The day's end

[ACSR: Kazari Uiharu]

As they continued around the stands, the group found various things like keychains of some of the security robots. The one based off the director's face brought bad memories so they decided to leave those alone.

Most of the stuff here were just little knickknacks without much actual value. The team did manage to find a stall with a shooting gallery game. Misaka took a turn playing that and was actually quite good. She won a bracelet shaped like one of the more centipede-like security robots which she thought was funny.

After they all got bored of the fun and games though, they headed away and back to more normal parts of the city.

As they walked around, Misaka suggested they get a late lunch at one of the restaurants they'd been too together a lot. They had been walking in the wrong direction for it but it didn't take long to turn around and head back to the very familiar parts of the city.

Joule thought of Academy City for a moment. She'd been here for long enough that it was more familiar than the city where GV's old base had been. While she'd gone to school there for a time, she couldn't say she was familiar with most of its streets or restaurants. There had always been the danger that someone would spot her and kidnap her.

She had always had Lumen to look out for her anyway so…

Hmm. Joule's emotions took a dip.

As they were walking towards their destination, they actually bumped into Uiharu. She lit up to see them.

"Hey guys."

"Shirai let you go already?" Saten asked with a smile.

Uiharu tilted her head slightly "No, I'm just out on a patrol right now. She expects me back in an hour or so."

"Well if you've got an hour to kill, you can join us with our late lunch?" Misaka suggested.

Uiharu considered it "I've already used the office computer to do a quick scan so… sure? It's just as good as patrolling."

She joined them easily.

"Did you get a new tablet?" Joule asked her.

Uiharu nodded happily "A really good one too. I'll need to upgrade the hardware a bit but I can do that tonight. It's sitting at the office now installing some programs I had on my old tablet."

"And the prize money?" Misaka asked, turning her head over her shoulder to look back at Uiharu while still walking straight.

"Shirai is still holding onto it for now. She said she'd get it split into multiple cards for us and that she'd hand those out later."

In the restaurant, everyone sat down and ordered, the conversation drifted between some different topics before the food arrived, then it settled back on the jailbreak.

"The strange thing is," Uiharu began an off-hand comment "There were tons of security systems that weren't used."

"Like the guards?" Saten suggested "And how they were all away."

"No. There were some things that they could have used but didn't. And not just before I hacked in and made some of them impossible. They actually had a long range AIM jammer set up to deal with Espers attacking from a long way away. It could be targeted through walls too."

Misaka frowned at that "But then why didn't they use it when we were breaking through the walls with our powers? That would have made my combination with Kongou fail if they'd used it on either of us."

"There were a few more things like that too." Uiharu said "They weren't as obvious because most of them fell under my control during the process but did you know they had sleeping gas they could have pumped through the building? Or a sticky foam that could immobilise targets?"

Misaka groaned "You were really the winner in almost every way. The rest of us weren't even strictly needed."

Uiharu blinked at that "Not at all, I was powerless until you guys broke the robots that gave me access, and without the work of Joule we couldn't have escaped."

"Even so," Misaka raised her finger "Breaking through the juvenile hall's security so easily was all your incredible talent."

"Yeah, and Miss Shigenomori will probably say that your donation would be very useful for Asunaro Park." Saten noted. It was a child error facility that Uiharu had mentioned she'd make her donation to.

Joule tilted her head "And there's… What's the term again? White hat hacking? Hacking to find flaws and then exposing them to the company? You helped the prison too by exposing a flaw they can fix before someone else could take advantage of it to do something bad."

Uiharu blushed at their words and nodded "Yes it is white hat hacking I guess but I'm not really-"

"Have some more confidence." Misaka suggested.

Joule nodded "I'm fairly sure I've heard Goalkeeper was outright the best hacker in the city."

Saten nodded forcefully "Yeah Uiharu, you're the best. Even Shirai has said there's no one better than you at gathering large amounts of information quickly."

"Oh." Uiharu's eyes sparkled for a moment before they all heard the familiar sound of Shirai's teleportation as she appeared behind Uiharu, a thunderous expression on her face.

"Why are you skipping out on your patrol?" Her voice was full of controlled anger.

It seems the confidence boost the others were giving her had an impact, though maybe not the one everyone had expected.

Uiharu, with a confident expression, put her knife down and turned to Shirai.

"Oh you just don't understand Shirai."

"Eh?" Shirai was surprised about this attitude coming from someone like Uiharu.

"Pro Shogi players eat lots of ice cream and cakes while playing right? Consuming sugar is the best way to recover from mental exhaustion."

…Well from what Joule knew that wasn't quite true. It certainly made your brain release Endorphins but it could also make your thoughts more fuzzy if you took enough and a sugar crash could make your exhaustion even worse.

It seems Shirai wasn't putting up with that either as when Uiharu started making the excuse that it was to help her brain recover after the hacking she did during the trial, Shirai had grabbed her, stuffed the cream and strawberry sandwich Uiharu had been eating into her mouth and grabbed a jug of honey that was on the table. She teleported Uiharu to her feet and held out the honey.

"Should I add some honey, you want sugar right?"

Uiharu was very upset by this prank and after she'd had a moment to swallow some of the sandwich, she just mumbled "Please don't."

After that, they'd both headed off back to work.

Saten chuckled slightly, a small drop of sweat on her face "Maybe… we shouldn't have encouraged her?"

Misaka leaned back "Well, even if we might have gone too far, she did deserve the encouragement."

It was in the evening, over an hour after Shirai had come round to drop off everyone's winnings, Joule and GV's apartment phone got a call from a worried Saten.

"Uiharu's missing! She might have been kidnapped! Can you come and help?"

Joule looked at GV who was listening into the call. He left it up to her to decide. Joule just nodded.

"We're on our way!"

End of chapter!

There's an interesting difference between this story and canon now. In canon, the fact that Uiharu had been the sole winner meant that the prize money was thought to be the motive. Now that the money was split up before that, that theory will vanish sooner. Will that have an effect? Probably not in the long term, but in the short term?