First Games

Summary: Saten Ruiko realizes that the convenience store in School Distrcit 15 that she and Uiharu Kazari are in is about to be held. The latter realizes that her best friend has an incredible gift.

(This new new Fanfiction of mine is set in a semi-AU where Saten's hobby of researching the Internet for gossips and urban legends as well as her natural athletic ability and sharp thinking has evolved into the ability to do Sherlock Scans and notice details that the majority of her world would overlook or dismiss. Her own moral code forces her to act when she sees something wrong happening and the boatload of psychological issues she's been carrying since the Level Upper incident have been twisted too, causing her to take dangerous risks and act self destructively at times. Inspired by Pale Rose Fire's Shadow Games)

"Uiharu. Please listen to me carefully."

The tone that Ruiko Saten used, more than her sharp words, got Uiharu Kazari's attention. The Judgment officer would have paid attention to what her best friend was saying anyway. She and Saten were the best of friends in Sakugawa Middle School and even though Uiharu herself has an Esper ability despite having a Level 1 power, this didn't become a hindrance to their closeness, which was only tested back when Saten had used the Level Upper device. Uiharu made it a point to hang out with Saten most of the time outside of school and outside of Judgment duties to help her get over the incident. But if Saten was specifically asking for attention, she would obviously give it to her. But her tone was now urgent in a way that Uiharu had never heard Saten sound before. It was similar to the one Saten used when she had something important to say with their two other friends from Tokiwadai but this time, it was way more intense.

Immediately, Uiharu's guard went up. "What's wrong, Saten-san?"

"The man in the red hoodie is about to hold up this convenience store with a fake pellet gun. Please go apprehend him right now and stop him."

Uiharu couldn't help it but suddenly gape at her best friend's outburst. She stared dumbly at Saten and tried to make sense of the words. "I'm sorry, Saten-san but I think I heard you wrong. I don't think I understood what you said right."

"The man in the red hoodie," Saten motioned toward her urgently. "He's a failed Mangaka who's on the verge of being evicted from his apartment if he fails to pay all of his bills and he's about to try to rob this convenience store with a fake gun. So please go intercept that guy right now and stop him in the name of Judgment…"

"Can you say that one more time?" Uiharu requested again.

"There's no time, Uiharu! I'll just go after him myself!" Saten's expression changed as she tracked the guy she believed was about to rob the convenience store. The man had just started walking toward the cashier area after the last customer in line had checked out and Saten's expression changed to one that said she thought she was going to do this by herself. She obviously headed towards the cashier area as well.

Despite being an officer, Uiharu didn't know what to do in this awkward situation. On the one hand, Saten might be a bit imaginative and the daydreamer but she wasn't the kind of girl to suddenly fly off the handle and make something up like this. On the other, how could she, a mere Level 0 and a civilian, possibly know any of that?

"Open the cashier box! Give me all your money or anyone of you'll die!"

Uiharu Kazari stared.

What Saten had just predicted was going to happen had just happened in front of her eyes.

Behind the register area, the female cashier stood frozen. The gun that was trained on her looked very authentic. Uiharu wouldn't put bets on it being fake and from past experiences with Judgment, Anti-Skill and Skill-Outs, she knew what guns looked like.

And if this one was indeed a fake, it was a very, very realistic fake.

"Please stop it!"

"Whah!" The thief jumped as Saten seemingly appeared right next to him out of nowhere.

"You know that it's very wrong for you steal other money coming from hard work!" Saten bravely said as she faces off against the hooded man.

"Sh-shut up! Or I'll blow your brains out, you stupid girl!" The man shouted, turning his gun on Saten.

"You won't…" Saten smirked as she wasn't even afraid, "And you can't. Your gun is a mere pellet gun that can only hurt like an ant's bite. I bet you use it for your manga creations."

"It's not a pellet gun!" The robber violently denied it. "It's a real 9mm handgun."

"It's not," Saten insisted, "The grip's too small for it…"

"It is!"

"Then please shoot me if you even have the balls to do it…"

By this time, Uiharu was grinding her teeth but even she was too afraid to move forward with that very real looking gun aimed right at Saten's head. You're a Judgment officer, Uiharu. Please think! I needed to think! Her heart was beating out of control and she just knew that she was going to have nightmares about this, whether Saten survived this ordeal or not.

The robber stood frozen except for his shaking hands, and shaking pistol, which he still had pointed at Saten. He didn't shoot him, to her relief, but one could see the desperation building in his eyes.

Suddenly, Uiharu realized what the robber was going to do a second before he did it. Deciding to pick up a pipe nearby her, she lunged forward but she was too far away. The robber suddenly whipped Saten in the face with the pistol. Fake gun or not, it still seemed very solid, and Saten went down very hard.

"Stop it!"

Uiharu crashed into the would-be robber, striking him with the pipe and knocking him right into a drink rack. Their momentum and combined weight toppled the drink rack and the snack rack on the other side of it. The gun fell from the robber's hand and Uiharu knocked it out of both their reach then proceeded to lay into the man with the pipe, pummeling him furiously, taking revenge for her best friend.

"You don't touch her! You don't point a gun at Saten-san!" Uiharu angrily yelled, "Not my friend, you thief!"

"Uiharu…I think that's enough, Uiharu..."

Saten's voice snapped Uiharu out of her rage. She looked up and saw Saten up on her feet, albeit in a wobbly state. She had her hand held to her forehead, over her right eye. Blood was dripping down her face, giving Uiharu an infuriatingly worried feeling.

When she looked down at the man she was pummeling, Uiharu saw that the would-be robber seemed to have lost consciousness. The Judgment officer heaved a sigh before she stood up and hurriedly moved towards Saten.

"You're hurt, Saten-san. I need to take you to the nearest hospital…"

"I'll be alright," Saten waved it off, "Although I'm feeling a bit off."

"Then you're still going to the hospital."

"I don't need—"

"That can't do. You can lose consciousness if you just do nothing about it," Uiharu chided her. She then turned to the convenience store's employee. "Call the nearest Anti-Skill post here. Then get a first aid kit."

"I think the robber got off worse than I did," Saten pointed at the man.

"You're much more important than him, Saten-san…"

They stuck around until the Anti-Skill authorities came. Then they had to answer some questions. The security footage confirmed everything that Saten had confessed to the two detectives that are present. The agents watched it on the premises and made a copy of it for evidence to be used at trial. That should have been the end of their involvement since they're civilians but after watching the security footage, the younger of the two detectives came back to confront Saten.

"You were moving to intervene before that man pulled his pellet gun."

Uiharu and Saten had both left out the fact that the latter seemed to know beforehand what was going to happen. Saten had only told them what happened after the man pulled the fake gun. Not that she'd known beforehand and tried to get Uiharu to stop him before it could happen. Uiharu, despite being a Judgment officer, hadn't revealed that either since Saten hadn't. She'd planned on asking Saten about it later but it seemed she'd be getting her answers now.

"Yes. I was already moving at that time." Saten confessed.

"Why?" The other Anti-Skill agent, who had introduced himself as Detective Yagami Hikari, asked.

"Because I knew he was going to pull out a fake gun."

"How could you have known that?" Yagami's partner, Detective Matsuda Kage, demanded suspiciously. "Unless you were an accomplice, you couldn't have known that."

"No, I wasn't an accomplice," Saten said immediately.

"If you confess everything you know—"

"Let the girl speak, Matsuda," Yagami cut him off. "Saten-san, can you tell me how you knew what was going to happen?"

Saten stared at Yagami for a moment, her eyes intense. Then she spoke. "I realized that the suspect was an unemployed mangaka that was on the verge of being evicted from his apartment if he wasn't able to pay his monthly dues and realized that he intended to rob the convenience store to try to prevent that. So I wanted to stop him before he can steal off other people's money."

"How could you possibly know that unless you were in league—"

"Saten-san, please tell us how you knew this in a moment's notice," Yagami said, cutting his partner off again.

"His hands gave him away as a manga artist," Saten began to explain, "He had those pressure calluses on his right hand, in the right places for someone who spends a lot of time drawing and a scrap of screen tone stuck to his wrist."

"A bit of a giveaway, I supposed," Yagami agreed, slightly impressed, "But very observant of you to notice. Even I might have missed it completely. And how did you know he was about to be evicted?"

"His eviction notice was sticking out of his pocket. I saw it immediately. I read the visible part of it. That's all." Saten shrugged.

"And the gun?" Yagami asked. "Or rather, the fake pellet gun?"

"The sticker was stuck to the bag that he brought along with him."

"What sticker?" Matsuda asked.

"The one that comes with replicas of firearms usually used by doujin artists and mangaka," Yagami answered him, "They hasten things along a little bit when they're checked by security at the customs, or conventions, or anywhere else they might be sold. You should know this, Matsuda. We've been handling similar cases like this one before."

His partner only sulked back, clearly embarrassed.

"And you noticed all that?" Uiharu was a little amazed. "And you put it together…that's how you knew?"

"I didn't do anything wrong though," Saten shrugged off.

"No, you didn't," Yagami agreed with her.

"Well, actually you did something wrong!" Uiharu shrieked, "What were you thinking back there, confronting someone twice your size? At least there was only one this time, but still, do you have even have any self-preservation at all?"

"I couldn't stand by and do nothing. That would have been much more wrong," Saten argued back, "And you wouldn't even listen to me."

Uiharu grimaced, "Okay, I get it that it was my fault for not believing you, Saten-san but that doesn't mean it's alright to confront a full grown man twice your size! Don't do that again!"

"I have the feeling that you're the kind of person who would do this stuff, Saten-san," Yagami gave off a small smile.

Uiharu glared at the Anti-Skill detective, "Don't encourage her, Yagami-san!"

Yagami gave Uiharu an amused look, then handed a business card to Saten, who took it, her expression still blank, but Uiharu sensed that she was confused. Yagami must have sensed so too, because he explained shortly, "In case you notice anything else, you know what to do."

The two then left, leaving the two Sakugawa Middle School students to tend to themselves.