Furthest point

[ACMItM: Destroy the core]

Endymion's design was genius, Joule reflected.

"How are we still walking properly? We are at GEO, we shouldn't be feeling any gravity?"

Uiharu replied with another question "Well, we were weightless when we got off so shouldn't the question be what changed?"

The problem the physics of a space elevator, at the point they were standing at now, they should feel weightless. They had felt that when they had left the elevator itself. Now though it felt normal, 1G pulling them down towards earth.

They hadn't moved around enough to be in a different orbital height, the top was too thin for that anyway.

Saten pondered as they walked, following the signal that came from Arisa.

"In Sci-fi you always hear about centrifugal force acting like gravity?"

Kuroko shook her head as the wheelchair moved along.

"That can't be it, not with how a space elevator actually works."

Uiharu agreed with her "It's centripetal force that keeps the elevator up at all, if we were experiencing that it would take us a lot more travel as we'd need to have traveled to the counterweight and at that point the whole elevator would have a problem; a lack of a proper counterweight!"

"So," Misaka noted "there's something wrong here? Joule do you sense any... Magic?"

It seemed like she still wasn't used to magic being real yet. Regardless, Joule shook her head "I don't think so, but there is definitely something up about this whole structure."

"Wait, that doesn't make sense?" Saten mutterred "Since the physics doesn't work it has to be an Esper ability or Magic but you can't see either of them here?"

"Well-" Joule was about to say something as they stepped through a door marked 'Staff only', the moment she did, it was almost like the gravity suddenly dropped to half a G inside the newly opened hallway.

After they were all through it was Kuroko who made the comment.

"This just raises further questions."

Joule hesitated "I mean, we can determine laws for it." To prove it she stepped back outside into that hall where gravity returned to 1G and then back in where the gravity halved again.

Uiharu looked closely at the door "How is it so exact? I'd get if it slowly weakened the further you got from the center but in this case it just seems like a fixed line."

When they couldn't figure out an answer, they gave up. It wasn't as important as helping Arisa.

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

Security had been low so far, the other team was likely doing a good job keeping them busy. Joule had checked in with Index to see how it was going, apparently they had been having trouble with some kind of puppets that fought like trained assassins.

The only way they had of telling the time was their watches, all syncronised to count down until the performance was slated to begin.

From somewhere closer towards the center of the station, a voice could be heard as they travelled.

"Attention; We are now temporarily shutting down the network to adjust the relay circuits for the ceremony. Please wait a moment for service to resume."

Misaka frowned "Half an hour gone already, we better be close."

As it happened, they were. When they finally reached the room that the tracker said Arisa was in, the gravity was down to something like a tenth of Earth's. They had been moving more by using the bars on the wall than their legs and in Kuroko's case her now abandoned wheelchair.

The problem was that it was locked. The solution was for Misaka to hack the card reader.

A beep and a click later they were in. As they stepped inside, the remaining gravity almost seemed to drop away. While they could still feel a slight tug, they could of jumped to the roof if they wanted. It seemed that Arisa was doing just that. She was curled up and floating in mid-air with her head down.

"Arisa!" Joule called quietly. Arisa reacted quickly and turned her head to look.

"Joule! Everyone! You came."

"Duh." Saten notted as they walked into the room "You thought we wouldn't come after we promised?"

Arisa shook her head with a smile "No, I never doubted you all."

"Oh, and did you doubt me?"

The sudden voice came as a shock to them all, they had been followed into the room by a young girl, the CEO of Orbit Portal.

"You-" Saten began but the woman just cut her off.

"I doubted some of you, that much is clear. No, perhaps the right term would be that I underestimated you all. I expected the Railgun and the Young Muse, I thought the rest of you would have remained below."

There was an odd sense about her when she spoke. It was clear that she was a dangerous person. Talking over her didn't seem very wise.

"Oh?" Misaka noted "Do you think you've made plans that would stop me?"

The girl had a small smile that promised dark things.

"Oh I think I have. I don't think you're a killer after all."

"What?" Misaka demanded "What do you mean?"

Ladylee shrugged "I'll admit, I didn't know your hacking skills would allow you to break this station's security. Not that it matters much though as your two primary weapons have been sealed by this battleground. You can't risk damaging this station without risking the lives of everyone else up here."

Her wicked smile then turned on Joule "And for you, my dear, I don't need a threat. I can defeat you with only a few words, do you know what those words are?"

Joule hesitated, how could she be defeated in only a few words?

"It really is quite simple." Ladylee said with utter confidence "While you- none of you I mean, can risk killing me, I could kill everyone on this station with relatively little effort if I wanted to. So, if you want to save your friends, not to mention yourself, you need to do as I say. I'm honestly thankful you came, you might allow my plan to be even more successful than it would be with just Arisa."

Joule paled. Had this been nothing more than-

"Yes, i'll admit that I planned this. From the moment that Arisa asked for tickets, I knew I could get you all here to help me."

Misaka likely had thoughts allong the lines of "We'd never help you." However, she couldn't say that, not with everyone here as the girl's hostages.

Instead she frowned.

"Humour me a question Ms Tangleroad," Misaka was being very formal as she spoke.

The young girl's grin remained fixed.

"Go ahead."

"How old are you?"

At that, Ladylee's grin faded but stayed it place.

"Don't you know it's impolite to ask a woman her age? Why do you ask?"

"I did some research." Misaka answered "I found a picture of you from the nineteen hundreds."

The woman in the form of a girl frowned.

"That could have just been an ancestor."

Misaka shook her head "Even if it was- no, that would be the wrong way to say it. It would still be you either way. Right? Ms Tangleroad? You are far too... Mature for your age."

Ladylee's smile became an awful grin, the like a demon would wear.

"How clever, Miss Misaka. Indeed. Then allow me to answer your earlier question; I am somewhere around eight hundred years old. The exact number doesn't matter though."

The unaging witch smile returned to what it was before as she looked up to Arisa.

"Don't you think it is time for your performance my dear?"

Joule was panicking and sending updates to Index. Hopefully they could do something about all of this before things were made worse.

End of chapters.

So, Space Elevators shouldn't have gravity yet the movie shows that some places on the station does have it. I have no solution to offer.

On the other side, Ladylee was definitely not getting tricked that easily