A reward... right?


[ACSRT: Dream Ranker]

Joule sat by, keeping a weather eye on their brainwaves.

Misaka was just taking another card and lying down, Kinuhata was already in a dream. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

When Misaka drifted off though, Joule quickly noticed something was wrong. The card she was using was slipping deeper into her mind than it was meant to.

With a few quick steps, Joule grabbed the card off her head. With a start, Misaka's eyes shot open and she looked around. Her eyes were unfocused.

"What?" Her voice sounded a bit distracted too.

Joule held up the card, having reapplied the film quickly to seal it.

"This card was going deeper than they're meant to."

Misaka looked at the card and nodded.

"What was it about do you think?" Joule asked.

Misaka shrugged "I don't know. All I had time to see was that I was in my own body, rather than taking someone else's. Is it possible it might be the card we're looking for?"

Joule looked at the sealed card and hesitated.

"I'm not sure. But I'll put it to the side for-"

Kinuhata then woke up with a start, after Joule quickly calmed her, they told her about the card they'd just found.

After listening to the story, Kinuhata hesitated then asked "Which parts of the brain was it affecting?"

"Outside of the parts that the others affect?" Joule checked "Misaka's frontal lobe, there's a lot of important stuff in there. I didn't want to risk it."

After a pause, Kinuhata nodded and asked a question "I don't know much about telepathy, if it affected us badly, could you undo the damage?"

...Not without a song Joule thought. So she shrugged "Maybe? It depends on the scale and effectiveness of the damage. If you wanted, I could keep an eye out for something that would do damage I couldn't repair."

To that Kinuhata nodded "I'll... I'll take my chance with it. Just keep a close eye on me, got it? It would be ultra bad if this ended up hurting me."

...She didn't even strictly need to do it at all but she and Misaka wanted to know if this was the right card after all.

Joule agreed and Kinuhata laid down. Within moments Joule's soft humming had sent her to sleep. Joule prepared and was ready when REM sleep began.

...

Her telepathy was based on brainwaves, she could track the brainwaves occuring in any part of the brain. Joule tracked the effect the card was having, referencing it against what she knew of dreams and carefully watching for damage. Misaka was still awake, watching with a worried expression.

The card was forming new links in the brain. They were frail things that Joule could remove easily as long as they weren't reinforced with use. links of idle thought. They were pulling things from parts of the brain to the region hosting the dream itself. Ah, that bit would be drawing in the things Kinuhata was worried about? A bespoke nightmare maybe? There was no way that this card wasn't custom designed if it could do something like this.

Carefully, Joule changed her humming to prevent the reinforcements of any of those links. They'd be broken as she woke, no harm done. The dream was still getting stored to memory though, they'd have to ask about that when she woke.

On that note, it looked like she was waking up now. Joule carefully brought her back to the waking world.

Kinuhata seemed unsetteld by whatever she had seen, but it apparently wasn't anything to do with Bust upper, they just resealed the card and moved on.

Misaka grabbed the next card while Kinuhata recovered, Joule softly telling Kinuhata what parts of the brain had been effected and cleaning up areas if Kinuhata said she didn't want that link there. Things like the link from worries that might make her more likely to have nightmares, that Joule had cleaned earlier.

Finally though, they had hit the jackpot. When Misaka woke up, it was with a smile. She resealed the card quickly and handed it to Kinuhata.

"Found it!"

Kinuhata didn't wait, instantly removing the seal again to release a blast of the fragence as she went to the bed, Joule helped her drift off as she looked at the excited Misaka.

For her part, the Electromaster was looking down at her own chest thoughtfully.

"What?"

Misaka shook her head at Joule's question before looking up.

"Nothing, just thinking about Kuroko."

...Brought on by finding Bust Upper, that was a slightly strange thought. Or was she just thinking of being benevolent to her friend.

"What's the big secret?" Joule asked.

Misaka shrugged "A couple things, a chemical compound that is only somewhat required along with giving the body plenty of resources and performing a few... exercises. You can check the card yourself if you want. Just wait for Kinuhata to be done first. Apparently it promises results in just one night."

Well... if she said so. Joule would probably wait until after Misaka tried it before trying it on herself. If it went wrong, well, they could get her to the hospital.

"Why were you thinking about Shirai, was it something to do with those exercises?"

Misaka frowned at Joule's question and nodded "There's no way I could do it with her watching and it needs to be done right before bed too. I might need to wait for a night when she's out."

Which are always random as far as Joule knew. Misaka would have to get everything else ready and wait for the perfect time to do it.

Kinuhata eventually woke, just as pleased with the result. Joule stored the card away, hoping it would still be good when she needed to use it in the future. The two girls did an actual fist bump at that, they both seemed really excited to have found it.

"Money ultra well spent." Kinuhata noted and Misaka agreed with a big nod.

Well, as long as they were happy.


End of chapter.

Yes, Bust Upper actually worked in this timeline. They've both found "The secret"

As the original never makes it clear what the unnamed girl did, just that it happened over the course of one night (Must have been used on the night of the fifth), this is the best I can guess.

Nothing much happens on the sixth other than Uiharu and Saten commenting on the unnamed girl's... new assets, so I don't know if it needs a chapter. So we'll probably be skipping to the seventh and the Yumiya Rakko miniarc.

Also I am retconning a previous chapter. I messed up the timeline a bit. In chapter 195, I accidentally quoted the wrong event. That will have been fixed by the time thist chapter goes up.