The Depths

[ACMI3: Modern Weapon]

Uiharu had apparently managed to hack enough of the security that she was now in effective control of the entire prison's systems.

"I even made us invisible to cameras." She reported as she and Shirai headed for the door of the girl's cellblock "The people in charge of the test have no idea."

"What about guards?" Joule's voice buzzed out of Shirai's earpiece and Uiharu's terminal.

Uiharu looked down at the terminal, a confused look on her face "That's the thing, there don't appear to be any. I've accessed the camera feed across the cell blocks and there's only things like these robots."

As she spoke, she patted the guard robot she was sitting on.

Shirai looked to the side as they reached the door of the girl's building. The door was firmly closed and there was a small crowd outside who were looking at it.

Misaka's group, Kongou's group, A young girl with long baggy sleeves and a teenage boy in a tanuki mask.

"Uiharu?" Misaka blinked in surprise "Oh, and Shirai, you're okay."

"Thank you! You really do care!" Shirai celebrated.

Saten and the girl with long sleeves were looking at the door, when Saten noticed Uiharu was here, she raised over and gave her a high five too "You're okay! Do you mind helping us out here, we can't get the door open."

"Is that the only way in?" Shirai asked.

"No." The Tanuki-masked boy noted "We heard explosions from elsewhere earlier, someone likely blew their way in."

Uiharu nodded to the earlier question and after tapping a few keys on her keyboard, the door slid open easily. The girl slowly headed in, the boy following behind her while Misaka and Kongou's team made a plan.

"Hey Uiharu, can you see which cell the target's in?"

Uiharu nodded "Yes, I've already found its camera. The stand-in looks fairly relaxed, even with the chains she's got on."

Kongou nodded "For the sake of competition, let's go separately, would you mind telling us which cell it is though?"

Uiharu did and Kongou's team headed off. They'd still need to deal with the traps, but their suits should help.

As the team headed in, they avoided traps and Uiharu redirected the guard robots elsewhere in the building, giving their team as close as they could get to a straight shot.

The target prisoner, or the stand-in for said prisoner to be more accurate, was in solitary confinement.

Uiharu was humming as she typed away. She had just set the robot she was sitting on to follow Misaka so she could just devote her attention to managing the security system.

"Hmm~ No, a system purge won't get me out." She was commenting on what was going on and smiling.

Over the terminal Joule's voice could be heard "How did you get so good at hacking Uiharu? I'd understand Misaka or GV having the talent for it but for you to manage it…"

"Well, I've always managed the system for judgement so…"

Shirai laughed "No need to be humble Uiharu, you're a prodigy."

Uiharu scratched the side of her head while chuckling slightly, "Well… kind of, yeah. Most security in academy city is created by specialised AI, AI are written by people though and by understanding what makes those people tick, I can find flaws in security."

Misaka blinked and looked back, her expression showed how impressed she was "That's amazing, I always have to bypass those AI manually and some of them are very tricky."

"I've got a bit of a reputation." Uiharu smiled "Even on the dark side of the city, though I try to stay out of it as much as possible. I'm called the Goalkeeper."

"What." Saten's voice was empty for a moment and then her eyes lit up "Really? You're Goalkeeper? I've read the rumours about you online. I never knew you were that amazing Uiharu."

Joule was still thinking about something else Uiharu had said though "So you can predict the people who wrote the AI? Do you just guess the admin password on an AI to force it to stand aside?"

"If you wanted to simplify it, that's basically how it works." Uiharu agreed "There's more too it though. Everyone who writes an AI does it in their own way. I can look at the workings of an AI, get a good grasp of the mathematics it's working under and just make it leave me alone. The AI might know I'm disrupting the security but I'm not doing enough to make it throw up an alarm until it's too late to stop me."

GV's voice came over the terminal next "Your Esper ability is categorised as Telekinesis isn't it Uiharu?"

"Yes, but Thermal hand isn't a very strong ability." Uiharu agreed "I can just keep entropy stable by adding or removing a tiny amount of energy from a system."

Telekinesis as a classification was about Esper abilities that could control matter in some way, strictly speaking a lot of things were Telekinesis. Kongou and Saten's Aero Hand abilities were a good example.

In this case, Uiharu's power was a low level form of temperature manipulation, it was like Pyro- or Cryo Kinesis, the control of heat or cold. In Uiharu's case she could do both but only on a micro scale. In a way it was an ability that used a macrocosm (Her body and AIM field) to control a microcosm (the target of her effect). Though the same could probably be said of many other abilities.

"Why?" Uiharu asked to follow up on GV's question.

"Nothing really." GV mentioned "I just suddenly thought it a shame that with your talent you weren't an Electromaster like Misaka."

Uiharu shook her head "With no offence intended to either you or Misaka, I think if I had an ability to fall back on, I would be lazier in my hacking."

They finally reached the cell where the target was staying. Kongou hadn't gotten here yet (According to Uiharu, they were trying to break through one of the other doors to solitary confinement) so it appeared their team was the first one here.

Uiharu opened the door and Misaka pulled it open revealing a chair with a chained up girl sitting in it. Her hair was dark coloured and down to her chin. She was wearing white prisoner clothes and her hands were cuffed. She also had a large collar with a chain that ran down to the ground attached to it.

She blinked up at the group that had opened the door and smiled. Through her hair bangs, Shirai caught sight of her eyes. And through Shirai's monocle, Joule locked eyes with the girl's lilac eyes.

"This girl is dangerous." Joule thought, sitting in the cafe surrounded by allies, "Too dangerous."

If one could've seen her eyes in that moment (And sadly none of her friends were paying attention to them in that moment) they would have seen Joule's pupils shift slightly. Just for a moment each single pupil became a pair of cat-like slits.

The girl in question seemed to realise something too, but she kept a straight face.

"Hey, you ready to get me out?"

This was the target right? A stand-in, not a real prisoner.

Right?

End of chapter!

Oh I've been looking forward to this arc for a while. It's just sad that FF's Email reminders are down right now so not many of you will notice when this chapter comes out.