A visit with an old friend.


[ACSR: After School]

They needed to take the train to reach the hospital with good time but as they went in, Joule glimpsed Misaka- No, it was one of the sisters.

Joule waved and the sister slowly raised a hand back in answer.

Hokaze turned to look at what Joule was looking at but the sister moved on quickly.

"Was that Misaka?"

Joule paused a moment before shaking her head "Just a lookalike we know."

After that, they all headed into the lobby of the frog-faced doctor's hospital and mentioned they were here to see him to ask for help with an investigation.

This was despite the fact that they didn't actually have any member of judgement in their group.

The staff knew about them though so they were allowed to wait.

In less than five minutes, someone came to talk to them. It wasn't the frog-faced doctor but instead-

"Miss Kiyama!" Saten was as shocked to see the scientist as Joule though Hokaze was a little confused.

The woman who had once been known as the 'undressing woman' gave them a smile.

"Good afternoon you two. And hello," She turned to look at Hokaze "I'm Harumi Kiyama, an acquaintance of these two and a specialist in neurology."

Hokaze quickly introduced herself and everyone stood up to walk with her.

"It's a surprise to see you." Joule admitted "I thought you were still helping the victims of the ability body crystal incident."

"I am." Kiyama confirmed "They're having a check-up today and the Doctor allowed me to help care for them during it."

It must be reassuring to her. She's able to ensure that they're healthy herself without the fear of something happening to them.

[ACSR: Plot]

There was a pause before Kiyama asked "I heard you're on an investigation, what happened?"

"A missing persons case." Hokaze explained simply "There's an Esper ability acting in a way that we think would require the user to be in a coma, so we came here to check."

At that news, Kiyama sped up slightly "More experiments involving comatose espers is it?"

"We don't know for sure it's an experiment." Hokaze suggested but Kiyama snorted.

"It's Academy City, if it's something strange then it's probably an experiment."

Hokaze looked to Joule and Saten who both nodded. Hokaze wasn't as jaded as them but she got the message at least.

Kiyama had changed direction, before she had been leading them to the Frog-faced doctor's office but now-

"It won't be as fast without your friend." she muttered "But I'll give you access to the database. If we have a comatose esper who's being experimented on, I want to know too."

She swiped a card at an access point at the door and Joule realised that she had a proper ID, not just a guest one. Not only that it was still valid. It can't have been an ID from before the incidents, she'd been given high security access since the end of the poltergeist incident.

Inside was a computer and a few towers of servers and hard drives.

Kiyama turned on the computer with her ID and let Joule sit down to search.

"We don't know the name and our only image of her is a drawing." Joule noted "We'll be searching by her ability."

"Which is?" Kiyama asked with some curiosity.

Hokaze glanced behind her before looking at Kiyama again "Umm, she can act like a ghost. She's in the room with us."

Kiyama blinked at her for a few moments before taking a breath.

"An AIM field? Something like the AIM burst?"

"Something like that," Joule agreed "What ability actually caused that again?"

"Overlapping AIM fields. It wasn't a single ability." Kiyama glanced to the side as if thinking "But one person doing that... Maybe it's an advanced form of Clairvoyance? What exactly can she do?"

As Joule began looking through the list of patients that were comatose and clairvoyant, Hokaze began listing off the abilities she'd seen so far.

"She's invisible, can move through objects as if they aren't there, she can float and fly... Oh, and she can possess living beings to control their body and access their memories, the target's mind is unconscious while she's possessed them."

Kiyama was making notes "I doubt someone's cracked dual skill so let's assume they're all one ability. Most of those properties are held by AIM so it would make sense for her to be something like an unmanifested version of the AIM burst. Only she can float freely and possess..."

Kiyama paused as she tapped the pen against the paper.

"Possession? How could that me done? The target isn't conscious so it might or might not be telepathy." She paused and clicked her fingers before nodding to Saten "What level are you now?"

"Umm, I'm still level 1?" Saten replied with a blink.

Kiyama nodded "It should work then, wait a moment, I have to grab something."

She bolted out of the room as Joule continued checking the lists, having expanded it to include telepaths along with unknown ability espers.

There wasn't any need to read anything on the records, just a look at each picture.

After a couple of minutes, Kiyama brushed back in with-

"Is that an AIM reader?" Joule wondered, they'd used those in school before.

Kiyama nodded "A very sensitive one. I'm going to need everyone who isn't Saten to leave the room. I'll need less noise for this."

There was a pause and Joule got up from the chair next to the computer and with everyone else, she walked outside of the room.

A moment of silence fell on the group for a minute as people found places to sit down and began to wait. Something like two minutes after that, Kiyama left the room and looked at Hokaze.

"Can you ask your ghost friend to come in and possess Saten? I need to see if it affects her AIM field."

There was a paused before Hokaze asked "Has she agreed to do it?"

From inside the room, everyone could make out Saten's muffled voice saying "I did!"

Some chuckling could be heard for a moment after that from the group and Hokaze turned to look at what appeared to the rest of them as empty air.

"Could you...?" She didn't need to say anything else as her eyes, and thus the eyes of everyone else, moved to the door.

Kiyama headed back in and after another three minutes, there was another call from inside that they could all re-enter.

Inside the room, Kiyama was looking at some notes "My guess was right, her 'possession' fuses her to a person's AIM field and supports their body and mind with what I assume to be her own mind somewhere within the city. It's not full control and-"

"I didn't pass out." Saten finished for her "I was fully conscious, I could still move of my own choice and everything."

"So what does all of that mean?" Hokaze asked as Joule headed back to the computer.

Kiyama's answer was simple "It is a form of telepathy, something that can interfere with the AIM of others."

As Joule sorted the list to just unknowns and telepaths, Hokaze glanced into "thin air again"

"Wait, if the black out thing isn't actually part of the ability, why do I never remember your possessions."

"I'd assume she only possesses you when you're asleep." Kiyama theorised "In that case, your own mind becomes secondary to hers as your still asleep."

Joule sighed as she finished looking through the pictures.

"Nothing. Not a single hit. I don't think she's in this hospital at least."

Kiyama shook her head "She's probably in one of the city's laboratories. Finding it is probably going to be hard."

Hokaze nodded "We're just going to have to keep her safe until we find her body then."

That was the plan then. Their day of questions came to an end. Joule was aware of how these sorts of things went by this point so she hoped whichever evil scientist was doing this experiment would cause a problem tomorrow instead of tonight.


End of chapter

So yeah, they didn't talk to Heaven Canceler. I realised there was a much better person they could talk to for this.

Side note: The new fight in GV3 is so annoying to access that I simply haven't bothered yet. Compared to the Nova battle I mean, it's so much more annoying to do. Sure it's only two requirements but each has it's own problems.

...That said, I will have probably done it by the time I put this chapter out.

I didn't.