Chaos Theory: Chapter 19 (Patreon)

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Chaos Theory

Chapter 19: Focused Group Studies

“I’ll admit,” I said to Accelerator, “I didn’t actually expect you to have information so quickly.”

As I spoke, I walked to the side so that we’d no longer be visible from the door if someone popped out of the club room. I felt a ripple of interest from the students in the Ability Development Club, but they quickly turned back to other topics as I walked away from the door.

Luckily, they hadn’t seen Accelerator. Who knew what they’d do if they saw the number one Esper in the school. Nothing helpful.

Accelerator followed lazily after me with Last Order skipping along in his wake. “If you don’t want my help, I can just leave.” He shrugged. “No skin off my back.”

“I’m happy if you have any names,” I sighed. “Like I said, this is just faster than I expected.” I gave him a wry smile. “I’ve been searching for more information on those names for quite some time.”

Ever since Mugino Shizuri decided to stab me in the back. Though, with the resources I currently had access to, the hunt had been less than successful.

“Being the rank one esper opens doors.” The albino boy shrugged, eyes flicking towards the club room door. “But you’d think little miss perfect in there would be happy to chip in.”

“I wonder.” I tapped my lip. “Maybe I feel like she’s had enough traumatic experiences, what with watching someone brutally murder her sisters.”

Accelerator didn’t outwardly react—he had too much control for that—but I sensed the eddies of his AIM field flexing out into the space between us. It was the only way I could get a sense for him, since I didn’t want to engage his power directly.

Not yet.

“You’re talking a lot of shit for someone who asked me for a favor,” Accelerator jabbed. “Maybe I’ll just take this information and fuck off.”

“The Network trusts you.” I folded my arms. “So, I’m willing to do the same. But you’ll forgive me if I hold a bit of a grudge against someone who nearly killed my adoptive daughter.” I shrugged. “Call me old fashioned.”

He snorted. “Just a little happy family.” His features twisted into something cruel, pale eyes widening. “I can always offer her an apology, if you want… face to face.”

“If she wanted to talk to you, she would have.” I let my gaze track over to the Last Order. “They always know where you are, after all.”

That got a visible reaction out of him. The boy stepped forward, scowl spreading over his features, only for Misaka mini to jump in front of us arms crossed in a big X. “‘Time out!’ says Misaka says Misaka! ‘Fighting is not okay, okay?’”

Accelerator and I both looked at the Last Order, standing there like a power ranger in her oversized lab coat and polka dot dress. After a second, I decided to be the adult in the room.

“Sorry.” I ran a hand through my hair. “That was a bridge too far. I appreciate the offer of the information. What do you want for it?”

He snorted, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Well, I was gonna give it over for free, but since you decided to be such a massive bitch about it—” Last Order stomped on his foot. It did approximately nothing, but he let out an annoyed, ‘tch—’ as he flicked his chin to the side. “Whatever.”

Reaching into the unadorned canvas tote hanging from his cane, he pulled out a thin manila envelope. He tossed it, holding it shut with a simple flex of his power.

I caught the folder out of the air, flicking it open with one hand.

I had a bit of experience with that sort of thing.

“So… there you are.” I flipped through a few of the dossiers. Even for the highest ranked Esper in Academy City, there were some things you couldn’t get access to. There was a great deal of black in the ledgers, no doubt created with some process that you couldn’t reverse with a simple application of an ability. “Thank you.” My eyes lingered on a specific picture, one that had a bit more information than the rest. “This will prove most helpful.”

There was nothing else related to the Sisters Project, or to me, for that matter. But you didn’t become a scientist in this town unless you could shake off the murder of ten thousand little girls and move on to your next big idea. This one was even a bit familiar.

“He’s got a cat on his head1,” Accelerator said. I blinked, looking up at him in askance. “Fucking gaijin.” He rolled his eyes. “It means he’s suspicious. Most of the other ones have gone to ground, but he’s still kicking around, working on some memory transfer project.”

I ran a finger down the paper. “Meaning it’s something he can’t afford to leave alone.”

The man’s name was meaningless to me, but I memorized his pinched features and gray black hair. How fortunate, that someone working on the Indian Poker Cards would fall so neatly into my lap.

“That’s my good deed for the week.” Accelerator turned around, limping back down the hall without another word.

“‘Good luck,’ says Misaka says Misaka as she waves goodbye to the Professor!” Last Order followed after, smiling back over her shoulder. “‘He’s a big meanie!’ says Misaka says Misaka!”

I waved idly at the odd pair as they turned the corner right down the hall. A sigh escaped my lips. “Who decided that sticking them together was a good idea?”

I turned back, going over the details in the folder one last time as I stepped back into the conference room.

“What’s that, Professor?” one of the girls asked.

I looked up, snapping the folder shut. Fortunately, I was tall enough that no one could have peeked at it. “Nothing important, just an acquaintance handing off some teaching materials.” From the corner of my eye, I saw Misaka and Kuroko share a glance at that, but I ignored it. “Anyway girls, we have a bit more time, so why don’t we all demonstrate what we’ve learned and what we’ll be working on this week.” I smiled. “It is a Monday, all.”

*~*~*

[Spoiler=Club Members]

Ability Development Club Members

Canon

Misaka Mikoto—Electromaster [5]

Shirai Kuroko—Teleportation [4]

Kongou Mitsuki—Aerokinesis[4]

OCs

Sasaki Ryoko—touch telepathy [4]

Tanaka Arisu—photokinises [3]

Nagasaki Miyu—Eyesight to grip teleportation [3]

Minamoto Ayako—Wildcard [3]

[/spoiler]

“So, Onee-sama?” Kuroko asked. “What do you think that was?”

Misaka Mikoto stared at the door the Professor had just left through at the end of club hours. Usually she stayed longer, but today… “I don’t know.” Mikoto shook her head. “Something important.”

“Could it be dangerous?” Miyu asked. The girl was working with her own teleportation ability. As a very strong level three, she was able to teleport things into her grip, but had trouble going in reverse. Kind of the opposite of Kuroko, and Mikoto was glad they worked well together.

Still, she just shrugged at the question. “Potentially. The professor gets involved in all kinds of weird stuff.”

“It is academy city.” Tanaka Arisu bit her lip, twirling a bit of light around her fingers. “I…”

“It probably is dangerous,” Kuroko cut the other girl off, crossing her arms. “Why, the last time I ran into the Professor outside of Tokiwadai, she was getting into a fight with Meltdowner!”

“Meltdowner?”

“Surely you’re joking.”

“Still, it is the professor…”

“That seems a bit far-fetched,” Kongou said. The girl placed a delicate hand on her chest. “I find it hard to believe that someone as composed as Professor Hebert would get into a fight with one of the few women level 5s in the city. It seems almost… crass.”

“I think that one’s true, actually.” Mikoto shrugged when everyone turned to look at her. “The Professor does get involved with a lot of dangerous stuff. She even helped me with a problem earlier in the semester.”

“Sh-she has a very strong ability,” Ryoko, the touch telepath, added. She poked her fingers together, an exercise that Professor Hebert had offered her as a way of ‘grounding’ her own ability.

She’d done so much for their little group, so Mikoto felt a bit bad that she wasn’t able to do anything to pay her back more directly, but still. “It doesn’t really matter what she’s doing though, because none of us got a look at the folder.” It was annoying, but the Professor had left before Mikoto had a chance to snoop. She’d been very cognizant of Mikoto’s hands, actually, making sure she couldn’t just generate a picture using the iron content in the ink.

“Um, actually…” Arisu raised her hand, light fading. “I did…get a look?”

“Eh?” Mikoto tilted her head.

“Well, you had me practicing photon bending, and it was really interesting that Professor Hebert would just step into the hall like that, so when she came back in…”

“You stole a peek?” Minamoto Ayako practically surged forward. The resident gossip’s eyes sparkled—in a way completely disconnected from her ability—as she honed in on a new source of info. “What’d it say, what’d it say?”

Mikoto sighed. If only the girl was half as forthcoming with her own ability as she was with other people’s lives, maybe she’d have made more progress. Still, the electromaster couldn’t lie, she was also just a little bit curious about what was so important in that folder.

“Well,” Arisu said, “There were a lot of names and numbers I didn’t understand, but I think I saw an address!” She pressed a finger against her chin. “I think the paper was titled Indeanu Poka Project2. I’ve never heard of that before.”

“Indian Poker?!” Mikoto jerked upright.

“Eh, have you heard about it, Misaka-sama?” Arisu asked.

Mikoto huffed. “The Professor mentioned running into someone shady selling Indian Poker cards. They’re apparently supposed to share dreams but…” she glanced around, before leaning forward and cupping her mouth. “It’s why she had a different… figure this week.”

“Eeeeh?!”

“No way!”

“We gotta find them.”

“Ah, uh, well.” Mikoto waved her hands. “Maybe not? She wasn’t very happy about it, you know, because she didn’t want it to happen.”

“Huh?” Miyu tilted her head, straight black hair falling neatly around her features. “But who wouldn’t want…” she blushed, “you know…”

Ayako giggled, covering her mouth with one hand. “You can say it, you know, Miyu.”

“I-it’s just—”

“Hmm, I can see why the professor would be upset.” Kongou placed a palm on her cheek. “When I was growing, I had to buy a bunch of new clothes. To go through that all at once it would be very annoying.”

“Che.” Kuroko jerked her head to the side. “That sounds like you’re bragging.”

“No, really.” Kongou shook her head, long black hair swaying back and forth. “Besides, I think that slim is very in right now.” She sighed. “It’s very difficult to keep on top of fashion.”

“Hmm?”

“What do you mean, Kongou-sama?”

“I-I’ve never been any good at fashion.” The touch telepath continued to wring her fingers, practically hiding behind her own messy blonde bangs.

Kongou paused, a bit surprised by the sudden amount of interest. She glanced at Mikoto, but the electromaster just shrugged.

“I don’t really do fashion,” Mikoto said.

Kuroko coughed. “Boyshorts.”

Mikoto zapped her.

Seeing that there was no escape from the ravenous teenagers in front of her, Kongou only sighed. “Fashion, beauty, social media, it is all based on the same idea,” she said. “For instance, my family is rather well connected, so I have a social media manager for my online posts.”

“Ehh, really?”

“Online presence is very important, you know!”

Kongou pulled out her phone. “If you look, you see that in all of my photos I am somewhere leisurely, like the pool, or Cambodia, or eating pastries on the Champs-Élysées even though I have school.”

“How do you do that?” Mikoto glanced at Kuroko. “I can see if you were a teleporter…”

Kuroko sniffed. “As if I would waste my time on something so trivial when I could be spending time with Onee-sama.”

“I was informed that I should ‘always be on vacation’,” Kongou said. “So, you take many more pictures than you would usually need, then space them out over the rest of the year.”

“Oooh.”

Ayako, ever the gossip, leaned forward, eyes sparkling. “This is the deep lore.”

Kongou slipped her phone away to a chorus of ‘aww’ and ‘wait’s. “With beauty, it is the same way. You choose positions and lighting that emphasize your best features, up to the point of using prosthetics to look a certain way.” She cupped the side of her mouth. “One famous fitness influencer recently suffered a major scandal for using pads to make her rear look bigger in all of her shoots!”

“No wayyyy!”

Mikoto frowned. “Now I’m doubly glad I don’t bother with it.”

“Well, as a level 5, you should have a presence, even if it is just an Esper account and not a personal account,” Kongou replied.

“What’s the difference?”

Kongou opened her mouth, before pausing. “I do not think we have enough time for me to explain… social media to you, Railgun-sama.” She shook her head. “Anyway, all this to say that no matter what you look like, the point of social media is to sell the idea that someone is doing better than you. Why? To generate attention, likes, sponsors, the holy grail of engagement.” Kongou nodded. “Well, my family is not so crass as to do something like sponsorships, but we do partner with some brands.”

“Wow, it’s like a whole secret world.”

“As interesting as this all is,” Kuroko cut in, “it seems we’ve gotten a bit off topic, no?”

“Ah, it would appear so.” Kongou, waved a hand. “My apologies.”

“No, that’s really interesting.” Mikoto glanced down at her own body, before making the connection. “It’s just more of the same backbiting and infighting, just like esper rankings.”

Now the girls glanced over at Mikoto, and she sighed. “Well, you know I’m ranked second now, in Academy City. Here at the top, things are different.” She bit her lip, remembering her own fateful fight with Accelerator. “But I’ve been all the way up from the bottom of the rankings, and outside of the top 10, top 25 maybe, it’s all so… performative? Like, if your ability goes up, your rank goes up, and I thought that was what was happening to me, but…”

“But?” Ayaka asked.

“But it was also about getting noticed, getting the spotlight. In part, the fact that I was still growing got me a lot of attention, because most Espers level off after they reach level 2 or 3.” Mikoto shook her head. “And then, once you get stuck, you wind up jockeying for position. Looking back, I saw it happen. People who thought if they could just break into this bracket, they’d get more attention from Academy City.”

“Or else, they drop out of the program entirely,” Kuroko added quietly. “One of my senpai at Judgment, she was disillusioned with her lack of progress, and dropped out of school for a while.”

The mood in the room darkened at that, as the girls all looked back at past friends and acquaintances, many of whom did not merit acceptance into Tokiwadai, who’d no doubt fallen into the same trap.

“Academy City,” Mikoto said at length, “has a lot more secrets than I realized.” She snorted. “I bet there’s even a case study somewhere, comparing social media to the Esper Ranking system.”

Kongou nodded. “It is quite literally social credit.”

“Eh?” Arisu shook her head. “B-but we’ve all worked hard to get here! It’s not…”

“We’ve all worked hard.” Mikoto gave the other girl a smile. “But we’re also all in this club to help each other, because you can’t go at it alone. Not in Academy City.”

“Not unless you’re the Railgun…” Miyu giggled.

Mikoto shrugged. “Even I have people who help me out.” She reached out, snagging Kuroko in a headlock. “Even if they’re more trouble than they’re worth most of the time!”

The girls giggled as the number four struggled playfully in Mikoto’s grip, before the older girl let her free.

“I don’t think I would like it if my Esper ability suddenly changed.” Kongou said.

“Yeah, yeah!” Ayaka nodded. “That’s why I didn’t use that Skill Upper thing, it felt… skeevy.”

“It was skeevy,” Mikoto muttered.

Kongou nodded. “Even if my ability was ‘improved’, I am perfectly satisfied with my own progress, to have it suddenly invalidated would be… disquieting.” She cleared her throat. “That is to say, that perhaps we should also help the Professor out, and take care of this Indian Poker card problem, before it has a chance to grow.”

The girls of the Ability Development Club shared glances. “It would be good practice.”

“These Indian Poker Card things seem fishy.”

“It’ll make great gossip!”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Kuroko stepped forward, crossing her arms in a big X. “As a member of Judgment, I can’t condone such wanton vigilantism. You should leave the address to Judgment and Anti-Skill to investigate.”

There was another glance, then Arisu smirked. “But Judgment doesn’t have the address,” she said. “I do. And I’m not gonna share.”

Kuroko looked at her, mouth moving soundlessly.

Mikoto let out a sharp laugh. “Why don’t we all go for a club outing, then, and Arisu can lead the way. Judgment isn’t invited.” When Kuroko started to wilt, she added, “but all club members are perfectly welcome to join, as well as friends of members, if, say Saten and Uihara wanted to… tag along.”

Kuroko gave Mikoto a sharp look, before sighing. “Well played, Onee-sama.”

“Also… speaking of club activities.” Mikoto paused, before glancing at Kongou. “Would you… be willing to help me and the club set up a social media profile?”

“Eh? Didn’t we just spend all this time talking about how it was bad?”

“I think a lot of it probably is, and fame makes people do crazy things.” Mikoto straightened her back. “But you can also reach a lot of people, and since I’m already famous, maybe I should be using that for something.” She looked towards the door. “I wonder if more things like Indian Poker cards or Skill Upper could have been prevented if people were paying more attention to that, instead of just.” She blushed, “you know…”

The girls all giggled.

A moment later, Kongou tossed her hair. “Well, for a rival, that is quite a large favor you are asking for.” Mikoto grumbled, but the heiress continued, “however, for a fellow club member and friend? I may have a photo shoot coming up I could bring a few guests on.”

Mikoto blinked, looking at the girl she’d only ever butted heads with over the course of their time together at Tokiwadai.

Then she smiled back at Kongou Mitsuki. “Lucky!” she said, “I have the best friends.”

It was, she realized, very true.

*~*~*

A/N: While I write my fics in English for obvious reasons, I still sometimes like to have fun with the fact that the characters are sometimes ‘speaking’ another language.

Footnotes:

1: Neko ga kaburu: (lit. wearing a cat on the head) is a Japanese idiomatic expression meaning “he’s suspicious” so, in Japanese Accelerator said something like “Neko ga kaburu aitzu”, which Taylor as a fluent but non-native speaker who has never heard that idiom before, would have understood as “he’s got a cat on his head.”

2: The Japanese phonetic alphabet does not map easily onto English words, so Arisu, when reading the file on Indian Poker cards, would have read the phonetic pronunciation of Katakana（i.e.インディアンポーカ）. Meanwhile, Misaka has been told about Indian Poker by Taylor, so she made the connection.