The Speech


[ACMI: Academy City]

Uiharu and Joule were dragged along by Misaka's youngest sister. It was actually taking them of the direction of the speech that the woman from the board of directors was going to have.

That worried Joule just a bit. Assuming Last Order was tracking Accelerator properly, that meant he was around here somewhere.

There were a lot of students about. They made up a majority of the crowd. If Accelerator started something...

"Oh." Uiharu noted "Joule, have you heard what this presentation will be about?"

"Voting rights for students." Uiharu filled her in "We make up a majority of the people living in the city after all, Oyafune Monaka thought... well. She'll probably go over it."

As Uiharu pointed, Joule saw an old woman walking across the stage to the podium.

Joule was still looking around though, Last Order was doing much the same. They were trying to spot Accelerator in the crowd.

He's got white hair, it shouldn't be very hard. Sadly it did seem to be that bad.

"Hey, Uiharu. What are those vans?"

The vans in questions had "air-purifier" Written on them but having those outside felt a little odd to Joule. Uiharu turned away from the speech where the director was introducing herself to glance over and them.

"Ah, those are Wind Defence systems, anti-sniping messures. It's not really strange that they'd... why isn't that one turned on?"

She wasn't looking at the one Joule had nodded at, but one a bit futher away. They could see the massive fan inside the truck from where they were standing and more importantly they could see it wasn't spinning.

Joule turned to look at it as Last order glanced the other way.

"Why bring anti-sniping messures but then not turn them on?"

Uiharu nodded "My thoughts exactly. Do you mind keeping hold of Last Order for a moment?"

Joule did so as Uiharu ran off, pulling out her phone as she tightened her Judgement armband.

"Last Order?" Joule looked to where the girl had been, only to see her weaving her way through the crowd behind her. She switftly followed after her, just as she heard a pinging sound from somewhere nearby. Joule recognised the source of the sound to be the nearby Wind Defence Van, a van that specifically now had a small holl punched in the van's side. A bullet hole.

Anti-sniping messures, messures that prevented a sniper from hitting a VIP. But the vans themselves weren't protected against snipers!

...No, right now she had to find Last Order. She'd felt the waves of the Misaka network before and Last Order was the core... there.

She pushed through some more students and found Last Order looking around, confused.

"Last Order?" She asked.

The young girl shook her head "Misaka was sure that Misaka had sensed him right here, where is he?"

Joule couldn't replicate the method of searching for Accelerator's choker, the fact it was connected to the Misaka network meant that to see it, she'd need to "see" the entire network. She could find Last Order like that but everything else blended into the background with how "loud" Last Order was when it came to EM waves.

As she glanced around though, she heard an explosion and spun. One of the Wind Defense vans had gone up in flames.

...He's probably over there.

But did she want Last Order running towards a burning vehicle. No. Accelerator would be fine but Last Order wouldn't.

The explosion had caused guards to gather around to try and escort the director off the stage, one of them fell and blood pooled but the rest of the guards were able to finish their job to get Oyafune Monaka away.

...Joule had managed to miss the entire speech because she was so distracted.

Eventually, Uiharu came back to them while panting softly.

Accelerator was probably long gone by now and Last Order was pointing in a new direction.

Instead of chasing him at once though, they all sat down.

"So, it was probably Accelerator who set off the explosion." Joule noted.

Uiharu sighed "Not that we know that for sure though, either way it seems it was for a good reason. No one had noticed the loss of sniper defenses. If he, or whoever did that, hadn't, she might have gotten really hurt."

"He's being a good guy, Misaka notes with a big smile as Misaka eats ice cream."

...They had bought Ice cream for her to keep her here long enough to discuss what was going on.

"So..." Uiharu ponders "He must have known about the assassin in advance. Otherwise he wouldn't have likely picked up on it that fast."

"We picked up on it fast too." Joule reminded her. Uiharu nodded but explained.

"Yes, but you have me. I'm well-versed in this kind of things. If he hadn't known about the Wind Defence before-hand, he wouldn't have known how important it was if it had stopped."

So, Joule thought this was probably the start of something, but was it something new?

What was on the table right now? The Poker cards, her illness, Last Order...

Hmm. Just because she was hanging out with Last Order right now didn't meant the girl was involved in something. She wasn't always a target in much the same way that Joule herself wasn't always the target.

Oh, there was Frenda? That had been a new thing, even if it was connected to the Poker cards in some way.

There are no coincidences in Academy City, well. There's probably such a thing as Luck but it's still the result of something somewhere. The butterfly effect and all that.

Because of that...

She pulled out her phone and sent a quick text.

"Hey Saten, can you check in with Frenda? Ask her if there's anything going on in the city today that normal people should be careful of?"

A few moments later, she got the reply.

"I will!" With a smily next to it.

Hopefully that turned up something. In the meantime though, it was time to follow around Last Order some more. Hopefully nothing goes wrong today.

That said, it is lunch soon, maybe they should stop to eat something.


End of chapter.

And now Frenda is getting mentioned. I know many people have been looking forward to her in this arc.