2

"So…how did you do this, again?"

"Quiet!" Mikoto furrowed her brow. "I swear this worked last time," she muttered. "Any physical contact should be enough to establish a working current…"

They'd been holding hands for the past few minutes while Mikoto tried to establish a good link. It had been awkward at first (getting Mikoto to start had been hard enough, despite the fact that she'd been so gung ho only seconds before), but now it was bordering on monotonous—because of the simple fact that Mikoto had been trying and failing over and over again.

Mikoto's grip tightened on his hand as she thought harder, but Kamijou didn't complain. It wasn't the most unpleasant of sensations, to put it one way.

Still, he tried to use what little he knew about electronics himself to try and think about the problem. Mikoto had mentioned current as an issue, hadn't she? He wasn't entirely sure—his curriculum had been devoted more to esper studies than anything else—but he thought he remembered Komoe-sensei saying something about current being a stream, one of pure electricity.

And if something happened to block that stream…

"Maybe," he said tentatively, "it's my right hand again."

Mikoto was still squinting at the ground. "I don't know," she said quietly. "I can feel the electricity in your brain—I can feel it right now. I just can't read the signal clearly enough to actually get memories out of it." She frowned. "Well, okay. I've got a pretty good idea why."

"What? Actually my right hand?"

"Sort of." Without warning, Mikoto pinched Kamijou's left hand. After his yelps of pain and betrayal had ended, she said, "You felt that, right?"

"You think?"

"Well, that would be your nerves using electricity to tell you about it. That's our problem right there." Mikoto sighed. "I can read your brain's signals, but also a billion other messages from every other neuron in your body. I'm sure that freaky right hand isn't helping either."

So it wasn't like blocking the stream, then. Just dumping a metric ton of gravel in it.

"We've got too much signal noise," Mikoto said, at the same time. "Like static in a radio broadcast." She hummed speculatively. "I guess last time I did this, Kiyama must've absorbed some kind of low-level psychometry from an esper, made it easier for me subconsciously…" She grinned. "Kind of like a transducer, you know? More like an autoencoder, actually."

Kamijou blinked. "Sure."

Well, at least the solution to their problem wouldn't involve cutting off any limbs. But they still had a very real issue—how were they supposed to get around an entire nervous system? That wasn't exactly something that Kamijou could just switch off.

Like always, he had no idea what was going on, but he would still try to help. In the movies, static usually meant the radios were getting jammed, or that the signal wasn't strong enough. In both cases, the solution for that was—

Was—

—was getting the sender a lot closer to the receiver.

He gulped, again. "Uh…" he began. An unfortunate idea was coming into being.

Mikoto was still thinking aloud, unaware of the sudden change in Kamijou's demeanor. "So," she was mumbling. "If background noise is the issue, the obvious solutions are to filter the input, or increase the signal-to-noise ratio. In our case, we could increase signal strength by…"

Kamijou saw her eyes widen. He tried again. "Uh, Misaka—"

The thoughtful look hadn't left her face. "In our case, the easiest solution would be to…" She looked up at Kamijou. Their eyes met.

Silence.

"You're thinking what I'm thinking," Kamijou said. "Aren't you."

Mikoto's voice had somehow risen to a squeak. "Not necessarily," she said, and Kamijou was pretty sure he could see a splotch of red across her cheeks. "I was just thinking…" She coughed. "I was just thinking that we should put our heads together."

"And figure out a solution, huh?" Kamijou croaked. He was sure his face was starting to turn red, too. "They do say two heads are better than—"

"Oh, you know what I meant!"

No mistaking it. Mikoto's face was definitely red now—not that Kamijou could really make fun of her. His face was probably just as colorful. "Yeah," he said, holding back an agonized groan. "I do."

"Well…" Mikoto sputtered. "Well—if you do—then—" She let out some mix between a yell and a groan. "Why does this always happen with you?You always have to put me through this kind of crap—"

"What?"

Kamijou had time to hear another strangled yell from Mikoto before, suddenly, her hands slapped onto either side of his head in what felt disturbingly like a judo move.

Then, Mikoto practically slammed her forehead into his. "Remember," she hissed, her breath warm against Kamijou's face. "This is the only way to make this work. There's nothing else I'm getting from this!"

"I…I know!" Had his mouth always been this dry? This close, there was nowhere else to look; Mikoto's eyes stared fiercely into Kamijou's. He could just imagine what Tsuchimikado would be saying right now—

Shut up, shut up!

Mikoto had said it herself—there was nothing behind this aside from pure necessity. To think about more than the situation at hand would both be wrong and disrespectful to her. There was really only one thing to feel right now. One thing to say.

"Misaka," he said. "Just in case you screw up…or something happens…I just wanted to thank you. You've already made me feel a lot better."

For a second, Mikoto pulled back, but Kamijou saw no disgust in the action. She just had a little smile on her face. "I won't screw up."

Slowly, she pressed her forehead against his, one more time.

It was like tuning an old radio.

Mikoto really could feel Kamijou's mind now, feel it hissing within his head as the nerves and synapses fired. She tried to recapture the sense that had overwhelmed her during her contact with Kiyama—it wouldn't be possible to parse each new thought one-by-one. Instead, Mikoto tried to relax; tried to let the darkness behind her closed eyelids transform itself into new images; tried to let her thoughts fill themselves with old certainties.

Of course, Mikoto had used her mind to interface with computers and simpler devices in the past, but she knew this would be on an entirely different level of difficulty. No one could hope to decipher neural signals consciously.

Each new detail had to place itself into her mind; if Kamijou's thoughts were a sandstorm, then it was better to feel the maelstrom as a whole, rather than try and watch each grain whirl by. She already had a mind of her own—now she just had to imagine it firing in the same way as the one right beside her. She just had to match the pattern.

At least, that was how it was in theory.

The reality of it was that it was hard, hard to separate Kamijou's thoughts from her own. She no longer doubted that some sort of telepathy had helped her last time; the experience this time felt more like groping in the dark for a (possibly non-existent) light switch. She felt Kamijou furrow his brow just as she furrowed hers.

Both of them pulled away at nearly the same time.

"So…" Kamijou said tentatively. He broke off.

Mikoto sighed. "I'll say it," she said. "I might have screwed up." She paused. "A bit."

"So," Kamijou began, before breaking off again. "Are you saying you can't—"

The expression on his face almost hurt to look at. "No!" Mikoto said, almost a little too loudly.

Okay, fine. Definitely too loudly.

"No," she said again, more softly. Mikoto paused—how was she supposed to explain this? "I can do this," she said, after a couple moments of silence had passed. She still wasn't very sure what to say here, but it'd be better to start talking. "I'm just…"

Did she really want to say it like this?

Fine. There was no other choice. "I'm…just not sure if I'm actually reaching you."

"You're not sure whether you're thinking your thoughts or mine, huh?"

"No—" Mikoto blinked. Wait. "Actually," she said slowly, "you're right. How'd you…"

Kamijou smiled sheepishly. "That's just how I feel whenever I look at someone and try to convince myself I'm reading their mind."

Mikoto stared at him. No, she was not feeling endeared right now, not in any way—

"Whatever," she said hurriedly, before anything stupid could come out of her mouth. "We're still going to need to fix this."

"Well…" Kamijou hesitated, then spoke. "We could do it like a magic trick. You know those mind-reading tricks they show on the late night programs?" He looked at her expectantly.

Mikoto said nothing.

"Really?" Kamijou sighed. "Fine," he said. "I'm going to think of something. Tell me what it is." He looked at her. "Does that sound good?"

"Sounds a lot more like you want me to become some sketchy street performer," Mikoto said. As she said the words, she cursed at herself internally—was she trying to make him pull away even further? What was wrong with her? She always got like this when the guy was getting a little too—

"Okay!" Mikoto yelled, pushing the thought aside. "Doesn't matter to me. Let's go."

This time, she wasn't quite the one that leaned in first. Neither was Kamijou. It felt less like an embarrassment and more like some kind of mutual hug. Yeah. This wasn't anything to worry about, even with the feeling of his hands around her neck and his nose brushing against hers—

Yeah, nope. Nothing to see here.

Mikoto pushed the thoughts away. She tried to push them all away. Kamijou was thinking something, encoded in the whirling, snapping nimbus of energy she could feel so clearly now. A very similar mess had to be whirling around in her own head, converted into thoughts, emotions, and memories by some inexplicable process. If she could just tweak what she felt, apply the same process, and create the same whirl within her own head…

Her brow furrowed; she gritted her teeth. She was so close—

There was a rhythm to the energy, she found. A pulse. A pattern. Slowly, Mikoto's brow relaxed once again; she breathed deeply. She could feel the rhythm so powerfully now that she couldn't imagine not feeling it before. Really, it was just like a heartbeat.

And suddenly, a thought occurred to her, completely unprompted.

She's on the bridge tonight.

The vision followed an instant later.

The scene was blurry at first, the details indistinct. Even as Mikoto watched, though, they began to smooth, the fuzzy lines overhead resolving themselves into iron girders, and the girl—

The girl—

I see her outline as she leans against the bridge's railings, and I know I've found her.

I've found her. I stride forward, papers in hand. There's only one thing I'm thinking now.

I've found her.

I've finally found Misaka Mikoto.

Suddenly, the scene in front of her was gone—and not just in terms of sight. A moment before, Mikoto had felt her lungs aching with the effort of running. Now she was sitting, staring into a familiar face. Her body no longer ached.

Where, Mikoto thought, am I?

The face blinked. It moved back, and the rest of its body was revealed, showing a person—

Oh. This idiot.

All the details came back to her with the thought—where they were, what they were doing, what they had just done—

What she'd just done—

"Oh God," Mikoto murmured, just as Kamijou said, "What the hell was that?"

She looked over at him. He looked over at her.

Finally, Mikoto just grinned. "That worked."

The words seemed to snap Kamijou out of his daze. "I'm definitely not doubting that," he said, shuddering. "But…" He broke off, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. "What happened just now?" he asked, after spending a couple more seconds gawping like some spiky-haired goldfish.

"Did you miss the part where I—you know—read your mind?" Mikoto could hear the excitement in her own voice. No surprise there. She still remembered that exact moment when the rhythm that she'd been aware of had just clicked into place for her, and the images had begun to flow. No telepathy had helped her along this time. This had been her power, hers alone. Mikoto felt a rush of excitement, one rivalled only by the time she had first fired the Railgun.

Kamijou still seemed befuddled. "I don't doubt that you read it, but did you see what I was thinking about?"

Mikoto thought of the figure—her figure—leaning against the railing, of how desperate and despondent it had appeared. She thought, too, of the sheer relief that had permeated Kamijou's memory.

There was more than sight, here.

"I didn't just see it," she said. "I kinda, well—"

"You felt it too, right?" Kamijou leaned forward in excitement. "That's what shocked me so much. I'll be honest"—a grimace flashed across his face—"I don't remember that night too clearly. I really tried my best to picture that first second, but I still wasn't sure if you'd even glimpse it. But the second you started—well, I knew you were seeing it."

Mikoto frowned. "How?"

"When I started out, I was struggling just trying to imagine you leaning against that railing. Even that was sketchy." Kamijou laughed slightly, then said, "Then suddenly it wasn't just crystal-clear, I was living it all over was like I'd gone back in time. I could see everything I'd seen, and—" Kamijou hesitated. "Feel everything I felt," he said, after a pause.

Mikoto thought back to Kamijou's relief at the realization, to the remnants of shock at the discovery of the Sisters, and finally to the pain of a body run ragged. "I know," she said. "So could I."

She frowned to herself. Was Kamijou really comfortable with her having this level of detail? Even after their little shared flashback had ended, she had still felt connected to him in a way that she hadn't even felt with Kiyama. And even if she was okay with that…

"Is that okay with you?" Mikoto asked, watching Kamijou carefully. "It's a lot of detail." To put it lightly. She wasn't sure, if the roles had been reversed, if she would ever allow anything close to this.

Kamijou looked less uncomfortable than she'd expected. In fact, he looked more sheepish than anything. "Well," he said, "there are always some thoughts that Kamijou should probably keep to himself—"

"Oh, shut up!"

"—but none of them will appear in those memories," he finished. "I'm sure of that." He sighed. "Seriously, though, there's a bigger problem here."

"You mean besides your immature teenage brain?"

"Okay, okay, that was bad," Kamijou said, raising his hands. "I'll stop. I'm just saying that it might be too much detail. Which might be a bad thing…for both of us."

"Oh. I see."

Mikoto couldn't really imagine what memories were waiting, but the genuine fear on Kamijou's face was a rare thing. It was also strange, strange enough to put a shiver down her spine. But she hadn't come so far just to crap out at the thought of scary pictures.

"Let me try again," she said, "I might be able to control it." She hummed, considering. "And if seeing the memories get to be too much of a problem, well, the last person I did this to didn't remember anything after I knocked her out."

One of his eyebrows twitched. "What exactly are you suggesting?"

"Nothing. Now shut up and let me break into your brain."

With a little more work, Mikoto was able to turn the volume up and down.

Well, it was less straightforward than that. Originally, the experience of accessing the memories had almost been like teleportation, even possession. But by holding back, not letting herself integrate entirely with Kamijou's synapses, Mikoto was able to adjust the memories until they were somewhere between a nightmare and a daydream.

Kamijou hadn't really tested her too hard, of course. So far, she'd just gotten short memories of walks through the park, looking at city skylines and so on. He'd been curiously bland in his choice of memories after the first.

It was time to stop that. "Can you stop going easy on me?" Mikoto said.

"What do you mean?" Kamijou tilted his head.

"I mean, stop giving me the Old People Show. Walks in the park? City skylines? What's next, prune juice?"

Kamijou winced. "Well, I guess I know you've gotten good at something when you start making fun of it."

"Exactly!" Mikoto said. "So come on. Hit me with your best shot. That's why we're doing this in the first place."

A strangely cunning look appeared on Kamijou's face. "'Your best shot', huh?" he murmured. "Okay."

Mikoto grinned. "That's more like it."

For the umpteenth time now, they leaned in. And Mikoto saw…

A huge arc of electricity, arcing right at my face. I thrust up my right hand just in time, and it fizzles into nothing.

"Fight me seriously, damn you!"

The view shifted again, to—

Another bolt of lightning. I toss my groceries aside and once again, barely manage to stop the incoming strike—

And another. And another. Bolt after bolt, seemingly from every angle, all stopped just in time. Finally, the montage stopped.

Kamijou was smirking when Mikoto leaned back. "Well," he said, "I did give you 'your best shot'."

She glowered at him. "I guess that was fair."

"What, you mean you didn't enjoy that? Wasn't it exciting to know what it feels like to be me?"

Mikoto groaned. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry, alright?"

"Now, hearing that has been the biggest shock you've ever given me."

"What do you want, a gift card?" Mikoto rolled her eyes. "So do you think I'm ready for the details?" She wiggled her fingers like she was telling a ghost story.

The smirk slid off Kamijou's face. "No."

Just like that, the humor in the air evaporated. Mikoto sighed. "You're probably right. But I'm as ready as I'll ever be." Hesitantly, she met his gaze. "Are you?"

He looked distinctly uneasy, but then he gritted his teeth and nodded in that classic Kamijou way. "Let me start slow."

"Sure," she said, as gently as she could.

"Okay," Kamijou muttered so quietly she could barely hear him. "Okay, where do I start…" He took a deep shuddering death and started to lean in. "Let me try this."

There was so much uncertainty in his voice that Mikoto almost wanted to give him a hug, but she leaned in herself. She closed her eyes and felt Kamijou's forehead bump into hers.

"Here we go," Kamijou muttered.

Mikoto took that as her signal to start. She reached out towards his mind as she had so many times already—

And—

This is nothing like before, was the last thought that went through her head—

She was drowning, she was falling and she could never stop. She was burning alive in a desert, starving and thirsty beyond belief. She was floating slowly in space, her blood turning to ice and her skin boiling. She felt a noose tightening around her neck before the beginnings of a final, sharp fall—

Oh my God—stop—

Suddenly it was over, and Kamijou was saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I tried to start slow, I'm sorry…"

Mikoto barely heard him over the roar in her ears. She was still waiting for her heart to stop pounding. The bench seemed solid and reassuring right now; she took deep breaths of fresh air, trying to shake off the feeling of suffocation.

"Misaka—Misaka, are you okay?"

No wonder he had been afraid. No wonder he had been worried about her. For a split second, Mikoto almost considered the danger of what they were doing—the possibility that both of them would end up traumatized. Just for a second.

Then Mikoto shook it off. No. This idiot had risked death for her. No matter what happened here, it would always be in her head and nowhere else.

"Misaka!"

Dimly, Mikoto realized that Kamijou had been yelling for a while now. "Sorry," she said. "I'm fine." I am. I'll have to be.

"Are you sure?" Kamijou was staring furiously at her like he wanted to do some mind-reading of his own. "It was like I could hear you. I just felt you yell 'stop'—"

Mikoto bit her lip. "It was—a lot," she admitted. "You're gonna need to try and focus." She scowled. "But I've really only got one takeaway so far."

"What?"

"Why didn't you tell me about any of this sooner, you freaking idiot?"

Kamijou sputtered and threw up his hands. "Well—I—" He looked around wildly, as if the answer would be floating in the air somewhere. Finally, he groaned. "I didn't exactly know you could read minds."

Mikoto rolled her eyes. "Awful excuse. Now let's go again."

"But if I can't control it—"

"Then we'll keep trying. Get it?"

"You said you'd be here all night, but I don't think you knew how long that night would be—"

"Get over here."

With a final groan, Kamijou leaned in and placed his forehead against hers once again. "From the beginning," he muttered. "Fine."

And—

Mikoto—no, Kamijou—couldn't move.

They couldn't move. Together, this time, they stared up at the green-eyed girl towering above them, stared straight at the shining lance in her hand.

They watched together as Othinus said, "These petty fights are such a pain. I think I'll just end the world."

And Mikoto saw, for the first time, that immediately everything turned dark. She watched as the first of Kamijou's billion hells came into being.

This would, indeed, be a long night.