Emotional Fallout
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{A/N: Looks like I've cause a bit of confusion with relation to the characters and series classification. Sorry! Basically a while back I wondered how the gang from Railgun would respond to a character with the nuclear powers of Touhou Project's Utsuho (a.k.a Okuu). Rather than create a copycat character I instead borrowed her for the story, adjusting some bits to make her fit the universe. I initially listed the story as a cross-over as, technically, it is one, but upon realising that cross-over stories are sidelined under FFnet's index re-marked it as just a ToAruIndex one, since it's heavily weighted to the Railgun side and needs no knowledge of Touhou or Okuu to understand or enjoy. Also, the avoid with Okuu's name will make sense in time, I promise.
Sorry again!}
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Chapter 3: Don't count your Eggs before they're boiled
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I looked at myself in the mirror, it was the last week of March. A grey pleated skirt, white shirt, light brown jacket and my own choices, a green hair ribbon and black kneesocks. The 'To-ki-wa-dai' Girls' High School winter uniform. The Dorm Mistress' eyes met with mine in the mirror.
"Well don't you look smart. Almost as much as you are."
"Unyu?" she had lost me again.
"You look ready to truly harness your power, my dear Raven."
I looked back at her. I didn't know what I felt, …or how I looked. But this meant I got to spend more time with Mikoto, so I was happy.
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Me and Mikoto were lounging in her dorm room a few days later, the first time since my official entry, when my stomach grumbled.
"Unyu? I'm hungry."
"Oh, is there something you'd like to eat?" asked Mikoto.
"Ermm, ooo. OOO! Yep, eggs!"
"Ahhh, how do you like them, fried, omerice, raw…" she wondered, idly rolling her head from side to side.
"Nope. I like to boil them!"
"Heh, of course you would. Okay, well we'll go get some from the kitchen"
So both of us walked down to the dormitory kitchen, but on the way Mikoto went quiet, looking at me strangely, like she didn't want me to know she was looking. Then she asked me.
"Raven,…."
"Unyu?"
"Why, are y… What hap- ….How did you come to be at the Cypress Park?"
"Oh, unnn- well they looked for somewhere to send me and that was the first to come up."
"Oh. No. That's not what I ..meant. …..I mean, how did you come to be a child error?
"Ohhh….W-"
"Please you don't have to if you don't want to! …Sorry if it's a sensitive subject."
"It's okay Mikoto, if it's you that wants to know."
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It was last summer, I lived with my mummy, Satori, and older sister, Rin. We lived in this little house out in the woods at the bottom of the mountains. Just the three of us. I loved it. My main duty was collecting firewood and keeping the stove going. Then one day, maybe a month or so before then, Professor Yasaka visited the first time.
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It was a hot and humid night, but I followed my duty and kept the fire going, so we could all eat and bathe. Mummy came in with this stranger woman. She called herself Professor Yasaka Kanako and said she was searching the countryside for children with special powers and had heard about me, a child unable to be burnt. And she was right. Many moons before Rin and me had been playing before bathtime and I was silly and tried to pour the bath myself. I got covered in hot water, and a bit got on Rin's foot. It hurt so so much and we had to take Rin to the doctor to get her foot treated, but I wasn't burnt at all. Mummy called it a miracle.
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After she heard that, the Professor came to visit lots, sometimes she stayed the night, to do experiments with my ability. I enjoyed the science a lot. After a while she worked out I was immune to heat because my ability must be something to do with controlling or producing heat. Well after many attempts to find my ability and no success she went away for almost a week to get something special and came back with this cube of silvery metal. 'Uranium', she called it. And I could feel it. I don't mean like as in touching, I could sense it being there, even without looking at it. It was spooky. Like magic. And looking at it for a while I felt like it was calling to me, like it was shaking and every so often there would be a bang I could sense and whole cube would ring with the shock. I would just sit there and stare at it. The professor said I could sense the atoms inside it, and that I had an amazing ability. She said she thought I might be able to control those atoms. And the more I watched the cube, the more I noticed the feeling was the opposite of one I had felt all my life. Wetness. Wetness and water felt sparkly to me, a pink sparkliness. And I felt this with other things that weren't wet. Air was slightly wet, pale pink, sparkly, as was wood. But the Uranium, it felt purple and shaky, which reminded me of one time I had felt that before. One day we had gone on a family picnic into the mountains and Rin and me had gone into a cave and the rocks felt pale blue and the air smelt purple and shaky. Strange, stale, pale purple, shaky air. But most of all dryness, both the rocks and the air felt like dry to me, but not normal dryness, a blue dryness. Mummy had said the locals wouldn't live in the caves as the air was bad. 'Ray-don', she said. In comparison this dull silvery cube glowed a bright shaky blue to me.
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It was a few nights later, the Professor thought I could make the cube get hot by controlling the atoms. I had just had my bath with Rin, and thought I might be able to squeeze the atoms in the water together, making the little puddles of the water dry up. I'd tried it and the water just got warm, it didn't dry but it did get hotter. I bounded out the bath and tried to find the professor to tell her about this, but I couldn't find her. Mummy said she had gone on a walk as it was a cool dark night and she wanted to see the glowworms, but I was too excited, I ran to the cube and tried the same on it as I had on the water.
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Nothing, nothing happened. I was trying so hard, but I could feel the atoms resisting, they felt soo heavy, unlike the ones in the water. Then an idea struck me, if the water was red, and the uranium was blue, maybe I needed to do the opposite! As I concentrated with all my strength the cube started to ping and shake all over, like the whole thing was coming apart. Then, within a second there was a blinding flash.
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I woke up afterwords. I'm not sure how long afterwords it was. The sky was bright, like day. I was on my back, at the bottom of a crater. Except it wasn't day, and it was where my home had been. Where Rin had been. Where Mummy had been. The brightness of the sky was from a ball of fire, a dirty black sun rising up into the clouds. I searched for them for hours and days, all that was left was ash, dirty, white and black ash. And it was all my fault.
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I shook my head. "Oh, well, my whole family died in a fire" was all I said. "Oh … I'm so sorry" was all she said.
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Once we returned to her room with the eggs, Mikoto led me into a little kitchen that she said her and Kuroko had to themselves.
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Mikoto went and filled a kettle with water and went to electrify it.
"Oh, don't do that" I said.
"Whyso? How else are you going t- ahhhh! Of course! How silly of me!" she realised.
"Yep!" I smiled the biggest smile possible.
Mikoto filled a saucepan with cold water and passed it to me. Seven minutes later my eggs were done.
As I started to unpeel the first of my eggs I noticed my senpai looking oddly at my, I think she was jealous.
"Unyu?"
"Oh, ermm. -" she blushed.
"- I was just admiring the practicality of your ability. …Is it possible for you to heat the eggs dir.e..ct….." she trailed off, then picked up one of the eggs, held her palm out flat in front of her face, placed an egg on it, put her other palm flat on top, and looked at it with a determined face. Her tongue even stuck out a bit.
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'POP!' went the egg, as the first sparks of electricity passed through it, and the contents splattered across both of us, staining our uniform shirts. I don't think I've seen anything as red as her face then and burst out laughing.
"…I..I …ah ha ha, I could heat the egg directly but, ehehe, it would heat unevenly and might crack, get burnt, or heh, ….explode".
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{A/N: Well that's the end of Chapter 3. Hope you all liked it!
I've got several further chapters already finished, the remaining all plotted out, and have just passed the 10,000 word threshold for the finished chapters :D , but the next immediate one, chapter 4, is proving troublesome to write ...but then it is the pivotal one that changes the whole tone of things.
Wish me luck!}