I woke up, finally, to sunlight trickling into my own room, past my spider-plants- which were a little dry, but would be right as rain with a bit of water. Ah… It was good to be out of the hospital.
The prescribed exercises didn't take as much time as a morning jog did. I burned some time practising emotional dual-processing instead- specifically, by writing another chapter of my mildly-popular internet light novel, What Makes A Slugcat. I was writing it somewhat like a cross between JoJo and a nature documentary, following the protagonists across generations. For this arc, the slugcats had inadvertently reactivated a defunct bio-engineering facility, releasing a bunch of dangerous biomechanical creations; I was planning to bring it to a close this chapter, with the death of the old, fat, wise slugcat I'd been following for the past few arcs. Ripping off that one scene from the old Primeval television series, I'd need to make the old slugcat feel content that he'd saved his two adopted slugpups in return for an old slugcat's life, despite being sad about the pain he'd cause them, while the two young slugcats tried to find a way to open the door and save him from the creatures he'd been locked inside with- it would both be very dramatic, and acted as an excellent two-empathy case to work on for my esper practise.
After posting that, and restraining my urge to repeatedly refresh for the sake of incoming upvotes and sad reactions, I checked the online drop points for info on Disciplinary Action that I'd set up last night.
Michan had checked with her contacts, and had managed to get a few people to pass on what information and rumours they had. Additionally, there were already a few reports coming in on good targets for further snooping on the DA. "Hmm…" I muttered. "Looks like someone important has a gym class, later today…" Gyms were fairly easy structures to identify and pass by, so it would be a convenient way to add them to my informant network.
Comparing the timeline to the bus routes, I noted that a shopping trip after school tomorrow would overlap my range with theirs. And, as I'd noted the last time I'd been dragged into a shopping trip, I'd grown out of a few things recently… I would've preferred a lunch trip, but alas, the times didn't quite fit. There were a few other opportunities for cooption I made note of, but that was the one I'd have to go out of my way for.
Satisfied that the crackdown was still moving quickly in the right direction, I moved on with my day.
Specifically, that meant breakfast. While I was usually happy to cook for myself, or just plain skip it, I decided to head down to the dorm cafeteria today. This was mostly a matter of practicality. While I was back to being ambulatory and capable of using electronic devices, I was not exactly enthusiastic about trying to use a spatula or a knife in one hand while I had explicit orders to take it easy with the other shoulder. The cafeteria, on the other hand, happened to be in the grips of an arbitrary number of maids, which meant that not even trays were necessary- it was more like a restaurant in that way.
While the majority of my friends weren't available, either due to living elsewhere (Sakibasu, Shirai, the assorted sisters and non-Tokiwadai students) or being absent on the exchange trip, I noticed one of them sitting on her lonesome. I'd gotten here quite early, so I was wondering if Awatsuki was still in her dorm. "Wannai, hi," I said. "Mind if I take a seat?"
"Shokuhou!" she said, surprised but pleased to see me. "You're back from the hospital? I'm glad. Ah, do take a seat… Awatsuki is skipping breakfast, she's getting swimming and esper ability advice from her senpai later," she explained, answering my unasked question. "But I have different free periods, so I'll be in a later session- I'm here early to make sure my food's gone down before I go swimming."
"Ah," I said. "I just tend to eat breakfast early, myself."
Wannai was eating porridge, with the fruit and spices needed to make such a thing appropriately fancy for a place like Tokiwadai. There were probably fancy restaurants in this city that were less try-hard than here. I, meanwhile, had ordered a standard 'soup and three sides' meal, composed of a few small bowls or plates of various things. It was a similar concept to an English breakfast- a breakfast of many small portions, that could've made a meal in and of themselves if you picked one or two and scaled them up. There was the miso soup and a bowl of rice, both mandatory, plus a protein (pork cutlets), a pickle (cucumber, with sesame), and an extra (some fruit salad). Japan didn't have a strong breakfast tradition historically, so it was also something you could have at lunchtime, with bento boxes being similar, minus the soup.
"Do you eat early because of the bento boxes you make sometimes?" asked Wannai. "I've heard there's girls who stalk the kitchens, waiting for a moment to strike…"
"Eh, kind of," I told her. "Basically, I'm really bad at portion sizes- so most of the time if I'm cooking, I end up cooking far too much. I've got a little minifridge in my room to put them in, so if I make breakfast early, I can have the leftovers at lunch; but if I haven't got room, I can slip into the kitchen so they don't get wasted." I paused. "You're right about the kitchen stalkers, though. Checking whether the fridge has anything in it is like a slot machine to them, I guess. Geez, sometimes I have to keep them from noticing I've put anything in there, just so they don't monopolise it…"
Wannai happily listened to me complaining. "Have you thought about cooking less food?" she commented sensibly.
There were probably fangirls who would have sharpened their knives if they'd heard her say it, given their opinions of Shokuhou's Homemade Bentos. "Yeah, but most single-portion items in the shops are ready-made meals," I said. "Not too many students cook for themselves as a hobby- especially in the School Garden- so the fresh ingredients tend to either be portions sized for the staff, or portions designed for a get-together. The packet sizes I have to work with don't really give me a reason to narrow things down…"
We chatted for a little while longer, my food arriving partway through. After a pause to start on actually eating breakfast, Wannai turned the conversation to some of the makeup products she used. I didn't use makeup much myself, not really seeing the point in it, so after some listening and agreeable comments it ended up a friendly debate on the merits of products for skincare versus for showing off. A few people said hello to us as they entered; Wannai was saving a seat for a friend she'd made, apparently, but the other seats on our table were filled when Mibuki (the Standard Bearers' party leader) and the majority of her subfaction gave us a polite greeting and sat down alongside us. The chat continued regardless.
"...I've only tried Academy City cosmetics, but the cosmetics here are much better-tested than outside," noted Wannai, while I finished of a bowl of soup. "So the scents they use are much better for your skin than anywhere else! And looking after your heart is just as important as looking after your body, so if a perfume or cream makes you feel cute, then that's just as much a service as a moisturiser, right?" In response, I hummed in acknowledgement. "Feeling special can help with your personal reality, too," she mentioned. This was true- it was part of the reason that higher-level espers tended to be more eccentric, to put it delicately. "So if you found something that fit you, it could help with your powers… maybe a honey scent?"
I hummed, putting my spoon down, and decided to humour her thoughts on the matter. "I do like sweet things," I admitted, remembering the ice-cream I'd had last time I was out with my friend group, "but I don't think it would really fit my personality. Or my powers, for that matter… If I did pick something, I'd probably go for something sharper, or crisper. Lemon might be a bit strong, orange might be a bit sweet… I like lime scents, but I don't think that fits either… Not a citrus, then?"
Wannai took the time to consider her reply around a mouthful of her porridge. However, her musings were interrupted- she swallowed, and waved to someone.
"Miss Kongou!" she said cheerfully, drawing the attention of a girl with long black hair. I didn't recognise her at a glance- one of the summer transfer students, if I had to guess. "I saved you a seat, if you'd like to sit with us?"
Mibuki, sitting a few seats away at the core of the cluster of Standard Bearers, gave a considering look to the interaction. 'Miss Kongou' seemed to notice that, as well as a somewhat surprised and slightly daunted look at meeting my own eyes; she chose to bulldoze her way through the situation. "Good morning, Miss Wannai!" she said, while I was eating cucumber. The girl's voice was somewhat loud and haughty, but she seemed honest enough. "It would be my pleasure to sit here," she noted as she took the proferred seat. She met my eyes, slightly nervously, but smiling. "...Would you introduce me to your friend?"
"Of course," Wannai replied. "This is Miss Shokuhou Misaki, she runs the Constitutionals! Miss Shokuhou, this is Kongou Mitsuko; she's a transfer student who arrived during the summer. We made friends after she helped us with carrying some equipment to one of the classrooms."
Ah, that was adorable. "Hi," I said. "Nice to meet you." Wannai had someone else to talk to now, so as Wannai asked Kongou a question about her own makeup, I returned to my meal.
From there, it was mostly Wannai and Kongou chatting. Kongou's nerves stayed somewhat on edge for a bit longer, but she seemed to relax when she realised I was just an introvert with food, instead of being there to silently measure her up or something. Wannai's social circle was surprisingly small for someone who liked being around people- she was a bit of an inverse to the usual 'extrovert adopts introvert' interaction- so it was good to see her making a new friend. Awatsuki seemed to get along quite well with Saten in particular, but a lot of Wannai's friends in my own little friend group or the swim team didn't seem to gel as well as that; hopefully Kongou would give her someone in addition to Awatsuki that she really meshed with.
The rollcall came about halfway through the meal; it was one of the weird quirks of Tokiwadai that Kongou hadn't quite got to grips with, apparently. Well, halfway through standard mealtime- I'd gotten here quite early after all. When I was done with my meal, I stood up, propping myself up on my crutch. "Well, it's been a pleasure to meet you, Kongou," I said. The girl had made a good impression on me, but the extrovert vibes were wearing me out, and she had Wannai- who'd also finished, but had made no moves to leave- to keep her company. "I'll see you around!"
"It was a pleasure to meet you too, Lady Shokuhou!" she replied. Indeed- she was a bit much, but nice enough.
__________
My first two periods were free periods. Given that human brains generally performed best when you didn't strain them to their limits, Academy City school courses (the ones I was familiar with, anyway) tended to be dense lessons, followed by free periods and homework, rather than consecutive lessons through the day. You could use these free periods for various things, though you could only leave the school grounds if you had permission, as the Nihilists had done for their lab in second and third period. The first of my own free periods, however, had been reserved for the System Scan.
At its most simple, a System Scan was a method of systematically linking your AIM field strength to its observed effects. In many ways, it was like the rote tests you had at the end of a school term; its purpose was to monitor, rather than to grade you on anything- though unlike such tests, we had these at both the start and end of a school term. Not everyone responded to esper lessons in the same way; part of the frustration that many low level espers had was that they'd often backslide in the absence of their usual regimen. Backsliding was one of the big separators between Level 2s and Level 3s, actually. While reaching Level 2 was often a matter of not noticing something vital, Level 3 tended to be the line where powers became useful enough to be self-sustaining.
It wasn't a hard and fast rule, but certainly, backsliding in a school like Tokiwadai was much rarer than in others. Many delinquents were those who'd become frustrated with their progress, and disillusioned with esper classes, and had sought out alternative means of getting ahead. While there were certainly those who gave up, as Skill-Outs tended to, they weren't the only end of the spectrum… Psychedelics, voluntary suffocation and electrical shocks weren't too uncommon in back-alley efforts to boost psychic powers, their only real use being the conviction they fed to one's Personal Reality, and I'd even heard of gangs where unanaesthetised trepannings were a membership requirement.
Someone like myself or Railgun, meanwhile… there weren't enough Level 5s to tell, but I was fairly sure that you could demarcate the difference between a Level 4 and a Level 5 as where power growth became self-sustaining. Observations like that had been what drew people to Deadlock, the fanatics who'd attacked me last year; they'd thought that these patterns were because of higher-levels passively suppressing lower-levels somehow, rather than being skill barriers on the curriculum. Admittedly, I could safely assume that my self-directed growth this summer was unusual even by Level 5 standards, but I'd only really improved my methods rather than my power. Of my summer activities, it was only the effects of the various high-strain impromptu workouts it had gotten, and possibly my improved confidence in its abilities and versatility, that would cause an increase in the objective strength of my Personal Reality.
Even if my strength hadn't grown all that much objectively, however, it was still incredibly funny to show up to the System Scan and suddenly be a few orders of magnitude more competent with some of my side skills.
First, I had shown off by using my cryokinesis in a swimming pool. I was used to working within membranes, so I found it quite difficult to freeze water in the middle of the pool; instead, I had to make the ice creep in from the edges, where the pool wall met the water's surface. But as I already knew from my range feats, Mental Out could make up for in quantity what it lacked in pinpoint pressure, so the side of the pool still made for a much better showing compared to using a water bottle. I was yet to achieve a baseline level of non-mathematical parallel processing, alas, but when boosted with Mental Out I was starting to get there. It wasn't as consistent as I'd like, but it took about twenty seconds to freeze a quarter of a water bottle's thickness of ice on the rim of the whole pool, versus about five seconds to freeze a full water bottle I was holding. That was quite a lot of ice, in the grand scheme of things.
Admittedly, I wouldn't be making an ice rink any time soon unless I figured out how to freeze a pool top-down instead of from the edges of the surface; an eyeballed estimate suggested it would take me a good three or four hours to reach the middle of the pool from the edges, and I did not have the time for that. A number of girls on their free periods had come to watch the System Scan, since I was basically the only person doing it, and had found themselves basically watching paint dry during this part- a few American exchange students were included in the number, quite confused at why people thought the ice was noteworthy enough to bother staring at.
The exchange students were much more enthusiastic, however, when I used the volunteers to stage a few scenes from the original stage projects they'd worked on before the summer holidays. It was to show my full-brain control and information copying for the System Scan; it didn't really matter exactly what I did, so it was a good time to show off. Granted, all those scenes had four people at most- I wasn't quite good enough for that degree of complexity on five people at once- but when someone pulled things out of your head to put on a show for you, it didn't matter too much how many people were involved.
Still, there were a lot more ways to use an ability than I had in the hour-slot I had for the System Scan. Most System Scans were a lot shorter than that, since there were usually fairly easy ways to quantify abilities, but my focus on breadth over depth meant that there were quite a few different nifty tricks that needed official testing. An average pyrokinetic basically needed to measure pressure, temperature and volume, then stick their hand in an AIM detector to get the objective figures. I needed to do a lot more than that, though sticking my hand in an AIM detector was still the same.
AIM detectors were basically just a big pile of sensors in a box, with calibration for individual students being software-side, as AIM fields were detectable in a variety of forms- heat for pyrokinetics, EM waves for electrokinetics, that sort of thing.
Mental Out, specifically, was observed from an AIM detector via the excitation of water vapour (rather than by a drop in temperatures, as its particular form of poltergeist might imply). This effect was exponentially more powerful the closer you were to me, and was just about possible for humans to detect based on the activity of their chemoreceptors. Basically, people had a stronger sense of smell when standing a metre or less away from me; funnily enough, that effect was how I was selected for Exterior in the first place.
The initial idea for Mental Out had been using it as a method of hyperstimulating the olfactory cells. It might not have sounded like it had anything to do with mind control, but the incidental amplification of smells due to my AIM field's passive effects included an increased sensitivity to pheromones. Thus, the initial Mental Out plan was pheromone-based rather than neurological, using natural and artificial pheromones to manipulate moods. I wasn't sure if I could produce enough pheromones passively for Mental Out's AIM to have any significant effects on humans, but given its passive nature, I was willing to be willfully ignorant. Pheromones had been cut from my curriculum quite quickly, regardless. I'd proceeded to get distracted and try to work on auxiliary uses, as I still often did, and managed to start stimulating other types of receptor- it was only a small leap in logic to start working with neurotransmitters and neurons instead, and the rest followed logically from there.
At the end of the hour, I stuck my hand in such a box- it was easiest to measure AIM after intensive use, after all. It bleeped with a friendly green light, and read out my score in a friendly electronic voice. The examiner next to me hummed, and jotted something down on her noteboard- for the most part, System Scan measurements were automated, so she was mostly here for helper coordination, verification of results, and to talk to me in the post-Scan session.
Part of that automation was the printing of report cards. There weren't too many letters you could put on such a card, so when the next level was 'literally God' and I'd surpassed many of the other Level 5s in my specialities, a few of those letters were just 'S+'. However, my recent improvements had changed my Psychometry grade (used for literal psychometry, but also close-range sensory fidelity) from a C to a B, while Psychokinesis had jumped from F to D.
"This is extremely impressive, Miss Shokuhou," said the examiner, having to stop staring at the report to meet my eyes. "You've made some great strides over the summer… May I ask how you did it?"
I hummed, resting my chin on the back of my hand. I'd thought this through ahead of time; the biggest shifts in the balance of power- like Mental Upper- were things I'd kept concealed, but getting objective measurements on my power in return for a cynical display of 'trust' on my part was a reasonable trade, especially when I was using those measurements. "If I had to say," I replied slowly. "I would say… guts!"
She paused in her writing. "...Guts?" she said, after a moment. "Your digestive system, or your emotions? You should be aware that the latter can…"
"Yes, yes," I interrupted. "I know, I know; back in early levels, you have to work on that 'zen' state where you're focused on maths, otherwise you'll stunt your maths and get stuck at a low level. But Mister Sogiita always talk about how important guts is." She almost physically twitched at the mention of his name, having had her worst fears confirmed. "And I can already check if it's stunting my maths growth, so if the zen state isn't a 'walk before you run' kinda thing, I can just stop putting so much guts into this, y'know?"
"And your maths is still the same?" she asked.
Minus the rearrangement I'd done… "Of course!" I chirruped, setting my neurons to use the 'truth' outwards response rather than the 'half-truth' one. "I just put more guts into the stuff I'm bad at."
"...That isn't a very rational approach," she commented, frowning.
"Well, you're not wrong," I responded cheerfully, with an Uiharu-like smile.
After some back and forth along the lines of 'please take this seriously' versus 'but I am serious', she moved on to other aspects of the discussion. "Since your cryokinesis has improved massively," the examiner said, not commenting on exactly how or why it had displayed such improvements, "have you considered working on macro-hydrokinesis or hepsokinesis? Or using your powers to melt the ice back down again?"
'Hepsokinesis' referred to steam control, 'hepso' being derived from 'to boil' in Ancient Greek. Technically, 'atmokinesis' would be more correct since 'atmo' meant 'steam' or 'vapour', but given that 'atmo-' was more associated with weather or air nowadays, it would be a bit confusing to use that term instead. "I've tried melting it, but that only works by convection," I told her. "I can't melt the ice itself, not in the ways I've tried." For emphasis, I started growing a little mound of ice on a coaster- they were left out for little cups of water to be placed on, but I had my plastic bottles instead. "Once it's locked in place, I can't get a grip on it unless I convect it with water that I've kept from freezing…"
I stopped, because she was looking at the ice strangely. She noticed my look. "...One moment, Miss Shokuhou," she said, "I'd like to test something."
"Of course," I replied. The examiner got up, and- after a few minutes, in which I started making a little ice bonsai on the coaster out of boredom- returned with a box.
The box was transparent, but was otherwise quite similar in size and shape to a standard boxed AIM detector. She gave the ice bonsai a bemused look, to which I simply shrugged. "Miss Shokuhou, could you do the same thing with your hand inside here?" she asked me. "Just the ice growth," she added, to clarify she didn't mean making anything fancy.
I nodded, a bit confused by what she was thinking- there was a rubber ring around the seal, which gripped my arm gently but firmly. As requested, I started spooling up TreeESP, and growing the ice inside. "There's more vapour in the air than you'd think," I noted. "I'm not sure where you're getting the impression that it's ex-nihilo."
"Humour me, please," she asked, and so I did. Inevitably, the ice formation slowed down as the humidity in the box dropped, though it did continue to grow. "...As I suspected. The air pressure in the box is too high, even accounting for unusual ice phases."
"Too high?" I asked. "What, is my arm swelling or something?"
"No, the sensors should be accounting for that," she responded. "It monitors evaporation from your arm, in addition to ambient humidity and pressure. It can only mean that there's more ice in there than there should be."
"...That clearly doesn't make any sense," I commented, even as the ice continued to grow. "So the extra volume in the ice has to be coming from somewhere."
"It doesn't have to 'come from' anywhere, actually," the examiner responded. "Macro-scale quantum fluctuations…"
I caught on to what she was saying before she could finish speaking. The usual example of psychic powers was deciding whether Schrodinger's cat was alive or dead, using one's personal reality. However, you could do more than just change the states of already-existing particles in that manner.
Theoretically, it was possible for particles to spontaneously come into existence. The probability for this was incredibly low… but so was a particle's direction suddenly happening to coincide with the vector a human brain was imagining, as Accelerator would cause, or an electron suddenly existing as both a particle and as a wave, as Meltdowner could manage. This was actually a common explanation for pyrokinetics- they were creating isolated particles which released heat or immediately bonded with oxygen in the air, resulting in the commonly-observed orange flames rather than plasma. "Right," I interrupted. "Doesn't that usually require higher-level psychokinesis, though? And isn't it usually isolated particles that disappear shortly afterwards?"
"It does, and it is," she responded, nodding.
"...And we don't have any explanation for why it's happening?" I said, thoroughly confused by the blob of ice, still growing, in defiance of all logic. When she went into an explanation on quantum fluctuations, I checked my maths.
It was definitely supposed to be capturing water vapour from the air, rather than generating it... But the 'identify water vapour' step was in a different section to the 'add to structure' step, and I hadn't added an 'if fail step 1, return to step 2' variant.
I'd been doing the maths under the impression that, if the full equation failed, nothing would happen. I'd chosen to do this because I had enough things on my mind with TreeESP; I'd removed the logic switches for ignoring a failed equation for finding the vapour, in favour of having maths that was easier and that would fit in the tree's bubbles more neatly. But something was clearly happening regardless, with Mental Out describing that ice was there, and normal reality meekly standing in the corner and nodding in response. So my conclusion was that, by continuing to describe the positions that ice would be in when I found no particles to add to it, and then checking the results, I'd been generating water molecules ex-nihilo in situations where there wasn't enough water, simply because it hadn't crossed my mind to assume that Mental Out would be able to act on molecules that didn't exist.
My usual, non-TreeESP equations were critically flawed because they were designed to make sense. After all, any plan which made sense had failure points; if they failed, then you had to either retry the plan from the start until it worked, or find an alternative to that step. However, an equation where failure was ignored meant that you could still move onto the next steps, ultimately leading to an equation that made so little logical sense that success or failure at any given step had no effect on the output. And by completing said nonsense, my Personal Reality was somehow- sometimes, at least, given it was still more efficient with water or high humidity- able to enforce it anyway, resulting in ice appearing for the sake of my maths being correct.
For the simple reason that I assumed it would block, logic was dead. I felt dumber for having slain it entirely by accident.
Sure, there were entirely logical quantum physics reasons why this worked (at least if you assumed AIM made any sense whatsoever from the perspective of thermodynamics), and it was actually both surprisingly ubiquitous and no less thermodynamics-defying than anything else I was doing, but when the meeting was over I was still fixated on it. I'd taken the time to confirm that ice still grew more with fixed TreeESP equations than without, but I still observed that the original, nonsensical TreeESP equations were stronger for their generating in addition to freezing ice. How did that make any sense? Why did something so incredibly stupid manage to be successful, entirely unrelated to the actually-intentional parts of TreeESP?
"You seem to be in a dour mood, Miss Shokuhou," someone said as I trudged through the corridor.
I turned to look at her. "Oh, Vice-President?" I said. Her name was Gaouin Tsukasa. Gaouin was leader of the largest traditionally-structured faction in Tokiwadai, with all the power and prestige that came with it. To her side was her aide, Kirara; the girl wasn't actually a part of Tokiwadai, instead being one of the maids from Ryouran Maid School, the same trade school that produced the cafeteria maids. "Did you need something?"
She chuckled jovially. Gaouin was rather noticeable given her unusual hairstyle; she styled it short and wavy for the most part, with a slightly untidy (if elegant) fringe. To the back of her head were two tufts, tied with hairbands, that reminded me of birds' wings. "It's my duty to see to the needs of my fellow students," she said. "After all, you are a fellow student, are you not?" She hummed. "You just had your System Scan… did you not do well, Miss Shokuhou?"
While she was perfectly elegant most of the time, Gaouin sometimes had the vibe of a quick-talking used car salesman; she was crafty and conniving, and while she had her honour, it was a politician's sort of honour. When she won, it was because she was the best, not because her opponent hadn't been given the opportunity to try, and whatever underhanded tactics had propelled her to victory were just part of the game. Right now, she was fishing for information more than anything.
She was also purposefully letting me read her mind. Her ability, Reflex Answer, was a psychological one that could parry Mental Out by acting as a 'quick reset' button, so if she really wanted to hide something, she could keep asking herself dumb questions to frustrate my efforts for a while. I didn't see much reason to deny her, though.
"Oh, the opposite, actually," I told her, stopping and leaning myself on the wall to take the weight off my arm. "I improved, but in an incredibly frustrating way, on top of the things I was working towards… Basically, I got my maths wrong with my cryokinesis," I said, "and it worked anyway."
She chuckled. "Why, the mighty Shokuhou Misaki, getting her maths wrong? I thought Level 5s were supposed to be good at such things?" she told me.
"If you look at Mister Sogiita and his explanations, you can see that it's not actually true," I noted. "Level 5s have really good processing speeds, but that doesn't always mean we're smarter. Sometimes we just do incorrect things faster."
"How did that happen, anyway?" Gaouin asked me. "Copying that boy's idiocy doesn't seem prudent for someone representing Tokiwadai as you do."
"If it's stupid and it works reliably, it's not stupid," I countered.
She was obviously needling me, but as with Iori, pretending she wasn't always ended up funnier- either they were forced to have a civil conversation due to the lack of a response, or they blew their tops.
"But no," I continued, "this was unrelated- I was playing around with cryokinesis, and I took out some logic gates for the sake of focusing on a different part." She was a little miffed at that- she was someone who focused more on the personal reality end than the mathematical end, so I was basically humble-bragging by saying I could calculate entirely different mathematical routes by rote. "It was supposed to break the logic of the equation and force a non-result, but instead it broke the logic of thermodynamics… It's not too uncommon, but I took pride in Mental Out being more sensible than that, y'know?"
"Ah well," said Gaouin. "We can't all be perfectly rational creatures, can we?" I made a noise of acknowledgement. "While you're here," she said. "Have you given any thought as to the Daihaseisai, or the student council elections?"
The Daihaseisai, or the Daihasei Festival, was an inter-school sports festival where the use of psychic abilities were encouraged. Tokiwadai was still a bit salty from losing to Nagatenjouki Academy last year. It was understandable; Tokiwadai was entirely composed of middle-school girls who'd only started having intensive PE lessons post-defeat, and a large number of powers were basically useless for sporting, while Nagatenjouki was considered the best school for actual schooling in the entire city. There were exceptions like Hokaze in Tokiwadai, but having better PE programs and older students- some of whom focused their careers and abilities on sports- in Nagatenjouki meant that a lot of us has been curbstomped.
I had not been among those getting curbstomped, since I basically only had one and a half legs at that point in time, due to the terrorists that had attacked me during the summer. But even my running routine would only take me so far against a school like that. Many Tokiwadai students were preparing for it, either to prepare to show their mettle physically, or to help the city itself prepare- the Daihaseisai was one of the select times of the year where visitors could enter Academy City in large numbers, and so people wanted themselves and their city to be the best they could be for the sports festival.
"We've had some funding requests from some of the sports groups," I noted. While the largely non-competitive Competitive Ambulation Club was basically held by me personally, I made a point of supporting the less prestigious sports clubs in the school- that was how Wannai and Awatsuki had joined, replacing the previous representative of the Swimming Club that had left last year. The Archery Club and Equestrian Combat Club didn't need any help, but clubs like the Softball Club enjoyed a loose association with the Constitutionals as an additional source of funding. "And there's some events being planned. I haven't had too much to do with it, beyond accounting…"
"And the student elections?" she asked, before I could continue. "What of them?"
Admittedly, interrupting me when I was about to speak was much more annoying than anything that Iori (the dollar-store Hokaze faction leader) could throw at me- I suppressed a twinge of irritation. "What about them?" I said, shrugging. "The whole reason we're called the Constitutionals is because the two of us at the top keep trying to foist the leadership off on the other. It'd be a big boon for any other faction president, but if I had to guess, I'd probably end up supporting one of our party leaders in the running."
"Hmm. So you'd much rather be a figurehead than do any work, I take it," she said, tutting.
"I am perfectly happy with looking fancy, doing paperwork and trading ideas, instead of actually having to make plans," I told her sagely. "Prestige is all well and good, but my ego's plenty big enough without having to inflate it myself."
She looked down at my- okay, no, she didn't look 'down', it was more horizontal, as I was quite tall and she was kind of a midget like that. "...Ah, your 'ego' is what's too big," she said, before meeting my eyes again. "Though I do have to say-"
Whatever she was saying was interrupted by the sound of my phone ringing. "Oh, excuse me," I said, checking the caller- Tatsuki? "I'll need to take this, it might be important." She twitched in irritation, and prepared to speak her mind- in response, I raised a hand and attempted to put her on hold with Mental Out, which she proceeded to parry with Reflex Answer, which basically had the same effect as we entered a glorified game of psychic pong.
"Tatsuki," I said, while Gaouin frustratedly reset her brain in an effort to get a word in edgeways. "Is something wrong?"
"Our safety measures have averted any harm, but there's been an accident at the thaumatological lab, my Queen," said Tatsuki shortly. I sucked in a breath. "We'd like you here as soon as possible to ensure that we're correct in our observations. Additionally, do you know of a man called 'Stiyl Magnus'?"
"No," I responded, frowning. "Why? Is there an intruder?"
"Ai provided a description of the man- tall, long red hair, black coat, wears a cross, smokes, tattoo under the right eye, wears rings and ear piercings- as preparing to intrude on our work; Miss Index provided his name, and confirmed that he's a coworker and ally of hers, but that he might cause serious problems if he's misunderstood the situation," Tatsuki provided. I grimaced- given that the last magician I'd stumbled into had been capable of pseudo-resurrecting the dead… Well, I couldn't even begin to describe what 'serious problems' might look like. "He's apparently an expert in applied thaumaturgy, and very capable of violence."
"Right," I replied. It sounded like it was a fairly serious situation, so… as much as it would be rude to ditch her, I couldn't let Gaouin slow me down. "I've just finished with the System Scan, so I'm on my way- I'll be there when I get there." Then I hung up, and turned back to Gaouin, who looked incredibly frustrated. "Sorry, but there's a faction matter that needs my attention," I said apologetically. "My people need me."
"...Very well," she said, dropping her use of Reflex Answer as I dropped Mental Out. "We will be continuing this conversation later."
As I'd left, I noted that I'd definitely pissed her off- but, as the second-biggest faction leader, she was also the sort of person who could understand exactly why I'd gotten ticked off from her trying to keep me there. Her own irritation wasn't just because I'd somehow ignored her power; it was also because she hadn't thought I'd the willpower to challenge her, and now she was asking herself why I didn't show it for anything else.
Troublesome. But as I'd said, there were more important things I had to deal with right now.
___________
I took a taxi to the vicinity lab- flagging it down with Mental Out for convenience- and started looking around for this 'Stiyl' fellow.
He wasn't exactly hard to find, given his description. I found him being trailed by a cleaner robot, that was hounding him for 'littering'- he was handing up some kind of card on an alley wall, a building or two away from our one, and using his height to make sure that the robot couldn't reach it. I frowned; he seemed to have some sort of barrier against Mental Out working, though what exactly it was doing to stop me from reading his mind, I couldn't quite figure out.
Despite the robot doing its best to harass him, his situational awareness was good enough that he noticed me easily as I approached. He turned to face me as I got closer, until we were both standing a few feet apart, practically squaring up to each other. He didn't speak, so I did. "Would you be Mister Stiyl Magnus?" I asked him neutrally.
"That I would," he responded, with a strong English accent. His voice was somewhat higher than the size of his frame would suggest, and he spoke in an uninterested tone of voice, like one of the delinquents who were confident enough to refrain from picking fights with super-powered middle-schoolers. "And you're 'Shokuhou Misaki', I guess?" he asked me, a quiet undertone of threat in his voice. "Most cabal leaders I've dealt with were taller…"
'Dealt with'? I wasn't sure exactly what he meant, but I could guess easily enough. "The research group's leader would throw a fit if she heard you call her a 'cabal leader'," I commented, following my usual strategy of bullheaded politeness. "You're an associate of our consultant, Mister Stiyl?"
"If you want to call me by my surname, it'd be Mister Magnus," he said- 'Magnus-san', verbatim- "-but I don't know why you'd want to show any respect like that." He tilted his coat open, and my eyes moved to the hilt of a bladed weapon concealed within. "After all, respectful people don't go around kidnapping my 'associates', do they…?"
"That they would not," I agreed.
Ping.
Get working directory- local, animal, human, awake, combatitive.
Identify mental models: 'bladed weapon attack y/n.'
Refer list to working memory.
Engage active monitoring: 'bladed weapon attack y/n'.
"Which is why she's volunteering in return for a cash stipend and free lunch," I continued, as I set up a mental model to pre-empt him if things turned violent. "As an expert and safety consultant, she has veto rights on anything we're doing, and we have regular ethical reviews to make sure members of the research club are actually listening to said vetos. She's also free to leave the project at any time."
He snorted. "I'll believe it when I see it," he said. It looked like he was readying his blade. Something seemed… off, though. Even if Mental Out didn't have anything to say about it, my gut said that violence wasn't his endgame. "Why should I believe a word that someone like you is saying?"
"Would you like to see it, then?" I asked him. "From what I've heard, nothing in there would give me any reason to keep it from one of Index's coworkers."
"Hmph. You're either too trusting, or too confident that you can fight me," said Magnus, a cocky smirk breaking out on his face. "Either way, you're definitely stupid… Let's go see this little cabal of yours, then."
We walked slowly, though this was mostly because I was using a crutch rather than any lack of haste. "So," I said. "You're one of Index's coworkers. A fellow Anglican, I would guess?"
"Do you think I'm here to chat?" he replied. I rolled my eyes, and let the silence hang.
After a minute, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it. I frowned. "Oi," I said. "You're not allowed to smoke indoors. It's only a block away, we're nearly at the door."
The smirk returned, and he let out a puff of smoke- I wrinkled my nose. "I don't think you can stop me, cabalist," he told me. "Can you?"
He was blatantly baiting me, but I took the bait- whatever was keeping his mind protected, it wasn't protecting his cigarette. Even a little bit of cryokinesis was enough to snuff it out; he looked down at the end of it, bemused, before giving me a look. "Apparently I can," I replied. "If you light it again, you're going to set off the fire alarms, y'know?"
"Bah, what would a sorcerer know about fire alarms?" he said, grinning at me. I had the feeling there was an in-joke here that I was missing, but I let it pass.
We stopped at the door; I had to write out a guest pass for him, putting his name as 'Magnus Stiyl'; I had to ask him what the romaji were, for the sake of ensuring everything was filled in completely. On getting the spelling of his name, I decided he was either fucking with me (likely) or he'd obtained the most chuuni name possible at some point (also likely). Either way, it was someone else's problem.
With an out-of-place green lanyard around his neck, we headed inside, to our lab's doors. "We have a basic decontamination chamber," I said, "so expect a small electric shock."
"Decontamination?" he asked, repeating the word- he was English, so I didn't expect him to know every word in the dictionary. 'Remove dye' was an approximate translation; it was shorter in Japanese, so he didn't mispronounce it. "If this is a trap, you'll regret it. Trust me." He didn't sound like he was bluffing.
"It's not, we do it for everyone that enters or leaves," I said. We waited for Hanabi's puff of decontaminating fire, then I gestured for him to follow me inside. I considered making a snarky comment about not having checked if wizards had death curses or something, but held my tongue.
As we entered, using a purely technological electrical shock in Ryukyu's absence, we both looked around appraisingly. Magnus' eyes drifted across the eyes of each girl, then the floor- where I'd previously seen the girls laying down tape- before landing on Index. I looked over the assembled Nihilists.
Hanabi was standing by the doors, giving Magnus a suspicious look. Tatsuki was furiously writing, next to Onizuka, who was sitting on a workbench, looking rather miserable. Sakibasu was also sitting on the workbench, one arm around Onizuka; they both looked relieved to see me. Ai was on the floor, resting plank-like with her face up, reading her phone; her face had some safety goggles on top. Index herself, finally, had been sitting on a chair beside the cluster of girls- she'd just stood up, putting down a box of breadsticks, which she had clearly been going through at rodent-like speeds. "Stiyl!" she greeted, cheerfully enough.
"Index," he responded. "What are you doing in a place like this?"
"Well… Shokuhou found out about magic because she's a mind-reader," she explained, giving me a wave, "and I didn't want her to read all the grimoires. Then I found out that her friend has a Stativarius violin, so they're wrapped up in magic already. So now I'm making sure that they don't do anything stupid, and they're letting me know anything they learn, which Necessarius can use if supernatural abilities spread outside of Academy City, or if someone from Academy City learns magic and causes us trouble."
Necessarius? Stiyl shook his head. "You're going to get us in trouble if you do things like this," he said to her.
She tilted her head. "I told Touma, though," she said. "And you didn't say anything like that to him. And there's already trouble- Shokuhou said somebody else was doing things like this, even if she didn't say what they were doing."
Magnus turned to me, frowning. "Someone else is combining science and magic?"
I grimaced. I didn't really want to spill the beans, especially not when I didn't even know what this 'Necessarius' was. "There's a group called Disciplinary Action that's been causing trouble in Academy City," I said. "It's being dealt with by the appropriate people." Namely, 'nobody with any position of authority in the City'. "It's not the sort of thing I want anyone here involved with; I trust you're not going to butt in on the matter?"
He looked at me with an unreadable expression. "No, I'm too busy for that," he said. "I'm here on other business." His attention turned to Index; he continued, "I have an edict from the Anglican Church; it requires both you and the boy." He gave her an amused grin, and stepped forwards. "So… You're being kidnapped!"
A look of understanding flashed through her. "...What rotten luck," she grumbled, then turned to us, completely unconcerned by the news. She glanced back at Magnus. "Hey, what time do you need Touma there?"
"Hmm… Seven pm," he responded. "At the Hakumeiza Theater."
"Call Touma and tell him to be at the Hakumeiza Theater at seven pm," Index told us. "And add something really chuuni," she added- Magnus looked rather offended at that. "Like 'If you value the girl's life', or 'If you don't, you'll regret it'. He'll understand what it means, okay?"
"...Right," I agreed. "Tell Kamijou that there'll be some horrible fate for you and/or him, seven pm, Hakumeiza Theater. …Have fun?"
"Thanks, Shokuhou!" she responded, and started walking to the airlock- Magnus promptly hoisted her into a fireman's carry over one shoulder and walked out himself. Index waved to us as they left.
"...What just happened?" asked Tatsuki.
"Honestly, I have no idea," I replied.
