunities. Basically, she did indeed do things beyond the confines of 'babysitting their kohai who refuses to stop picking fights with the villain of the week'.
I nodded, seeing that she was off in Gekota-Land or whatever that one theme park was called. "I'll let you think happy green thoughts while I fill my own plate, then," I replied.
"I think I'm going to watch a Gekota marathon tonight…" she sighed happily in response, as I left to go get food.
I returned quickly enough with my tray (true, we had maids to deliver dishes like a fancy restaurant, but we were here before full cafeteria hours)- she smiled again when she saw I'd copied the breakfast she'd ordered for herself. I did like rice and miso soup and whatnot, but sometimes you just wanted smoked meat. And thanks to Academy City tech, they were both real pork and not made of real pigs, so I had zero reason to restrain myself with such things.
"I'm looking forwards to the festival," I said, while her mouth was full of baked beans. "I've never really been able to introduce Michan and the Misakas to the people we know here, and I'm interested in seeing how it goes."
She swallowed. "Oh, and we can get to meet Miss Kouzaku's friends as well?" she asked, eyes sparkling. I nodded, humming through my own mouthful of perfectly-prepared bacon (slightly crispy, fat not removed). I'd only really seen Michan by herself or with the Misaka sisters; we'd been too busy catching up to talk about current friendships. "And maybe the sisters have made some friends too by now, too! I've been so focused on the more competitive aspects that simply being out of school for a while didn't even cross my mind."
From what I recalled of Michan's friends… "We'll still be somewhat in our schools for supporting our own events, which means it might be a bit difficult to get everyone's friends together- I think a lot of Michan's are in other schools, too- but I don't see why we shouldn't try," I replied. "...Actually, I was planning to host an esper session with- no, wait, Kiyama'll kill me if I start stressing out again… And you too, yes, I'm aware," I added, seeing Hokaze managing to pull off a deadpan look that was much more commonly seen on my own face.
Michan had mentioned having online friends she used for her 'investigative journalism', and I'd wanted to try and pick up leads from both them and from the sort of people who were unpleasant enough that mental malware would only change their success rather than their behaviour… I'd only just remembered that I still hadn't made the 'alerts' site for it I'd been planning to make, back before DA jumped the gun on me. I'd have to do that at some point.
Hokaze made a mild harrumph, dropping the look. "I'm glad you're listening," she said. "If anything else happens, I might have to make an on-duty schedule for crisis management…"
I shrugged. "Well, they should be reorganising the law enforcement, finally," I commented. "Maybe things will calm down?"
As I spoke, my power gave me a low-priority ping. Nothing particularly concerning…
Then I saw a rather horrified-looking Sanada and Kando (Hokaze's cinnamon-roll friends) entering the room and looking somewhere behind me. My assessment was probably not universal, then- I still wasn't concerned personally though. Hokaze had cleared her plate, and was just about to get up for seconds when she unknowingly looked in the same direction as her friends.
She froze. "...E-e-e-ehm, my Queen…?" she posed.
"Yes?" I asked, before feeling a hand on my shoulder. Oh hey, she did want to talk to me after all.
"Shokuhou," said a stern voice. "Given that Misaka is currently in a meeting with the Principal… Would you care to explain why you and her commandeered a city bus and flew it through the city, two days before representing Tokiwadai to the world?"
It was the dorm supervisor… She was strict, but reasonable, in my experience. I turned in my seat to her, and gave her a polite nod of acknowledgement- specifically the black-haired woman with the glasses, rather than the somewhat bubbly blonde woman who she tended to delegate to for the less rambunctious outer dorms. "Miss Dorm Supervisor," I said. "We got deputised by Judgment to catch a glorified internet troll; it got somewhat out of hand, alas. Him having access to a combat robot from within his school was both unexpected, and concerned the Judgment officer we followed enough for her to start with some… creative improvisation."
"Hmph. I see," she said, pushing her glasses up her nose- they caught in the light in a sufficiently-obvious manner as to have me confirm that yes, she was doing it on purpose. "You're very fortunate that this has been confirmed by Judgment, and that your doctor has provided us with a relevant medical excuse- either one of those individually, I might not be so forgiving. You're excused, Shokuhou."
Hokaze let out a little sigh of relief, glad to see I wasn't getting into even more trouble (even if it was the detentiony non-worrying kind) after I'd just gotten out of the last mess.
Hearing her voice, the dorm supervisor took the opportunity to immediately lock her gaze on Hokaze. My poor senpai immediately went rigid. Huh.
"And I'm sure that you can provide a similar excuse for your actions yesterday, Hokaze…?" she suggested. "I understand that your friends were in trouble, and that perhaps it could justify unwise decisions about whether or not to leave it to the proper authorities… but I'm also inclined to understand that robots menacing your colleagues would be equally destroyed," she said, adjusting her glasses, "regardless of how high you managed to kick them. Was there any particular reason that the damage to the surrounding street- a street that was supposed to be part of the grounds for tomorrow's scavenger hunt, might I add- was necessary?"
"W-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-well, n-not as such," she started. She did not have any excuses- and neither did I, for that matter, forcing me to abandon her to her fate in favour of the fried mushrooms on my plate. "B-b-but-"
The dorm supervisor stepped forwards and twisted Hokaze's neck with a crunch.
I promptly startled enough to catapult most of my breakfast off the table.
It took a few moments of incomprehension, but I quickly found myself scanning Hokaze's nervous system to confirm that no, her neck was not actually broken, she was just in some sort of… pressure point-esque state? How? Why? More importantly, what the fuck?
As I processed, the dorm supervisor visibly paused. "...I'd recommend going to the kitchens and asking one of the maids to assist you with that mess. Good day, Shokuhou," she said with a curt nod to me, literally carrying off a limp Hokaze.
"That's so sad," said Kando- Hokaze's friend, who was apparently in my personal space now, the discovery leading to the startling of most of the rest of my breakfast off the plate. "I hope she doesn't get too much detention… Oh, are you okay, Miss Shokuhou?"
"...I thought they were joking when they said she did that!" I said, a little more high-pitched than I'd have liked to. Given both this, and the precedent of things like B. rex and Magnus' height, I was starting to think that perhaps I did not know biology as well as I thought I did.
Hokaze's other friend spoke up- Sanada, the one who was really bad at being a rebel. "Umm, I'll go get one of the maids," she said. "...Wouldn't you know if they were joking, since you can mind read?"
"It's not like I read every little thing!" I countered reasonably. "I don't question things like that! …Anyway, bean sauce. Oh! I have an idea."
It turned out that no, my macro-scale hydrokinesis was not good enough to get baked bean sauce out of my clothes to any reasonable degree. Or for getting water out, for that matter, as I discovered from a somewhat ill-advised effort to use water generation to force the issue...
I wasn't exactly going to try evapourating it with an improvised technique on clothes I was wearing, but I was fairly sure that looking like someone had spilled a large glass of water on me was more dignified than being covered in bean sauce like a toddler. The breakfast rush was starting by the time I made my trip back, I'd take what I could get.
__________
I'd just finished getting changed (again) when I heard a knock on the door. The same alert had gone off again. "Mh? Ah. One moment, Miss Dorm Supervisor!" I called, shrugging my backpack back on; I opened the door a moment later.
"Miss Shokuhou," she said, standing about as primly as normal. She adjusted her glasses. "Might I have a moment of your time?"
I nodded, somewhat confused since we'd already established I wasn't in trouble, but deciding not to snoop. "Of course, Miss," I replied.
I found myself in the dorm's staff lounge soon enough; the other dorm managers were likely busy managing the school's general rise to wakefulness- given it was the day before the Daihaseisai, it was probably more than a little like herding cats. She gestured to a seat on one of the staff lounge sofas, and took a seat opposite. "I'd like to apologise for startling you earlier," she said.
I tilted my head. Given the basic assumption I'd come to once I'd settled, that pressure points and equivalent techniques were reasonable (if perhaps not always appropriate) in a school where any given student could reasonably overpower an adult… "Why?" I asked, cocking my head. "Hokaze was fine. I checked."
"It's a failure on my part if you felt the need to check," she clarified. "A lot of students are intimidated by me, and that's just a part of my job description, but there's a difference between being scared and feeling vulnerable or unsafe. If you were worried for your friend because of something I did, then I should have been more careful with my actions." She adjusted her glasses again. "...I apologise if I'm treading on sensitive ground, but was there a reason for it?"
I considered that briefly. "I guess I just think of necks as being… vulnerable," I said. "From a neurological standpoint, at the very least- all your nerves go through your neck, and there's no skull in the way like there is for the brain. It seems very… easy, for even a bit of accidental damage there to just break everything else."
"I see," said the dorm supervisor. She paused to take a sip of her tea- she'd had it on the table when I got here, so she'd probably interrupted whatever she was doing to go check on me. After a moment, she glanced down at it. "Would you like a hot drink, Shokuhou? Or anything to eat, since I interrupted your breakfast?"
I frowned minutely, the partial cup of tea having drawn my attention now I noticed it… No, I noted after a quick scan, she hadn't had a means to know I was about to leave my room. She'd left it because she'd felt the need to go find me, rather than to intercept me as I left. Though I also noted she still had questions about what I'd said, even if she wasn't sure whether it was a good idea to ask them.
She was also somewhat suspecting that I was reading her mind anyway, I idly noted, as an aside. It was less of something she was worried about, and more about trying to figure out what that meant for my comfort. In her logic, a middle-schooler mind-reading someone who startled them seemed to her both expected for their own feelings of security, and possibly somewhat unhelpful if she was saying one thing and thinking another.
I answered the spoken question. "No thank you, I've got a drink in my bag if I'm thirsty," I said. "And I had a cup of tea this morning." She nodded. "...I don't believe it's specifically related to any of the attacks," I continued, deciding to answer one of the other questions, too. "I had the impression when I was younger, well before then. …Though I can't say last year's incident helped."
"The Deadlock incident?" she asked. This was a reasonable clarification request, given that there had also been the Sha Clique incident, though the most I'd really been involved was some of the girls being rather suspicious of me in the months prior.
I nodded. "That's the one, yes," I agreed. "Are you aware of the specifics?" I wasn't mind-reading her very much right this second, so I waited for her to respond in the affirmative.
"I've been filled in on it, yes," she replied, after a moment figuring out if it was rhetorical or not. "You were forced to use your powers to set your attackers against each other."
I checked for the details she knew of. "That's the gist of it, yes," I said, in agreement to what she'd said out loud.
She hadn't been able to get much more detail, beyond the events of my leg scarring to make sure nobody poked me in that particular trauma. This was probably significantly less than what she needed for educated decision-making. On the one hand, we'd already sorted out this particular issue for all intents and purposes, but on the other, having an accurate idea of 'what you were told' versus 'what is the case for the children you are protecting' seemed fairly important…
I didn't mind going into more detail too much- it had been a lot more public, after all, so it was nowhere near as personal to me as most of the other incidents. "The suits were designed to automate themselves if I tried to keep them from attacking with mind control," I explained, "but they could only pick up neural signals, not hormone stuff. Temporary narcolepsy would've been my first choice, but that wouldn't have gotten the robots away from me. So I set the people against the suits- twiddling with the dials on how angry or focused they were until they went berserk in their comrades' general direction. They didn't have any ranged weapons, and the quickest weak spot for an angry person to access was between the suit and the helmet…" I winced a little at the memory. "It made for some rather unpleasant noises."
"I can imagine," said the dorm supervisor, promptly squashing some memories of her time as some sort of combatant in a (failed) attempt to avoid me noticing. "I can assure you that I have certification for using that hold safely, and that it's harmless when performed by trained individuals; necks have a lot of connective and elastic tissue to protect them from such actions."
This was basically the opposite of any medical advice about necks I'd ever heard… but I hadn't really heard about that sort of thing in this life. It wasn't like I'd taken a first-aid course or anything, so I'd only updated what I knew already with that sort of knowledge. "The certification thing is good to hear," I said, nodding slightly.
"I'm glad," the supervisor responded. "There were some other things about your wellbeing I wanted to discuss, as well."
"Oh?" I asked, my heel tapping slightly on the floor. I'd only been skimming, so I'd only really seen her next topic once she'd switched tracks.
"Do you recall the last time I had to have a discussion with Hokaze about her behaviour?" That was news to me. "She came to me asking for your emergency details, the day she came back from her field trip, and ended up running herself ragged and damaging her school uniform trying to find an alternative solution, instead of discussing it with me further. It appears she hasn't learned her lesson about stopping to consider what would be more helpful instead of acting impulsively, which is why I was somewhat more severe this time."
Ah, I understood what she was talking about- Hokaze hadn't mentioned she'd gotten in any trouble, though knowing her, she probably counted it as 'narrowly avoided trouble' if she only had a warning. "So you're not mad that she broke the rules trying to help me, you're mad she caused more problems than she needed to when she did?" I asked.
"Yes, that's right," she said. "Though it's not what I'd like to discuss. Are you aware that your emergency contact details were significantly out of date at that time?"
I nodded. "I am, yes," I said.
"At the time, I sent in an urgent request to report that I'd found it in error," she explained, frowning. "Usually, this only takes a few days to fix at most. I discovered recently that there hadn't been any changes since I reported it; that led me to search for any more errors. At your age, you're not able to access all of your files, and I found something that concerned me in one of those files. Are you aware that you have a long-term medical emergency noted in your files, and that it hasn't been updated since your first companion organisation filed it?"
'Companion organisations' were the polite, legal way to say 'the scientists experimenting on you'... Okay, I was exaggerating, but not by much. A lot of girls in Tokiwadai had a companion organisation of some sort, and most of them were just standard, every-day businesses and research groups. (I'd acted on my displeasure for the ones that weren't, in the past.) Having a companion organisation was a great way to improve your powers, and the lack of connections or support for low-rank espers in getting one made them a particular point of contention for Skill-Outs.
For the purposes of privacy and security (supposedly), companion organisations were largely anonymous on the paperwork that our dorm supervisor could access. So it wasn't like it had 'Clone Dolly' in big, bold letters- a significant problem for figuring out who had done that original Dimensional Reader experiment, especially given I'd inadvertently destroyed or killed my best leads in the Exterior incident- she could tell that I'd been with a given company at given dates, and anything they'd written down officially.
So she knew I'd had a 'medical incident', and she knew it had taken me out of school for the next few years, but she didn't know which organisation had done it or what the consequences had been.
"Was this more than… eight, nine years ago, I think?" I asked. I'd never seen the actual paperwork, and I was terrible at keeping track of time at the best of times, whenever I wasn't cheating with my power.
She nodded. "It was."
"Then it's probably when I lost my memory," I said. "I don't recall anything that happened before I woke up with that research group- it hasn't affected any memories I made afterwards, and I haven't had any checkups on it since I was elementary-age, so it doesn't sound right if it's still on there."
"Certain medical emergencies do give companion organisations the right to restrict parental access, if they have evidence to suggest they might be a danger to untrained individuals," said the supervisor, grimacing as she did. "According to the paperwork, and your schooling history, this was one of them… Your most recent companion organisation should have updated the paperwork a long time ago."
I shook my head. "Perhaps, but the whole reason I don't work with companion organisations any more is that the last one torpedo'd my friend's reputation and couldn't even keep a building afloat, let alone their finances," I said. Which was technically even true. "They prioritised their data security over having backups. The building collapsed during an artificial hydrokinesis experiment- it took a lot of paperwork with it, so I doubt anyone realised I was still on those medical registers by the time I joined Tokiwadai. Or they thought someone else was going to fix the error when they didn't see any issues with me."
Granted, I didn't think that 'I lost the paperwork' was the real explanation. But it was a reasonable explanation, at the very least.
"What was the danger that had them keep you isolated, if I can ask that?" the supervisor requested. "You've been here for more than a year now with no incidents, so I doubt that it's still relevant, but if it's something that might still flare up, it's better to be prepared."
"I had some… fairly severe personality changes after the amnesia," I said, a little slowly. "I got a lot more rebellious than I had been before. Which, when you're trying to make a Level 5 who can mess with your general brain meats…" I made a wibbly hand gesture. "Not exactly the ideal situation, I would think. I do recall there were more questions on the Tokiwadai entry exams about ethics than I'd have expected… Would that have been related?" I asked.
"We don't normally have ethics on the entry exams, no," she confirmed. "Not at any length, at least. I'll have to ask the headmaster if it was the case, but you're no less a model student than Hokaze or Misaka," she said- I decided not to check if she was damning me with faint praise- "so we can probably remove it from your records. Have you had any contact with your parents since then?"
I shook my head again. "No," I said. I decided not to mention the efforts I'd made to change that, earlier on. "Misaka was asking her parents about it, though. She seemed pretty positive about it, the last update she gave me…"
"The Misaka family is helping you?" asked the supervisor, one eyebrow quirking upwards. "That's a good sign."
"You've met them?" I asked.
Her expression changed minutely. "No, but they have a good reputation," she said. "I heard them discussed by the school's director when Misaka was first being invited to the school; Misaka's father in particular is a well-known international consultant, so he has a lot of contacts he could use to assist you, both in and out of Academy City. Even among the parents of Tokiwadai's students, he's a good person to have on your side in a situation like this."
"Huh," I said. "I hadn't really thought about it… You know," I added, gesturing vaguely. "Who people's parents are. I just kind of assume 'generic person who probably has money', and leave it at that."
"That's the last thing I wanted to discuss, Shokuhou, now that I'd confirmed my suspicions," said the supervisor. "You weren't here for the last Daihaseisai- if you don't already know, it can sometimes be difficult for students with a poor or absent home life at this time of year."
"Because other people's parents are visiting, right?" I asked. "It doesn't seem like too big a deal to me. And a lot of my close friends are already aware."
"People's parents come up a lot in discussions during the Daihaseisai, which can cause problems if it's not an easily-discussed topic," she explained. "I volunteer with a cohort outside of Tokiwadai on occasion, and it's something I'm very aware of. There's also the matter of other people's parents having discussions with their childrens' associates, which is often a daunting experience."
I frowned. "Why?" I asked.
"For many parents at Tokiwadai, the Daihaseisai is about more than supporting their children in a sports festival- many of them will want to see if their children are making the connections they'll need for their futures," she explained. "Most will be focused on their fellow parents, but not all. It's more common for high-schoolers, but sometimes they'll want to meet students of interest in person, and that can put notable students under a lot of pressure- especially clique leaders," she added, gesturing at me with a nod of her head. "On rare occasions, we've had to step in on our students' behalf… You're generally a self-confident young woman, so I don't think you'll have many problems if it does happen, but I don't want you to be caught off-guard."
"...Ah, so it's power politics," I said, sagely. "Makes sense… I'd like to be surprised now you mention it, but I'm really not. I'll keep that in mind, Miss."
She nodded. "If you do need any support, during the festival or otherwise, my office is open," she said. "Most students would rather visit my coworker's office, but I'm aware that there are students who can find her cloying when they need someone to talk to."
"I'll keep it in mind, thank you," I replied.
It was a platitude. She could probably tell. "Good," she said anyway. "You have lessons, so I won't keep you any longer."
Right- I did indeed have lessons to get to this morning, though I was lucky enough that the Friday double-period of neuroscience was replaced by the Daihaseisai rather than being today. We wouldn't normally have a clique meeting today, but the second half of the day was being set aside for last-minute Daihaseisai prep, so we'd be having a clique meeting later. "Have a good day then, Miss," I said.
"You as well, Shokuhou," she replied, and adjusted her glasses one last time before I left.
I was about two corridors away from her office when I passed Inubushi in the corridor.
I noticed her right arm was in a sling, and her gaze met mine as we passed. It was also the first time I'd seen her with her skirt being worn sensibly of her own apparent volition, instead of the usual rolled-up skirt she did for whatever reason. "...Morning," she said gruffly as she passed me.
"Morning," I replied, and glanced behind myself at her as she passed- our eyes met, she having had the same thought, and I turned my eyes back to my own path.
Lessons were in the opposite direction to where she was going, of course, but she didn't give me bad vibes about wherever she was going. I wasn't going to pry.
__________
Hokaze was on detention at lunchtime, alas. It did, however, give me a bit of a chance to catch up with Sakibasu- we hadn't talked much lately with how busy I'd been.
"Sakibasu, hi," I said, taking a seat next to her with my lunch. "Are you and the others doing alright? I didn't get the chance to ask this morning."
"You went to the hospital, and had to talk to the dorm supervisor-" She shuddered briefly. "-and you're asking me if I'm alright? Pshah! It should be me asking you, my Queen," she retorted haughtily.
"Hah. As a general rule, being under siege is more stressful than instantly winning," I countered. "The hospital stuff was just a checkup, thankfully; I did hit my head yesterday, but I was sent home with the all-clear afterwards. Biting my tongue was the worst of it, in all honesty."
"And the dorm manager?" Sakibasu pressed.
"She had some questions about my paperwork that she'd been trying to solve," I said, dissembling a little on the matter. "I didn't get told off like Hokaze did… I hope she's not too disappointed about missing lunch with us. She should be back in time for the meeting, though."
"Hear, hear," Sakibasu agreed. "To answer your previous question, it was stressful, but we were all confident we'd have backup soon enough. And you certainly pulled through- why, you practically won with a snap of your fingers alone!"
"Yeah, but that's not too far from the usual with me," I said. "If you include the times I have to deal with out-of-school idiots myself instead of waiting for Judgment, at least. Did you see Hokaze, though? Her training's really pulling through for her."
"I didn't see it, but I certainly heard it, my Queen," she said. "It certainly must have been a sight if she made such a racket."
I nodded. "I'm pretty sure she broke the sound barrier," I said. "She told me this morning that she'd been trying out some more micro-scale stuff to try and raise her temperature limits…"
Over the course of lunch, we ended up talking shop on whether either of our powers might be able to copy or mimic the molecular manipulation shenanigans that Hokaze was trying to do. It was a debate that ended inconclusively- the lunch bell rang before we were done, and soon enough, we were headed to the pre-festival clique meeting.
"I must say, I have high hopes for this festival," she said to me as we walked to the meeting, as part of a gaggle of Constitutionals that had converged around me after lunch. Most of them were in their own conversations. "The upper-year girls have been saying they feel much better-prepared, and it's rubbed off on us first-years."
I tilted my head, and asked, "Is that so? With all this other nonsense going on, it feels like I haven't had any time to focus on the sports stuff… If other people's preparations have been going better than mine, that sounds good."
She gave me a short, pitch-perfect ojou-sama laugh- it had taken her a lot of practise to get the noise down, I knew from experience. "Indeed!" she said. "From what my senpais have told me, many of the girls would shiver last year if they thought they'd get a bit of mud on them; I don't know about the other cliques, they haven't been very cooperative with our training, but I have faith in our girls."
"You'd think the other cliques would finally group up with us in the one time of year we've got bigger things than bickering with each other," I idly complained.
She shook her head. "Most of them are entirely focused on intensive power training," she said.
I'd made the suggestion in previous meetings that perhaps covering our tactical weaknesses would be more effective than enhancing our strengths, given that we'd been beaten last year by Nagatenjouki. On paper Nagatenjouki had Accelerator in attendance, but he obviously hadn't joined in last year, and their student populace wasn't entirely high-level espers like ours… If one side had better gear and lost, the classic blunder was having no idea how to use them, and the Constitutionals had generally agreed with my assessment of what the problem had been.
"Hopefully they're training them for something relevant then," I commented. Sakibasu just sighed. "...Huh. They're sticking to their guns, then?"
"Some of them are on board with our plan- the Kobayashi and Inubushi cliques in particular, even if we have our disagreements with the latter- but playing to one's strength is a popular strategy for a reason," she said, "and one that's particularly relevant in the business world. Most of them don't understand the point of what we're doing, not when we're supposedly trying to play catch-up rather than taking the initiative."
"I suppose that's not an unexpected result," I said, pushing open the door to the clique- the other girls had drifted back as we reached the door, leaving me in front when we entered. "Heh. Maybe we'll be the brains for the brawn this festival?" I asked her, semi-ironically.
"Oh-hoh! Perhaps we will," she agreed.
There were already some people in the room- a number of the Nihilists were set up in the corner, obviously having had a mini-meeting of their own, and it seemed that Kongou had been doing the same with a mixed group of unaffiliated and group-members. I headed to my seat at the front and took it, as the others who'd come in with me headed to their own usual spaces.
I was completely unprepared for the meeting, mostly because I'd been focusing on making sure that the Skill-Outs and Azure Group weren't going to be picking too many fights while everyone's parents were in town. But in all honesty I'd been winging it a lot lately (that and doggedly pursuing my to-do list), so this was nothing unexpected.
We were also, yet again, finding ourselves with a deficit of chairs. And possibly also floor space. I'd have to talk to Hokaze- who arrived just before the meeting started, and who looked pleased to be out of detention, rather than down in the dumps about it- to see if we could try and estimate how many chairs would give us some breathing room instead of having us steal chairs from the other rooms yet again.
Ping.
Get working directory- faction meeting room, animal, human.
Headcount.
Start meeting.
Once the usual hubbub died down, I stood. "Good afternoon, and welcome to the Constitutionals' Pre-Daihaseisai meeting," I said. "As we're all aware, this is the last day before the Daihaseisai, and one of the duties of any clique is making sure we're prepared for competitions such as these."
Run readthemood.exe.
I smiled slightly. "Thanks to our preparations, I can safely say that- for the most part- we're feeling confident about how much we're going to contribute to the school's scores. Of course, confidence is all the more effective when it's well-grounded, so let's get to work on grounding it! I'm grateful to all the people who have been making sure that our mindset, equipment and plans are all top-notch, so let's hear from some of them."
Present subfaction leader: Standard-bearers.
Mibuki stood. "We'll start with the obvious- Miss Mibuki has been leading general preparations," I noted, "meeting with the school's sports team leaders and talking through what equipment and strategies we'll need to be at our best."
Our clique had a big advantage over the others in this particular regard; a lot of other cliques' supported sports clubs were the flashy, expensive, prestigious things and that needed expensive equipment like horses, or that were from the 'big' sports like archery or running. But the Daihaseisai needed a lot of flexibility, and our mish-mash of smaller sports clubs gave us easy access to the sorts of people needed to figure out what the hell we were doing.
"If you'll go through the results of all your efforts?" I asked her, with a nod.
"Certainly, my Queen," Mibuki replied, with a pleasant smile. I took a seat, and she headed to the front, not holding any notes to read from. She spoke confidently. "Our first order of business was ensuring that our clothing and footwear wouldn't fail us- last year, a number of competitions were lost because Tokiwadai students lost traction, or were distracted by clothing damage. We learned that a lot of this was due to equipment failure rather than human error, and that if we could prevent mistakes like that, we'd have much better odds of winning…"
Mibuki led through her major points- that the parts of the students' PE uniforms not decreed from above were often more for fashion or comfort than intense exercise on a summer's day, or were based on 'this'll do' rather than what was needed for a task. This followed into the general plans for critical sports; for example, the Dodgeball Club leader, Kirifu, had a lot to say about the balloon battle (a major source of points given the number of students involved). Makigami went over the sort of mindset we'd need for the best chances of victory- respect your opponents so you try your best and don't underestimate them, work as a team, chase victory rather than impulses- and finally, we discussed some of the info that our various soft espers had fed us.
With a bit of good management of the speakers, I managed to keep engagement high enough throughout that nobody was nodding off or anything; when I deemed we'd had enough discussion, double-checking, questions and so on, I brought that segment of the meeting to a close.
Ai headed back to her seat after delivering her usual difficult-to-interpret predictions- unexpected rain being the big one, in clear defiance of the weather reports- and her team's review of how we might benefit from them. As she promptly curled up horizontally on two chairs to resume scrolling through her phone, I stood.
Run readtheroom.exe.
"Thank you, ladies," I said. "With that, we'll bring our Daihaseisai discussions to a close for today; with all the work that's been put in, there's always more to say, but we'll probably be sitting around burned-out at midnight if we try to talk it all. Everyone who hasn't been chosen to speak, thank you kindly for everything you've put in. You know who you are!"
"Since we've already had our scheduled meetings, we can skip over our usual discussions on clique activities, budgeting, and so on. But there's been news about a lot more than Daihaseisai prep this week," I noted, "so if we have any questions or concerns about recent events, now's the time to speak- we'll need all our focus on the festival tomorrow! Yes, Saito?" I recalled her from one of the (relatively) recent esper revision sessions; she was a member of the Students.
"My Queen!" she said eagerly. "Is it true that a whole bunch of Tokiwadai students got attacked by Skill-Outs yesterday?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes, though that's not quite the whole story. Judgment arrested a student who was trying to stir up a hornet's nest yesterday, on both sides," I said. "He managed to get together some students with a particular dislike for me- or the idea of me, depending on the specifics- and made a concerted effort to break into the Nihilists' lab." There were a few gasps. "Fortunately, a combination of the Nihilists' excellent security preparations-" I gave a nod in their general direction. "-and the opportunity to intervene with Miss Shirai as a temporary member of Judgment ensured that nobody involved was seriously hurt."
"And the Azure Group?" she asked. "I heard that's how Inubushi broke her arm!"
"It's not something I've had the opportunity to look into," I freely admitted. "I'm aware that the same student, who had gotten his mitts on Anti-Skill surplus after the recent DA incident, sent a number of drones to the Azure Group's first meeting. I don't know who else was involved, however- and that's a matter for Judgment, rather than the Constitutionals."
There were one or two disappointed noises at the lack of gossip. I was curious myself- I'd heard rumours going around that Inubushi was no longer in control, having been replaced by Kamino and a third-year girl, but until I had the opportunity to check with a primary source (gossip wasn't the sort of thing I was willing to use my power for), they were just that: rumours.
I gestured for another student to speak. "Do you think it will happen again, Miss Shokuhou?" she asked, worriedly.
"There's always a risk of that sort of nonsense, but we're ever more prepared for it now that the problems are getting better-known," I said. "We've always had self-defence classes, of course. But I've heard credible rumours that Judgment and Anti-Skill are making plans on how to better make sure everyone- regardless of Level- is safe and comfortable. And, of course, there's the Student Union. I'm sure that many of you heard about Vice-President Gaouin's absence from the school this morning?"
There were a number of noises of agreement in response to my rhetorical question.
"She was attending the first Student Union meeting, with a number of other schools from across Academy City," I explained. "It's the first real step towards every-day students being able to contribute to making the City a better place for everyone- and if the city's a better place, who has time to be angry? The Student Union is a fairly experimental initiative, but I hope that soon enough, it'll be something we'll all have the means to support."
I ran a quick check over the room, to make sure there weren't any lingering questions- the Daihaseisai and the more public shenanigans from yesterday were the big questions on everyone's minds, so if I answered everything from those, then anything else could be covered outside of the meeting. I internally sighed when the last couple of questions were still in enough people's heads that I couldn't really leave it unsaid.
I picked one of them who looked like she was about to burst if she didn't get to say anything. "Is it true that you beat up a whole group of Skill-Outs?" she asked, eyes wide.
"If I may, my Queen?" said Tatsuki, standing up. I nodded to her; she spoke where she stood, rather than heading to the front. "'Beating up' would imply there was a fight," she boasted, and I made a concerted effort not to facepalm. Instead I just gave her a slightly flat look, which she willfully ignored. "There are those that see our Queen as weak, but having faith in us as Constitutionals- and refusing to throw her weight around over every little thing- is certainly not an indication of weakness. When we were out of our depth, she came to our aid; I hope that both our friends and our rivals remember that. Lady Shokuhou," she finished, bowing with purposeful melodrama towards me; I rolled my eyes, and gestured for her to sit down.
"That was either very sweet or a purposeful attempt to get on my nerves, and I'm not taking the time to figure out which," I deadpanned, before having a look for the last few questions. One more would probably be enough… "Miss Ueda?"
"I heard that Miss Iori joined the Kobayashi Clique, and that she's not picking fights with us any more!" she said. "Is that true?"
"That's also something I haven't had the chance to look into," I said, though it was definitely major gossip right now. "But I'm fairly sure that Miss Iori and I have come to an understanding; we both stumbled into the same problem together, which we've hopefully resolved."
Right. Daihaseisai, question time, anything else…? "And with that, I believe we've come to the end of our meeting," I said. "Be sure to rest up tonight, and enjoy the Daihaseisai!"
Of course, I still had a lot to do- between the meeting with Tatsuki later, needing to review the Nihilists, and the plan to actually tell us whatmst the heck was going on with magic and the Pope and all that nonsense, I was going to be very, very busy this evening. And there was the opening ceremony speech, which I was definitely going to be using my powers to cheat on.
But I had a feeling that this time, I'd be ready for it all- ready enough, anyway.
