What happens now?

[ACMItM: I'll sing for those people's sake]

Joule yawned and smiled as Misaka and Saten caught the yawn.

They were all at the local Judgement office. "All" in this context included the woman who had been in the robot and the mages that had been trying to kidnap Arisa.

Well, two of them at least. The pyromancer that Touma apparently knew had gone to talk to someone and the water witch hadn't really "felt welcome" in the room. The witches who controlled earth and air had stuck around to keep an eye on everything.

There was largely a tense feeling in the room.

Joule checked the clock, apparently it was getting on to midnight. They really should try and wrap this up quickly.

In the end it took Arisa to brake the awkward feeling.

"So, what exactly is going on?"

Uiharu had dug out a ball to be used so everyone didn't talk over one another. The fact that they had to do it this way at all was quite funny.

Arisa tossed the ball to Kuroko with her first question. She checked with Uiharu (Who was at her computer) before answering.

"Seeing as everyone is willing to calm down and talk, we aren't arresting anyone yet. But Anti-skill is waiting outside. Let's just get down to it and put everything in order."

She looked over to the mages.

"Three questions, who are you, are you actually witches and why did you want to kidnap Arisa?"

She tossed the ball and the wind witch caught it.

"I am Jane, my friend here is Mallybath. We work for a group that works out of England and I'm afraid we can't tell you any more about us. We are indeed witches however. For your last question... master would be able to explain this better but I will try."

She took a breath and then began "It has come to our attention that Arisa is likely a Saint." A mix of faces and vocalisations could be observed but Jane pushed on "Normally, natural born Saints join the church but it appears in Arisa's case, no one noticed it for some reason. Regardless, our group has come to believe that Orbit Portal intend to use her power in some sort of magical ritual involving the space elevator Endymion. It is likely that this ritual is based around the opening of the elevator somehow and so we intended to take her now so we had more time to research what the ritual was designed to do and if nes- if needed, to remove it."

Ok wow.

The witch, Jane, looked back at Arisa.

"Have they told you anything?"

She tossed the ball and Arisa caught it.

"I haven't. I- I didn't even know I was even a Saint."

As she spoke, the Crow Leader looked annoyed about something.

Arisa continued "What could it do? The ritual I mean?"

With the ball tossed back, Jade shook her head and answered "I honestly have no idea. We don't know what basis they are even using. The only thing known for sure is that it will be big, whatever it is."

The ball was thrown back to Arisa before she passed it on to Misaka without a question.

Misaka looked at the witches and simply asked "Why didn't you think to just tell her?"

The witches, upon catching Misaka's throw, looked over at the Crow Leader.

"Her guards wouldn't let us get close, they work for Orbit Portal after all. That and we worried she was in on it. Violence, while not the only option, was the best option we could see."

The ball was then passed over to GV who turned his attention on the Crow Leader.

"What is your name?"

She caught the ball and scowled.

"Shutaura. I'm not giving you my full name either."

She looked around the room with a raised eyebrow.

"You don't all believe what these people are saying do you? There abilities are unnatural and they've already admitted they're from another nation."

Index, sitting near Touma, raised her hand and after a sigh Shutaura through the ball her way.

"I'm fairly sure they're telling the truth, at least in regards to this. There are groups in England that do this sort of thing."

Joule reflected that if the magic side was trying to keep up the facade that they didn't exist, the past few months had tanked the chance of that happening.

She passed the ball to Touma who looked around.

"So what is the plan? What is Arisa going to do?"

Arisa took the ball with a pass before taking a breath.

"I know that it is very likely a trap of some sort but... I still want to perform. All of those people who are taking the time to come and see me, I don't want to disappoint them."

Uiharu gave her a smile and Arisa nodded and took another deep breath.

"So- we need to prevent it from doing any damage. How do we find out what the ritual does?"

Index raised her hand and got the ball passed to her.

"I could figure it out with some more information, If I knew what the performance venue looked like."

"The top of Endymion is not public information." Shutaura cut in.

Index sighed at that.

Touma took the ball and suggested "I mean, it is right there above us. What stops us from using a telescope to check what it looks like?"

"Wouldn't work." Index took back the ball "I've looked at it before actually, there is nothing inherently magical that I can tell from the outside, I'll need to know the inside to figure anything out."

Joule held up her hand then. After being passed the ball she made a suggestion.

"When we go up for the show tomorrow, you could have a poke around to see what's going on."

"...That might work." Index noted.

Shutaura cut in again then "The public cannot go out of bounds."

"Are you just trying to be difficult?" Misaka noted with some anger in her voice.

Seeing as no one cared about the ball anymore, Joule nodded to Arisa "Would you be okay with that? You could sing but there would be the risk of something going wrong because of the ritual."

Arisa nodded "Yes! I can do it!"

As the argument with Shutaura progressed she just seemed to get angrier. Eventually though she just stood up with a look like thunder.

She turned to Arisa.

"Make sure you get back to Orbit Portal at the right time tomorrow!"

And then she stormed out.

Huh.

The topic then changed to how the mages would contact the team as they didn't have tickets.

They needed the plan soon so they could all get some rest before everything went to hell.

End of chapter.

And the butterfly results in; People actually talking.

Communication, solving problems since language was invented.