Begining of the festival

[ACSRT: Strawberry Yakisoba]

Joule checked her watch. It was still quite early. She had needed to get up at earlier than normal and then changed quickly, GV had passed her a piece of toast and they had both made their way to their school where they were being organised for events.

The opening ceremony was about to be aired when Saten and Uiharu arrived. Uiharu had gotten everyones itineraries for the week from the teachers. Joule read through her own. The first thing was warm-ups once the first part of the opening ceremony was done.

"What do you mean by the first part of the opening?" GV had asked.

Uiharu shrugged and explained "The ceremony will be going on for about three and a half hours. The first events start while it's going on."

"...That seems like a problem." Joule observed but Saten smirked.

"I just heard it was required in order to get all of the events done in the required time."

Joule's shoulders fell as she realised just how active she'd need to be this week but she looked up at a noise like a hum from GV.

"What is it?"

"I'm not in any team based sports until near the end of the week."

Saten poked her head round to check and sucked in a breath as she saw he was right. She turned to Joule who shrugged "I have the that cavalry battle thing you mentioned later today."

"I've got that one too." Uiharu noted and Saten checked her own and nodded "Me to, so why don't you? What do you have at that time?"

"Nothing." GV said "That period is empty for me."

"At least that means you can watch in the crowd though?" Saten suggested.

GV nodded but still looked worried so he asked to see Joule's sheet. She passed it and he noticed something so he checked it with his own to make sure.

"Huh, you seem to have a fewer events than I do?"

Uiharu checked it against hers and nodded "He's right Joule. You're doing about half as many activities as the rest of us. At least until near the end anyway."

"Maybe it's just because I'm not very active and whoever set up the timetables took that into acount? How are the individual timetables designed anyway?"

"AI." Uiharu noted "Our teachers put down our nominations and an AI checked everything to ensure that we don't have two activities at the same time or anything like that."

"I didn't put my name forward for a lot of the sports, maybe these were just whatever was left over." Joule noted.

GV sighed "It's still odd though. Concidering what happened a week ago, I'm worried this might be some sort of thing to split us apart to make it possible for someone to grab you."

Saten shrugged and then gave him a thumbs up as she said "If it is something like that, you can trust us to keep a close eye on her while your busy. We'll get Misaka and Kuroko to help when they can too. It's only near the start of the week anyway, if something will happen then it will come sooner rather than later."

There weren't any events which left only Joule out thankfully so that was a promise that she'd probably be able to keep.

That said, the opening ceremony began. Two of the level 5s were making the pledge.

One of them, "Sogiita Gunha" was someone she had never met. He did seem quite chaotic though as Joule realised he was probably going off script. The other one though...

Blond hair and sparkling eyes. Joule didn't have a solid memory of her, even weeks later but that was the level 5 telepath that Misaka knew.

They had met before that though, even if not in person. Joule thought that she might have been the one controlling that girl she had met during the Tokiwadai Midsummer Fesitval. In all that time, she had yet to see the girl properly.

Mental Out. Shokuhou Misaki.

Joule shook her head and looked back to her friends that were currently talking about Gunha's improv. It was time to get warmed up after all.

As they were already in their sportswear, all they needed to do were some streaches and a bit of jogging.

Granted, her first activity was not for a few hours left now that she was reading her itinerary. She was in the 10 am scavenger hunt. It was actually the first scavenger hunt of the festival though there was another one after lunch. While Saten and Uiharu wouldn't be taking part, they got a message that Misaka would be.

It wasn't a team sport but Misaka would be able to keep Joule safe as they searched. It just became a question of whose items were easier to find.

Joule was looking forward to it.

End of chapter.

Huh, another short one. I wonder if this will be a theme for this arc?