"H-How long have you been standing there? Do you always teleport into rooms to watch people sleep?" Kamijou Touma could be forgiven, particularly given that he was lying injured in a hospital bed, for being unsettled by the teleporter that had been looking down on him for some unknown span of time. It was a logical assumption that the opening and closing of the hospital door would have been enough to stir him from slumber. It was also the sort of ill-thought-out statement that landed him in trouble more often than not.

In an unusual turn of events, this implication didn't annoy the visiting teleporter nearly so much. Part of it was undoubtedly that almost everyone that knew her well was liable to accuse Kuroko of being a pervert at some point or another. Part of it…

"Of course not. Onee-sama is my roommate, I don't need to do any teleporting at all." Kuroko ignored the all too familiar concerned look. By way of illustration, she lifted her hands, showing both of them to be imprisoned in casts. "But since I can't use my hands until this heals, it was the easiest way to get in."

The reversed needles had penetrated more than she had thought. Even though removing them entirely had been a simple matter, ensuring everything healed correctly was turning out to be quite annoying. For the first time in what was likely several years, Kuroko had even been forced to leave her hair down. She had thought to use it as an opportunity to spend some extra time close to onee-sama but her lack of experience with longer hair had made the entire experience frustrating for the both of them. Although the idea of onee-sama pulling her hair wasn't altogether unpleasant, she would prefer if it were a deliberate choice.

"Have you heard that the experiments are finished?"

"One of Misaka's younger sisters told me." That was interesting; it was still early in the day.

"Do you know which one?" The confused look made it clear that, no, it wasn't Miyu that had come over to visit. There must be at least one more in the building. "Some of them are more identifiable than others."

"I came to thank you for that," Kuroko continued, "If not for your assistance, then I could never have subdued Accelerator."

Although, avoiding methods that risked turning into murder wasn't the whole of it. "I probably owe you my life. Everything I did to slow Accelerator down only got used against us, and then in the end I was powerless to stop him. But after everything, you're the one injured in a hospital bed. Even though you had no reason to be involved to begin with. So, thank you, Kamijou Touma."

"I didn't do anything special. Helping Misaka and sisters was just the right thing to do." And if he honestly believed that it brought things to the hard part of the conversation. Thanking Kamijou for his contribution was one thing, even if she hadn't brought a gift like onee-sama planned to.

The teleporter sighed. "I also feel that I owe you an apology for my assumptions when we first met."

"Although you are obviously lacking in refinement, an idiot with no sense of self-preservation, and look exactly like someone that would string girls along without remembering their name—"

"Is this an apology or not!?"

"—The truth is that your heart is in the right place, and no matter how shady and unsuitable you might seem, I know that you would never intend to do anything to hurt onee-sama. It was wrong to think of you as an ape that would put her off men entirely."

"Uh… thanks?"

Elsewhere in the same hospital, Misaka Mikoto was regretting coming with Kuroko. Whilst accompanying a teleporter made the entire trip much shorter, it also meant that she couldn't put off her promised visit until after delivering the gift she had bought for that idiot. Instead, she had been brought to this room moments after entering and just as quickly left on her own, with Kuroko going off to make her own visit as soon as it was clear that the experiments were finished.

It was still awkward enough to see someone going around with her face, only made worse by the lopsided bedsheets serving as a reminder of how she had failed to do anything for all of her unexpected sisters in the end.

"'I didn't expect onee-sama to visit,' says Misaka, registering her surprise, 'Misaka had been under the impression that you hated us and would avoid any contact that could not be helped.'"

"I don't!" Even though it was almost exactly right in what she had been trying to do, avoiding having to visit, telling them to not come near her when the experiments had been continuing. "I don't hate you… if anything, I thought you would be telling me to get out. It's my fault for handing over my DNA map to begin with, if I hadn't done that then none of the experiments would have ever happened, none of you would have needed to get hurt or suffer…"

"'If onee-sama had never co-operated, Misaka would never have existed,' reminds Misaka, subtly pointing out how obvious this is. 'Even though onee-sama's actions were required for the experiments to happen, it is only because of that that we have the opportunity to live and experience positive things.'"

"But I couldn't do anything to stop it!" the older of the two said, twisting her hands together, "All I did was set you up to suffer!"

"'You give me the happiest time of my life. If the experiment had ended as the nine thousand before had, spending an afternoon with onee-sama as your younger sister, being treated as an individual for the first time, would have been better than I ever expected," counters Misaka, tactfully avoiding mentioning when onee-sama tried to take her gift back."

"'We know that onee-sama tried her hardest to stop the experiments, and only by knowing you did that boy and girl get involved,' reassures Misaka."

Then… they really didn't hate her? After all the experiments she had enabled and how she had to rely on others to clean up the mess she had put in motion, the Sisters still accepted her? "I know I… still haven't been a good big sister. So—"

"'There is one thing,' admits Misaka, purposefully not making eye contact. 'I was supposed to die a week ago, like every other Misaka. But even so, I am still alive. Even though Misaka were created to die in the experiment, even though our soul reason was to be killed… I was given a new purpose before the experiment ended,' says Misaka. 'I was placed in the role of onee-sama's sister in public and as a student. But Testament includes no data on how to perform this or what it requires. So… please, stay with me, and help me to understand,' requests Misaka, mustering all her selfishness."

"Sure. I will," the older of the two said, "I guess we both have a lot to learn."

The quiet of the hospital room was broken by the unexpected crunch of a cookie being bitten into. "'The cookie is rich and buttery without being greasy, and crunchy without being crumbly,' reports Misaka, praising the expensive store-bought gift."

"Hey! Those weren't meant for you!" Mikoto said, jumping to her feet and immediately sparking threateningly… something which, at least at any level she was going to do accidentally or reactively, completely failed to intimidate Miyu.

"'Were they not? You left them on the table' says Misaka, boldly lying about taking them from onee-sama's lap when she was distracted. 'If you want to bring gifts for that boy, maybe you should try homemade cookies? I can help you evaluate them.'"

"So… why are you baking cookies together?" Saten wondered, looking between the two Tokiwadai students. It was strange enough to have been asked for use of her kitchen in the first place, until Misaka had explained how people would get too curious if she used her dorm kitchen. But she would have thought the biggest concern there was her roommate finding out what she was up to.

Instead, Kuroko had come along with her and spent the entire time so far sat on the countertop out of the way. Not that she could be blamed, with the casts.

"They're for a friend," Misaka said defensively. It was exactly the sort of statement that would have made Saten think secret boyfriend—except why was Kuroko there?

"Honestly, onee-sama, it's going to come out eventually," the teleporter in question said, sighing, "Onee-sama's younger sister was caught in a difficult position and Kamijou-san provided some assistance. We wanted to bring them a gift while they were still in hospital."

"Oh, I see." Hm, something like that sounded off, though…?

"Wait… onee-sama, doesn't Kuroko get anything?" the teleporter asked, optimistically teleporting far too close for comfort, "I helped too, and I got injured…"

A brief war of indecision raged across the blushing Railgun's face, before she conceded, "F-Fine, just make sure they aren't all eaten before that idiot can get some."

"I still find it hard to believe she ate the entire box before you could get it back," Kuroko said, back on the countertop.

"Wait, Misaka-san has a sister?!" Saten exclaimed, the enormity of the idea finally hitting her. Not only did another one of her friends have siblings that had never been mentioned until now, but it was also the Railgun of all people that had a sister! "Wait, how old is she? Is that who I saw outside of Seventh Mist?"

"Ahah, she's the same age as me, I guess, and it was probably my sister that you saw," was the nervous response, "I just hadn't expected her to be out in public like that."

"Oh, is she super shy or something?"

"Not exactly," Kuroko said, piping up, "She's transferring school right now, and she should be leaving the hospital this week, so you can meet her then."

Saten continued to ask away about details—by transferring schools, did that mean she hadn't been attending Tokiwadai before now, or was she leaving for some reason? If she was only joining now, wasn't that a bit strange? Surely twins should have gone to the same school, especially with such a relation to a Level 5. That esper ability levels weren't that genetic, even if the similarity in powers was, did a great deal to satisfy the girl's interest in that line of enquiry—obviously if your closest relative was so powerful, there would be a point where you didn't want to be in their shadow.

For their part, the Tokiwadai students just avoided trying to give too much detail in case of contradiction. The little they, and Miyu, had been able to agree on was that there was no point trying to avoid mentioning unethical experimentation, the Sisters simply had too distinctive speech patterns to not raise questions, even if the missing leg somehow avoided notice.

As onee-sama kept baking, asking Saten what came next after the butter and sugar were mixed together, Kuroko found her attention drifting to a measured bowl of flour. It was off to one side, and if she remembered correctly would be needed after the eggs were added to the current mixture. Carrying it to where it was needed would be slightly annoying in her current state, like many other simple tasks.

But she could just teleport it to herself, then over to the table onee-sama was working on. That raised an important question, though: if she could move it to herself and then to a target destination, why could she not just move an object directly from one place to another? As she had so recently learned, Kuroko could affect objects remotely, the distance she could reach with her power working in both directions and not simply as a target point.

It was the sort of point-to-point maths that she wouldn't have ever considered trying before, even as a mental exercise given that she had no ability to touch such things. Kuroko had only been concerned with the path traced in eleven dimensions as it pertained to sending an object from herself or, recently, towards herself. The path taken through the mapping of 11-dimensional space and its correspondence with physical dimensions from one point to another was not a problem that she intuitively understood how to calculate.

But now that she had nothing better to do, and wished to contribute somehow, the idea was strangely appealing. It simplified to two eleven-dimensional vectors describing her intended teleportations, from the bowl to herself and from herself to where onee-sama could reach it. If she calculated those and added them, then she would have the movement to make to simply go from point to point, without necessarily needing to work them out directly without reference to herself as an easy simplification.

It was a perfectly rational mathematical assumption. It also led to the bowl of flour appearing slightly off target, at an angle, and already moving in the direction of the edge before it bounced off. Breaking the bowl, of course, but also scattering flour wildly… and with the bowl having suddenly appeared from thin air, there was only one person to blame.

"Kuroko! What did you do!?"

"I… miscalculated slightly."

Rather, what she had done was overlook that adding the two vectors compounded her teleportation errors. When teleporting away from herself, particularly as the distance increased or the objects grew larger and heavier, she tended to be slightly off on the accuracy of her intended destination. In the reverse direction, her uncertainty over the precise origin of an object she was teleporting translated to an uncertainty in its final position, momentum, and quite likely shape—albeit at an imperceptible level. With everything added together…

"If you don't stop, you're not getting any cookies!"

Improving her accuracy would definitely need to wait until a better time.