Sorry for the unexpected hiatus! Medical stuff prevented me from updating, but hopefully, I can continue to improve on that situation, and deliver more regular updates to you all.
"Misaki-sama… please go to sleep."
This request broke Misaki out of her staring contest with her phone, snapping her eyes up at her lover who was currently sitting at a computer desk, turned away from the monitor and giving the telepath an extremely concerned look. Misaki's eyes flicked up at the clock to check the time. Closing in on midnight.
"It's not that late-" She began to say, but Kazari was having none of it. Both of them had left the manor house and gone to one of Misaki's private offices, where she had more computer equipment for Kazari to use, to do some more work with more privacy- researching and investigating the snake-faced conniver they knew was up to his vile plots. Admittedly, Misaki had spent a decent amount of time wondering how the little mission of Saten and Frenda's was going. It should be fine. That place was abandoned.
"It is late, and I know when you haven't been sleeping. I know when you go to bed with me and then sneak out of bed to work more. I want to find out what… he… is up to as much as you do, but you can't keep using your powers to keep yourself awake for days at a time. I know him being silently coiled up in his den this long is unsettling, but please… get some sleep." Kazari asked softly from her computer chair, her hands in her lap, fidgeting as she looked down, breaking eye contact.
"I'm just fi-!"She paused, biting her tongue and stopping herself as Kazari flinched. Misaki frowned more deeply, realizing that as Kazari spoke, her own expression was getting more and more severe and irritated with her lover, especially when Kazari had interrupted her. Kazari continued to fidget and avoided looking at Misaki, which was what she always did whenever Misaki got angry. An anxiety driven habit that always made Misaki feel terrible. Now she'd snapped at her because she was sleep deprived and irritable.
"...Alright." Misaki said quietly, standing from the couch she was sitting on, feeling a lump of guilt in her stomach like a stone. She hated fighting with Kazari, and she knew she was being bitchy because she hadn't been sleeping. She walked over to her lover and gave her a soft kiss on top of the head, leaning into her and pressing their heads together. "Sorry…" Kazari leaned back into her, but didn't say anything.
It hurt, honestly. But it was something that she knew Kazari had learned, that Misaki had helped her learn. 'It's OK' was something many people would say in response to an apology like Misaki had just given. Kazari didn't say that, because… it wasn't. Which stung. But she deserved that, a bit. She should know better than to snap at Kazari for just caring about her well-being.
Misaki sighed quietly, pulling back after giving Kazari another kiss on the head, moving away as she grabbed a blanket and pillow out of a corner and moved back to the couch, lying down on it, grabbing the remote she'd used to suspend her ability to sleep and clicking it, feeling the weight of withheld sleep almost immediately start crashing down on her.
"Love you, Haru-chan…" Misaki said weakly, her eyelids fluttering shut.
"Love you too." Were the last words she heard before sleep took her.
"You see, Rubber Ducky, this code is supposed to… to… UGH!" Uiharu put down her trusty Rubber Ducky onto the desk, pushing away from it and leaning back, staring up at the ceiling. Even explaining her code to the Ducky was not helping her figure it out right now. She was just too upset.
Uiharu turned her head to look at Misaki, who was now sleeping quietly, only making the slightest of sounds with every slumbering breath. She looked so peaceful, but Uiharu's stomach was twisted into knots. It wasn't the first time she and Misaki had fought, and hardly the worst fight, but that didn't make it easier. Misaki wasn't free of a temper, no one was, but she had excellent control of it. It was just… days on end without sleep left her temperamental. Uiharu knew that.
Still didn't stop her from being upset at Misaki for snapping at her or biting her head off. Even after all this time she was still… really jumpy.
Uiharu sighed and stood up from her chair, rubbing her face and walking over to the couch, crawling over the back of it and nestling herself between the backrest and Misaki, pulling the blanket over her and closing her eyes. Maybe some sleep was in order for herself, too.
"Good night…" She said quietly to the sleeping mind reader next to her, who continued to slumber undisturbed as she too drifted off.
12 Months Earlier
Misaki sighed and rubbed her temple as she listened to her various agents give reports. She was seated in a comfortable cushioned chair in one of the numerous offices she owned across Academy City. Treefall was still fresh, the damage still catastrophic, and she was still restructuring her support network to figure out what she needed to rebuild.
And that snake-faced monster was still missing.
She sighed once more as she opened her eyes once more, looking up from her lap, in which lay a piece of paper on which was printed a recently taken photograph of an old man with a large liver spot on his head who had not had the decency of dying in the disaster.
"...In short, we lost track of him not long after the photograph was taken, and it is likely he has gone to ground." The man finished, looking up from the tablet he was reading his notes from, looking at the teenage mind reader that served as his employer. Despite the fact that every person in this room dwarfed her in age and size, none of them had any illusion that the Queen was anything less than what she was- a terrifying psychic titan that they respected and feared in equal measure.
"I see." Misaki replied dryly, sighing as she put the photograph down on the desk not far from. Her mind began to wander in thought but was quickly pulled from it by a vibration in her pocket. Fishing her phone out, she flicked the holographic screen open with her thumb with a smooth, well-practiced motion, looking at who messaged her. Her eyes lit up for a moment.
"That will be all for today." Misaki said, abruptly, a few of those present, most of them newer employees, giving surprised looks, but the rest simply stepping away. Misaki rose from her cushy throne and left the office, her new part driver, part investigator Keitz Nokleben following behind her like a shadow.
"There was one other matter that I feel you should be informed of…" The man said as he strode down the stairs.
"Did I not say we were done for today?" She said with a slightly sharp tone. She was a bit eager to respond to the individual who'd texted her.
"Oh dear." He remarked humorously at her sharp tone. "It's regarding the activities of the Number One and his new tiny protege." He replied in a lazy tone that matched the expression he so often wore.
"...Proceed."
Misaki sat in the backseat of the luxury car as Nokleben drove, her eyes gazing out the window as she digested the new information regarding that white-haired lunatic. She should have known better. She needed to keep a closer eye on his behavior. She'd deal with it later.
"Coffins… Yet another problem the underworld has vomited out for me to deal with." She sighed.
Her eyes went back to her phone, at the somewhat ominous text she'd gotten from her contact labeled "Haru-Chan". Simple words.
"Hey- I need to talk to you. It's really important."
Misaki frowned at it. It was rather serious in tone, something that she didn't get too often these days from her. She began to text back, intending to arrange something with Uiharu, when suddenly Nokleben shifted directions on the road, taking an unexplained exit.
"What are you doing? This is not where I told you to go. I need to get within range of a certain individual." Misaki looked up, glaring into the rearview mirror. Nokleben glanced up at her eyes, his calm gaze unbroken.
"Apologies, but I was just alerted to something, and I think you'll agree it takes precedence, I didn't want to miss the exit." He said in a lazy drawl as he continued on unimpeded. Misaki clenched her jaw. Nokleben had two things that made her grudgingly tolerate the rampant back-talk and sass that he often gave her: skill and competence. Enough for her to listen first instead of just using her powers on him.
"And what could that possibly be?" She demanded, still glaring into the mirror.
He passed her a small tablet over his shoulder to her, which she took and examined. Her eyes widened as she did.
"Someone breached several highly secure databases, including our own. They're accessing massive amounts of highly sensitive data. The topics are interesting… The Level Six Shift Project, reports on Treefall, and…" Misaki didn't let him finish, cutting in herself with a level of alarm and coldness in her voice.
"The Sisters."
It wasn't long before Misaki was in yet another cold facility, Nokleben coordinating with cybersecurity employees to backtrack who had just started to massively harvest a truly colossal amount of data on some of the most sensitive topics Misaki was safeguarding. Misaki had on a fur coat just to keep away the chill, and was currently texting Uiharu back, who was none too pleased with her.
"I'm sorry, something crucial is pressing my attention. I'll let you know as soon as I am free, OK?"
Misaki had sent that the better part of an hour ago, and Uiharu had still not responded to her. Uiharu always did that when she was exceptionally upset- ghosted. It was a bit immature, and Misaki wanted to call her on it, but this was hardly the time.
Putting the phone away and looking back to the task at hand, she needed to focus more on this. She'd spent far too much time covering the tracks of the Sisters from that psychopathic snake to risk this information getting into the wrong hands.
"Whoever this is must have some kind of death wish, they're getting real close to brushing right into the Board's personal business. They pulled a direct original copy of The Level Six Shift Project straight from the Bank by force." Nokleben observed as he watched a giant display monitor at the back of the room display relevant information fly across the screen.
"Seriously?" Misaki said in disbelief. "Is that… even possible? Is it an Electromaster? I'd suspect Misaka Mikoto, but she's still in a coma, and I'm not aware of any other Espers-"
"No. No powers were utilized as far as we can tell." Nokleben cut off the speculation, and Misaki could only stare up at the tall man with further disbelief. Who could possibly have the skill to hack into the Academy City's Bank, the most secure computer network on the entire planet, the most advanced and-
"We backtracked the traces from our network and managed to find some remnants of her. She wasn't as careful with us as she was in the Bank. She had a student profile attached to a nearby wireless phone she was texting off of to someone that I managed to get an identity from." One employee said, tossing the student ID onto the screen.
Misaki stared up at the screen and felt the color drain from her face as a chill ran down her spine, a wave of nausea washing over her as she stared into the face of the hacker who had broken into the Bank, private labs and corporations, and Misaki's own secure networks and stolen countless files of highly classified data.
At the face of Uiharu Kazari.
Misaki groaned as she woke up from her slumber, her eyes fluttering open. It took her a moment to get her bearings, remember where it was she fell asleep. A slight shift next to her caused her to glance to the side, spotting a still sleeping Kazari snuggled between her and the back of the couch. Smiling a little, she gently slid from the couch, sneaking over to the window, swiping her phone off the table as she strode.
That dream… That happened so long ago, it was like a distant memory. But… it wasn't so long ago, was it? Just a year. A year ago, when her well-intentioned attempts to help Kazari had accidentally set her on a warpath that nearly got her killed.
Her precious Kazari may be jumpy at physical confrontation and arguments… but the digital was her demesne and if she had a mind, why, she could burn down the world.
"My precious, beautiful Haru-chan." Misaki said in a whisper as she turned and looked at the lump under the blanket that still slept soundly. Checking her texts, she saw what she was looking for. Status report from Saten.
"Not dead! Got the thing. Also robot."
Misaki fixed the text with a long stare as she parsed that short, very vague message.
"Robot?" She texted back. There was a pause, before she got a text, not from Saten, but from Frenda.
"I'll fill in here; Ruiko is asleep, she sent that text a few hours ago. we were attacked by an autonomous six-legged walker-drone with a rotary grenade turret that weighed in probably of the ballpark of 10-15 tonnes? Hard to say for sure. We survived. No injuries."
Misaki stared at the text, her eyes having gone wide in alarm.
"That… but that place was supposed to be empty-" Misaki choked on her words, looking back at Kazari again. Still asleep. Her phone buzzed again. She looked back at it, reading the next text from Frenda.
"Don't bother trying to convince Ruiko to quit. I've already tried and failed, and unlike you, I'm fucking her." Misaki paused in her reading to sneer a bit. Frenda was so unspeakably vulgar sometimes. She continued reading. "She's dead set on this. So don't waste time on trying to convince her to stop, try to figure out how the hell this Indigo freak has access to a drone that costs millions and can spare one to just leave as a guard dog. Give us another lead, and we'll chase after it."
Frenda was much braver over text than in person with her- she knew Frenda was terrified of her. Suppose it was easier to be brave when you weren't face to face.
But thoughts like those were the least of her concern… right now, her thoughts were plagued with the doubts she could never let anyone see.
She looked out the window again, clenching her jaw.
"...What is my next move?"