Peaceful afternoon

[ACMI2: A Certain Everyday Spectacle]

"So, no one else could come?" Joule asked as she took a bite of her ice cream.

Saten shook her head "Kuroko and Uiharu are doing Judgement work, I invited Misaka but she said she was busy."

Joule took another bite before speaking out loud "I wonder what Misaka is doing?"

"Well, judging by past example," Saten began with a sigh "she might be doing something she doesn't want to talk to us about?"

Joule shrugged "I mean, she does have other friends. I think."

Saten grinned "Didn't she drop hints that she had a boyfriend?"

Joule thought back "I think I remember, didn't she bake those cookies for him last month?"

"Yeah, and that time I poked her about a date and she blushed quite hard." Saten added.

There was a pause before Saten smiled.

"Want to spy on Misaka's date, see what kind of boy has caught the lovely Railgun's heart?"

Joule thought for a moment as Saten took a bite of her own ice cream and watched her.

"How would we even find her? It's not like she'd tell us where she was if we called her and asked if she was on a date."

Saten's face fell at that. After sighing dramatically she sat down on a bench.

Trying to cheer her up, Joule made a suggestion.

"So, any new rumours?"

That perked Saten up, she pulled out her phone and checked a list on it. Had she just noted down each one she found.

"Okay, let's start with this one; Goalkeeper."

"Goalkeeper? Is this something to do with sports then?"

Saten shook her head at Joule's question as she sat down next to her.

"Nah, it's the story of a white-hat hacker who provides amazingly secure security systems. Supposedly their creations are in the top ten best systems in all of Academy City!"

Saten's voice went to a sly whisper for a moment "It's even said that this goes for the dark side of the city."

She leaned back and smiled "The rumour doesn't have much more attached to it except for the fact that the Board of Directors supposedly knows who the Goalkeeper is but doesn't believe their systems are as good as they really are so they don't hire them for their systems."

Joule nodded and thought about the network security in the city. GV was always better at hacking than her but she did practice from time to time. She wondered if GV knew any more about it, maybe he had to hack one of their systems at some point?

To break the silence Joule pondered out loud "I wonder if Uiharu knows anything about the Goalkeeper, I mean she is good with computers."

Saten nodded "Maybe. But here is another rumour coming up; It's about Tree diagram!"

"Tree diagram was destroyed though?" Joule pointed out "Misaka said so, GV did as well."

"Oh, yeah." Saten looked disapointed as she checked her phone again.

"Huh, looks like that isn't public knowledge. The Board has kept that hidden."

Saten tabbed down to another listed rumour "On the subject of Academy city's leaders, here is one about the windowless building."

Joule frowned trying to think. "That's an odd building in this district right?"

"Right, just over there." Saten agreed as she pointed to where the building sat a few streets away "So, here's the rumour; Publicly they say that there are ways into that building from below ground but no one has found any when they go to investigate so the rumour says that there isn't any entrance or exit, if you want to go in you need to go with a teleporter who already knows their way around inside, it's said these people are called 'Guides'"

"Teleporters, huh." Joule thought out loud "I wonder if the top two that Kuroko mentioned are guides?"

Saten pointed at her excitedly "Yes! Maybe! Good Idea!"

They simply walked and chatted for a few minutes before Saten remembered another one.

"Hey, since the Daihaseisai festival is coming up, have I told you about Shadow Metal yet?"

"No?"

Saten smiled "It's a rumour that always becomes popular around this time of year. The simple version of the story is that when hundreds of esper abilities clash, there's a metal created that doesn't exist naturally in the world. It's refered to as Shadow Metal."

Joule nodded "And the Daihaseisai festival brings it up because all of the Espers that get involved right?"

"Right." Saten confirmed.

"So what does it do?" Joule asked.

Saten shook her head "No clue, the rumours don't go enough into it. Maybe it depends on the powers that go into it?"

"So electromasters would make a superconductor metal then, or something like that?"

Saten shrugged.

They walked and played for most of the rest of the afternoon. When the sun started to set they got a call from Uiharu.

"Saten, Can you come and bring some food to the Judgement office. I think I'm going to be staying late tonight."

End of chapter.

This is another arc that is hard to get the team involved in, I do have plans though.