What was the reason?

[ACMI2: However, To Earnestly]

So, it turned out that having them all in there to watch over the sleeping girls would have been too much.

They had come the next day as planned. Shokuhou and her clique, Misaka, Shirai, Uiharu, Saten. Joule had sent a text to Saten last night to fill her in on what had happened after they'd split up at the Arcade.

Joule was there too of course. GV wasn't. He was poking his nose into the dark side of academy city to try and find the missing girl that Hokaze had fought there at the end. Shokuhou apparently knew her and that her name was Houjou. GV had taken that info and gone poking around.

She probably learned it from the clique. They had apparently launched cyber attacks against her after all.

The teams had swapped info, the clique's info about Houjou and Judgement's new info about a possible motive.

"All of those emotions that were the heart of the crimes could have been artificially placed in them by a telepath." Shirai had explained. Eyes turned to Shokuhou at that and she nodded and explained.

"A Telepath can modify emotions, obviously, it requires level 2 to do a single emotion in an obvious way. Based on the crime though... I'd expect a level 3 or 4 to be behind it."

Of course, then the question was "who was that esper?" There weren't that many level 4 telepaths in the city. Shokuhou apparently had a suspect but she wasn't telling. The second question that came up was "Why were they working with Yumiya and Houjou?"

"They might not have been." Joule spoke as she raised her hand "At the end there, Yumiya seemed very emotional too. It was fixated upon Hokaze."

Shokuhou nodded "About what I expected. I agree. She could easily have been controlled too."

More info was passed around but in the end the doctor had limited it to four people going in the room that Hokaze and Yumiya were in. Shirai opted out, going to see the wounded judgement member instead. Uiharu joined her and Saten tagged along since, as she said "I don't have much of a connection to this all anyway."

Shokuhou then denied most of her clique from coming in since it wasn't like she'd need any help with this. She sent them to organize water refills for her inside the room. So in the end only the three left: Shokuhou, Misaka and Joule, went in.

Joule didn't ask at the time why Misaka even wanted to come in for this.

So the three of them waited in the room as the soft breathing of the sleepers could be heard.

Finally, Hokaze started to shift around. The ghost girl, who'd naturally come in anyway as very few people could see her, excitedly bounded over to her.

"Junko, are you okay?"

Hokaze was sluggish as she woke up but after a few seconds she was up and aware.

She talked with those who had come to see her until Yumiya began to move too.

Everyone became quiet and Misaka pulled the bed divider closed to bring them all out of sight. Only Shokuhou was visible to Yumiya as she woke up with a start.

This had been planned out. They needed answers from her. Shokuhou was the best person to ask those questions as she was related to the case while not being part of the battle in the warehouse. Not too close and not too far.

"Huh? I-" Yumiya looked around and her head stopped as she saw the city's most powerful telepath leaning against the wall of her hospital room.

"So, you're finally awake." Shokuhou observed as Joule peaked through the divider to see what was going on.

"You?"

Shokuhou began to explain the thoughts that Judgement had come upon since yesterday and the thoughts they had been talking about in the lobby.

"So, Judgement would probably guess that you and Houjou were behind it, but we're thinking that you were under the power of her ability too."

"Her." That mysterious suspect that Shokuhou wouldn't speak about?

"I even have a pretty good idea about the method." Shokuhou admits "That card that you used on me, a modified Indian poker card was it not? Something that could affect your mind like a Testament."

A modified card? Joule thought she should ask for details later as she hadn't mentioned something like that.

Yumiya covered her damaged eye socket with her hand and admitted "I don't know... my heart skips a beat when I see Hokaze-"

Hokaze, still sitting up in bed behind the divider, blushed as Yumia continued to talk.

"But I also want to tease her sometimes. No one is more beautiful, strong or cool. She is my hero. But... She's number 2."

The expression on Shokuhou's face was amazing. It was a perfect expression of "I'm done with this."

She was hiding it well of course. But Joule stillsaw the slight change in her expression. Misaka could too and she was resisting the urge to laugh at the situation.

"That can't be right." Yumiya continued "So I want everyone to know how amazing she really is- so..."

She paused and looked up at the ceiling "What was I even doing?"

She realised the contradictions in her actions now.

Shokuhou decided to explain that the "poison" was fake. Houjou had also tried to create more evidence that made it look like Yumiya was a pawn.

"Basically, it looks a lot like she's covering for you."

Not that any of them knew why.

Yumiya was quiet for a minute as she digested all she'd heard. The people hiding behind the curtain divider were doing much the same.

Finally, she looked up.

"If I may ask, where is Hokaze?"

Shokuhou turned to the divider and gave Joule a mental poke with a hidden remote. Not something to control her, just prompting her to act along.

"She's right here of course."

Joule pulled the curtain to reveal herself, Misaka and the blushing Hokaze.

Yumiya looked to be in shock.

End of chapter

A debriefing, this and the next chapter could have been one upload but this one was already running on and I was running out of writing time in the day.