False Conduct

by Lacien

Unlike his famous younger sister Mikoto, Masaya Misaka is no level-5. Left behind and trapped as an underpowered level-3 esper, Masaya lives tormented by both his harrowing past involving Mikoto, as well as his powerful foes in the present—until a miraculous gift turns Masaya's world on its head, and invites him down a much more exciting, yet much more dangerous path.

4. Part 1 - Chapter 4 (The Gauntlet)

A Certain Magical Index PLUS: [FALSE CONDUCT]

PART 1, CHAPTER 4

-[1]-

There was only silence.

And then the crash of thunder.

He felt as though his soul had been shot out of his body. He no longer felt as though he was part of the same universe as that boy whose back had just hit the floor.

That was until the pain made itself known.

It took almost no time at all.

It pinned him back into the world like needles. There were hundreds, thousands, millions of them. They pierced his body everywhere. There was not a single square millimetre of him that wasn't feeling their sharpness slicing deep. His skin; his fingers; his toes; his eyeballs; his brain; his tongue; his hair; his soul.

Those invisible needles were all burning red hot.

His body screamed. His soul screamed. The entire universe beyond that thunderstruck body fell away into nothing. His body felt like a map of the entire world. Every location on it screamed to be known, to be saved.

But there was nothing that could save them from this feeling.

His every cell felt like it was being burnt away into individual bubbles filled with nothing but smoke and screams.

It was agony beyond description.

But one part of him was silent.

His heart did not scream.

It did not even beat.

It had taken the hit most directly.

As if by some cruelty, the boy was spared the relief of unconsciousness. Throughout this suffering, he was entirely lucid. He could tell, even through the excruciating body-wide inferno, that his heart had stopped entirely. It would be only a matter of time until he faded away from the universe and into the dark void forever.

The agony was horrific upon horrific, but that realisation of imminent, rapidly approaching death had ignited a primal terror that the boy had never before felt at such a level, at such an order of magnitude. It was a fear from beyond the flesh and blood; it was a fear from beyond the depths of the self.

That terror easily doubled that boy's suffering.

The boy could no longer think in words. His thoughts were in the language of screams and spikes of dread. Adrenaline surged through that body, but it could not restart that silent heart. The strike had been too great.

And then something else made itself known.

The boy's eyes sat wide open. Looking through them felt more like looking out of the portholes of a submarine imploding inside the sun. The world of the outer and the inner felt like separate universes, but he looked out through those unmoving eyes nonetheless.

And he saw a face.

It looked down at him. Connected to that face was a body with arms. Those arms were shaking something—someone. That body was not the boy's. It couldn't have been, for he was in here, and they were out there.

That face searched desperately for signs of life, shouted, screamed, cried. The boy did not hear the words, for he was in here, and they were out there.

His world on the inside was burning away in silence, where screams went unheard. The heart made no sound, and the blood sat still like settlling lava. There was nothing that could be done until the darkness finally arrived and took him away forever. It would not be long now; the countdown was underway.

Typical notions of time did not belong here. They belonged to that other world. In here, the only measurement was the approaching oblivion.

Did the agony of the universal inferno mean that eternal oblivion was still a ways away, or was eternal oblivion his salvation from the agony of the universal inferno?

From which did he want to escape more?

Eternal oblivion stepped closer, closer. The boy's eyes were still pointed outward, up at that crying face from that other world, but his soul stared down, deeper, at that growing void from somewhere within—from a place inside himself he did now know existed until now.

As the black oblivion thundered towards him from below like a heavy locomotive, his fear of it doubled, it tripled; past a point, the concept of numbers ceased to be applicable.

Oblivion was oh-so close now. The inner world began to fade into darkness. The universal inferno of pain that had once been the boy's body slowly vanished. There was no relief, however, as the fear of the void had become so much more unbearable. If the boy still had a working heart, it would have stopped itself in sheer terror many times over by now. He could not move, he could not think, he could not scream. All he could do was wait until oblivion grasped him in its empty fingers. He did not want to.

That terror wrenched his soul, twisted it. It writhed and squirmed in mindless panic, seeking any escape, any solace.

But there was none. All that was left were the two holes in that now empty world.

And that other world beyond them with the screaming tear-filled face.

He knew that face. It belonged to someone who was once very dear to the boy. He had known her for as long as he could remember.

But that didn't matter now. Nothing could change the fact that that face's owner had caused all this.

This was all her fault.

She could flood the whole universe with tears and it would not make up for a single percentage of the fact that she had just killed the boy. Fratricide.

All that remained was her face, the void of death, and the soul-scrambling terror it delivered. The distinction between the three meant nothing now.

The void at last grabbed him. The fear hit a boiling point among boiling points.

And then it disappeared.

The universe disappeared, as did he.

-[2]-

Masaya awoke with a start.

Sweat was streaming down his brow. His heartbeat pounded through his temples like a drum.

Ah.

Yes. His heart was still here, and working.

Masaya Misaka did not die.

That horror wasn't real, at least not this time.

Masaya was alive.

All stress and energy instantly drained from his body. His body went limp and his head sank deep into the soft pillow.

Huh?

Masaya's eyes were open, but only now did he use them.

This ceiling… A–ha.

He knew exactly where he was.

This had not been the first time he'd experienced this whole sequence. This time, at least, that whole earlier part had been just a dream.

Yes. This time.

Now, just like after that other time, Masaya found himself having awoken in a room in District 7's hospital. His mind got to work trying to remember how he had ended up here. It didn't take him too long to find all the pieces and put them together.

"Tachikuro this time, huh?" he muttered beneath his breath.

Tachikuro had beaten Masaya to a pulp many times before, but this had been the first beating where Masaya had blacked out before even getting to the hospital. Tachikuro was getting more and more brutal. Masaya knew that he could expect something like this to happen again if his level didn't rise at the next System Scan.

"Ah. Are you awake, senpai?"

A voice softly called out in that hospital room. It appeared that the issue of Tachikuro would have to wait until later. Masaya had company.

"Huh?" mumbled Masaya.

Where had that voice come from? It seemed to be from within the same room. Having just woken up, Masaya's Ohm Sight was not yet active. He quickly fixed that. The hospital room in its entirety came into volumetric form, along with surrounding rooms, hallways, other floors, and so on. To Masaya, the world now no longer felt so empty.

He saw that his hospital room was not so empty either. This was a larger room, equipped with four beds. The two across the room from him were empty—but not the one directly to his right.

Ohm Sight gave him a pretty good feeling as to who occupied that bed. Masaya tidied up his rattled mind while slowly turning his head to the right. He was still rather stiff, but the greatly decreased pain was a marked improvement to when he couldn't move at all following Tachikuro's 'treatment' before. By the time his head completed its turn (and the devils were securely back in containment), he could address his bed neighbour.

"Hey kid, what'd I miss?"

His eyes caught Hisao Sagara seated in the other bed only a couple of metres away. There was supposed to be a teal curtain between them, but it had been pulled back for some reason, leaving a clear line of sight between the two.

"Oh good, you're up. I thought you'd be asleep forever." responded Hisao as he rested a thick manga volume on his lap. He was lying extra comfortably, having had 'someone' tuck him in nicely and pinch the pillows from the unused beds to better prop his head up for reading. Masaya could easily guess who was providing him with such luxuries. It seemed that he had been awake for a while, as there were several other manga volumes atop the table besides him—Hisao appeared to be reading the fifth one.

"Wait, how long was I asleep for?" Masaya asked.

"It's Tuesday, almost five o'clock. You've been asleep a whole day."

"Huh. A whole day? Damn." mumbled Masaya with some surprise. Even after how exhausted he'd been after that whole ordeal, a little over 24 hours was still a bit much, especially when Hisao Sagara seemed to be all up and at 'em following his ordeal. "You know, you seem to be doing rather well for yourself after being impaled by a Hydro Cord."

"Yep. The doctors here are awesome. He fixed me up and gave me a bunch of long-lasting localised anaesthetic. I can't feel my belly one bit."

"Yeah. This hospital is among the very best." agreed Masaya, before realising that he probably could have used some of that anaesthetic himself. His gaze turned down, and he saw his right arm wrapped securely in an immobilising brace. It was still aching a bit, but nothing too bad—another clear improvement over yesterday.

He then focused on the rest of his body, which Ohm Sight could see had the occasional bandage or patch here and there. He could still feel a dull ache radiating across his entire being, but it was of a similar quality to the ache one got after overdoing it in a workout. It was an ache that could be mentally spun to be the result of a solid day's effort—a more satisfactory pain. That's exactly what Masaya did. He had pushed his way through a lot, after all.

Masaya and Hisao being alive and on the mend was certainly an acceptable outcome, but there were other questions from that incident that needed answering.

"Was there any update regarding Tachikuro? There's no way he's off the hook for this, right?"

It looked as if a light-bulb went off over Hisao's head.

"Yeah, there was. I gave testimony to that Judgment guy and some Anti-Skills while you were asleep, since Rika and I saw the whole thing. My wound was agreed to be the work of a Hydro Cord ability, so he's absolutely in deep shit."

"That should keep him out of our hair for at least a little while." mused Masaya.

"A little while?! He nearly killed us! They should put him away for good because of that!"

That got a chuckle out of Masaya.

"I envy your innocence, Hisao Sagara."

With him pulling the strings to cover Tachikuro's ass, he'll probably land a two-week suspension, tops.

But that was a problem for another day. Worrying about those things wasn't going to help him get better any quicker. At the current juncture, taking it easy and making the most of the opportunity to rest and recover was of course for the best. Some chat with Hisao Sagara was all well and good, but Masaya was going to need plenty of peace and quiet for the speediest recovery.

But, of course, that would have been too easy.

Ohm Sight caught a figure step out of the elevator a few dozen metres down the hall from their room. Masaya instantly recognised the proportions and stride of that figure.

Oh great. Here she comes.

Sometimes, knowing that something (or someone) troublesome was approaching with Ohm Sight would lead to more pain than just being surprised by their sudden appearance would. Masaya's ability forced him to dread the inevitable far more than the average person. It couldn't have been too good for him.

And so, sixteen especially uneasy seconds later, Rika Sagara burst into the room with a plastic bag filled with cans.

"Hisao! I got Sprint, Doctor-Piper, and Lemon-Up. Which one do you want?"

She carried with her an energy that did not belong in a hospital room filled the direly injured.

"I'll go with Doctor-Piper." He turned to Masaya, "Are you thirsty at all, senpai?"

Rika Sagara's head snapped towards the direction of Masaya's bed as if it were spring-loaded sprinkler.

"Oh! Senpai! You're finally awake?!"

Masaya was not granted even a second to answer. Rika Sagara pushed a purple can into Hisao's hands and zipped across the room to Masaya's bedside. She towered over him like a grinning tsunami—she was much too close.

"Good morning senpai. Or should I say, good afternoon, heehee."

This kid.

Masaya tried to press his head deeper into his pillow as that disruptive girl leaned her face in closer and closer to his. She probably wasn't aiming to do anything too outrageous to him with her brother watching—he hoped. It was likelier that she was just trying to playfully test her luck on the boundaries with a defenceless Masaya more than anything.

What was for certain, however, was that it was annoying.

"Good afternoon, Rika Sagara. Personal space, please."

Rika Sagara stayed exactly where she was. Her cheeks were now flushed a little bit, but that wasn't enough to dull her smile.

"Senpai. You've saved me and Hisao twice now." She leaned even closer now. Her large dark eyes stared deep into Masaya's. Her lips parted slightly. She tried to subtly moisten them with her tongue.

Don't think for a second that I didn't see that.

She continued, "Isn't it right for you to get some kind of reward in return… like, maybe, you know, a k—."

"That Lemon-Up sounds pretty good actually. I'll take that." Masaya shot down her girlish nonsense like a surface to air missile.

Don't even think about it.

Rika Sagara's delicate lips promptly twisted into a pout. Masaya could see Hisao in the background collapsing back into his pillow with a (probably) relieved sigh.

Masaya had another request for Rika. With a pained expression, he asked her.

"Also, Rika Sagara, please don't lean on my arm. It's still sore."

"Hm?" mumbled Rika, before looking down upon where she was leaning.

In her efforts to invade Masaya's personal space, Rika had ended up resting her precocious chest upon Masaya's bound right arm. Upon leaning even closer, she had ended up resting a lot of her weight there. No amount of 'cushioning' was going to stop the pain from shooting up through Masaya's shoulder.

Rika Sagara's attempt at flirting had been blundered by her childish carelessness. An early growth spurt did not change the fact that Rika was still a 12 year old girl at the end of the day. She was certainly cute, but Masaya had reasons aplenty not to reciprocate flirts from first years. This was another one.

"… Sorry senpai."

Rika eventually removed herself from Masaya's right arm. He quietly sighed in relief from the literal weight being taken off his shoulder. Rika stepped over to the bag she had set down and pulled from it a can of Lemon-Up. When she returned to Masaya's side, she did so from the other side of the bed.

Rika cracked open the can for her currently one-armed patient. Masaya tried to move his left arm to grab the can, but he could not.

Rika had leaned over him again, now to his left. His left elbow was pinned under her chest.

Soft. Wait. No.

Masaya quickly snapped out of it. Most 14-year-old boys would be having the time of their lives right now, but Masaya believed he was too mature for that. Masaya's sights were set higher than this low-hanging fruit—with her low-hanging fruits.

There is no fun to be had here, he managed to convince himself.

Now, if a high-school girl were doing this instead, then that would be a very different story.

Rika held the open drink in front of Masaya's mouth. She seemed to have no intention of letting him hold it himself.

"Okay, senpai. Now drink up."

Rika Sagara was beaming brighter with every word.

"I'm not a child, I can hold it mys—!"

As Masaya felt that aluminium can pressing itself into his lips and the zing of citrus flooding his mouth, he felt a rather sudden and powerful urge to begin befriending high school girls post-haste.

"Drink it all up."

"Mppggggnngh."

In his current state, Masaya was powerless to fight back from Rika's lemon-boarding.

Just what would someone have thought if they were to see this situation unfolding? Masaya focused his Ohm Sight at the doorway to make sure nobody was there.

He was not so lucky.

Someone was there.

"I believe it would be best if you left the intensive patient care to the nurses, young lady." the doctor said.

-[3]-

It was now the next day.

Masaya sat in a tidy doctor's office. Across from him sat am old doctor with a frog-like face. Masaya knew him well. This man was his doctor.

Following that ordeal with Rika Sagara, who'd been promptly banished to a quiet corner chair thereafter, the doctor had checked over Masaya's state. Following that, he had set up an appointment in his office for the next day, if Masaya were feeling up to it.

And now, here he was.

The doctor began.

"How are you feeling, Misaka-kun? Has the aching subsided at all?"

"It's mostly better. I can move more or less fine now, apart from the right arm." Masaya replied honestly.

"You should be fine to go home today, but I advise you to refrain from any serious activity using your right arm for the remainder of the week. It would also be best to keep it in the brace until at least Friday."

Those words planted a slight smirk on Masaya's face.

He sure talks nonchalantly for someone who can fully restore a dislocated shoulder in only a single week.

This frog-faced doctor was best known by his alias 'Heaven Canceller'. He had certainly earned a name like that. Academy City's medical expertise was already light-years ahead of the rest of the world, and this doctor stood out as the finest even in this city.

"Of course, I didn't need to bring you here for an update regarding just that."

Naturally.

Masaya was well aware of what was coming next.

"Yes, I suppose it's been a little while since we've had one of our chats."

Masaya knew that this was not going to be a pleasant conversation, but he infinitely preferred talking about these topics with his doctor rather than his school's guidance counsellor or anyone like that. Heaven Canceller didn't have an agenda to try to line things up to, other than Masaya's direct wellbeing.

"Shall we begin by reviewing your biometrics? Do you mind if I just retrieve last month's data as well?" he asked.

"By all means." responded Masaya.

Heaven Canceller stood up from his seat and approached Masaya with a device in his hand. He gently pressed it against Masaya's chest. His arm brace was a bit in the way, but that was not a problem. The device communicated wirelessly—but with what?

Ohm Sight was an ability that allowed Masaya to identify conductivity differences in space to see what was most often unseen, including the other sides of walls, the inside of opaque containers, the inner workings of structures and devices, and the insides of people's bodies, including his own.

Compared to the modest conductive variations of the flesh and blood and bones inside his chest, something stood out. With its advanced synthetic materials, it was certainly not something he had been born with.

It was a bionic heart implant.

Collecting biometric data was secondary to its true purpose: to regulate his heartbeat and combat a dangerous medical condition that Masaya currently suffered from—chronic arrhythmia.

The device finished retrieving the data from the heart implant, and Heaven Canceller returned to his desk to connect the device to his computer. The doctor needed to perform this task entirely by himself, as that handheld device was the only machine that could communicate with Masaya's implant, and the doctor was thorough enough to not let anybody else touch it. That attention to security helped Masaya to lower his guard somewhat. The doc was someone to be trusted.

The doctor's computer finished downloading the data and began its analysis. Heaven Canceller wasn't going to wait until it was finished to being conversing with his patient.

"Have you seen your sister Mikoto lately?"

Masaya's ease disappeared in an instant.

-[4]-

… Her?

Masaya felt his stomach plummet. His eyes shot wide.

Contain yourself! It's just the doc asking.

A chill had engulfed Masaya, but he put on a grimace and managed to hold himself back from breaking into a panic attack. He took a series of deep breaths, slowly raised his eyes to address the doctor, and finally managed to speak, if very uneasily.

"You certainly don't beat around the bush, do you, doc?"

Masaya's face had quickly gone pale, his heart (with the help of its implant) was racing, and his posture had tensed up. All of this had occurred in response to hearing about a single person.

The doctor had gotten quite good at slipping past Masaya's guard. Masaya didn't like it, but that was an essential first step in these kinds of consultations.

"I take that to mean that have yet to." sighed Heaven Canceller, "I won't force you to do anything you don't feel like you can handle. As you're well aware by now, I'm hoping that having these conversations in a safe environment will help to desensitise you to what happened. Compared to those earlier sessions, you've already improved immensely."

Mikoto Misaka.

That had been the name of the girl who was Masaya's younger sister—or at least she had been, until June of the prior year, when it had happened.

"I'm still getting nightmares of that moment… It may look like I'm improving on the outside, but I feel like I've just gotten better at hiding it—at locking it away." said Masaya, his eyes fixated on nothing and nowhere.

"You seem to downplay your own growth." reassured Heaven Canceller.

Please don't talk to me about growth.

That word had struck a nerve with Masaya. He took in a deep breath, and gritted his teeth.

"There is no growth for me… Not in recovery… Not in my ability… I'm going to be stuck like this forever, I just know it… I keep hoping for something, anything, to show up and make things alright again." Masaya's was no longer just quietly mumbling. There was bitter emotion leaking from behind those words. He sucked in a deep breath to keep those welling tears at bay, "But how long can I just… sit around and wait for a revelation to just magically show itself? I may have been successfully resuscitated after my heart was stopped by that bolt… but I feel like my soul never came back from purgatory."

That was it.

On the surface, Masaya could showcase himself as the scrappy underdog who rescues children from Skill-Outs, or the honourable warrior who never breaks in the face of torment from the powerful and wicked.

But that was not the core Masaya Misaka. That was just the façade he put on when things got rough— the stone mask that did not cry.

Strip all that away and Masaya Misaka was a very pained and vulnerable 14 year old boy. To expect him to be anything else after what he had been through would be a very foolish assumption.

Whenever that delicate-hearted boy lacked the internal strength to deal with something as he was, that unbending, stony side of him took over and dealt with it, one way or another.

"Misaka-kun, have there been any more blackouts lately?"

Oh, those.

A topic like that was not something Masaya was ever pleased to have on his mind. He simply answered honestly; there was nothing else for it now that his guard was already down.

"None since February."

"That's reassuring to hear." The frog-faced doctor gave a warm smile, "Please call me at once if you suffer another one. Now, what have you been occupying yourself with lately to distract you from your troubles?" asked the doctor, "Are you still playing music?"

The doctor easily tilted the topic into something Masaya could more easily speak about. Masaya had picked up on the pattern after this many meetings, but welcomed the shift in conversation matter each time.

Even among this sort of conversation matter, 'blackouts' were an especially unpleasant topic for Masaya. Discussing them with Heaven Canceller was anything but enjoyable.

Appointments with numerous other specialists had been made and met, yet there had been no breakthroughs. Until a revelation revealed their real cause or how to fix them, the two of them had already said everything they could on the matter. There was no point in dwelling on it.

There were some conditions in this world that even that miracle doctor could not cure.

Such was the fate of this middling esper.

The rest of the meeting was uneventful. They discussed Masaya's activities, went over his implant data, put together something of a roadmap to track the progression of his recovery efforts, and so on. Eventually, the meeting came to an end.

As he set foot outside of that office, he took a moment to fix something.

That vulnerability.

That weakness.

That hopelessness.

That exposure of his true feelings.

Those memories.

They all had no place outside of that doctor's office—out in the real world.

Masaya forced them back down. Harder. Harder. He made sure that there would be no chance of them showing themselves again involuntarily. He breathed in deep—deeper.

Crush it down. Crush it harder.

At last, those devils were back in their vault. He locked it tight.

He then put back on his usual stoic face.

There. That's better.

-[5]-

It was now Thursday.

Masaya's injuries had kept him out of school for two days. That morning, upon arriving at school, he caught a familiar feeling that machinations of some sort had been underway during his absence.

Upon entering his classroom for first period, his suspicions were confirmed.

"What the hell happened to you?" asked Masaya with a grimace as he took his seat.

Usually, Masaya was not too concerned about the welfare of his particularly troublesome classmate, but something was off here.

There's no way the kid hit him that hard.

Hatano, with a face covered in bruises and bandage patches, averted his gaze and made no response.

Masaya was certain of it. Hatano had run into Hisao Sagara and his sturdy wooden stick (which had apparently belonged to a young and flexible tree trunk that Rika Sagara had used her ability to snap into a makeshift club), but that would have given him a single bruise at best. Hisao had then slammed the stick square onto the crown of Hatano's head, but such an injury wouldn't have shown up on his face. No, Hatano's face was positively covered in bruises, scratches and patches all over.

Somebody's beaten the hell out of him.

Masaya had a good idea as to who could have been behind that, especially after Hatano's pitiful screw-ups on Monday afternoon.

Kyoji Tachikuro had not gotten to enjoy himself to the fullest that day. Masaya had refused to yield to him, and his fun had been interrupted by both the Sagaras and Judgment. He had not been in a very good mood by the end of it.

Additionally, that older Judgment guy had dropped by the hospital again before Masaya's meeting with Heaven Canceller to update the victims on the situation.

Kyoji Tachikuro had copped a sweet ten day suspension. He had to be fuming.

Still, taking it out on your own goons is low.

"Uh?" came a voice. It was Seiri Fukiyose, who had just entered the classroom. On top of Hatano's dreadful appearance, Masaya of course still had his right arm in a brace and some bruising poking out from his left sleeve. The surprise of immediately seeing two of her classmates in rather pitiful states had apparently caused her voice to get caught in her throat.

Masaya silently hoped that she wasn't thinking that he and Hatano had done this to each other—that would have been much too generous to Hatano.

He turned to face his other desk neighbour, "Good morning to you too, Fukiyose-san."

She didn't respond, as usual.

He needed to come up with some better greetings when dealing with her like this—but frankly, so did she.

Hatano was apparently in no mood to be making fun of him fumbling with her this morning. The relief from the lack of harassment was countered by an uneasy feeling that something was awry.

From out of nowhere, a completely unrelated train of thought arose in Masaya's mind.

"Ah. Hmm…"

Masaya recognised that he had more prudent issues to deal with right now—namely, how was he going to make it through this class? With his dominant arm bound in a brace like this, writing was going to be a task and a half. The first class of the day was Japanese, which meant plenty of writing.

He decided that he would spend the next ten or so minutes until class properly began to try to get the hang of writing left-handed. Ohm Sight might have given him all the spatial awareness he could ever need, but writing was much more dependent on muscle memory, of which his left hand had next to none in this regard.

Masaya gave it his best shot, but it was certainly much more difficult than he expected. The inability to use his other hand to stabilise his notebook while he was writing in it led to some outrageously bad handwriting, even by non-dominant–hand standards.

He apparently wasn't the only one frustrated. His eyes had been on the paper, but he didn't even need his Ohm Sight to catch that Fukiyose was shooting annoyed glances at his pitiful work.

Yeah, yeah, you neat-freak. I'd like to see you do any better.

Masaya ignored her. The paltry few minutes before Japanese class began would certainly not be enough to master left-handed writing, but he was going to have all of today and tomorrow to get used to it, whether he liked it or not. After about ten or so lines of some 'lorem ipsum' and whatnot, he had begun to find a bit of a rhythm to it, and he was beginning to figure out which approaches were providing the best results. Still, the shifting around of his notebook was proving to be a real hassle. The sounds it made slipping left and right over his desk was proving to be irksome to his classmates—most of all, the one directly to his right. Her brow was twitching with each 'shuff' sound the sliding notebook made. She tried to turn her head away from Masaya's desk, but it seemed to do no good. Her feet began twitching and fidgeting beneath her desk. After about another minute of handwriting that looked like it belonged to the rigid stick-arms of a melting snowman, it all proved too much for that stickler for the proper.

SLAM!

Masaya finally managed to get a right hand to hold down his notebook—except it wasn't his own. His gaze crawled up from that hand to meet the face of its owner.

Well this is awkward.

"Yes, Fukiyose-san? What might be the matter?"

His address to her was stiff and overly formal-feeling. It had just come out that way. The angle of Seiri's trademark grumpy eyebrows deepened in response somewhat. Masaya had found himself once again in an especially uneasy situation with her.

"Stop that. It's extremely annoying."

"You are correct. Writing like this is quite a nuisance." he said matter-of-factly.

Masaya had found himself acting rather smugly standoffish. This wasn't his intention.

Why can I not avoid acting like a weirdo around her?

Seiri only gave out an annoyed sigh. She plomped her shapely rear back down into her seat and rummaged around in her desk draw for something. Upon finding what she was after, she reached her left hand across the desk gap to swipe Masaya's notebook from right under him. Masaya watched on quizzically as Seiri ripped pieces of blue adhesive tack from a strip and pressed it onto the corners of his notebook before returning to him and pressing the notebook down onto his desk to secure it there.

Seiri Fukiyose stood proud over her improvised solution (and Masaya) with crossed arms.

"What do you say?" she asked, like a parent would after buying ice cream for a nagging child.

Who does she think she is, my mother?

Despite thinking that, Masaya figured that it'd be best to avoid annoying her too much further. Seiri must have been feeling especially generous to be helping him despite their general unease around each other. Perhaps it was the brace making him look especially weak and pitiful which made Seiri feel more confident in dealing with him this morning. Or, perhaps she still held in her heart some semblance of care for hi—.

Nope. Doubt it.

It was best not to open up that rabbit hole again.

Seiri cleared her throat. Masaya saw that as his call to display some overdue gratitude.

"Thank you for your help, Fukiyose-san..."

There's just one small thing.

"… But this isn't my Japanese notebook."

"…"

"…"

I shoulda just kept my goddamn mouth shut.

And so, Masaya Misaka had become trapped in an endless loop of silent and extremely distressing eye contact with his stubborn and uptight ex-girlfriend.

Shiiiiiit. How could things possibly get any more awkward than thiiiiiiiis?

It wasn't even his fault. Why would he have been doing test-scribbles in his good tidy Japanese notebook? She had just gone and assumed.

This was typical Seiri Fukiyose behaviour. Why he had once been infatuated with her sorts of antics, he could not pinpoint.

She could have just read the subject on the cover, but nooooooo.

Masaya wished that he had the courage to say that point out loud.

Once again, Masaya could feel the formation of a new ultra–cringe-inducing Seiri memory happening in real time. At this point, he must have been making them faster than he had been even during their time as a couple.

"…"

"…"

Their awkward silence and locked eye contact continued. It then continued some more.

Without breaking the painful eye contact, Masaya focused his Ohm Sight onto Hatano, who was finding the view outside the window to be especially interesting right now.

C'mon Hatano. As much as I hate it, a little bit of "Fumbling the baddie again, are ya?" or even some "Get a room, you two!" would do wonders right about now.

Hatano had picked a terrible day to stop being a pain in the neck.

Okay Seiri, you can break eye contact now. Please back down already. Shit, she's not going anywhere, is she? Shiiiiiiiiit.

Both Seiri and Masaya were well known for being as stubborn as donkeys. Seiri's stubbornness was in opposing unscrupulous behaviour; Masaya's was in enduring it—at least according to him.

Two immovable objects had been unstoppably forced into each other by accident.

It looked as though neither of them was budging.

"…"

"…"

And so, these two, who prided themselves on their maturity in the face of troublesome youths, were both acting awfully childish at the moment.

At this point, this nonsense could only be stopped by a third party, or perhaps an earthquake.

Now, as pretty as Seiri's eyes were (which Masaya would readily admit), being locked into an awkward staring stalemate with them was anything but enjoyable. Strange feelings loaded with ambivalent nostalgia and painful memories of past blunders began to flood into his heart. Staring into those eyes was beginning to hurt. Masaya wondered what had stopped him from relegating those memories to that 'vault' as well.

He hoped in that moment, for someone, anyone, to barge through that classroom door and break that endless lock-on. Ohm Sight watched the hallway intently.

Oh! Someone's coming!

He didn't recognise this person. They were on the smaller end, so they were probably a brand new first year. They marched quickly and with purpose towards that classroom door. They grasped that door handle with vigour...

I'm saved.

…And forcefully slammed it open.

"Masaya Misaka, you are to come with me to the Tatenkara Judgment branch office at once." commanded a boy with a green armband.

Shit. Okay—anyone but you guys.

-[6]-

Masaya sat quiet in that office. Despite the posters hung up around the place preaching the carrying out of 'justice' and the upholding of 'righteousness', one would have a hard time finding a more wretched hive of scum and villainy within a middle school campus—at least if your name was Masaya Misaka.

This was Tatenkara Middle School's Judgment branch office.

"Misaka, do you have any idea how much trouble you're in right now?" asked a voice from across a desk too grand and expensive-looking for a middle schooler to be sitting behind it.

Katsuro Amine—Tatenkara's (now) senior-most Judgment officer, and another thorn in Masaya's side. He was a member of Tachikuro's social circle; however, despite that fact, he looked as though he could have made for the ideal Judgment officer. He was strong, athletic, and a people-pleaser with a virtuous-looking countenance. However, Masaya was very familiar with the hypocrisy and lies behind that boy's plastered-on smile.

Also in the room were two bright-eyed first-year recruits, a boy and a girl. The two looked as though they still believed sincerely in the purity and nobility of Judgment's cause. If that were indeed the case, then they'd certainly picked the wrong middle school to enrol at.

One of those new recruits was the boy who had brought Masaya in—or had tried to. Three minutes of the classic "Am I being detained?" routine had proven a bit above the newbie's experience grade, and Amine had then additionally been summoned to forcefully pull Masaya from his seat with his telekinesis. It had made for a good show, but Masaya's felt that reputation had probably suffered a bit for it, but that was nothing new.

He didn't even give me my rights or explain what I was being arrested for, that rotten corrupt cop.

This was hardly Masaya's first run-in with the 'law of Amine'; however, even after this many instances of the same song and dance, things had not changed. Once again, as he usually did when dealing with Judgment, Masaya found himself in that seat, in that office, with his hand cuffed to the chair, and no idea why—apart from the fact that because it was Amine's doing, the reason had to be overly-partisan nonsense.

"I haven't the slightest clue." honestly responded Masaya, "You'd may as well pull the charges out of a hat at this point; it'd at least make for some good entertainment."

"I'll be pulling them out of your throat by means of a confession." uttered Amine with narrowed eyes and subtly curled lips. "Would that suffice?"

"I'm afraid I have no wrongdoings to confess to today… Except maybe banging your mother last night—but that didn't feel wrong in the slightest."

Got him good! He was just asking for that one.

"Well, on that topic, Mrs Misuzu's not too bad herself."

Shit this guy's good! Tossing her actual name around is an especially dirty move, though.

Despite sitting within a Judgment office—the supposed bastion of properness—this was still the bickering of two 14-year-old boys. It would naturally contain some unsavoury and less than creative jabs.

Amine turned to address his fellow Judgment members before Masaya could come back with a certifiably diabolical retort involving a hypothetical future daughter.

"Recruits! Seated before you now is none other than the scourge of Tatenkara: Masaya Misaka. Do not get caught off-guard by his piss-poor attempt at jokes; he's a real menace, so expect to see him in here a lot."

It appeared that Amine was already working hard to indoctrinate those new and impressionable Judgment members against Masaya.

The Judgment frauds are reproducing.

"The piss-poor joke is none other than you yourself, Amine." Masaya sighed, "Tell me already, what nonsense charges have you pulled out of your ass for me this time? Hopefully they don't have Tachikuro's spunk all over them this time."

Again—14-year-olds.

Perhaps I should've gone a bit lighter on the jokes so the newbies don't think I'm actually some cocky charlatan or something. Eeehh, that ship has probably sailed.

"Frankly, you're such a piece of shit that I honestly don't think you deserve to know."

Oh man, what a letdown of a comeback!

That had not been the first time that Amine had spat out that line at Masaya.

Masaya sighed and turned his head to address the new recruits frankly.

"Good luck having this guy as your superior. You're gonna need it."

They tensed up at the ominous warning. One of them even silently gulped.

The bonds of the new recruits to their superior were still in a young and tentative state—it appeared that they were still at least partially open to heeding the words of a 'troublesome joker' like Masaya.

"Don't listen to this bottom-feeder's rabble, you two." Amine slapped a slab of documents onto the desk to snap them out of Masaya's 'fear-mongering'. He whipped a pointed index finger towards Masaya. "Within the span of less than a year, this dirtbag has been found guilty of serial assault, arson, disrupting the peace, evading arrest, contempt of court, in—."

"Wow, that's funny. I've never even been to court." noted Masaya.

"That'll be a second account of contempt of court." Amine seemed to be enjoying himself.

"Oh, so this is the court?! Well then, it looks like your contempt of court charges hold no power because you're a pants-sniffing retard who doesn't even know what a court is."

"Pants-sniffing retard?! Words like that more or less constitute assault of a Judgment officer."

"What do you know; assault of a Judgment officer is also a phony charge. Hey, let's keep going and tick them all off the list."

At the end of the day, Judgment's entire strife with Masaya boiled down to typical case of the officers performing favours for their friends by misusing their legal authority to run harassment campaigns against target individuals. As a close associate of a certain Hydro Cord user, it was left to Amine to bother, harass, and slander Masaya in any way he could—whether he enjoyed doing it or not.

Regardless of how good Masaya was at dealing with Amine's taunting, Amine's actions here absolutely constituted an abuse of Judgment's authority.

Judgment was a decentralised student-run peacekeeping organisation within Academy City. They had the authority to make arrests and file charges, but anything serious necessitated the inclusion of Anti-Skill. This meant that Amine was limited in how much he could tangibly harm Masaya in a legal sense before people who actually did their job got involved and ruined his fun (and hopefully kicked him out of Judgment to boot). It was a delicate balancing act, but Amine had refined it to an art.

Amine had flashed a slab of 'incident reports' and listed off a number of serious crimes that Masaya had supposedly committed; however, since most of those were severe enough to warrant a formal Anti-Skill investigation, the chances were that he'd never actually officially reported or uploaded any of them to any real law-enforcement databases. Rather, he maintained his smear operation in a closed ecosystem and kept filled out documents around to make it appear as if he had submitted formal reports. It also made for some easy anti-Masaya propaganda to indoctrinate the youngsters against their new 'enemy'.

Unfortunately, while most of the crimes he'd been listed as committing had not been formally filed, the repeated instances of Masaya being unfairly arrested in front of his schoolmates and teachers, as well as word of mouth, whether slanderous or genuinely misinformed, making its way around the school had both contributed to Masaya's reputation and credibility having taken a nosedive over the past year.

To make matters worse, some formal charges had in fact been made, however, and Masaya had been forced to plead his innocence straight to Anti-Skill. Most of them were from instances of Masaya getting beaten to a pulp by Tachikuro, which would then become twisted by unreliable 'eyewitnesses' (Tachikuro's followers pretending to be unassuming bystanders) into Masaya being the instigator of assault.

Ah. Wait a minute.

Masaya quickly realised why he had actually been detained this morning.

"It seems you've finally caught on, you piece of shit." smirked Amine.

"I've been telling you not to suck Tachikuro's dick so much. You must be going blind with all that spunk in your eyes."

"Hey Misaka, go fuck yourself." Amine's eyelid twitched.

Oh, he didn't like that one bit.

As much as Masaya and Amine could easily sling insults at each other for the next hour, it was about time that they got to the point of the unlawful abduction.

"Alright, that's enough messing around. Just tell me already; who was bitching about me this time?"

"You have been accused of committing battery against both Hiroto Hatano and Danbei Arono."

It seems that Hatano isn't the only victim of Tachikuro's wrath-turned-fraud.

Tachikuro probably intended to use flip the punishment he doled out to Hatano and Arono to double as a crime to pin on Masaya for giving him attitude on Monday afternoon and landing him a big fat suspension.

"Wow, both of them huh? That sounds pretty serious. Could I see the Anti-Skill report?" asked Masaya.

Amine paused. He knew what Masaya was up to and was none-too-pleased about it.

"Of course not." he finally uttered sternly.

Bingo.

"Why not?" asked Masaya. "It couldn't be that this report doesn't actually exist?" Masaya turned his attention to the younger boy who had first been sent to detain him. "Hey kid, purposefully not submitting a battery report in order to keep Anti-Skill out of an investigation for the purpose of a personal vendetta has to be in stark violation of Judgment protocol, is it not? Did Amine show you any sort of arrest warrant before he sent you after me?"

The younger officer froze up. He appeared to realise his blunder.

He had not been given any formal reports or warrants upon being asked to bring Masaya in. That's why Masaya's "Am I being detained?" act had worked so well on him—he legitimately didn't know the answer.

Judgment could make arrests on the spot if they were responding to incidents in real-time, but since Anti-Skill interference was being avoided this time, Masaya had to be in school for any 'arrests' to happen. This arrest had been planned in advance, which meant that there needed to be a warrant—of course, that was only if one intended to follow procedure properly.

"That's enough out of you." snapped Amine.

With a flick of his wrist, Amine used his telekinesis to twist the cuff on Masaya's left wrist. It dug into Masaya's skin and wrenched his hand into an immensely uncomfortable angle, but Masaya didn't budge. His eyes were dead on Amine, but his voice was directed to the two recruits. With a perfectly-calm demeanour, he continued his exposé.

"But unjust arrests are only the tip of the iceberg with this guy. As you can see here, he uses force on the unlawfully imprisoned just to get a kick out of making them squeal."

Those two first-year Judgment kids weren't looking too comfortable after hearing that.

"You have the right to remain silent, Misaka." calmly retorted Amine. That didn't stop Masaya one bit.

"He accepts bribes to lessen the punishment of his influential associates—hell, for his dommy lover boy Tachikuro, he'll do it for free. And of course, you've already seen him make up phony charges to increase detainee sufferi—."

"Be quiet. You'll only hurt yourself." snapped Amine again, twisting the cuff harder.

Masaya continued regardless.

"Now, what you two have to worry about is when his defence slips and Anti-Skill does manage to get involved. We all know that Judgment and Anti-Skill work as each other's watchdogs. When Anti-Skill does find things here that don't line up, which they will because your senpai here is so sloppy, guess what he'll do about it."

The two new recruits were looking even more nervous now, they were exchanging uneasy glances.

"You have no power here, Misaka. Do you really think that our recruits are moronic and gullible enough to fall for your fairy-tale smear effort?"

"Since the evidence was never uploaded to any databases, he can modify it as much as he likes. He'll make the malpractice all your fault and throw you under the bus without the slightest hesitation. The next time it happens, it'll probably be one of you two."

"Oh my… Would that be another case of slander I see?"

"I wonder what Katagi-san would have to say about that—or Harone-san—or Raoma-san. Of course, I can't really ask them anymore, can I?"

Masaya had acted as a whistleblower to Anti-Skill three times in the past. Those three names had been Amine's co-workers in this very Judgment office. Three instances of Amine shifting the blame with flawless execution had been enough for Masaya to know that things weren't going to change, and that only the virtuous and proper Judgment members would ever be see punishment if he were to continue with this approach.

Additionally, Amine had not taken these attacks lying down. He had worked with vigour to whittle Masaya's credibility in the school down to almost nothing.

But the new first-year recruits deserved to know this history, regardless. They were new, and their loyalty was still to Judgment's naïve yet noble cause, rather than to Amine himself. Perhaps, with that information that Masaya had planted into their still-open minds, they would one day be able to make the changes that Masaya could not.

But alas, today was not that day.

"That's a nice little story, Misaka, but it doesn't change the fact that you're not leaving here until you confess to committing battery against Hatano and Arono."

Regardless of Masaya's grand exposé on Amine to the younger Judgment members, the fact remained that Amine was ultimately still in charge of everything that happened in this room. He had simply brushed off anything Masaya had said as if the words meant nothing. It didn't matter if the new recruits were now introduced to the idea of being suspicious against Amine—either he would complete his indoctrination of them against Masaya, or he would throw them under the bus just like the others. He probably already had contingency plans in place to deal with them at any time if they chose to report him for voluntary malpractice.

That was the kind of person Katsuro Amine was.

Right now, Masaya's reasonable options were awfully limited.

Just getting up and leaving was not an option. Despite only being handcuffed to a regular old steel-framed chair, which would usually be easy enough to just get up and walk away with, Masaya was trapped here at the will of Amine, whose strong telekinesis could lock the chair in place as though it were bolted to the ground.

Additionally, he could lift Masaya and the chair into the air, flip him upside down and press his face into the ground, or into 'other things'. A particularly dirty move involved using his ability to apply pressure onto Masaya's body, including his internals. This could be used to inflict severe but invisible pain upon Masaya, or it could be used to place immense pressure upon his bladder or lower intestine for some especially degrading results—but that option was best avoided in this poorly-ventilated Judgment office. Amine could also force Masaya to bite his own tongue severely and bloodily, but this was also unlikely today since he was after a verbal confession first and foremost.

With a powerful all-rounder ability like telekinesis, it provided him with plenty of options for interrogation.

Masaya, with nothing but Ohm Sight to help him, had no real way to physically fight back against any of it. To make matters worse, one of his arms was out of action, and the other was currently cuffed.

Masaya had no hope of opposing Amine physically, and opposing him with the power of the law only ever got innocent people hurt. So, as was the case with Kyoji Tachikuro, Masaya's only real option to oppose Katsuro Amine was to stalemate him and break his patience.

Despite his high and mighty demeanour, Amine was little more than Tachikuro's personal clean-up guy. Tachikuro, being the theatrical type, would often wreak outrageous havoc (usually when assaulting Masaya) and then order Amine to "fix it". Amine had no personal stake in Masaya's punishment, and there wasn't much fun to be had in sweeping Tachikuro's messes under the rug.

In other words, unlike Tachikuro, Amine took no real pleasure in punishing Masaya. This was just an unwanted side-job for him, so making him rage-quit was much easier than with the actually psychopathic Tachikuro.

So that's what Masaya chose to do.

If he was in for a rough time at the hands of Amine whether he liked it or not, then he'd may as well win in the end.

Right now, Masaya's reasonable options were awfully limited.

But what about his unreasonable options?

Something in Masaya's mind flipped.

A mask of stone was donned—his invincible battle armour.

It was the same as what had happened with Tachikuro.

Masaya now had his objective: Be freed from this Judgment office without submitting to Amine's illegitimate authority. It was a delightfully straightforward win-condition. Pain, suffering, destruction of dignity—none of those were relevant now. He would endure as much of that as he needed in order to achieve his objective.

No matter how much of a pyrrhic victory it would be, it would always be infinitely better than bowing down to Amine and the cabal of that Hydro Cord tyrant. The only outcomes for Masaya now were success or death, and he knew that Amine couldn't kill him.

From that point of view, success was more or less guaranteed.

In that state of mind, Masaya's mental processes were undoubtedly warped and severely lacking in self-preservation instincts by the standards of any normal person.

He knew what the fear of death truly felt like. His fears had become so severely lopsided that anything less than that true fear of death was simply not worth complaining about.

Masaya's plan was straight-up unreasonable.

But unreasonable was what was needed right now.

"I'm not leaving until I confess, you say?" smirked Masaya. "It looks like I'll be here for quite some time then, for I have nothing to confess to."

Amine stared Masaya dead in the eye.

"Well, I'd rather we get this over with nice and quickly." Amine gave Masaya one final chance to back down and accept defeat.

He really should know me better by this point.

That initially small smile began to spread wide across Masaya's face.

His mind abandoned his last remaining reasonability, for it had no worth here.

When in the Judgment office, do as the Judgment officers do.

Outrageous and unfair was the name of the game in this place.

He would absolutely win this. It would just take a little bit of classic Masaya-grade lunacy.

A chuckle escaped him.

"Hehehe. You cannot tempt me into submission, Katsuro Amine! I hereby declare my innocence to almighty God! Oh, dear God, I am innocent of any and all wrongdoing, and no effort of Katsuro Amine can make me submit to the will of his fraudulent schemes!" He really began to embrace the madness. This was fine, for he was alive in a world-gone-mad. "Hahahaha! God has chosen me as his champion to oppose your villainy—because no-one else will! You cannot break me, Amine, so do your worst, for it shall all be in vain! Hahahahahahaha!"

Amine returned an especially displeased look.

-[7]-

"So, Amine-kun informed me that you had another one of your little mental breaks again, Misaka-kun" said a unimposing, but monotonous voice.

Touché, Amine. Touché.

"It wasn't a real mental break. It was just an act to make him leave me alone." responded Masaya atop an stiff faux-leather recliner. "The fact that it was enough for him to immediately dump me onto you only goes to prove that that fraud of a Judgment officer had no intention of pressing a formal charge against me, which I reckon qualifies as perfect proof that his arrest of me this morning was unlawful and based on no grounds, performed for the sole purpose of a harassment campaign against me. He was only trying to waste my time and torment me until I confessed to something I never did. In other words, he's an asshole."

"Now, Misaka-kun, you can't call someone that! You need to take their point of view into account."

All that and he only gave a solitary shit about that last part!

It had taken less than two minutes in that room for Masaya to change his mind about the Judgment office being his least favourite room in the school.

There was one place even more maddening.

This was Tatenkara Middle School's guidance counsellor's office. Masaya was often thrown in here whenever a teacher would hear of fabricated misdemeanours he'd supposedly committed. Like with the Judgment office, he was rarely let out until he confessed to whatever he was being accused of this time. In other words, he was often stuck there for hours at a time.

"You really just don't give a shit, do you?" accused Masaya, turning his head to face that other person in the room with him.

"That's not true at all, Misaka-kun. You need to stop believing that the entire world is against you." said that other person from their armchair. That 50-something man was Mr Narohoshi, Tatenkara's school guidance counsellor.

As far as Masaya was concerned, he was about as incompetent as a school counsellor could get. He was no doctor, so his methods were all based on feel-good philosophising and empty niceties instead of actual psychology.

Academy City was a city founded on the study of youth brain science, so it had the highest number of qualified psychologists in the entire world. That didn't change the fact that all of them were grossly overqualified for the role of student guidance counsellor, and with over a thousand schools in the city, there were a lot of those spaces in need of filling.

As a result, just about anyone could get the role—and it showed.

"Misaka-kun. Amine-kun also informed me that you assaulted Arono-kun, and even your own classmate Hatano-kun. I saw them this morning, and I have to say, I am very disappointed that you would do such a thing to your fellow students." Mr Narohoshi swung his head from side to side disapprovingly.

"You shouldn't believe anything Amine says about me. He's a dog who has orders to bite my ass whenever he gets the chance."

"Now, Misaka-kun, Amine-kun has been an excellent Judgment officer for these past two years. His dedication to Judgment's cause is highly commended by the faculty. He even worked hard to expose misconduct happening within his own branch, even if it meant speaking out against his own seniors. To assign a derogatory and dismissive label like 'dog' to someone like him is highly disingenuous and speaks only of your refusal to see eye-to-eye with your fellow students who only have your wellbeing in mind, even if they are required to reprimand you for your repeated actions made in bad-faith."

Katagi, Harone, Raoma. I'm so sorry your only legacy at this school has been so undeservedly besmirched because of my hasty actions. Please forgive me.

Mr Narohoshi's careless pseudo-intellectual rambling was already getting on Masaya's nerves. Masaya was a firm believer that Mr Narohoshi was a firm and ungrounded follower of the classic con-philosophy of 'more words and bigger words equals smarter'.

It appeared that he needed some extra motivation to get to the point.

"So in other words, you're always going to believe him over me, is that how it is?" Masaya made his query about as straightforward as it could be.

"Well, Misaka-kun, you do have a notable history of repeated reported instances of aggressive and dishonest behavio—."

"A Simple yes or no answer, please."

"I believe that there are many more factors to consider whe—."

"Yes. Or. No."

Even his getting to the point needs to get to the point!

Masaya already knew what Mr Narohoshi's mental answer was. He had known for a long time that there was no help he could receive from this man. His everyday problems ultimately boiled down to an endless feedback loop where his resistance angered the powers that be (i.e. the tyrannical Tachikuro and his allies) who used their power and influence to stomp him into place, which he could do nothing but resist against—which would start the cycle anew.

A peace settlement was not an option. With the power balances at play, it would inevitably end up being horrendously one-sided, and it would give Tachikuro's circle effectively full dominion over Masaya's life—and after all the trouble Masaya had given them, they'd take full advantage of that. Masaya's wellbeing would only ever stand to lose from such an approach.

Third parties, such as Mr Narohoshi, who saw this chaos only wanted the cycle to stop. The only way to break the cycle was to prevent one party from renewing it. Masaya was far and away the easier target for a third party to attempt to pacify. The Tachikuro party simply held too much influence and credibility, and Masaya held next to none. Labelling him and him alone as the problem child was just that much more efficient.

Tachikuro and his dogs. Amine and Judgment. Mr Narohoshi.

Their reasons were each different, but their objectives were ultimately all aligned:

Beat Masaya Misaka into submission, one way or another.

Taking his perspective and feelings into account was simply not worth the trouble.

Such was the fate of this middling esper.

After some pause, and trying to find the least inflammatory wording to employ, Mr Narohoshi delivered the most milquetoast, fence-sitting response that he could muster.

"Misaka-kun. You should know that am not one to pick sides when it comes to our school's students. You are too quick to jump to a 'me versus them' mentality. Your classmates and fellow students are not your enemies." Mr Narohoshi plastered on a speculative and self-satisfying expression. "Your constant suspicions that your fellow students are out to get you sounds like it could be symptomatic of personality problems such as paranoid personality disorder, or perhaps antis—."

"You're not a doctor. You have no business speculating about that." snapped Masaya. "I already have a doctor to discuss these things with. I know what I have, so your input is not needed here, nor is it welcome."

Mr Narohoshi nodded, "Ah yes, there is of course your post-traumatic stress disorder to take int—."

"Ex-fucking-cuse me?!" exclaimed Masaya. He was not prepared for a bombshell like this.

When the fuck was this fraud allowed to see my medical history?!

Masaya had been sent to this room on a plethora of occasions, yet he'd never mentioned the starting point—that disaster that started everything, and the effect that it had had on his mental health. That quack-fraud was not qualified enough to ever help Masaya with that information; he would wield it with all the grace of a sledgehammer, to beat him down until he stopped fighting back, and then celebrate the successful 'fixing' of a notorious problem child.

Masaya knew that he was the type to cut corners and brute force his way through delicate mental health problems in order to claim a premature success and plant an easy feather in his cap.

"Misaka-kun. There's no need for you raise your voice in here. This is supposed to be a quiet and safe environment for you to be comfortable to openly express yourself."

Masaya's mind raced, trying to pinpoint the weak link who would expose his sensitive information to such a unhelpful person.

There's no way Heaven Canceller would be so sloppy with giving out confidential patient medical histories like that. Nurses are sworn to patient confidentiality as well. I met with those other psychological specialists for the purpose of assessing a separate condition, not the PTSD. Where the hell did this hack get that information from?!

"Who told you about my condition?!" demanded Masaya, glaring with vitriol into Narohoshi's relaxed, purposeless gaze.

"Following your outburst during your last meeting with me at the beginning of March, I received a very productive phone call from your mother apologising for your behaviour under my care. She explained your situation to me. It was very enlightening."

Mom, you idiot! How could you betray me like this?!

Mr Narohoshi continued.

"She explained to me that your current unruly behaviour stems from a warped psyche created by PTSD following a near-death experience involving a violent confrontation with your younger sister."

"…!"

Spikes of terror shot through his body at the mention of each detail. Flashes of memory forced their way up from the vault he'd forced them back into after his meeting with Heaven Canceller. He tried his hardest to clear his mind and stomp them back down into that deepest containment.

Internal pressure built within Masaya's body, like he was being pumped full of poison. He felt so uncomfortably ill.

Masaya's face twisted into a pained grimace. He felt like his face wasn't even a part of his body anymore, but a window he was staring out from.

Any psychological professional could have told that Masaya was being made horribly distressed by this conversation.

Alas, Mr Narohoshi was no psychological professional.

To him, Masaya's discomfort was the promise of a breakthrough—an invitation to dig deeper.

"Yes, the stagnation of you ability development, followed by your younger sister overtaking you with her more versatile electrical ability—."

"Shut the fuck up!" snapped Masaya.

Painful memories leaked more and more from Masaya's mental vault. His breathing became shuddery. He forced it back into a steady rhythm—just like the exercises.

Masaya was just managing to keep it together. It was like bailing water out of a sinking boat with a bucket.

Mr Narohoshi answered his urges to punch more holes in the hull.

"Your friendly rivalry with her stopped being enjoyable once you knew that she had surpassed you. Insecurity and envy took over and poisoned your sibling bond. Last year, it reached a boiling point whe—."

"FUCK OFF!"

That mental vault creaked, split in places. More of those wretched memories leaked forth and made Masaya sick to his stomach. All of the worst things Masaya had desperately tried to hold down were eager to burst forth all at once.

He could not let that happen.

Masaya leapt up from the recliner. He needed to escape from the room at once.

Of course, that would have been much too easy.

CLINK!

"…!"

Masaya was considered to be a wild card by the teachers and faculty of Tatenkara. He had precious few allies in the school. On top of that, he'd been put in this room by Amine of all people.

So of course he was still cuffed—now to that large and heavy faux-leather recliner.

Escape was not possible.

That fact was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The dam burst. The vault was blown open.

"Agh!"

And everything came forth. It hit him like a flash flood.

He couldn't think.

He couldn't breathe.

Masaya was overwhelmed by a nightmarish panic attack.

"Aaahh! Aaahh! Aaaaaaaahh! Grrrhhaaaahhh!"

Throughout the whole thing, Mr Narohoshi refused to stop talking.

It took 45 minutes for Masaya to finally return to a state of relative control. He had to do it all on his own.

At the end of it all, Mr Narohoshi commended Masaya on a productive session.

-[8]-

The school day was over.

Somehow, Masaya had survived.

Following his panic episode, he was finally released from Mr Narohoshi's office and allowed to recuperate in the nurse's office for a time. Eventually, he was able to get most of those monstrous terrors back into their vault and assume a something vaguely resembling a stoic expression. He managed to make it back for afternoon classes, but he uttered not a word the entire time. His appearance for the rest of the school day would have seemed largely normal from the point of view of any of his classmates, perhaps barring Hatano.

And now, at last, he was free.

Every step he took felt as though he wore leaden shoes. His breathing was conscious, routine, and likewise heavy.

Masaya was utterly exhausted

By the time he was far enough away from school that he could loosen up his façade some, he was doubly so.

His Ohm Sight was operating at a bare minimum.

He didn't know to where he was plodding—until his arrival there.

The riverside—the grassy slopes that covered it made for a relatively quiet and serene spot, despite being a public space. Masaya knew that he needed something like this right about now. He did not hesitate to indulge.

Masaya laid his back onto the soft grass and clovers, and then released all of the tension that had built up in his muscles over the course of that day.

He was probably going to get grass stains on his gakuran—compared to blood stains, that would be an improvement. The bed of clovers was also an upgrade to that bed of dirt he'd lost consciousness upon back on Monday—and instead of Hydro Cords, it was the gentle sunshine of a spring afternoon and cool touch of the wind that wrapped themselves around him today.

Masaya Misaka may as well have been Tatenkara's punching bag, but at least the wider world itself was not going to withhold its enjoyable little things from him arbitrarily—the universe wasn't one to discriminate.

He managed to take some solace in that.

After running that gauntlet of being at the mercy of his network of detractors in quick succession over the span of one morning, Masaya believed that he'd earned at least a modicum of peace to enjoy—at least while it lasted.

He sank deep into the peace and tranquillity. He indulged in that state for some time. He really could have just accepted the call of sleep and napped out under the open spring sky right then and there. He kept himself just above that threshold, though. Who knew how long a 'quick nap' would actually last for?

"Senpai. Are you sleeping?" asked a voice from surprisingly close.

It appeared that Masaya had nothing to worry about with regard to falling asleep, for an alarm clock had presented itself. He was quite simply in the opposite of an effort-giving mood at the moment, so running Ohm Sight calculations was out of the question right now.

That had allowed for someone to sneak up on him.

"Hee hee, senpai. Are you taking a nap outside?" continued that curious voice.

That voice was known for getting noisy. Its owner was unlikely to allow Masaya's peace and quiet to continue if he tried to ignore her. Some sort of response was required.

He opened his eyes to look up at that troublesome girl—only to be met immediately with more trouble.

"…!"

When he saw that, a shiver of adolescent energy shot down his body and his mind was woken up immediately. His eyes went wide.

Blue!

The Sagara girl just had to taunt Masaya awake while standing right next to his head, leaving a clear and open line of sight to something that starts with 'P' and rhymes with 'upping the antes'. That had to be deliberate. Masaya was picking up a troublesome behavioural pattern here. The kick-start to his mind allowed him to get straight to the reprimanding—rather un-typically of a 14-year-old boy in his position.

"Rika Sagara, why on Earth are you standing there?! I can see right up your—!"

"Oh, so you are awake! Hee hee. Naughty senpai."

She was feigning surprise, but there was definitely some teasing going on in there.

"Just… Don't just stand there!" commanded Masaya, while doing nothing to actually remove himself from that line of sight. His adolescent drive was powered up now, and he caught himself shooting quick peaks now and again. His internal monologue battled with itself.

Stop it!

But her thighs though!

Nice thighs or not, she's a first-year! Knock it off!

Hnnnnggggggg!

Stop it!

"Senpai…" Rika's tone dropped its flirtatious air, replaced by intent of care and concern. "All through today, you looked so depressed and tired. I want you to feel better, so you can stare as much as you want, guilt-free—at least for a little bit. This is what makes boys happy and gives them energy, right?"

Wrong kind of energy!

"Who gave you that idea?!" questioned Masaya, his gaze having trouble picking where to settle.

"It was in the mangas Hisao likes to read."

Good grief, girl! This is definitely a growing child's first misguided understanding of boy-girl relations, alright. Still, her thighs look positively deli—Stop staring at them!

Masaya made the executive decision to squeeze his eyes shut and stop the cycle of staring up there making him want to keep staring up there—there was some internal opposition, but he managed to crush it. He patted the soft grass to his left.

"Sit."

It was best to get her down from up there right over him.

She did as instructed and laid on the grass beside him. Their heads turned to face one another. They were quite close; their faces dominated each other's field of view. It all felt surprisingly intimate—just short of feeling like too much. Masaya had a big question on his mind now.

"Rika Sagara, why do you keep coming onto me? What's the thought process?"

Masaya wasn't in any mood to put on any airs right now. He wanted to be real with her, so he just went straight to the point.

The first time she'd come onto him was immediately after they'd met—she'd just asked him out on the spot. The second time was in the hospital, where she'd tried to justify stealing a kiss. And now the third time, she was already flashing her underwear at him. That was a troublesome progression, and, if this continued on its current trajectory, before too long, she'd be trying some nonsense you might see in a positively degenerate ecchi manga if this behaviour wasn't promptly reprimanded and curbed.

As far as Masaya knew, Rika Sagara was a good, kind-hearted girl. She shouldn't be going in that direction—and she'd no doubt run into serious consequences if she did. That had to be avoided. Her brother would certainly be grateful for some intervention.

"Because… I like you, senpai." she declared with a reddening face. Her cuteness was on full display this close up.

Nice try.

She said that without much doubt, but probably not a whole lot of thought either. That was how it usually was with first-year girls dipping their toes into romance for the first time.

"Why do you like someone like me, whom you only met earlier this week?"

"Because… It's you… Senpai." Her eyes didn't know where to settle, and she was going timid. "Every time I see you… I end up liking you more and more. Even when you push me back… you're not mean about it."

That was also typical of first-year girls. It was the possibility of a romantic prospect that excited them rather than the person themselves. If that possibility didn't fall apart after multiple encounters, it excited them even more.

She continued.

"Hisao tells me that I'm bad at recognising personal boundaries, and that I get carried away too easily. I know I can get annoying at times, but you're so good at handling it, and it puts Hisao at ease… I tend to stress him out a lot. So… I want to be with you… because you're someone Hisao respects, and approves of."

A question arose in Masaya's mind, as if his subconscious was handing him the script. He knew that digging into why this question was picked was a bad idea, so he simply asked it.

"Why are you always so reliant on Hisao?"

"Because he's my family. Who else would I rely on?"

She hadn't hesitated for even a second. Masaya could tell from the look she was giving him that her question there, while rhetorical, was also genuine.

This was simply the way of the world for her. She continued.

"Hisao's my only family in the city, so I rely on him for a lot. I think it's been tough on him… because… who does he have to rely on and give him the advice he needs?" She paused, breaking eye contact while she mustered up the words she wanted.

Masaya felt something ominous about the direction this conversation was taking.

"Senpai… I think he believes he's found that person… in you… In the hospital… Hisao told that he wished he had an older brother like you."

A feeling of unease flooded Masaya's body. He was right to be on-guard. Those words were like nitro-glycerine. With improper use, his vault of devils was in danger of being blown wide open. He needed to deal with that malformed ambition before something bad happened, not just for him, but for those two as well.

So he decided to be completely honest with that girl who held simply too much faith in him.

"You need to get that dreadful idea out of his head. I'm not qualified to be anything like that to anyone. You saw what a weakling I really am. I can't actually protect anyone. My advice means nothing coming from a no-gooder like me. Anyone who takes advice from me will just end up like me—and you don't want to end up like me." A bitter smile had crept onto his face. "I have no control over my own fate. I'm just trapped in this endless cycle of just barely hanging on while everyone takes turns trying to beat me into submission. Where is the hope in that?"

In his current low-defence state, he'd ended up venting to this girl entirely by accident. Maintaining eye contact was a bit too much to ask for by the end of his quiet rant.

"Senpai…" she looked uneasy, wavering. She assembled the strength she needed to continue. "Senpai. What was that you told Hisao about hope? Back when he was really badly hurt?" She took in a deep breath and donned a brave face. The intensity of her gaze would allow Masaya's eyes to hide away no longer. His gaze was pulled back in line with hers. "You said that there's no point in going on if things weren't going to get better—and you're still going on, looking for that hope."

That wasn't me talking—or was it?

"Hisao is that hope and support for me. You are that hope for Hisao… So… where's that person for you, senpai?"

"…" Masaya tried to process what he'd just heard, but he could not wrap his head around it. "What do you mean?"

It was as if the very assembly of his worldview had left behind crucial gaps that were required for the meaning of those words to fall into place.

Hope couldn't be a person. Hope was hope. Putting one's hope into people was what politicians tricked people into doing. It wasn't something that actually solved people's problems—right?

Masaya's confusion was apparently completely alien to Rika Sagara. She blinked until his words were assembled into some sort of meaning in her mind.

It seemed that the answer shook her somewhat. Her eyes went wide in exasperation.

"Senpai?..." her expression was tense and frozen, "Do you really not have anyone to go to for strength? For hope?... All those things they did to you… You shouldered that pain all by yourself?... How?... Th-that's not right! That's not normal!"

From her lying position beside him, she lunged. She rolled over towards him—and threw her arms over his shoulders.

She held him gently.

"You can't keep going on like that, senpai!"

Like what?

Masaya laid there beneath her. He didn't understand what the big fuss was about.

Wasn't this simply how it was to be a man? It was something that every boy needed to learn sooner or later. Masaya had simply learned it quicker than usual, but there was nothing wrong with that—right?

Rika raised her head from his chest. Her now-misty eyes met his.

"Senpai. If you keep going like this… you'll break… So…" she sucked in a deep breath, resolving herself, "Please… Let me be that person for you!"

"That person?"

"Yeah." A tentative smile grew across her face. "Someone has to, so it may as well be me. I'll do it!"

Her smile settled into a peaceful expression, as if her heart was now fully in on the prospect. Rika Sagara pitched her proposal with a caring and gentle tone.

"When life feels like it's getting to be too much to handle; when those no-good bullies are trying to hurt you again; or when you feel like screaming at the world—come to me. I will hold you nice and tight, like this…" she snuggled up deeper into Masaya's chest, "… and I'll tell you all the best things about you that you need to hear…and you can release all of your pain and troubles… so that you can stand strong and refreshed once again." She peeked up at his face again. "How does that sound?"

That description rang a bell for Masaya.

"Isn't that basically just a girlfriend?"

"… Huh?"

There's no way.

Surely Rika Sagara hadn't used that whole display of closeness as just an excuse to shoot her shot again. Masaya was also pretty sure that there was at least one innuendo snuck into that proposal, somewhere.

"Of course, the label of girlfriend entails other things as well, but the core of it is there. You're basically just asking me out again, aren't you?"

"That's not what I was talking about…"

The absolute cheek on this girl.

That managed to get a light chuckle out of Masaya.

"I'm not looking for any first-year girlfriends right now, so I'll pass."

Masaya made sure to remind that girl of his official Masaya policy regarding first-year girls.

"I wasn't trying to—."

"Nice try, Rika Sagara, but I can see what you're up to."

"Senpai. You're not getting it. I wasn't talking about anything specifically romantic, but rather, someone you can confide i—."

"You almost had me there for a seco—."

"Ahh! Dense senpai!"

Rika Sagara raised herself off Masaya's chest and using her bodyweight pinned him to the ground with her elbows, making sure not to rest any weight directly onto his injured shoulder this time. She held his face between her soft hands. Her face hovered only a foot above his.

There was no escape from what she'd say next

"If you can't tell the difference… then… very well, senpai…"

Her gaze was intense. She breathed heavily, and swallowed hard.

"… I'll just do both then."

Her head began its descent.

Her course was charted.

She's going to…

"Oh my! Are we interrupting something?" called a voice.

-[9]-

As if right on a cue that nobody asked for, a voice had called over to those two.

"Maybe we should have given them a minute first." pondered an additional voice.

"Nah. This is way better." responded the first.

Masaya and Rika awkwardly shuffled themselves out of their compromising position. Upon getting back up to a seated position, Masaya turned to address his 'guests'.

Atop the grassy slope, there were six of them.

They were high school students. Their uniforms matched that of that Judgment member who'd rescued Masaya and Hisao back on Monday. That school, the name of which Masaya could not recall, was known for hosting and developing strong espers. It appeared to hold some international prestige, since one of those high school boys in that group didn't even look remotely Japanese.

But what on Earth did boys from that school want with Masaya?

"Can I help you?" asked Masaya apprehensively as he rose to his feet. He pulled Rika Sagara up with his free hand.

"Well, that depends. Are you Masaya Misaka by any chance?" asked the one front and centre. His attempt at a friendly poker face was poor—there was something devious happening behind those eyes.

Masaya felt as though he'd seen that face, or one like it, somewhere before.

A vague familiarity wasn't going to make him lower his guard, though. Ohm Sight returned the world around him to its regular volumetric, unhidden form in pristine detail.

"Who's asking?"

"Kuzan Arono."

Arono. So that's where.

That name flicked a switch in Masaya's mind.

Any thoughts of his prior situation with Rika Sagara had fallen away to the void. The short window of vulnerability had now closed shut.

Masaya's pliable and expressive countenance was replaced by one of stone in an instant. With only a single name, Masaya knew exactly what this encounter was about—what was coming next. A vulnerable Masaya would not be welcome where he was headed.

"Am I correct in assuming that there is no convincing you of my innocence at this juncture?" he called to that boy at the top of the slope.

That older boy's poker face gave way to a diabolical smirk.

"I'm not trusting a stranger's words over my bro's, so don't even think about it, you rat."

"Very well, then."

Masaya began the march back up the grassy riverside slope, back up to ground level.

Someone was going to have to stay behind. She had no place in that troublesome world he was being pulled back to.

"Senpai!" she called to his back.

His marched halted. He turned back to face her.

"You go home now, Sagara-chan—or go visit your brother. I'll talk with these guys."

"No you won't! You're going… to do that again, aren't you?"

"…"

Masaya refrained from answering that question.

"But you're still injured! You can't win like that!" She seemed to have guessed the answer regardless.

"…"

"No! You'll just get hurt again!"

"…"

"Why must you go!"

"Because I'm Masaya Misaka. If I can't do it, then who will?"

Then he resumed his trek up the slope. He did not hesitate to face his fate.

This was probably something that that girl would never understand.

That other Masaya Misaka was gone now—back to guard the vault where all the rest of the weak things were held. Once that face of stone was back on, there was no stopping him.

Masaya was not going to walk away from this confrontation victorious; there was no doubt about that. Picking up the pieces afterwards could be left to that weaker him. He would grieve, complain, marinate on how things ended up like this. He would beg for fate to throw him a bone. He would declare "Next time, I'll do it. I'll bow out. I'll break the cycle"—but whenever trouble next showed itself, he would flee and hide behind the stony Masaya—a glorified autopilot, but also a glorified Masaya. Every time, he'd run away, and leave dealing with the danger to that invincible stone mask.

Be the Masaya that the weak Masaya wished he could be—those were his instructions.

Once that switch was flicked and that mask donned, nothing short of another lightning bolt to the heart could ever hope to stop him.

The weaker Masaya would deal with the consequences later—that was the unspoken arrangement.

The stone mask didn't concern itself with any complaints from that other half.

Its sole objective was to win.

Perhaps they were still one in the same. Perhaps they were entirely separate entities sharing a brain. Perhaps they were just modules that were mixed and matched together atop a core being to become what the universe would call 'Masaya Misaka'.

The distinction didn't really matter.

When he reached the top of the slope, he didn't look back at that girl down there. Instead, he turned to his guests with a devious twist in the corner of his mouth.

"How about we find a spot a little more out of the way?"

With an expression like that, you'd think he'd be the kind of guy to never lose.

One day, he'd make that a reality.

Or die trying.

AFTERWORD

Hello again, dear reader.

Welcome back to A Certain Magical Index PLUS: [FALSE CONDUCT]

Whoops, I wrote another long chapter again.

I hope you've been enjoying the story so far, even though Masaya hasn't even really set off on his hero's journey yet. Expect some big bombshells to turn the story thus far on its head in the coming chapters. It really didn't seem like it'd take so long to get there back in the scene blockout phase, so I hope you'll stick with the story until then. Things are going to get super exciting.

Next chapter, we'll be meeting a super important and cool [original] character, so look forward to it.

This chapter was all about probing into the depths of Masaya Misaka's mind. He and Mikoto are definitely not on happy terms right now, that's for sure. Following his traumatic experience, he's developed a couple of psychological defence mechanisms in the forms of the vault and the stone mask. He's become quite reliant on them, which has morphed him into quite the peculiar [if mentally precarious] character indeed. This chapter showcases how and when he uses them, and how the people around him react to his bizarre behaviour, whether they be friendly or hostile.

Who knows how Mikoto herself feels about this whole situation?

This was a bit of a dark chapter, like the previous one, so I made sure to lighten it up with some comedy in the Rika and Fukiyose scenes. Those are quite fun to write, so I hope you found them at least somewhat funny.

We're getting another brawl next chapter, with some new brawlers with neat abilities. How is Masaya going to handle it, especially with one arm out of action? Stay tuned, dear reader.

As always, I welcome your thoughts on the story so far, dear reader. What are you liking so far? What are you looking forward to? Tell me to hurry up the pacing? Don't hesitate to let me know.

-Lacien