The meal was nice, and not just because of the hot-pot restaurant that Misaka Senior had chosen, which partially explained how she got away with the fondue thing. One part was that it was a style I hadn't been to before, though that said more about my eating habits than their rarity- they were quite common. The Misakas were either introverts, too distracted by their mother, or using Radio Noise as the equivalent of sneaking their phones at the table, so I mostly got to sit in the background while the girls talked to their mother. Last Order was loudest, of course, but a lot of them had questions and thoughts, and that was before passing on requests from sisters who weren't in AC right now.
Misaka Senior- Misaka Misuzu, I learned- spent a not-insignificant amount of time getting up to apply hugs or tearing up in joy… when she wasn't being as much of a menace as Last Order, anyway. Drinking the rest of the wine she'd brought with her probably didn't help with her not-unjustified clinginess, but it was probably the main reason I was included in it.
Also, with her mother for comparison, I was never going to accuse Misaka of not being an ojou-sama again. (Until she kicked another vending machine, at the very least.)
We'd just finished dessert, resulting in Last Order learning that I knew how to make waffles, and demanding my recipe. "I wanna know, begs Misaka begs Misaka!" she demanded, trying to run towards me despite the hand on her head that was keeping her at arms-length.
"It's a secret," I replied. "At least until you're fully out of hospital. Besides, it's not too hard, you just need-" My watch buzzed. "...Oh, sorry!" I informed them, standing up (while making sure Last Order didn't fall face-first from my shift in position). "I've got the next competition in a minute. I hope you don't mind me heading off?"
"Oh, it's no problem!" said Misaka Senior. "We were planning to go watch, but I wouldn't want to leave Mikoto-chan alone for all of lunch, and some of the girls will be needing to rest soon anyway." She was right- I could see the ones who'd been out getting a little weary, Little Misaka in particular. "That means you too, L-O!" she added, because she'd already picked up on the girl's boundless energy.
"Aww, complains Misaka complains Misaka…" Last Order sighed.
I scruffled her hair, the little sticky-up strand on the top going unrestrained by the action. (Misaka Senior had it too, I noticed, which made me wonder if Mikoto had to flatten down the same tuft every morning.) "There's plenty more opportunities to have fun," I said. "And you'll need to save your energy for the Night Festival, too!" I took a step back from her before she could latch onto me like a limpet, and gave the others a short bow. "Well then. Thank you for the meal, and it was a pleasure to see you all!"
There was a general chorus of Misaka-noise- followed by some of the sisters starting to bicker at having said different things to other sisters.
From one of them, I heard, "Misaka just heard that 'have a good day' is cuter than 'goodbye', says Misaka…!" I tried to hide my smile at that, failed, and promptly took my leave.
I was full, but not overfull- a necessity, given the sisters all had a fairly limited palate right now (despite Last Order and Rei attempting to convince their newfound mother otherwise), and that their intended guest of Mikoto would've had the same competition I did soon. That was good; I needed some time to let lunch settle anyway before I exerted myself.
The walk took me just the right amount of time. By the time I got there, I could see that Tokiwadai- and the other school- were already well into gathering.
The girls weren't bunching up by clique- they were mingling, which was a good sign, though I could still see that the centre of attention was Kobayashi, tall and somewhat stern-faced while she was the acting authority. There were also a number of subfaction leaders, official and otherwise; I could see a frowning Makigami talking avidly, with the other girls mostly listening. Iori- now under Kobayashi's clique- was there too, as part of the discussion huddle, and Kongou was eagerly drilling 'how to cheer loudly for Tokiwadai' into a number of meeker-looking girls.
There was an air of tension to them. It was because of Misaka's continued absence, no doubt about it- she'd missed one game already, after all.
"Hey!" I greeted, jogging a little to get into speaking range. "Seems like I'm on time- it looks like things are going well?"
"Ah, Miss Shokuhou," said Kobayashi with a friendly smile. "It's good to see you. You have more people here, so I'll defer for the duration of the competition; I have to ask, though- do you know where Misaka is, and if she'll make it in time?"
"Unfortunately not- she's mostly-fine, and in good spirits, but she'll need bedrest for the next few days." There were a few consternated murmurs at that, and I decided to cut them off before they could start worrying. "So we're an electromaster down," I said, "but that just means the rest of us have to pick up the slack. We have to leverage everything we have, as hard as we can, even if that was the plan anyway; given the work we've put in, both for the Festival and more generally, we've got a heck of a lot to leverage."
Makigami nodded enthusiastically, as part of the general agreement noises now that people were listening. "Of course, my Queen!" she verbally saluted, and the fact she joined in on the 'My Queen'-ing for once was clear evidence of her hype. "A lot of our strategy was built around Misaka's abilities… How should we be adjusting our plans?"
Kobayashi coughed for attention, and I gestured for her to speak- she said, "From the information Miss Kongou has kindly gathered-" By which she meant 'from their mutual shit-talking', obviously. "-this school is prepared for us specifically; if they can defeat key targets before they're in position, they could overpower us. Defeat in detail, your clique members said." I gave her a nod. "Thus, we need to cooperate and make sure nobody gets caught off-guard, and that's doubly so for people who need preparation time, or who are better at helping others than attacking directly."
Iori- who was still too prideful to stay quiet for long, despite being a Kobayashi clique member now- cut in. "Which mostly means you, Miss Shokuhou," she said, nodding. "You've got that massive timer before you can do anything, haven't you?"
I nodded. "Me especially, yes," I agreed. My Level 5 restriction this time was simple- I was on a timer before I could use anything, beyond sensory abilities and local hydrokinesis at the very least. After that point, I was unrestricted; it effectively turned a generic balloon hunter game into King Of The Hill (though the actual King Of The Hill was tomorrow). If they didn't want a fully-powered Level 5 on the field, they had to take me out- and, more importantly for me, it gave me an excellent excuse to refrain from sandbagging with the mind control. "Got a plan?"
"As a matter of fact, I have!" she boasted, with a wide grin and a haughty look. "When we were having out little spat, I did some research into that friend of yours- 'Michan', you called her? Well, me and my friends' excellent research skills led us to a few interesting discoveries!"
I gave her a flat look at that. "...I know we made up, but please don't take such pride in your stalking ability," I requested, deadpan.
"I can and I will. Anyway! Her ability is very similar to mine, even if that goop stuff is a shoddy replacement for what she's supposed to be really good at," she said. "But I'm pretty sure I can get a hold of what I need, right here! There's a fountain nearby I can get water from, and I can get the rest of the materials from the environment. If I bulk out the right-salinity water with freshwater in the middle, even a mere hotdog's worth of salt could let me control a half a litre of water!" She proceeded to do an ojou-sama laugh.
…In retrospect, this was probably how Accelerator felt back when I'd bragged about my ice control. "...You're suggesting that since we both need time to get ready, we'll both need bodyguards at first, and then you can act as a bodyguard to take the pressure off everyone else, right?" I said, deciding to get to the point rather than focus on that. "It seems sound to me…"
Despite my usual exasperation with the girl, Iori was a powerful esper- I could wreck her easily, sure, but putting her up against a Level 5 with a single water-bottle wasn't really representative of her full skill. She was right in one other thing, too- her power really did resemble oobleck-mode Michan. The force and finesse of correct-material Liquid Shadow would still shred her (metaphorically and literally) in a theoretical death battle, but in a fight of putty versus saline solution, Iori had Michan almost completely outclassed.
I'd seen the girl's system scans. She was one of those rare espers that could mix both quality and quantity, and that was something I had to give her credit for- she could multitask whole swarms of water-blobs, and still have plenty of processing power left over to leverage the brute force of her not-insignificant kinesis grades. Her complete failure to threaten me said more about Level 5s than about her own power; she allegedly had a brain, and thus her powers alone weren't something that could reasonably concern me, but that didn't change the fact she could fairly easily shatter concrete if she (literally) put her mind to it.
Tatsuki had once suggested that, given her observed force output, and that human bodily fluids appeared to be well within the chemical limits of her power, she could totally rip the blood from someone's body if she tried. She had also asked me if she could pursue this further, to which I'd quite reasonably advised her that it would be rude to ask a girl if she could bloodsplode someone with her mind; the amended suggestion had been declined, and the two girls hadn't stopped bickering since.
So that all meant, if we could find a source of fluid, salt, or sufficiently-salty fluids, we'd have a hydrokinetic juggernaut on our hands. It had been very useful for clique formation, however, and was certainly very useful in a children's sports festival.
If she could get the materials to use it, that is. She relied on having a 0.9% salt content for the fluids she controlled; ideally, she'd use agar or something to bulk it out, but that wasn't completely necessary.
To add to that… "Anyone else got a setup-heavy ability that might benefit from some extra scanning?" I asked, and ran a quick Mental Out search.
However, the armbands on their arms- designed to make sure I wasn't cheating by doing too much human-manipulation before the timer- bleeped softly as they did, drawing various glances from the girls as they each flashed on the lowest of their five bars.
I glanced away, a little embarrassed at having been caught in my snooping for once. Then I coughed, and continued. "...Apparently the answer is no," I said, nodding to the others, pretending I'd remembered the bands were there. A few of them seemed a little caught-out by my pause themselves, but nobody made any complaints. "Anyway."
In terms of tactics… Basically, everyone else was either a generalist or too specialised to need to come with me. The Kobayashi Clique members Kinen Mei and Soushuu Kii (often just called Mei and Kii) were the closest to Hokaze, with instant acceleration and air wall projection respectively as their powers. Makigami's invisibility would be incredibly helpful for both attacking her enemies and defending herself, as an example of one of my own clique's less obvious assets. And they were by no means alone; Kongou was a particular powerhouse on her side, and her air jets would be incredibly useful for controlling the field
But other girls here, like Sakibasu or Iori's privacy-invasion duo (who were keeping their distance, but who seemed more discomforted than scared), were pretty mediocre from an ability-leveraging perspective. They were still vitally-important, both for indirect ability usage and for getting enough balls in the air to overpower the enemy's defences, but they'd need support or advantageous circumstances to deal with stronger ability-users on the enemy team.
"Kobayashi is the obvious leader- there's people more from my clique, your ability will be much better than mine for tracking and relaying information but before the handicap ends, and afterwards, I can cause a lot more trouble focusing on the enemy team if you're still focusing on keeping ours in one piece," I said. "We won't know much of what our enemy's doing until it happens, so stick together- power strength is our biggest advantage, so we should probably split into hunting parties and turtles… People focused on battle, and people focused on protecting their own helmets," I clarified, noticing a few confused looks.
As for people that would help in our group…
"I can be a pretty strong win condition, but they have to hyper-focus on keeping my balloon unhunted if they want to win, and we don't- I think just one more person is all we should put on my group, and that'll let the rest can take advantage of their distraction by playing normally and keeping them pinned down that way," I noted. "I can use myself as a relay between our group and Kobayashi, too- if you pick up on my mental voice, I can just feed the voices I hear into it, and the rules don't count that sort of thing as 'telepathy'." She nodded, seeing my point. "We need someone who can keep us in one piece, long enough to get Iori rolling, and then still be able to act as support for the 'complete' power assembly…"
That, to me, made one person here ideal for the task ahead.
"Miss Soushuu?" I asked- the aerokinetic girl perked up, her brunette hair (and her twin bangs in particular) pouncing slightly from the movement. "You've got defence with your air walls while we're still powering up, and you can swap it out with your mobility to play skirmisher afterwards; having attack and defence means you can move around with less support, and someone mobile would combo great with Miss Iori's water blobs. Anvil-and-hammer style- if the enemy's trying to break past them, you can pin them down pretty easily, I think."
"Oh, that makes sense, Miss Shokuhou," she said with a nod and a brief smile. "I'll be happy to work with you."
There was something… a note of distance, perhaps, in her voice. It struck me as odd. But I nodded- "Glad to have you, then," I replied.
__________
We faced our foes on a playing field, similar to that used for dodgeball. Kongou- another member of the competition- had done her utmost to rouse the many softer spirits in the group, and now, we faced our opponents with bean-packed balls at the ready.
The rules were simple. We couldn't use roads reserved for spectators, we couldn't go indoors, and we could only use assigned balls- ours being the red ones, theirs being the white. All of us were wearing paper balloons on our heads, affixed to hard white caps that were strapped to our heads; these paper balloons were the target.
Testing, testing, one-two-three… "Hey, say something, Iori," I said.
"Something?" she replied.
Kobayashi's voice came back to me.
"I can hear her loud and clear- that should be very helpful," she replied.
"Though it's very strange to hear multiple voices from the same connection."
I'd done a little poking with my power, given I'd confirmed I could do that from the telepath in my prior contest, and her AIM field was basically pulled into 'strings' that could attach to the AIM or brain of other people. I wasn't quite sure which. Either way, it meant she could only work as a star network, rather than any other type- all traffic had to be relayed through her, and that only happened as fast as she could process.
I'd attempted to get multiple people on the same link, when I'd invited her to an esper session, but that had just left everyone involved with migraines after the wires started clumping or signals started getting routed through the midway attachment points. That had been rather sad- it would've opened up more complex networks if it had been successful, but sometimes a duck was just a duck, and sometimes a one-way power was just a one-way power.
"Excellent," I said. "I don't think there's any more prep we need to do, then."
The plan was simple- the centrepoint would be our goal, and we could pick up Iori's power substrates on the way. And the rest would be as discussed.
The announcers' voices rang out. I put my focus on the team in front of me, mostly tuning them out while they rehashed the rules of the contest- getting an eye on who was focusing on me would be more important. Word of Misaka's absence had clearly gone out, because they seemed a lot more confident than a school going up against Tokiwadai normally would be.
And the people focusing on me were… honestly, almost all of them.
"We'll need initial protection from an all-out attack, looks like," I sent to Kobayashi, and she responded in the affirmative. They were going all-out, were they…?
An eager grin slipped onto my face- I saw the first cracks in their confidence show as they saw my expression. Here I was, with a golden opportunity to do a little mind-control flexing, and they thought I was going to let them take me out before I could indulge?
Hah. I'd just have to show them they'd bitten off more than they could chew.
I went tense in anticipation when the announcers finally got to the countdown.
"Competing schools, are you ready?!" they called.
"On your mark, get set…"
The pop of the starting signal went off, and everyone moved at once.
"Gooooo!"
The enemy team fired their abilities, and so did Tokiwadai, wind and fire and rubber and telekinesis all clashing as the enemy tried to disrupt us and our girls immediately countered them. Soushuu's air wall went up to keep the backlash away- I dived low, grabbing a pair of red-team balls from the ground, Iori following my lead. No point in leaving without ammunition, after all.
Our strategy was trading my immediate mobility for Iori's snowballing potential- she was slower in both reflexes and running speed, so we were still in range of the enemy when the dust cleared. "C'mon, Iori!" I yelled, as she pushed off the ground with her second red ball. "Places to go, people to beat!"
"Why are you only this energetic when it's a problem for me?!" she complained. My eyes flicked away from her-
My hand went up, and a ball curved wide, bouncing off of a wall behind me with a layer of frost. Another, telekinetically-propelled, was caught in one hand thanks to a quickly-dropped red ball and a hand-eye-coordination hack- I almost stumbled as it kept pushing for a few seconds, before going slack as the telekinetic seemingly tired. "Oh- sorry!" called Soushuu. She'd caught a fusillade of projectiles, but hadn't quite managed all of them.
"No worries!" I responded. I couldn't single out the person who'd thrown the ball I'd frost-curved- that seemed like a really good throw rather than a power, so kudos to them- so I made a finger-gun gesture through the air wall and continued my retreat into the streets behind us.
Despite having Tokiwadai on my side, the enemy team had one major positional advantage- both the centre of the field and the fountain Iori needed were on their side of the pitch. The bounds of the contest weren't regular or symmetrical at all, which meant the enemy team and their lower average power level could have a much greater space on their side to make up for it. So while we could break line of sight like this, we still needed to flank around the enemy and break through to our goals.
As we made it out of the enemy's area of awareness, I checked my passive scans. I could track them by their armbands without triggering anything, I'd checked, but mind-reading would trigger them, so I had to guess what was going on based on how they moved. "Play vanguard, would you kindly, Soushuu? They're fanning out to try and catch us- we'll need to stick close to you," I asked, and she nodded, slowing a bit. With that established, I started rattling off positions in my head, for Kobayashi to translate to the rest of the team.
We moved quickly- Iori was mostly making up for her lack of sportiness with dogged enthusiasm. It wasn't long before we hit the enemy lines.
"There they are!" yelled a boy, scruffy-haired, wearing glasses, around our age, as he rounded a corner- and quickly flung up a fire-shield as I mock-threw my ball at him.
The broken line of sight was enough for me and Iori to duck around a corner wall, while Soushuu charged ahead, using her air walls like steps to get some height. His eyes widened when he realised that she was heading over him- her pinpoint throw-from-above was disrupted when she had to stop and throw up cover against an attack from the street he'd come down.
But he was turned around now, eyes locked on Soushuu rather than us. I tossed my ball, and fine-tuned my aim with the same ice-deposit trick I'd used to throw off the enemy projectile- it soared through his paper balloon with a pop, letting Soushuu focus on the chokepoint she'd just found for herself.
"Score one for Tokiwadai!" I yelled, and ran to catch up, Iori quickly following up- she passed me her spare ball, and I responded with a thankful nod as we got back to Soushuu before she could get surrounded.
Another member of the enemy team- a girl, with black pigtails- shouted, "We've found Mental Out!"
"Don't you mean Mental Out's found you?" I shouted back with a smirk. "I'm not the only telepath we've got, y'know! Prepare to be ojou-sama'd!"
"Eh?" she called, immediately before Kinen- Soushuu's black-haired friend, with the ridiculously-long twin ponytails- sped past, taking the girl's balloon down with a drive-by melee attack. "...Eh!? What!? Nooooo!"
"Told ya!" I shouted back at her, though I didn't stop running away. Soushuu let us past; more competitors might come down the sides, but there were definitely enemies behind us.
"I see it!" panted Iori, drawing my attention back to her- she was by no means worn out by our sprint, fortunately. "The fountain! Can your power splash the water from here?!"
"Nope!" I responded, looking at the fountain design as it came into view; it was a pretty bog-standard ornament, albeit in a modern design with swooping abstract curves, standing proudly where two major thoroughfares intersected. A lot of the buildings around us, shopping stores mostly, had their entrances arranged to face it. "That margin's too high for my kinesis, we'll have to do it manually."
"Damnit, Chocohou!" cried Iori, and put on a burst of speed. "Have a consistent power level, will you?!"
We made it to the edge of the fountain, narrowly avoiding a tossed ball or two as we ran. We both came to a halt with an impact of hands on fountain's-edge. "Now what?" I asked.
"Watch this!" yelled Iori, and splashed some water on the floor.
"...I'm watching?" I said, confusedly, when nothing appeared to happen.
Iori's face contorted in frustration. "Damn, damn, damn!" she cried, briefly stomping her foot. "There should be salt here, I checked around the city before the festival! Wait- did they clean all the pathways since then or something?!"
"They did," Soushuu responded, backing up towards us, propping up new air walls as she did to keep us covered. "Why?"
"They must've washed any salt residue off!" she realised. "There's usually some on flat terrain like this, from when they salt it in the winter, or from cleaning agents- but if they're making sure everything is pitch-perfect…! We'll be bottled in if you don't think of something!"
"Wait- if I don't think of something?" I clarified, to which they both nodded. "How should I know where to find salt?!"
"You usually pull some sort of unexplainable nonsense out when there's a problem," Iori observed reasonably, and ducked a little as two more balls bounced off Soushuu's walls. "So figure it out before we lose!"
"Fine, geez!" I responded, and had to duck a curveball that was thrown over the wall. That person again?! "Umm… Uh-" Another ball bounced off. "Okay, gimme a minute to hash something out- I haven't tried solution-generation before… In the liquid sense I mean, I solve things pretty-"
"Just hurry up and do it before we're locked out, they're surrounding us!" pressed Iori.
She was right; enemy students were coming down two different roads, and even if I could see Tokiwadai attacks- a blast of air from Kongou knocking off a few long-shot throws, a ball from nowhere (aka Makigami) assassinating the balloon of a telekinetic that was about to get a ball past Soushuu, Kinen trying for another drive-by and getting caught out by my arch-nemesis with the really good throwing-arm- we'd definitely be caught out if I took any longer.
"...Ah, screw it!" I said, and roughly mashed some of the calculations for brain-detection with those for water-generation. Then I aimed my improvised function at the fine spray of water coming from the top of the fountain, and activated.
Immediately, the water started to turn, a slightly salty, metallic smell becoming apparent. Iori sensed it, turning to it before the effect was even really noticeable. "Keep doing that!" she cried, bringing up her arms as a mnemonic, and quickly gathering the altered fluid into a growing water-cored orb. "Whatever it is, it's working!
I spotted someone on top of a building- a tall boy with a triumphant grin, as he flung a ball- suddenly jet-propelled. Soushuu spotted it, but her walls took time to project, and she wouldn't make it.
It slammed into Iori's liquid mass instead. "We're in business!" she crowed- the outer layer had split briefly, spilling fresh water on the ground, but the structure as a whole held firm. "Shokuhou! Keep doing whatever you're doing. Try and make some ice on the inside- a slush will help keep it together. I'll be able to split off some blobs once we find soil!"
"Gotcha," I responded.
We started moving; Iori formed empty eye sockets and a stringy, gaping mouth on her blob, and sent it charging at the enemy students who were most in our way. It gurgled ominously, Iori altering its 'mouth' to force bubbles to foam through the water, and slammed a heavy dumpster out of the way like it was an empty cardboard box. "Hah! Yeah, you run!" yelled Iori. "Fear the blob of doom! Tremble before us, ahahah!"
"What is it, anyway?" asked Soushuu- Iori wasn't done with her buildup, and we were still in a bad position, so her air walls were still covering our retreat. I paused awkwardly (verbally- I was still running), trying to figure out how to explain it. "Umm, Miss Shokuhou?"
Iori noticed my silence. "...Wait," she said, turning from her blob's rampage. "…It's not made of watered-down pee or something, is it?"
"What? No, of course it's not made of- why would that be an option?!" I asked, incredulous.
There was a pause, the silence waiting for the actual clarification on what it was.
Seeing I wasn't getting away with leaving it at that, I added, "...It's, ah, cerebrospinal fluid. Probably."
"...Ah, probably?" asked Soushuu, looking slightly green.
"You made salt by… turning water into brain juice!?" Iori asked, having to take a breath halfway through, looking baffled by the realisation of what it was she was controlling.
"Look- you asked for me to improvise, and I improvised!" I argued. "Sometimes you pull a perfect power-block technique out of nowhere, and sometimes you have to make do with brain juice. Anyways, you were rushing me!"
"But you turned water into brain juice!" Iori repeated- this did not appear to be affecting her willingness to wield said brain juice in a massive blob monster, which was still charging ahead of us.
"I'm a brain-o-kinetic," I insisted, "what were you expecting when you didn't give me time to do something sensible?! Argh!" I threw my hands in the air. "I am never living this down, am I!?"
__________
I lobbed an aim-enhanced ball down from the top of the building, popping another ball on the enemy team. "How's the situation, Kobayashi?" I asked, watching Soushouu hop off another wall and back onto the rooftop, to catch her breath.
"There's less than a minute left, and we're already far ahead," said Kobayashi.
"You were right- their focus on you has thrown them off completely, and victory is in our grasp even without the timer."
With Soushuu to guard me, I'd climbed up a fire escape in the centre of the grounds, the whole area well within my range. From here, I had the high ground. Kongou's air jets, her understanding of air physics, and the occasional roof from Soushuu had let her send reinforcements of red-ball ammunition up to us- a number of our more defensive players had come up here to hole up with us, turning the game into a multi-layered siege as the enemy team tried to break our position and the rest of Tokiwadai surrounded them.
"With the timer, I'm sure your brain-o-kinesis will have no trouble securing that victory," she added.
"...I'm never living it down," I sighed despondently, and lobbed another ball at another target. That one missed, despite my cryokinetic aim-hacks, unfortunately.
Iori was still on ground level, acting as border defence. She wasn't entirely relying on brain juice for her blobs any more, and had sent off blobs on memory to refill her stores when she'd found other sources of water. Kongou had been taken out by a swarm of enemy students trying to break her supply line- she'd fought valiantly, but with her gone, Iori was probably the single strongest esper on the field right now.
She was clearly enjoying her reign of terror; with our improvised fortress at her back, her blobs ahead of her, and airdrops of ammo from the girls manning the walls, she was simultaneously laying down suppressive fire and imprisoning any white-team balls she or her blobs found inside of her blob monster. The thing was using its treasure trove to make its menacing gurgles even more menacing, as well as adding some ablative shielding against any attacks that tried to destroy it with brute force- an incredibly tough prospect, if you were forced to fight Iori's force with force of your own.
We'd taken casualties, but the enemy's distractedness had left them with a lot more members down. And any second now…
The armbands all beeped, and fell off. I grinned. "Showtime," I said.
I picked a few critical points in the enemy team- where Tokiwadai was pressing them hardest- and targeted a few individuals with a spare hand or two. I couldn't legally take them down with their team's balls, but between the pressure from Tokiwadai and the chaos from realising that the Level 5 had just lost their chains, they were in no position to differentiate any subsumed individuals from their own.
Their lines broke.
"Excellent work, Miss Shokuhou," Kobayashi affirmed, her telepathic link giving her an excellent view of the enemy team's collapse (albeit an abstract one- it could only detect audio clearly, and could only track its targets hazily otherwise).
"We've won for sure."
With a Level 5 to smash any organised resistance, and the ability to simply make people pick up a red-team ball and hit their own balloons once they lost control of the situation, we finally had the chance to wipe the floor with them. And so we did.
Our foes were clearly disappointed, and more than a little frustrated, at their loss; we made an effort to be gracious victors and thank them for the game, though between their lack of enthusiasm, and the occasional natural arrogance from our playerbase of ojou-samas, we didn't quite manage to soothe their egos. Once we left, we promptly piled up in the victors' area to celebrate.
Given the number of people involved, and the lack of any official leaders, there weren't any victory speeches this time. Schoolmates and visiting ex-schoolmates or out-of-school friends were piling up; I smiled, and slipped away from the pile of overly-excitable students to retrieve my phone from the event organisers.
I'd gotten a text from Hokaze.
'I saw your performance on the screens! 
That looked like so much fun! <3 Did you enjoy your meal? I really enjoyed my time with my parents! I've got a competition now, so I'll talk later!'
I texted her back:
'It's all going very good! Hope to hear from you later.'
I pocketed my phone, and started to move back to the celebration, where Kongou was starting to make an overly dramatic overview of the events from our team's perspective to the people who'd just joined us. It was busy, but it did look like fun, and this had been my last contest of the day- I had time to relax later. A few of the girls- Soushuu, Sakibasu, Makigami- saw me coming, and moved to let me into the group.
I was interrupted by the sound of clacking heels. "Oh, Miss Shokuhou!" said a voice I recognised- that of a member of the faculity.
"Oh, Miss!" I said. It was one of our maths teachers- she gave me the vibe of a young woman with old money, and was definitely the sort of person you'd expect from a fancy school. "Can I help you…?"
"I'm very sorry to interrupt, but a representative from one of our school's major affiliates has asked to speak with you," she said, smiling broadly. "It all seems very exciting!"
"Major affiliates?" I asked, tilting my head. Mostly because I wanted to know who, rather than the term confusing me or anything.
"Ah- I'm not sure how much the students keep track of adult things like that," she said, and started to explain. "A number of companies assist us at Tokiwadai, both for the prestige and for mutual benefit with our ability development programs. It's very rare for such a company to speak to a student personally- you should be proud of yourself!"
"...Thank you?" I said, puzzled- and perhaps a little irritated that I was being dragged off, unprompted. "Do I have any responsibilities, beyond turning up?"
"Oh, no- just be yourself," she said. This advice ranged from 'quiet' to 'somewhat dorky' to 'perfect professional' to 'stabby stabby', so it wasn't particularly helpful, but I nodded along like I understood what she meant. "Such requests are vetted by Director Unabara herself, so you don't have anything to worry about! You have... oh, half an hour, before you need to be there."
I nodded- I'd never met the director, so I didn't know how much credit I could really put in that. Probably 'not very much', given she'd been on the board with a literal cannibal up until he got Mugino'd. "I see," I said, keeping my concerns out of my voice.
"This could be very good for your future career- you could even get an excellent companion organisation right now! I hear that you haven't found one that fits you for a while now," she said, faux-conspiratorially; this was technically true, but completely missing the point about why I didn't have a companion organisation. "Anyway, you'll have to head back to Tokiwadai; one of the maids will guide you to the meeting room upon arrival, Doctor Kihara will be meeting you there. Enjoy your week!"
It took a moment for the name 'Doctor Kihara' to sink in. "...I'm sorry, what?" I questioned abruptly- but she was already trotting off. A deep-scan mind-read gave me literally no further details. Doctor Kihara?!
…Yeah, this was definitely something to contact Hokaze about, and Michan too, if she was nearby. I had no idea what was about to happen, and my faith in the director had plummeted off a roof with the name alone. (Kihara Gensei? Kihara Yuiitsu? Someone else with the same family name?) I moved to pull out my phone-
Someone grabbed my wrist, and my gaze snapped up to whoever had just touched me.
Soushuu Kii stared me in the eyes. "Miss Shokuhou," she said earnestly. "Please- you can't go."
"...You know about the name 'Kihara'?" I said, staring back at her. Then I glanced back at the celebration. "...Perhaps we should speak in private, first."
She nodded silently, and followed me.
