Child Error

[ACSR: Uiharu Kazari]

Saten Sighed "It's not fair they make us do community service because we have lousy test scores."

Uiharu responded as she kept sweeping the floor "This could be valuable life experience."

Joule nodded as she kept sweeping and Saten looked over curiously "Joule, your test scores were fine. Why did you come?"

A smile rose to her face "Well I couldn't think of something better to do today. In addition I like helping children."

Uiharu smiled back to her "It is fun playing with them and seeing their smiling faces."

Saten looked down at her broom and admited they had a point.

When Uiharu and Saten had sent her a message about the community service, Joule had been upset at first as their previous plan to have a picnic by the river would have to be delayed. She was a bit confused about what a "Child Error Facility" was supposed to be but GV had summed it up as he was leaving for a job "It is basically an orphanage, during the level-upper incident we saw one via Kiyama's memories."

Joule was worried for a moment when he said that "Are all the children experimented on then?", GV smiled at her "Not at all, as far as I can see from my findings most Child Error Facilities are just normal orphanages except without an adoption system in place, those within are meant to leave around 18 and they are treated as regular studants when they are old enough to come."

Joule sighed, GV had been looking into the aftermath of the Level-upper incident, according to him the children in comas had been found and he was actually going to confirm it today. He had said some other strange stories however like a building being struck by lightning and then repairing itself but that was probably just another esper fight.

Either way, Joule left the house a few minutes later and caught Uiharu and Saten as they walked to their destination.

The three continued to sweep up the playground and as they did the homeroom teacher of their class walked up with someone else. When they had first arived he had been surprised to see Joule but after she explained she wanted to volunteer too he let her be.

Now he walked up and introduced the woman beside her as Shigenomori Kazuko, the principal of the orphanage.

The principal greeted the girls but then wondered if the girls by the gate were friends of theirs. The three of them looked over to see Misaka and Kuroko hiding behind a fence looking at them sheepishly.

The five of them met up and Kuroko noted the coincidence of their meeting. Apparently they weren't here to volunteer, from what Joule could read of Kuroko's vauge answer they had basically stalked their dormitory manager to try and figure out what she did on days off because of how strict she was on the job.

The five of them peeked in through a window to see her inside talking with their homeroom teacher. He was telling her about the fact that some of his studants wer helping today and they likely would make small mistakes.

Then the dormitory manager blushed and muttered something about how she was sure that "His Charges" wouldn't do anything wrong and that even if they did "She wasn't good at punishing children."

They had to hold Kuroko back as she muttered something about how that was a dirty lie.

It was then that Kuroko hit upon something "This must be the mysterious man in her life!"

When the others seemed confused, Kuroko explained her theory that the dormitory manager was going out with someone and that was what she spent her time off focusing on.

"Love?" the others responded with a mix of surprise and blushing from Joule.

It was then that Kuroko clenched her hand and spoke with purpose "I have a mission, I will see to it that her love blossoms, I will not fail her."

Misaka's response was the fastest "I don't know about this Kuroko."

On the other hand Saten and Uiharu gave their agreement to the plan while Joule continued to blush and nod.

Misaka sighed "I hope you realise this won't be easy."

"Well," Uiharu started "I trust Kuroko to be able to create any sort of romantic situation."

A sharp look was sent her way as Kuroko asked "What does that mean exactly?" The tone of voice meant she suspected exactly what Uiharu meant.

[ACSR: Tokiwadai Chuugakkou]

They met up the next day to "volunteer" again, apparently a plan had been hatched. Just after they had been introduced to the children the dorm manager pulled Kuroko away to talk to her.

Joule and Uiharu went outside with their Homeroom teacher to play with the children while the others started the plan inside.

After a while Uiharu and Misaka switched out so it was Joule and Misaka playing tag with them outside.

Joule could tell that Misaka was thinking deeply about something so as she started to entertain the children with her singing she sent a message to Misaka "What are you worried about?"

Joule saw her look up suddenly from being lost in her thoughts and Joule strengthened the connection.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Joule mentally asked

The song she was singing was one of her quieter ones, a composition she had created herself.

Misaka's message returned "I'm thinking about Dr Kiyama's students. They are still in a coma even after all these years."

Joule sent some warm feelings over as she said "Don't worry, from what I heard the children are in a hospital being well cared for in their comas, there might even be a way to wake them up still."

Misaka sighed audibly then sent back "I hope you are right about them waking up, I still don't like it."

A few minutes later everyone went back inside, on the table for the children were pizzas and cakes. Apparently there had been a surprising amount effort that the cakes took to get but Joule didn't listen to carefully.

The two adults were talking calmly until one of the children pointed at them and said "Look, they are being all lovey dovey with each other!"

The children started to sing "Lovey-Dovey!" for a few seconds and the dorm manager turned away shyly. Kuroko then had the great idea of getting the homeroom teacher to describe his ideal woman.

As he began to speak Joule could see the blush that the dorm manager was trying to hide and she smiled.

There was then a rumbling, the building shook slightly, Kuroko called it out first "Earthquake?"

The children began to panic and the homeroom teacher tryed to calm them but the dorm manager called for them to get under the table.

As Joule did she heard a strange voice, she couldn't make out the words but someone was calling for someone else. Until the earthquake ended the voice kept repeating, at first growing in strength and then fading.

Uiharu made the note that there had been a lot of earthquakes lately, though this was the first of them that Joule had been caught up in.

"Oh no." the homeroom teacher had spoken seeing that the dorm manager had shielded one of the children from a falling kettle.

He helped her up but she was unharmed.

The rest of the day went fairly well according to Kuroko, Joule had just kept playing with the children.

[ACSR: Taisetsu na Tomodachi]

The next day the others went to Seventh Mist to help make the dorm manager ready for a supposed date but Joule was more curious about the voice she had heard during the earthquake so she let them do their thing as she began to investigate with Lumen acting as a passive-aggressive telepathy sensor.

Lumen would be able to tell the difference between telepaths so they might be able to find the person whose Telepathy was speaking during the earthquake.

In the end they found no-one and from a phone call that came later it turns out that the date didn't work out.

Joule sighed as Lumen summed up the problem "Was everyone trying to hard to make it work?"

Joule nodded and sent back to her "Probably, maybe given time the two of them might have fallen in love naturally but Kuroko pushed it to hard."

She sighed and began the walk home

End of chapter

Yes I know it's short and not very good. My original plan was to skip this episode too (17 had been skipped) but when I saw the foreshadowing in this episode (The earthquake, thoughts of Kiyama, child errors) I knew I would have to do something for this.

The original name had been something like "Joule stands back and watches things happen" but I changed the name because it was too... not right for the chapter.

Anyway Episode 19 won't be skipped and could be maybe good. Probably, Maybe, I don't know.

I'm not good at filler, even foreshadowing filler.

Anyway in Index news, the Deep blood arc has occured (Episode 17 shows that it has finished by around this time)