A Check-up

[ACSR: Place to Return]

GV was already at the hospital when they got there.

They, along with Saten (Escorted over from Anti-skill's safehouse), Uiharu and Esther went to check on Frenda first. She gave a half smile when she saw them and a slightly confused look at Esther.

They introduced Esther as the person who'd be acting as her bodyguard while she recovered. Frenda also had some news of her own that she'd gotten while they were away. One of ITEM's members had called her to tell her that ITEM had basically been disolved after everything that happened. While it wasn't impossible their leader might still come for her, it was now much less likely.

...Esther would still keep an eye on her to be sure though.

The Dark Side had apparently fallen apart throughout the day. GV had witnessed parts of it but as this was mostly a matter of "teams" being dismantled and he was largely a lone operative looking into something for someone disconnected to whatever the issue was that they were fighting over, he didn't get caught up in it.

He had found something though and he shared it with Joule privately. He had found notes about something called "FIVE_Over Modelcase_'MENTAL_OUT'" So far he only knew the name though.

After that discussion though, Joule had finally gone for her Check-up with Heaven Canceller.

She told him her symptoms.

"It started with a dry throat, at some points it becomes hard to talk or sing because of how painful it gets. Sometimes my vision is blurry too. My... Ability has also been strange. I have a friend..." She explained Lumen, just in case "and she's not been well either, as an aspect of my ability and mind, her being tired is worrying me. She even went completly silent today, and my powers shifted to allow me to make illusions."

Finally she stopped and looked at the thoughtful doctor. He gave a slight chuckle "I doubt you have much to really worry about, but if you're that worried, let's test to find out exactly what's wrong."

Was he just trying to ease her worries or did he really believe that? All the same, GV stood by as he began testing. A throat swab didn't reveal any problems and and eye-test didn't show any issues. Joule had made the note that she wasn't feeling either of those symptoms now but Heaven Canceller told her it was still important "If the problems were there, they would have left a mark of some sort."

To make sure it was nothing they were overlooking, Heaven Canceller took the time to do a full suite of general purpose health checks. A blood check, blood pressure, a reaction test, that sort of thing. There was some data to compare to that had been gathered throughout the year.

Then came the more detailed tests. An interesting fact of Academy city was that unless there was a specific reason for it to be denied, Espers had a large fund put aside for them in case of head injuries. Heaven Canceller didn't get charged at all for letting them use an MRI.

Joule slid inside it as Heaven Canceller began looking at the results. Unlike the ones Joule had read about during her psychologic research, these machines didn't make any sort of loud banging noise. It was even apparently an old model by Academy City's standards but it was still far ahead of the rest of the world.

When she slid back out, Heaven Canceler reported no obvious issues. Her brain was normal- normal as any other Esper's really. It pleased her slightly that Adept brains apparently looked so similar to Esper brains. Even so...

"Then, what caused the change in my abilities?"

Heaven Canceller slid his chair back as he thought about it.

"It would have to be something temporary but repetative, something affecting your brainwaves. Possibly something supernatural? Here..."

He searched through a draw of his workstation and pulled out something that looked like a choker, it wasn't too dissimilar to the one Accelerator was wearing these days.

"This is a variant of an AIM reader combined with some of the newer tech to read brain waves. If you're wearing this, it can record your brain during one of those episodes and we could look over it to see what was happening."

Joule turned it over in her hands and put it on. The doctor showed her how she could use it to record. They took a recording now to give evidence of her "Base mental state" as she said she was fine right now. The Choker also apparently recorded blood pressure and body temprature. It had all kinds of minor things too to help check her health.

He also gave her an app that could download data from the choker quickly and allow her to view it, add notes about which symptoms she had been feeling, that sort of thing.

Joule prayed they could get to the bottom of this soon. Lumen's weakness scared her a lot, more than she'd expected honestly. She really just wanted a few days off. She'd rather not get into any more danger while she was trying to figure it out. Let GV find something interesting for a change. Then he'd have some stories to tell her when he got home.

For now though, they both just headed home.

End of chapter (And the arc)

The problem is that Joule's "Illness" is not something so easily found. At this point it should be obvious to... well, everyone who either read the Railgun Manga or is sharp enough to figure out the references to this in Index. I know many of my readers are actually more in-tune with the lore than I am so that should be a lot of you. Assuming you weren't one of the ones I outright told when answering a review.

Also, my alerts seem to be working again. Yay.