Chapter 4: Turning Points
Over the next days, Misaka continued to experiment with the strange new senses she had gained and it was only four days later that she made a surprising breakthrough.
The brunette girl sat still as a stone statue, silently concentrating and trying to get a better feel for whatever she had felt since her awakening. A few days ago she had started to put some time before sleeping and other free hours aside and work on what she could sense so distantly. She also tried to reconnect with the network periodically, though that hadn't shown any promise yet.
The female did not truly know what to do in this situation. All she could try was to breathe in and out and to concentrate on that distant feeling.
Now she could sense it, just on the border of her awareness. A flow of something... something
White.
Misaka took another breath, testing the border of what she was seeing with her new sense, a flowing stream of something that felt strangely familiar. She considered her options, before taking another breath and touching the stream with her new sense.
The streets of the city, filled with chattering people, some important, others common but all connected in a network of streets.
The wind blowing between the houses, coming from the river, sometimes carrying stenches and sometimes a bare hint of what the ocean may smell like.
It was a picture that filled her mind, like the land itself was speaking to her.
The girl took a metaphorical step back and felt something remaining, just a hint of whatever the stream contained flowing through her. Somehow she felt an almost instinctive urge to do something. With barely a thought, she touched the stream again and formed a connection, a bridge that let a part of the stream flow into her.
She could feel it, like a switch she had to push and then it poured into her. A smaller flow of
White filled her very being.
Misaka opened her eyes to see her room again, still sitting on her bed and feeling slightly stiff. But at the same time there was a feeling of contentment, of clarity like she had never felt before.
"What is this? It is like I can feel all the streets of Imardin, the connections between all these living in the city, the bonds that hold everyone together." These thoughts were flying through her mind.
To be honest, it was a bit like being connected to the Network.
Then she noticed that she wasn't alone. A cat was also sitting on the bed, looking at her with its head tilted sideways in curiosity. The girl was still feeling the energy flowing through her as she regarded the feline creature. Its fur was long and dark, not black but closer to chocolate and its eyes were similarly dark with a yellow background.
These eyes looked at her with a sharpness that one wouldn't expect from a normal animal.
Almost like in a trance, Misaka stretched her hand out to pet the cat. She idly noted that she couldn't remember any cat ever voluntarily getting this close to her or any of her sisters.
Her fingers found the cat's ears and they caressed its head almost automatically. She could feel it again, the same sense of potential, of something that she couldn't explain with words. It was like seeing an incredibly detailed blueprint for just a moment, before the memory became something outside of her grasp. She was still aware of it and of the fact that she had felt like the cat could use the same energy she had touched earlier. No, like it could be used by the energy.
She grasped the power that had started to fill her, flowing through the connection to the stream she had discovered. It was overflowing, like it was eager to fulfil some kind of command that she was only just beginning to understand. Her free hand pointed left of the first cat and she let the power flow in that direction, giving it form and remembering the form of the cat. She formed the energy, orderly and clearly reproducing what she had sensed from the feline.
Her breath halted, light gathered in front of her, first taking a vague form and then filling in details. Finally the glow diminished and Misaka found an identical cat sitting next to the one she was still petting. Well, maybe that wasn't quite right. There were differences, small but perceptible to the observer. Ears were formed slightly different, eyes that were a bit bigger than the other one. What she had done had taken this cat as a basis, but it didn't create a perfect clone.
And she still felt the plan that had made this possible in the back of her mind, waiting together with the one she had gained before.
The sound of ceramic shattering interrupted any further thoughts or observations Misaka could have had
Her head turned to the origin of the noise and she saw a broken plate and food lying on the ground. There stood Sonea in the doorway, looking at her with her mouth wide open and eyes widened in shock.
"You... you made a cat from nowhere... you did magic."
Misaka blinked in confusion, not having expected to understand that particular word. Somehow the language which had formerly been broken was easier to understand now. It was still not perfect, but she somehow could almost sense what each word meant. The small amount of the White energy that remained flew through her at a slightly accelerated speed.
For a moment everything seemed to stand still. Misaka looked at her new friend and the older girl stood still as a statue in the doorway. A shiver seemed to go through her and her eyes moved away from Misaka to the side in direction of the door.
"Misaka should probably explain what is going on and what else she had kept to herself, suggests Misaka while tilting her head questioningly." Normally the clone of Misaka Mikoto would have trouble understanding the social cues of this situation, but right now she felt somehow more confident than she was used to.
The words seemed to shake the other girl out of her state of shock. Sonea shook her head for a moment before looking at the brunette with suspicion. She bit her lower lips, but then took a step forward and then moved closer before sitting on the single chair in the room moving it closer to Misaka's bed.
Her eyes asked for answers and so Misaka gave them as far as she could.
Of course Sonea already knew the abridged version of her tale, so she only had to fill in the parts that the younger girl had left out purposely. Most importantly, that was the fact that she was also an ability user, created for a certain reason. Explaining the Network and the Level 6 Shift Project would be harder though.
"You are saying you can use a special power?" Sonea asked before looking aside and muttering something to herself under her breath.
"Misaka was created for the purpose of combating the Number 1, so he could grow in ability. As a clone of the third strongest Esper in Academy City, I possess the ability to manipulate and produce electricity, explains Misaka shortly."
Sonea frowned. "Electricity?"
The younger girl answered the girl by pointing away with her finger and creating a few sparks of electric energy. "You would probably know it as lightning, says Misaka while nodding."
Both were silent for a few moments and Sonea looked at her fingers for a while in curiosity.
"But... the cat?"
At that question, the girl from Academy City nodded. "Since my appearance here, I have developed a strange sense which has led me to create a copy of the cat. I did not have this ability before that, or at least I wasn't aware of it, explains Misaka.
There was an awkward silence between the two, even now that things had been explained Sonea still looked hesitant. The two girls looked at each other and finally Sonea sighed.
"Okay... I don't really get everything, but I don't think you are lying and you are not a magician." At this Misaka blinked before noticing that she suddenly knew what this word meant, magician, one who uses magic. That was an impossible thing, but so was creating a cat from nothing but raw energy.
"The lightning is something I have heard of in stories, but no one has ever heard of a magician creating animals from nowhere. So I will keep this whole thing secret, just make sure that nobody notices it and bothers us, alright?" The girl with the dark hair smiled at Misaka and the clone tried to smile back. It was unused, though she thought she had managed it.
Misaka turned her head to the cat that was still sitting next to them. She wondered whether the rest of its body was also so similar to the original and the cat turned as if show her its appearance. Curious, Misaka tested for a moment and soon noticed that she could easily make the cat do whatever she wanted. The false animal seemed to instinctively know what she desired.
If she concentrated, she could actually feel a very fine connection to the feline.
"Misaka will try her best to keep everything secret, agrees Misaka."
Sonea rubbed her nose.
"I know a few places out in the Slums where we can experiment with whatever you can do and nobody will bother us." Misaka looked at her with surprise.
"Hey, you didn't think I would just leave this be without getting involved? This is looking like it could be interesting and well, we are friends you know." The pale girl smiled and then, after a moment of hesitation, grabbed Misaka's hand in a gesture of friendship.
OOC: Rewriting the older parts of the story while also trying to write a little bit whenever I can find it in myself. Only really story-important difference is that Misaka won't have her gun, which is going to have been stolen by the thugs in Ch. 1. Otherwise just trying to add detail and make things more sensible for me.