There was a strange, unknown almost queer duality of sorts, a proverbial clashing of concepts, a conflict of outlooks on the world and of differing states of being, something that Saten Ruiko found difficult to properly perceive, understand or even comprehend on the simplest of levels, so oddly unfamiliar was it.
Without a doubt she'd never felt more confused, warm, affectionate, scared, hopeful, worried, concerned and unnerved before. So many twisting emotions, thoughts and feelings coalescing into a single mass deep within her mind.
Seemingly of their own accord, each element, each state of being seemed to figuratively hold one another's hands, each working to form a daisy chain around her.
Placing their differences aside, these feelings, these states of existence formed a collation whose sole purpose was made infinitely clear, ironically enough given the rushing, rapidly-beating heart within Ruiko's, whose thoughts were running wild, nearly beyond the scope of her own control.
"Saten, before I leave… the Super Secret Handshake Code of Super Secrecy? It needs to be done."
Moving toward her 'best friend' as best she could, ignoring the presence of the machine that continued to observe her, repeatedly producing mechanical whirring, something not unlike the continuous spinning of a mechanized fan's blades, Saten Ruiko extended her own arm and with her own hand clenched into a fist, she held the extremity mere inches from Hamasaki Tsubasa's own.
The muscles within Ruiko's face etched a thin, if genuine grin upon her facial features.
"In the name of great justice, let's do the Super Secret Handshake Code of Super Secrecy."
Clack.
Two sets of knuckles gently knocked against one another, once, twice, a third and then a fourth time; then, their hands were brought upwards, downwards and repeatedly struck one another, as if the two were attempting to play some violent rendition of 'Rock, Paper Scissors'.
"Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake cake, Baker's Man, make me a giant mutated sentient and highly intelligent slug with osteoporosis as fast as you can," Saten Ruiko spoke, softly, in hopes of not offending anyone within earshot who potentially suffered from the aforementioned physical disability.
From where Saten Ruiko left off, the fourth-ranked level five picked up, speaking in an equally hushed tone of voice.
"Roll it, pat it, mark it with a "do not disturb", and put it in the dungeon to eat dirty thieves."
With a giggle, Saten Ruiko shook her head, as she rubbed either of her temples with her left hand's index finger and thumb.
"We're so screwed up," she spoke with a giggle. "I'll keep you updated with what's going on here, I m-mean, er, I-if… if that's what you're wanting."
As he began to truly take his first steps toward his leave, the fourth-ranked level five remarked, "Only if you're feeling up to not breaking my heart. Seriously, I'd prefer it, but you don't have to. Even just letting me know when you're feeling up to par is acceptable. Or, you don't have to do anything of the sort, it's on you. Take care, and… get well soon, Ruiko."
"Maybe, if I use my maximum willpower, I can rapidly heal my own injury… that's a new Urban Legend to look into! Maybe someone can already do that! Mister Regeneration, the Man Who Couldn't Die! Anyways… er, uh, good luck with your researcher stuff, Hamasaki-san," Ruiko exclaimed, as the fourth-ranked level five esper took his leave, proper. "Don't let them take chunks of your brain and use them to clone a giant super-brain! Remember what I mentioned before? All Urban Legends have a starting point, and that starting point is the TRUTH! TRUUUTTHHH! I'll make sure to chat with you."
Hardly able to even make the simplest of attempts to restrain the smirk that crossed his facial features, born of Saten Ruiko's constant, evidently infinite supply of spunky personality, Tsubasa effortlessly succeeded at opening the hospital room's door – apparently, the locking mechanism didn't require a key card to open from the inside – and stepped out, ensuring that he closed the door properly preventing any potential would-be intruders from storming the hospital room, for whatever reason they could've possessed to perform such an act of intrusion.
He certainly would've stayed longer if 'duty' hadn't been perpetually, silently calling.
The games, Academy City's plotting to achieve the advancement they'd long identified simply as SYSTEM were ongoing as they always were, and he, the competitor, the star 'athlete', he couldn't miss out.
The fourth-ranked level five's solace came in the fact that, no matter what, she would come first. As friend or as something more, if such a future could be reached out to and obtained, she would always come first.
It was exactly for that reason, not only to soothe and achieve his own personal desires but to ensure for her, Saten Ruiko a place where the likes of those who dwelled in the embrace of the underworld would not lurk just beyond her view, that he would pursue what he pursued.
So long as those who fed its voracious appetite continued unabated as they did, engaging in the activities they likely had always engaged in, somewhere at some point in time, whether within Academy City's border walls or beyond them, the underworld, the "Dark Side" of Academy City would persist as an ugly, misshapen tumour.
If the so-called "Dark Side" of Academy City was a cancer, then he the fourth-ranked level five, Voidwalker would act as the chemotherapy.
And so it was for that reason Hamasaki Tsubasa would work alongside them. It was for that reason, as Hamasaki Tsubasa took his leave from medical facility, unchallenged by employed personnel – there would be little reason to attempt to halt the progress of those inconspicuous and uninjured who'd chose to come and go in a medical facility dedicated to physical, rather than mental healthy recovery – that he held Academy City's seventeenth school district as his upcoming destination.
It was for that reason the fourth-ranked level five was giving Academy City exactly what it wanted, over, and over, and over.
February 12th, 2004. 1:13 AM.
Preparations had been necessary; but there he was, at long last. The exodus complete, Hamasaki Tsubasa was present and accounted for.
The limited light provided by the glow of the great, uninhabited chunk of space rock that orbited the blue and green world, Earth, brought illumination to the 'side' of the world where Academy City had been long ago constructed; beneath these lunar rays, a switchyard in Academy City's seventeenth school district was mere moments away from receiving a visitor.
Beneath the rolling tires of the vehicle which he had wrongfully pilfered, scattered pebbles, smaller pieces of objects – in this case, stones much greater, much larger than their 'offspring' – were forcibly ejected or otherwise outright crushed beneath the vehicle's weight.
The fourth strongest esper in Academy City observed his surroundings, as best he could while he drove alone, lacking any sort of moving obstacles to concern himself with.
A thought, a consideration, an observation regarding the world around him passed him by.
It was almost humorous just how simple of a task it truly was to commit a crime in a place like Academy City. So long as one was important to the City's endgame goals they could effectively do whatever they wanted, so long as the experimental, underage chattel were kept unaware.
One could even get away with murder, so long as they, the murderer, happened to be in cahoots with the City.
"Academy City is Hell."
An example lesser than the example of a murderer's unpunished crimes was right in front of Hamasaki Tsubasa; in fact, he was inside of the example itself.
A personal shuttle, a vehicle, an object, something that cost someone plenty of yen was easily and unlawfully gained through the simplest of acts, a mere series of calculations performed in just the right way, simple desires made manifest through the use of physics and mathematically-based formulas.
These very sorts of thought pattern were inspired to traverse the winding passageways of Hamasaki Tsubasa's higher mind as the distance between his pilfered vehicle and Test Site A8.
One of the very same locations utilized in the Level Six Shift Experiments focused around the Accelerator's ability development.
Whether it was mere convenience or a matter of outright irony, the fourth-ranked level five likely wouldn't know. Kihara Gensei, the elderly man whose mind was slowly, perpetually slipping from his grasp, not unlike a wayward child seeking to leave their parents' proverbial nesting ground when he wasn't acting like a complete psychopath, was almost a pathetic sight to see, so nostalgic and unexpectedly, so melancholic.
At the very least, the mouldering corpses of the Sisters clones were likely bagged up and incinerated, or otherwise buried in some stinking landfill, where the beasts who would gladly feast on rotting carrion would be incapable of even utilizing the clones' remains in order to further their own collective life-cycles.
Academy City was certainly good at making the site of more than one gruesome killing look innocuous enough, for a City-State absolutely dedicated to giving incredible superpowers to children under the age of eighteen.
With a shake of his head, Tsubasa looked downward, toward his pilfered vehicle's dashboard where among other necessities, the vehicle's steering wheel, ignition, numerous knobs, stick-like protrusions, and glowing or otherwise blinking icons were located, the latter being located above the vehicle's steering wheel, the screen, likely utilizing LED or alternatively LCD technology was protected by a fairly thick layer of fibreglass. Evidently, the vehicle wasn't a make that possessed a touchscreen interface. Primitive.
Located on that virtual interface, Tsubasa searched for a simplistic icon that would decide the pilfered vehicle's fate.
Simply enough what he sought out was located by him, as his eyes' vision looked over the interface. The icon, depicting the small, pixilated image of a Jerry can glowing a bright shade of orange as all of the icons located within the virtual interface did, repeatedly and rapidly blinked, off and on, seemingly at a fixed rate and intervals.
Tsubasa produced a disapproving sigh. The vehicle wasn't even a hybrid, not even a partial hybrid that could offer the choice between electric power and power based on consumption and subsequent ignition of gasoline. The vehicle's model was practically ancient, something straight out of the Jurassic Period; or it might as well have been something out of the Jurassic Period, at least.
Unlocking the vehicle's driver's side door, the fourth-ranked level five stepped out from within the vehicle, carefully stepping away from its location while occasionally looking downward, toward the asphalt beneath him, as, with each individual inch he moved, his steps were measured.
For any potential onlookers, namely those within Academy City's top ranks who found themselves perched in 'high places', Hamasaki Tsubasa called forth with the use of his developed Personal Reality, two thrashing limbs constructed of void energy, the one element he could properly control, the very element most human beings would never encounter.
Each vaguely resembling a human being's arm, right and left proper, surged outward and hovered at either side of the vehicle, their great palms outstretched, their few, clawed fingers pointed outward, and away from their wrists.
Inward they moved, the abandoned, pilfered vehicle, the fruits of some poor soul's labours the intended target of their wrath.
Accenting the movement was a sound not unlike a roaring clap of thunder, something between the forced crunching of the vehicle's plastic-forged outer shell being crushed, with well over thirty thousand newtons of force, and the screaming of its metallic innards as they too, even within, were torn and shredded like sheets of paper deemed to have been irreparably sullied with some kind of grammatical crime against the Japanese language.
For the span of a few moments the pilfered vehicle was perpetually shrunk, until it was little more than a jagged, vaguely cube-shaped mess, with twisted protrusions emerging from within. What little gasoline that'd remained inside of the damaged gas tank leaked out, and began to puddle around the cubed remnants that'd once been an operable vehicle.
With a roll of his shoulders, he knew the real deal, the events that would define the future, no matter how insignificant they might've seemed, in that moment, were about to begin.
An obsessive, intrusive thought passed through his higher mind, not inquiring as to whether it was welcome, and, evidently, not caring all that much about personal space, either.
"Only seventy-five to go."
Just over six hundred of them had fallen – voidclones – emotionless, unfeeling constructions, quite literally, in a manner of speaking, birthed into the world, and then ripped from it.
This cycle of events rotated, changing, yet in a manner of speaking always remaining the same, from one stage to another, in pursuit of what lay within each voidclone, produced as a by-product of their creation.
At the very least, 'killing' the unfeeling, void-born automatons had become a task easier on the fourth-ranked level five's conscience.
The real, standout 'issue' was that time, as always, as it always seemed to be, no matter the circumstance, be it peaceful or ridden with conflict found itself to be of the essence.
Gathering void energies into the palms of his hands seemingly from nowhere, tendrils, resembling stream-like ribbons shaped not unlike funnel clouds, Hamasaki Tsubasa reminded himself of exactly what was at stake, and evidently for whatever reason, what Kihara Gensei too sought to undermine.
For someone who spent so much time lurking around in the blackened underbelly of Academy City, Kihara Gensei definitely sought to see its research on esper abilities brought to a halt.
With a reminding, proverbial slap to the face, delivered in the form of a passing, disciplinary thought, Tsubasa recalled that in the reality beyond his own Personal Reality, he lacked the time to speculate.
So long as the goal set to be achieved by the lab coat-wearing drones with their spectacles and their aloof, unconcerned attitudes towards their fellow man was the establishment of SYSTEM, unspoken and unseen horrors beyond the comprehension of even the wildest of imaginations would continue to plague the Japanese City-State that supposedly dedicated itself solely to the innocuous, if mildly unconventional desire to further 'the development and nurturing of esper abilities within young, bright minds'. The next, natural development in human evolution.
In order to bring about an end to that, some sacrifices would have to be made, some rules would have to be broken, some laws would have to be violated, and to an extent some personal hypocrisies would have to be enacted.
Moreover, some risks would have to be taken.
Focusing as intently as he possibly could, this seemingly simple task was made much more difficult than it should've been. Along the curling, rising and falling highways flanking, and, to a lesser extent, surrounding Academy City's seventeenth school district, vehicular traffic seemed to perpetually soar back and forth, back and forth, left to right, right to left, north to south, south to north, as if those who commandeered their vehicles never had to – or alternatively never sought to, for even a moment – think of anything beyond driving from one end of Academy City and then to the other, tormenting each other for the amusement of some sadistic higher entity.
Drivers honked their vehicles' horns at one another, wordlessly attempting to criticize each other's perceived inability to properly drive.
The fourth-ranked level five's temples throbbed as he forcibly ground his teeth together, cursing under his breath, swearing at an individual who wasn't there, never having existed in the first place.
It didn't seem like it would ever end, and the incessant blaring interrupted Voidwalker's very thought process, silencing his calculations each and every time he would begin to perform them.
What didn't soothe the fourth-ranked level five's frustration was the reality that the district itself, despite being the heart of Academy City's industrial sector seemed to have little ground or even air-based traffic of its own. The dull, dark-toned roadways of asphalt and the slimmed walkways of simple grey concrete were equally unappealing on both an aesthetic and practical level when compared to the specifically-designated travel locales found in other, more 'people-friendly' districts.
Perhaps if they weren't so complex in nature, his higher mind and henceforth his Personal Reality wouldn't have so terribly struggled in functioning, faced with near-constant distractions.
With a wordless, nearly primal vocalization of frustration and resentment alike, Tsubasa did what he could to gather his wits and began performing the necessary calculations, projecting the relevant formulas, applying, as the needed element in each, the one thing he could produce; void.
What he set out to accomplish was not at all unlike the stages of a human child's formation: insemination, conception, subsequent fetal development, and, finally, following the nearing of the ghoulish, twisted mirror image of gestation's completion, expulsion.
Before him, his mind working its science, a rather large, spherical mass of collected void began to form, its genesis made physical, even its limited visual presentation; contributing to its formation were ribbons of void energies, leaking outward from the palms of Voidwalker's hands, each linking together, and forming complex, individual sections of the overall mass.
Seemingly originating from within the spherical mass itself, great, crackling streams of purple, darkened tones of blue, and streams altogether devoid of any and all pigmentation, simply appearing to be paradoxically formed of utterly black nothingness, the streams, resembling bolts of lightning surged outwardly and repeatedly shifted direction.
For a mere moment the spherical mass 'wobbled' as increasingly, perpetually enlarging, crackling and multicoloured 'bolts' were emitted.
Most would not have known of it, however, the chemical makeup of the spherical mass's discharges was certainly not anywhere even close to that of Earth's naturally-generated lightning; it was, instead, a physical, forceful phenomenon beyond the phenomenon which planet Earth could produce, naturally or otherwise.
It was the element that wasn't an element at all. It was the non-element, a force which should not have been, made real through the use of an esper ability's reaching out and touching what would have been better left untouched.
If one could've, upon witnessing the formation of an unsightly, unstable-seeming sphere, continued to compare the process of creating constructs from a raw elemental force that the average human being would've never come into contact with or even ever known of to the act of a human fetus' conception, an act oftentimes considered to be sacred, then the unsightly spherical mass could be compared to the womb of a human female, a place of incubation.
In the advent of the spherical mass's completion, the thin, nearly invisible layer of void surrounding every last surface of the fourth-ranked level five's form closed the brief distance between itself, and the skin of Academy City's fourth strongest ability user, he who'd created and maintained it.
No immense pain came, nor did the flesh of he who called the void forth suddenly begin searing, as if being eaten by flickering, licking flames.
Instead, every inch of Hamasaki Tsubasa's flesh, from the crown of his head, to the soles of his feet seemed to begin itching, as every individual hair on his form began to stand on ends, rising, like a great monument erected by some civilization whose greatest achievement would be forged of stone materials.
There was a reason why the fourth-ranked level five ensured the layer of void remained away from his flesh, ensuring that it, always would remain floating, perpetually existing mere inches away from his body.
The void energies and by extension the calculations that would substitute the elements common in electrophoresis, DNA sequencing, with unworldly void energies needed something from which a duplicate could be formed, after all.
Within the span of mere seconds, which, from the perspective of the chilled, shuddering, and utterly shaken Hamasaki Tsubasa felt more like the span of many long and particularly gruelling hours, the layer which often was made to hover around he who'd called its power into the world was forcibly ejected, utilizing physics-based calculations, resulting in the near-invisible mass being hurled forward, not unlike a baseball clutched in hand, thrown outward by the thrust of a child's wrist, momentum and kinetic force taken properly and relevantly into account.
If the shifting sphere of void could in a non-literal circumstance be continually compared with the womb of a human female, then, given such, the ejected energies could hypothetically be compared to the parting of follicle cells surrounding a hypothetical human woman's proverbial ovum, and the subsequent, figurative insertion of a hypothetical human male's proverbial gamete.
The sequenced DNA of the fourth-ranked level five was forcibly injected into the spherical mass of energies; with a sigh of relief, Tsubasa, continuously ignoring all outside stimuli as best he could in order to prevent himself from being distracted was able to find solace in the knowledge that the hardest leap, the greatest bound and the most daunting of hurdles in the gruelling, overly-long and almost unnecessarily complex process had come to a close.
The subsequent and final stretch of the fourth-ranked level five's self-cloning process would practically complete itself; all Tsubasa would have to do was wait until the voidclones started to plop out, complete with the sections of fully-formed brains that were required for a swift harvesting.
His lips curled upward, forging something of a crooked grin.
He had utterly defeated, utterly, utterly unmade the fifth-ranked level five, the fifth strongest esper in all of Academy City, she who in the state she'd entered easily could've annihilated in a single, non-concentrated, wild and wrathful blast the likes of the third and second ranked level fives.
Surely, he who had withstood such an all-out assault – not only withstood, but emerged with not so much as a single scrape upon his body's skin – could deal with a few dozen copies of himself, each ranked approximately at the general level of talent he'd possessed when he'd existed aimlessly as one among so many espers ranked at level four, going through the motions of everyday life in Academy City.
It was with this sense of bravado, or, perhaps, confidence – he couldn't quite be certain which, for all he knew, he could've lingered on the edge of the thin line that separated bravado from confidence, figuratively drawing a proverbial border between them – that he watched on, as his mind processed the information that needed to be processed, subtracted what needed to be subtracted, added what needed to be added, and substituted what needed to be substituted.
It was through these methods, the calculations, the formulas, the adjusting and warping of elements in an equation that soon lead to the production – truly, production was the only word fit to describe the end result of the process – of a grotesque, gaping hole, located in the centre of the spherical void mass.
Forced outward from within, falling forward, only to suddenly catch itself, 'collapsing' onto its hands and knees not unlike the position Tsubasa assumed a lowly peasant would've taken while bowing before some haughty and perpetually spoon-fed monarch was something that resembled the high school-aged boy who'd birthed it into the world.
Not identical, it looked more like his shadow, a trick of the light, had suddenly gained sentience, and decided to part from its originator. It possessed every curve, every contour, every peak and jutting protrusion of Hamasaki Tsubasa's form, but, it lacked any sort of details that could potentially identify it as a living thing that should've existed.
Hues of purple, dark tones of blue, and a complete lack of pigmentation, utter darkness swam across the forged, created, artificially-designed thing.
As it rose, it faced its originator, the level five esper who had brought it into existence, who had neglected to provide it with any sort of intellectual functions, any sort of individuality, any sort of life, Hamasaki Tsubasa didn't stop.
Effectively, the fourth strongest esper in Academy City had created a factory, with an assembly line that existed only within his own mind, powered only by his own Personal Reality, and tended to only by his own thoughts.
With the factory in motion, proper, capable of spewing out faceless, featureless voidclones, Tsubasa would merely have to repeat the process another seventy-four times. Seventy-four additional voidclones would be birthed into a world in which their sole purpose was predestined.
If Kihara Gensei was watching, Tsubasa assumed him to be experiencing quite the nostalgia trip, indeed; the old man was likely crying tears, a truly foul concoction of pure, liquefied evil, joy, and the sense made manifest that, even in Academy City, the world's greatest hub of scientific and technological mambo-jumbo, he would never recapture his perpetually-fading youth.
Regardless of what the rotting Kihara thought, regardless of who watched on, regardless of who questioned or doubted his path, Academy City's fourth strongest esper would face seventy-five level four duplicates of himself, in time due soon.
February 12th, 2004. 1:32 AM.
"Saten-san, what have you gone and gotten yourself into, now? I swear, it's always something with you…"
"Sorry, Shirai-san, I promise it was super important!"
"Huh."
"SATEN-SAN?! What do you mean you're in the HOSPITAL?! Shirai-san, what should we even do?! Saten-san could be horribly mangled! Maybe her pretty little face has been completely taken OFF by some maniac roaming the streets with a thirst for human blood!"
"Uiharu-san, you're starting to sound exactly like her."
"What happened, Saten-san?! You need to tell Shirai-san and I right NOW! As officers of Judgment, it's our shared duty to bring to justice and hand over to Anti Skill any wrongdoers! We…"
"Uiharu, Shirai-san, it's all good, just calm down, I-I'm fine! I just messed my knee up, that's all! It's never THAT big of a deal! Do you really think that a little knee injury is going to keep me down? No, ma'am, the answer is no!"
Saten Ruiko, having freshly showered in one of the hospital room's multiple bathrooms, now clad in her simple, blue-green hospital gown, with her smartphone pressed to the side of her face – apparently, she was permitted to use the device in the hospital, as no automaton nurses came by to reprimand or even attempt to dissuade her from using the device, even to make calls – looked up to the ceiling of her hospital room, a space she shared with three other individuals, each of whom seemed to be in a progressively, medically shittier situation than Ruiko herself.
She, with her 'busted knee', as she'd come to call it, was simply set to follow a set of steps outlined by one of the automaton medical professionals. Whether it had been the same machine that'd originally been tending to her or another entirely, Ruiko could hardly even begin to try and be sure. Each and every single one of them were identical to one another.
"PRICE" was the name of the system in which the aforementioned steps were contained, according to the machine; Saten Ruiko would have to, one, protect her knee from further injury. Two, she would have to rest her 'busted knee', for, at the very least, three days, according to the automaton medical professional. Third, her 'busted knee' was perpetually, continuously covered with ice packs, the sensation of each bringing to the injured girl considerable comfort. Fourth, her knee had been successfully and cautiously compressed, with an elastic bandage set over her 'busted knee' by the surprisingly delicate hands of the robotic nurses. Finally, Saten Ruiko's knee had been elevated, held upwards in a sling, though, it hadn't required to be bound in any sort of cast.
"It seems that whenever you go off gallivanting with that level five friend of yours, Saten-san," Kuroko began, "you two are always getting yourself into a predicament. I don't think he's good for you."
"Shirai-san," Uiharu Kazari reprimanded, "Saten-san can be friends whoever she likes! That's not fair of you to say that."
"It's not untrue," Kuroko retorted.
"In his defense," Ruiko quickly began, poised to counter the level four teleporter girl's scathing remarks, "even when I'm by myself, trouble seems to gravitate towards me."
Then, an inquiry was posed; one which derailed the, at the time, current direction of the conversation shared by the three middle schooler girls.
"Which hospital are you currently interned in, Saten-san?"
Posed by Shirai Kuroko, Uiharu Kazari didn't have a comeback, nor did she see anything particularly 'offensive' in a simple question. Regarding her own thoughts, Kazari realized that she had completely neglected to inquire at all, in regards to where, exactly, her friend was hospitalized.
"I'm stuffed in Hasegawa Hospital," was Ruiko's response, which she quickly found herself backpedalling on. "I-I'm just k-kidding about being 'stuffed', by the way, it's pretty nice here. The rooms have bathrooms, and kitchens, and everything, and the robot doctors are really nice. Nice enough for robots I guess!"
On the other end of the call, Shirai Kuroko nodded her head, seemingly in affirmation; with Uiharu Kazari, her fellow Judgment officer at her side, the two hundred and eighth dorm of Tokiwadai Middle School's off-campus Dormitory was just a bit less lonely.
"Hasegawa, physical injuries and childbirth wards," Shirai Kuroko muttered, more to herself than to Uiharu Kazari. In response to Kuroko's soft vocalizations, the girl with the flowers upon her head had looked to her fellow officer's direction. "Uiharu, are you coming?"
The level one Thermal Hand user quickly and repeatedly nodded her head.
"Let me text Haruue-san, just to let her know that I won't be home right away! We're coming, Saten-san! You're not going to be alone any longer!"
Ruiko couldn't help herself; she simple couldn't even attempt to halt the river of giggling that overtook her. The 'mummified' individual, seemingly bound to the adjacent bed began to produce soft, muffled laughter, as well.
Whoever they were, Saten Ruiko was certainly impressed by their tenacity. In a situation such as theirs, she certainly wouldn't have found herself laughing.
"You both are making a mountain out of an anthill," she stated. "I'll see you soon, I guess? You know you're both going to be in deep doo-doo, especially you, Shirai-san, if your dorm supervisors find you out after curfew, right?"
Deviously, Uiharu Kazari uttered her response, before terminating the call, on her end.
"I'm sure Shokuhou-san and Mitsuari-san would be willing to help us out!"