Chapter 2: Sand Blast

"This should be a good spot," Lilian drags Touma to relatively free patch of sand on the beach. "Now, what to build..." She places a hand under her chin.

Touma loosens his wrist after being dragged across the beach. "You're... the other Sterling, right?"

"Yeah," the blue haired girl answers. "I don't mind if you call me Isolde, that way you have different names for the both of us."

"If you say so, what happened to Miss Sterling?"

"She was getting too flustered to stand up straight, I had to take over."

"Flustered? About what?"

"Ahhh..." Isolde covered her face with her palm. "Okay, look at me." Isolde twirls her body around. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"How do I- *ahem*- how do we look?" Isolde's voice had a strong hint of annoyance.

"You look... nice..." Touma scratches his head.

"Nice?!" Isolde shouted while walking up to him. "That's all you have to say about this? That we look nice? Our swimsuit doesn't even look familiar to you?"

"N-no... I've never seen that before."

"You've got to be kidding me. There's nothing you can say about our swimsuit?"

"It's a little... on the childish side?" Touma nervously answers.

"UGH! Did something happen to you on the beach or what?"

"I was traumatized once, someone with blue hair and in a pink swimsuit."

"What?"

"It was a dude..."

"WHAT?!"

(Isode, it's fine. I was just getting my hopes up. I think we should let it go...)

"Fine, if you say so Lilian. This is definitely not something I want to dig deeper into anyway."

"Is everything okay?"

"No!" Isolde quickly slaps Touma in the face. "Now it's almost better. Almost."

"I don't think I deserved that," Touma rubs his cheek.

Isolde slaps him again, "I suppose you think that you didn't deserve that?"

"No, that one I deserved."

Isolde sighs. "Let's just get started on the sand building. Any ideas on what we should make?"

"Sorry, I don't."

"Well, do you remember seeing anything extraordinary or weird that we can use?"

"Weird? Um..." Touma starts to recall a lot strange things that had happened to him all throughout his memories. "No."

"You hesitated there... whatever."

(How about an animal? They said that we use animals.)

"That's just an example, though it's better than nothing. Anything you want to try?"

(How about-)

"A wolf!"

(What? Hey!)

"It's better than a rabbit."

(What? A rabbit's cuter!)

"And too easy," Isolde gathers mist around her arm. "Now should we make the wolf standing or sitting?"

(I didn't agree to this!)

Isolde's other arm grabs the mist covered one. "What? Hey Lilian!"

"I want to make a rabbit!"

"Get back inside!" Isolde whacks the other side of her face while struggling with her other arm.

"Ahem!" Touma catches their attention and he points behind them.

Lilian and Isolde turn to see a bunch of people looking at them weird. Lilian retreats back inside as Isolde regains full control. "Well, I guess there's no arguing now."

(...)

"Lilian..."

(I'm sorry about that, I guess a wolf would look better than a rabbit though.)

"Don't be like that, come on, help me out here."

(Eh? Help you with what?)

"Well making an animal out of sand isn't easy. Actually..." Isolde turns to Touma.

"What?"

"Come here for a second, I want to test something."

Isolde makes a cylinder of ice and fills it with sand. Then she blows mist into the sand, with the moisture of the mist dampening the sand. "Annd... there." Isolde freezes the sand inside the cylinder. "Here, can you touch this with your right hand?"

"Huh? Alright," Touma does as he was told, the ice shatters and the wet sand falls. "This is going to make sand building a lot harder, isn't it? Just my luck."

"Huh, I thought that the sand would at least stay frozen together." Isolde tries again with another cylinder of ice, except this time she takes water from the sea and splashes it onto the sand, then freezes it. "Here, try this."

Touma touches the cylinder, the ice surrounding the frozen sand shattered, but the sand stayed frozen together.

"I thought so," Isolde sounded confident while tossing the frozen sand up and down.

"I see what you did there," Touma smiles. "Since the first jar was frozen using nothing but your own power, my hand destroys all of the ice that keeps the sand stuck together. But with the second jar, you froze some natural water, which means that my hand can't destroy it."

"Precisely," Isolde nods. "With this it'll be much easier to build our wolf without worrying about your hand too much. But we should still be on the cautious side. Still, ice and sand are pretty heavy, I don't think we can do a normal standing wolf. Say, do you know what a wolf or a dog looks like sitting down? I'm having trouble imagining the hind legs."

Touma shrugged.

(I don't know either...)

"We're in trouble... Unless..." Isolde has a mischievous look on her face. "Hey, Kamijou. Sit!" Isolde pointed down.

"What?!"

"I said sit boy!"

(Isolde! What are you doing?)

"No, no way! Why should I do it?"

"You really want me to do it, while the beach is full of girls that are level 3s and 4s? There's nowhere to hide out here."

Touma looks around to see the beach full of students.

"I also need to see it. I can't make a cast without knowing how it should look like."

"I'm not a dog!"

"It's too bad that you have nothing to say about this swimsuit," Isolde looks over herself.

"Huh?"

"Misaka looked like she really enjoyed wearing this when I saw her wear it. I wonder what her reaction would be when I tell her that you didn't think anything of it. Or better yet, I wonder what might happen if she were to suddenly see you with another girl wearing it? Hehehe..."

(I-Isolde, you're scaring me...)

"Nice try, but I've dealt with stronger people and more dangerous threats."

"Tell that to your legs," Isolde pointed out how shaky they were. "But it looks like you lucked out." Isolde scans the beach to see someone had brought their pets with them.

"What do you mean? Wait, were you just messing with me?"

"Maaaybe. Come on, I'll make the cast, you fill it in with sand. Then we pour some water in and I'll freeze it. Lilian, you focus on keeping the sand cold and frozen."

(Got it.)

"So is there any reason that you want to be in the contest?"

"What do you mean?"

(I think he's asking if there's a prize we want.)

"Oh. There's really no reason for us," Isolde explains. "We just thought it'd be fun, that's all. But if there's a prize that we'd want... I don't know."

(Wasn't one of them a set of glow in the dark Gekota paperweights? Miss Misaka would looove that.)

"But you can be sure that she'd be trying to win that herself. That one angel wing pendant might make a good gift for Angel, I mean she's already got a fancy angel wing hairpiece."

(You're right, it really would look good on her. I hope she likes it.)

"She will. And finally there's also those tickets to a cruise getaway. You could bring Kamijou with you."

(W-WHAT?!)

Isolde twitches slightly from the loud sound in her head. "Ow... It was just a thought."

(B-but-!)

"What do you think Kamijou?"

"W-well..." Touma turns away nervously. "You'd have to win the tickets first, right? But with my luck..."

"What a convenient excuse," Isolde sighs. "It looks like I'll just have to make sure we win then!"

XXX

"An airplane?" Rutile questions Sachya. "Really?"

"Yeah," Sachya answers. "We both have gravity powers might as well use them."

"Won't we lose points for using our powers too much? It's going to be a problem, really."

"We're just making it hover, there's not much power in doing just that."

"Then how about we make a rocket instead? It should be much easier to make than a plane. And we can launch it after we're done with it. Really."

"I never thought of that," Sachya smiles. "Sounds fun!" Sachya launches gravity bombs around to bring sand to their location, having it pile up before her. "Getting all this sand to stand up straight is going to be interesting."

"We have gravity powers! It'll be a cinch, really!"

"Hahaha, you're right."

"I wonder if there's a noodle I can borrow," Rutile wonders. "If I can find one, we can stand it up straight and increase its gravity to pile sand around it. So we only have to worry about shaping it. Really!"

"Now that's an idea! Let's find a noodle!"

XXX

Wannai had streams of water floating around her as Awatsuki and Kongou piles up sand, lots and lots of wet sand.

"Is Ekaterina going to be alright?" Wannai asks.

"She'll be fine," Kongou answers. "The school's animal keepers know what they're doing, Ekaterina enjoys being with them."

"Too bad she wasn't allowed to come with us," Awatsuki comments.

"My beautiful imagery isn't complete without her," Kongou sighs.

Awatsuki and Wannai giggles nervously.

"Okay Miss Wannai," Kongou and Awatsuki move back.

"Right, I'll do my best," Wannai directs the water to the sand pile, carefully sculpting it into a shape. A plain rectangular prism.

"That's the easy part out of the way," Awatsuki comments. "Do you have a hang of it?"

"A little, but I think I need more practice before I do the second part."

"It's alright," Kongou reassures her. "We'll start piling up the sand again, you can practice however you want."

"Okay, I'll make sure that I get good enough so that I can catch you and Ekaterina better."

"I'll be looking forward to it," Kongou smiles.

XXX

"Um... Miss Shirai?" Uiharu stands back behind a furious sand cloud conjured up by Kuroko. "What are we... um... you, making? Something related to Miss Misaka?"

"What else?" Kuroko answers from inside the cloud.

"You do remember that your supervisor is here, right?"

The sand storm calmed down a bit. "That's right," Kuroko thought loudly to herself. "If I continue to proceed with this, she'll probably destroy it, along with my neck, before anyone can see it, especially Sissy. In that case..."

The sand storm started up once again. Uiharu could do nothing but smile nervously.

XXX

Mikoto and Saten were piling up sand.

"So what are we making?" Saten asks.

"A Gekota!"

"HUH?" Saten has a look of great disbelief. Then she slaps her own forehead. "Oh Misaka..."

"What? It's one of the prizes!"

"You couldn't think of anything else?"

"My eye's on the prize Saten, my eye's on the prize."

Saten shrugs. "Oh well..." She gets back to helping Mikoto build her sand sculpture.

XXX

"There!" Isolde puts the last bit of wet sand in the wolf's ears. "Lilian..."

(Got it... there, the water's frozen.)

"Okay Kamijou, you can touch the ice now," Isolde calls for Touma.

"Let's hope this works," Touma takes his right hand and touches the ice shell. The shell itself shatters completely but the sand wolf remained intact. "It... worked!"

"Yes!" Isolde pumped her fists to celebrate. "Wow, I can't believe it. Even I was worried there."

"How well do you think this will do?" Touma asks.

"Well…" Isolde looks around the beach at some of the other sculptures. "From the ones here, it should be fine. It's the other beach that worries me, that's where most of the higher grade students go. But we did our best, we should be proud of that at least. Come on, hurry and find one of the contest organizers, I'll stay here and keep the ice cold."

"Right," Touma nodded and left.

"You're keeping the temperature controlled right?"

(Yep. No need to worry about it melting.)

"Okay, I wonder if I can mold it a bit more?" Isolde puts a hand on her chin. "May be some dew to make it shimmer? Or some ice around it to replicate rocks?"

(You better not, we'll lose points if you mess with it too much.)

"You're right," Isolde drops her arms. "Hey Lilian?"

(Yes?)

"I never did thank you for your help, you probably had one of the harder jobs here."

(Hehe… keeping something cold? That's easy for an ice type Esper.)

"Haha, we're not exactly an ice type Esper. But still, thanks. I don't think I would've been able to do this without you."

(I'm sure you'd still be able to do it by yourself. It'd just be harder.)

"I probably could. But I'd rather not think about not having you around."

(Same here, Isolde… Same here.)

XXX

"And we're ready for liftoff!" Sachya finishes padding off the rocket. "Wow, it looks better than I thought."

"I know, I can't wait to shoot this into the air, really!" Rutile enthusiastically exclaims.

"Oh, you're going to actually fire this thing?" Isolde walked over to their rocket with Touma behind her.

"Lilian!" Rutile runs up to greet them. "You're done?"

"Yeah, we just got our sculpture registered," Isolde points to the wolf statue that she and Touma made.

"Oh that's so cool! Really!"

"Your rocket is pretty cool too," Isolde takes a closer look. "I can't wait to see how this thing flies."

"Well first we need to get one of the contest people to come and take a look at this," Sachya mentions. "Rutile, if you please?"

"Okay! I'll be back soon!" Rutile runs off.

"So," Sachya addresses Touma. "You got a girlfriend?"

"W-what?!" Touma jumped back a bit.

"What? You want to join in?" Isolde asks, smiling large with crossed arms. "I don't mind sharing."

"H-huh?" Sachya looks Isolde confused.

(I-Isolde! What are you doing?)

"I don't have a girlfriend!" Touma protests.

"I heard from Miss Misaka," Isolde explains. "You've got a… harem, as she calls it. She spotted you with at least a dozen different girls one night while you were drunk."

"Wait, really?" Sachya asks.

"Oh yeah," Isolde answers. "She really doesn't like to recall it though, she's… sensitive about her…" Isolde waves a hand in front of her chest.

"Ohhh…"

"But you do tend to hang out with her quite a bit," Isolde taunts Touma. "You sure Miss Misaka isn't your girlfriend?"

"No way!" Touma says defensively. "Are you crazy? She tries to zap me every time I see her!"

"This Misaka…" Sachya turns to Isolde. "Tsundere?"

"Tsundere," Isolde answers.

"Hey!" Rutile comes running back with a contest organizer behind her.

The official looks around the rocket, taking some notes, and takes some pictures, one of them with Rutile and Sachya. "Okay, we'll start judging these tonight once we finish collecting the rest of the entrants. Tomorrow we'll announce the winners at the dinner and they can choose and collect their prizes."

"Gotcha," Sachya creates a gravity orb in her hand. "Now let's launch this thing."

"Oh, oh! Can I do it?" Rutile asks. "My gravity's stronger than yours."

"Sure," Sachya makes her orb dissipate. "I want to see how far it'll fly anyway."

"Same here," Isolde adds. "Actually, hold on a sec." Isolde erupts some flat ice spikes out of her back, some mist begins to blow out of them and gradually jets out until she starts floating upwards. "I'll be over there, send it flying whenever you're ready!" Isolde flies ahead.

Rutile lightly touches the rocket, using her powers she lifts it up slowly, separating it from the beach. "I'm going to send this flying with everything I've got! Really!"

"Hold it," Sachya stops her. "As soon as you let go of that thing the friction and heat will tear it apart. Here." Sachya places a gravity orb in front of Rutile, it hovers in midair. "Fire the rocket through here, this will be create a repelling field to protect it a bit, depending on how strong your gravity is."

"Okay, better stand back, really!"

"Heh," Sachya smiles and starts walking away. "10… 9…"

"8…" a bunch of other people had gathered around them. "7… 6…"

Rutile straightens out her arms and aims the rocket at the sphere Sachya left.

"5… 4…"

Isolde looks back at the beach to see a lot of people gathered around. "Looks like it's going to be a heck of a launch." She creates a helmet of clear ice in front of her as well as creating ice armor around her body. "Get ready for a turbo boost Lilian!" Isolde greatly increases the output of her mist from her wings.

"3… 2… 1… BLAST OFF!"

"HIIIYAAA!" Rutile steps forward and throws the rocket through Sachya's gravity ball and sends it flying into the sky.

XXX

"Oi, Kuroko," Mikoto takes a look at Kuroko's work. "What the hell is that?"

"Do you like it Sissy?"

"Haaa…" Mikoto covers her face with her palm. What Kuroko made was the Statue of Liberty, with Mikoto's face.

"What did you make?" Uiharu asks Saten.

"A Gekota," Saten answers. "What about you two?" She asks Edasaki and Haruue.

"We tried making a castle," Haruue answers. "But we just made piles of sand. Eventually we turned them into chess pieces."

"That sounds great," Uiharu praises. "I hope you get a good score."

There was a loud boom coming from the direction of the other beach. Everyone turns to where the sound came from and sees something small leaving a trail of clouds.

"What is that?" Saten leans forward a bit. "I don't hear a plane or anything."

"That was a sonic boom," Mikoto notes. "But that thing's not moving anywhere near a plane's speed. A really fast car may be, but not a plane. And it's really, really small for something to be moving at that speed, could it be someone's ability?"

"May be," Kuroko answers. "It looks like it came from the other beach. Should I go check it out?"

"Oh it stopped," Haruue observes. "It's… going back?"

"Okay, now I know that it's someone's ability," Mikoto comments. "But why fly all the way over there?"

"Who knows Sissy," Kuroko shrugs. "We'll have to ask the people from the other beach whenever we're able. I'm going to register 'The Statue of Sissy' into the contest."

"Ugh," Mikoto covers her face again.

XXX

"That was amazing," Wannai smiles.

"It was definitely an unexpected surprise for a beach," Awatsuki agrees. "And Miss Sterling's power, I'm speechless."

"Whoa…" Rutile begins to lose her footing and tumbles backwards into Sachya, panting hard. "Thanks… Sachya…"

"You're panting? Why?" Sachya asks.

"It takes a lot of power to use gravity… the bigger the object and the stronger the gravity… the more it takes out of me… Really…"

"How hard did you throw that thing Kat?" Sachya ponder.

"For something that big… I'd say at least a couple hundred times… really…"

"What?" Sachya repeats out loud. "That's crazy!"

"Hahaha... I said I was going to use everything I've got didn't I? I meant it, really."

"Sterling," Touma sees the ice girl float back down. "Did you see it?"

"See it? I felt it, but I couldn't see it," Isolde answers. "The speed of that thing was incredible. I bet it could match up to Miss Misaka's Railgun. It just flew by me in an instant and disappeared before I could blink!"

"I hope it doesn't wreck anything up there," Touma mumbles.

"It won't," Sachya replies. "My shield is nowhere near strong enough to withstand that kind of force for that long. What flew past Miss Sterling was probably the last bits of the rocket before completely disintegrating."

"Rutile, are you okay?" Isolde asks the cat girl, helping her stand.

"I'm… a little tired… but, I'm… fine…really…"

"You deserve a rest," Isolde closes her red eyes. They reopen blue. "Okay, it's nap time." Lilian begins to rub Rutile's hair between the makeshift cat ears.

"Mmm…" Rutile drags Lilian to the sand.

The cat girl lays her head on the ice girl's lap, looking extremely pleased and comfortable. Lilian creates an umbrella of ice to shield them from the sun. The ice girl giggles softly. She then notices several pictures being taken by some of the crowd.

"Kamijou, I'm going to rest here for a bit. You don't have to stay here, you can do whatever you want. At least enjoy yourself here," Lilian smiles serenely as a tablet forms behind her. She leans back on it and closes her eyes while still rubbing Rutile's hair.

"Hey," Sachya talks to Touma. "You wanna get buried?"

"No!"

XXX

"Hehe…" Wannai giggles. "That was adorable."

"We should try that," Awatsuki suggests.

"W-what?"

"Hold still," Awatsuki pets Wannai. "How do you feel?"

"It does feel nice…" Wannai blushes.

"Really?"

"Hey you two!" Kongou calls. "What are you doing?"

"S-sorry!" Wanni apologizes as she and Awatsuki rush over. "Is something wrong?"

They look at their sculpture, it was Kongou wrapped up with Ekaterina lying on a couch suggestively.

"There," Kongou points to a location. "You made my chest a little small."

"I-I did?"

Awatsuki gives Wannai a suspicious stare.

"W-why are you looking at me like that?" Wannai panics. "I-I didn't do it on purpose."

"It might have been subconscious."

"I-I'm not jealous! L-look, I'll go and fix it now."

XXX

The rest of the day passed relatively uneventfully. Everyone spent the rest of the day relaxing and playing, except Touma. He had to entertain several of the Tokiwadai students concerning rumours around him, his powers and the two Level 5s of their school. And he was buried up to his neck by Sachya, with help from some of the students. After a short nap, Rutile and Lilian join the rest in the beach time fun, all the way until sundown. Then they all move into their assigned rooms in the hotel.

Lilian and Touma began to settle down in their room, which they were lucky to get a 2nd floor room with a balcony outside. A short shower for both and they changed into their sleeping clothes, which for Touma is just his normal street clothes. Lilian has pajamas with an icy texture.

Touma is completely knocked out after changing his attire. Lilian saw him collapsed on top of his bed, she smiles to herself and takes the blanket from the other bed and places it over top of his body.

"Today was an incredibly fun day, wasn't it?"

(It was. I don't think we've ever had this much fun.)

"Heeheehee, especially you."

(What's that supposed to mean?)

"I don't think I've seen you this genuinely happy. You were really enjoying yourself."

(What are you talking about? You make it sound like I never have fun.)

"Your usual fun is a little different from the one we had just now. Normally you'd be just teasing, or taunting. I can't really explain it, but I know it's different. I can feel it from you. This felt really, real…"

(Heh, you just might be right.)

"Too bad I can't see you smile. If there's one thing I really want from you, it's to see you truly smile."

(There's a mirror in the washroom.)

"No! I don't mean it like that! I mean, to see you really smile, face to face."

(…)

"Isolde?"

(Huh? Oh, sorry.)

"Is something wrong?"

(What do you mean?)

"I was expecting something like 'Well too bad we're stuck in the same body' or 'The hard part is getting me to actually smile' or something like that."

(Hey, what kind of person do you take me for?)

"Honestly, I don't know. I hate to bring up this question right now… Actually, I won't. Let's leave this conversation on a high note, okay? Goodnight Isolde."

(Alright. Good night Lilian.) (I'm sorry Lilian, but, I don't know what you are to me either. I don't know how or why you came to be, but there must be a reason. After all, you appeared after that dreadful night, when mother died…)

XXX

Author: I never did put any definitive limit on Rutile's power. The only limits were that she had to be practically touching the objects that she wants to affect (she doesn't need to actually touch them, they just need to be extremely close, like a coin's worth, which is why she can deflect any projectiles coming her way without touching them), and that the more gravity she uses, the more tired she gets, which is quite vague and can be easily abused.

I've said it before, Gravity power is flippin broken.