"LASF9 has a refractive index of... 1.87, and an extinction coefficient of 1.58 * 10-7 m-1 for light with a wavelength of 460 nm." the little girl said, concentrating on keeping the numbers in her head. "It has a reflectance of 0.093, and a Brewster's angle equal to 61.945°." she paused, thinking. "This makes it significantly worse than FK51A, at least at 460 nm. FK51A has a refractive index of 1.49, an extinction coefficient of 1.03 * 10-8 m-1, and a reflectance of only 0.039."

"But FK51A is way more expensive." A young man cautioned. "It could cost you upwards of 500,000 ¥ for a single lens, whereas LASF9, while hardly inexpensive, will only run you maybe 80,000 ¥ per lens."

"I can't let costs keep me from getting better results. In my two lens design, the FK51A will end up being almost 8% more efficient than the LASF9." the girl said.

"Yeah, but you're not the one paying for it." he said, sighing.

"You told me that if I learned the physics, produced the blueprint, and was able to provide an oral defense of the validity of my device, you would buy me the materials that I needed to build it." she said, pouting. "You never put a price limit on it."

"That was because I asked a grade schooler to prove themselves to possess a university level knowledge of optics. I didn't think you'd actually manage it." he shook his head, looking at the six pages of professional grade blueprints on the table in front of him. "Some of my fellow researchers couldn't have done this, and they work with optics for a living. I figured I was safe."

"You fail to understand my determination." the girl said, grinning.

"Yes, that's correct." he said flatly. "Hikaru, I don't understand why you need this device at all, let alone why you'd need it for an application where an 8% efficiency difference would matter. You're a ten year old girl, and this is..." he shook his head again.

"An internal reflectance chamber designed to generate a tight beam of coherent 460 nm wavelength light from a-" Hikaru began, but he cut her off.

"It's a beam weapon." he said evenly.

"Y-yes. It's, uh, a beam weapon." Hikaru said quietly.

"Hikaru..." he sighed. "What could you possibly need this for?"

"Defense." she said defensively.

"What kind of situations do you get into that a beam weapon would be a suitable form of defense?" he said, a little worry creeping into his tones. "Especially a beam weapon like this one. You do realize... no, of course you do. You know exactly what the resultant beam would be capable of. You've probably put a lot of thought into it."

"Two hundred and forty-three millimeters of steel per second penetration at 3KW." she said quietly. "A 0.04 second exposure to the right area should be fatal in most cases."

"So you fully intended it to be a deadly weapon." he looked at her, confusion on his face. "Why?"

"There are kids my age walking around with deadly weapons already." she said. "I'd rather be one of them than be at their whims."

"That's different and you know it." he said quietly.

"How?" she asked, a touch of anger in her voice. "Just because it's a 'natural ability' doesn't make esper powers any less of a weapon. Most level 3 espers could kill someone if they really tried it, and all level 4's are easily capable of it. No one would bat an eye if I was trying to hone my ability through the 'normal' way, even if it became just as deadly in the process. But build a device to try to give myself an edge, and suddenly it's some big deal." she kicked the edge of the table softly in frustration. "There's nothing expressly special about esper powers that makes them acceptable for people to use, or at least there shouldn't be. If there is, that's just a form of systemic elitism and you know it."

"Ten year old's shouldn't be talking like that." he said quietly.

"Most ten year old's don't have an I.Q. of 183, most weren't stuck reading adult literature from age 6, and most were raised by parents instead of a distant, barely present pseudo-older brother figure." she said pointedly.

"I'm... working on it." he said softly.

"Whatever." she sighed. "Look, I guess the LASF9 lenses will be fine if you're really so worried about cost. But if you aren't going to help me at all, I'll get some normal window glass and carve the lenses myself. I can get commercial grade mirrors without too much trouble, you can find cheap polarizing lenses in 3d glasses, and I'll think of something for the casing. I'm going to make this thing, one way or the other. You can either give me the tools to do it well, or I can hurt myself in the process of doing it poorly, but I'm going to do it."

"What happened to you?" he asked softly. "I know I don't spend nearly as much time with you as I should, but something this big even I would have picked up on. It's like you were a completely different person just a week ago." he cupped her hands in his. "There is a difference between esper powers and something like this, Hikaru, and it has nothing to do with power or advantage. I can take this weapon out of your hands, but you can't shut off someone's powers. They can't chose not to have them. I would disarm everyone of any weapon that I could, unless they had a very good reason for having that weapon. So, tell me. What is your reason? Why do you, one of those lucky enough to get to choose whether or not to be one, wish to make a weapon out of yourself?"

"Because I have to live surrounded by other weapons." she said. "Because every day I have to sit in a classroom containing no less than five people capable of killing me, because I eat lunch with three of them, follow the same route home as one of them, frequent a park that holds maybe eight or more at any one time, walk through streets in a city with thousands of them. You have your own protections. You're a R&D researcher for a big name optics company. The places you visit, the districts you live in, they're the safe ones, the ones under complete control. You don't really live in the city, not in the way that I do. If you did, you wouldn't even ask why I feel the need to have some real way of protecting myself." she stared steadily into his eyes. "In this world, only power gets listened to. Power can be achieved in many different ways. One is through money. One is through fame. One is by esper level. One is by the connections you have with people who've achieved one of the other three. I don't have access to the first one, and I won't for a long time to come, if ever. The second has its own risks associated with it, on top of also being largely out of my reach. I'm not making much progress with the third, and I handily fail the fourth. If I want to have my voice heard, if I want to not simply be tossed around by the whims of the people who have found their own power in their own way, I have to get some for myself. So I've opted to take option five. If I can't get strong enough naturally, I can use the greatest power afforded to humanity to make up the difference; namely, my brain. I'm going to forge my own path, gain my own power, and get my voice heard. I refuse to let others dictate how I live my life. This is my security, my vote, my voice, my hope. This is how I get heard."

He looked down at her, not saying a word. Silence filled the space between them, the ten year old girl and her twenty-one year old caretaker, tension building in the quiet. His eyes passed over her slowly, this little girl who spoke like an adult and held a jaded worldview, yet still had the determination inside of her to challenge the standing order, the childlike surety that she really could change the world.

If he helped her, she was going to get herself killed. But if he didn't, she'd get herself killed faster.

"FK51A, right?" he said, sighing.

The girl grinned.

A Certain Technological Annihilaser

An A Certain Magical Index/A Certain Scientific Railgun Fanfiction

- Four days previously -

"Hi-ka-ru!" A short blond girl leaned over Hikaru's desk, enunciating each syllable of her name slowly and deliberately. "Hikaru, Hikaru, Hikaru, Hikaru!"

"What?!" Hikaru groaned, lifting her head off of her desk with visible effort. She blinked blearily in the harsh white of the florescent lights, slowly resolving her friend's face through blurry eyes.

"I finally did it!" she smiled brightly, shoving a marked index card into Hikaru's face. Hikaru had to scan it over twice before her brain registered what was written on the card. Through her fatigue, she managed to grin back at her friend.

"I told you if you kept at it you'd make it eventually." Hikaru said. "Congratulations, Sayaka. You're officially an esper now." she feigned a sad look. "I guess you don't need me anymore, hun?"

"Oh, don't be silly." Sayaka said, punching Hikaru's shoulder. "I didn't stick around with you because you had powers and I didn't."

"No, of course not. You stuck around with me so you could cheat off of my homework." Hikaru said.

"That was, like, one time." Sayaka said. "Trust me, I learned my lesson. I couldn't even pronounce half of those words." she sighed happily, then tapped Hikaru's result card, which had been placed face down on her desk. "So, how about your results? Did you move up to level 3 yet?"

"I don't know." Hikaru sighed. "I must have slept through when they handed these out."

"You know, for such a smart student, you do sleep through an awfully large number of classes." Sayaka said teasingly.

"You have that backwards, actually. It's because I'm such a smart student that I can afford to sleep through so many classes and still do well." Hikaru flipped over the card, reading it briefly. "Nope. Still level 2." she flipped the card over and laid her head down again. "We should celebrate your achievement." she murmured through her arms. "Not every day that you get magical powers, after all."

"It's not magic." Sayaka said. "It's science. I would have thought you would be the first to defend that."

"Are you kidding me?" Hikaru said, laughing. "Okay, first off, have you read any of Schrodinger's actual work on quantum mechanics? The set of thought experiments that he conducted that supposedly provide 'scientific backing' for our esper abilities were actually created as an illustration of the ludicrousness of some of the affirmations made in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, specifically on superposition states. It's true that some of his equations have later been found to apply to some of the phenomenon related to esper abilities, but they never predicted any of it. The closest thing to the common understanding of how our abilities work is actually the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which was formulated by Everett, not Schrodinger. And even there, it's not a matter of the theory predicting an outcome, but more that parts of the outcome we see can be shown to not be impossible under the theory. If they quote the wrong scientist's work as evidence for the backing of our abilities, it's a pretty good indication that they don't actually know what they're talking about. I'm sure there is a scientific explanation for it, but we are centuries away from figuring out what that explanation really is. So, yes, it's magic. After all, all magic is simply physics that we don't understand yet, and we certainly don't understand this."

"You lost me around 'Copenhagen interpretation'." Sayaka said, staring at Hikaru blankly.

"Whatever." Hikaru sighed, shaking her head. "Us. Party. Today. Did that at least get through?"

"Did someone say party?" A boy called from a few desks over, turning to face the two girls. "I do hope you weren't planning on doing something fun without me."

"Oh, of course not." Hikaru said mockingly. "How could we possibly do anything without you?"

"Kazuki!" Sayaka said, rushing over to his desk. "Oh, you're not going to believe this!"

Hikaru put her head back down on her desk, letting herself settle into a comfortable position with her head snug in her arms. There was still a final block to sleep through, after all. She might as well get started.

-:(&):-

"How do you know about this place?" Sayaka asked, looking up with apprehension at the large, somewhat dilapidated building with a flickering neon sign signifying that the establishment was open for business.

"I explore." Hikaru said. "Is it really that important?"

"I mean, we are sort of in the middle of nowhere." Sayaka said. "Or, as much of the 'middle of nowhere' as you can get in Academy City, anyway." she looked around nervously. "Are you sure we should be here?"

"We're ten years old, Sayaka." Hikaru said patently. "No one is going to be interested in 'taking advantage' of us, and we're too young to be carrying any significant amount of money. We're going to be fine."

"If you're sure." Sayaka said.

"Oh, we'll be fine." Kazuki said. "And if something goes wrong, I'll be here to defend you two."

"Right." Hikaru said mockingly. "I'm sure the ten-year-old, no combat training, low mass, level 0 boy is going to be more than capable of defending the helpless girls in his party."

"Hmph." he huffed, pushing his slightly too large glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose. "Just you wait. I'll catch up to you two soon enough."

"And when you do, we'll celebrate for you." Hikaru said sweetly. "Like we're supposed to be doing for Sayaka. Right now. If both of you would just swallow your misconceptions and step inside the building with me. That would be great."

"Fine, fine." Kazuki said.

"This better be pretty good, Hikaru." Sayaka grumbled, walking in after Kazuki. Hikaru sighed, stepping in after them. She wished her friends would give her a little bit of the benefit of the doubt.

Sayaka and Kazuki gasped, and Hikaru let herself assume a smug smile. "Told you." she muttered, the three emerging into a bustling arcade area. They were surrounded in flashing lights, colorful displays, and the chirping and twittering of 8-bit sound effects.

"How do you know about this place?" Sayaka said in wonder, looking around the wide open floor, examining the gaming cabinets with a somewhat feverish look.

"I explore." Hikaru repeated. "As far as I know, this is the last surviving gaming arcade done in the style of the 1980's in Academy City. I know how much you enjoy retro gaming platforms, so I kept this under wraps for a special occasion."

"Uh huh." Sayaka said, not really paying attention. "Where can I get tokens for the games?"

Hikaru pointed, and Sayaka wandered off without a second of hesitation. After pausing long enough to make sure she found her place, Hikaru turned to Kazuki. "Sorry that there isn't much else to do. I know you're not really into games, let alone 35+ year old games, but try to enjoy yourself for Sayaka's sake, okay?"

"You did good." he said. "She's happy. That's the important part."

"How surprisingly selfless and insightful of a thing to say, Kazuki." Hikaru said teasingly, nudging him. "If you keep this up for too long, I'll start to get suspicious."

"Sorry." he said. "I'll try to be more boorish for you, Hikaru." Hikaru grinned, and he smiled back at her. "Is there any food we could get?"

"There's some disturbingly greasy snacks and soda for sale over there." Hikaru said, pointing to a booth with a menu sign hanging over it. "It tastes great, but, uh, make sure you only eat about half as much as you think you want or it'll end up coming back to get you."

"Understood." he said. "Do you want anything?"

"No. I'll be fine." Hikaru said, pulling a notebook out of her backpack and clicking a pen into action. "I'll be catching up on a little bit of my work over on the benches."

"Right." Kazuki said, walking away. Hikaru made her way to the benches in the corner of the room, settling down in a comfortable position, placing her textbook on her lap and keeping her notebook at the ready to record any observations.

"What are you studying now?" Kazuki asked, sitting down next to Hikaru a few minutes later, a large number of not quite identifiable fried objects now in his possession. Hikaru looked up briefly, then turned back to her book.

"Linguistic Anthropology, by Alessandro Duranti." she said, taking note of some important topic heading and jotting down a few connections in her notebook. "I'd be lying if I said that it was the most interesting thing I'd read, but it has its moments. I've previously read some of Chomsky's work, and I thought it would be a good idea to get a bit of a balance of views, see what the other camp of linguists came up with. I have to say, Chomsky's concept of universal grammar is certainly more elegant and beautiful then this interdisciplinary approach, but Duranti does make some good points."

"Uh huh." Kazuki said. "Where do you even get these textbooks, Hikaru?"

"The internet is a beautiful thing." Hikaru replied. "As it turns out, you don't need to be a university student to get most university textbooks; you just have to know where to buy them."

"Wait, hold on." he said, peering over her shoulder. "That textbook is written in English. How are you even reading that?"

"I'm fluent in three languages and can read seven." Hikaru said. "I thought you knew this."

"Being able to 'read' seven languages is different than being able to read university textbooks in seven languages." Kazuki said, shaking his head and beginning to eat some of the food he'd bought. "Really, at this point I shouldn't be surprised. Though, why, uh, linguistic anthro-whatnow? I'd have thought you'd be doing some math or physics or something like that."

"In Academy City, we're given very advanced math and science curriculum, but at the cost of the liberal arts. I'm just making up for the gaps." Hikaru said. "I don't have much interest in the physical sciences, I don't want to be a researcher or engineer, and pure mathematics never seemed like it had much point to it. Language studies, literature studies, art theory, and philosophy have always been more interesting to me."

"A good scientific basis is the key to unlocking esper abilities." Kazuki said. "Sure you don't want to use that brain of yours to level up a few times first?"

"I've already completed most of the high school science curriculum offered here." Hikaru said dismissively. "After performing some tests, it became clear that I was making no significant improvements in my skills above the baseline. Actually, if anything, there was a slight negative correlation between the time I spent studying science and my rate of improvement."

"How did you convince them to let you go ahead? They don't usually let people take instruction out of order." he said.

"I didn't. But the high school students didn't mind lending me their textbooks if I did their homework for them." Hikaru said. "No obstacle is insurmountable, if you're willing to put in the effort to discover a creative solution."

"Right." he sighed. "I forgot who I was speaking to. I honestly think that I get smarter through just having to interact with you regularly."

"You've certainly picked up some vocabulary." Hikaru said. "We're just about the most articulate ten year olds you can find, and that definitely comes from me. The rest of it, though, is just you realizing that you secretly were smarter to begin with, but too shy to assert that fact."

"If you say so. You're probably right." Kazuki said. "You know, Hikaru, what's it like to know everything?"

"I couldn't tell you, though I'd imagine that it would be quite boring." Hikaru replied.

The two sat in silence after that, Hikaru flipping through her textbook and Kazuki eating his food. She made good progress through the text, carefully denoting interesting passages and topics for more in-depth study. She got so lost in it that it wasn't until she was being shaken that she snapped out enough to look around.

"Hikaru!" Kazuki said, and she jolted to attention. He looked worried. "I can't find Sayaka. I don't think she's in the building anymore."

"What?" Hikaru said, shocked. "What could have happened?"

"I don't know, but when I went to find her, she wasn't anywhere. The building isn't big enough for me to have missed her. She's not here anymore." Kazuki said.

"Where did you see her last?" Hikaru asked, scanning the room for any clues. "And how long ago did you notice?"

"I've been looking for her for at least five minutes, but she's probably been gone longer than that." Kazuki said.

"Uh, how long was I reading for?" Hikaru asked.

"It's only been twenty minutes." Kazuki reassured her. "She's not hours gone."

Hikaru sighed in relief, then stood up. "I'm going to see if I can pick up any clues around here.
You ask around if people have seen her. She'd have been excitable enough to draw attention to herself."

"I already have. No one remembered her except for the token clerk, and he didn't pay attention to her after he got his money." Kazuki said. "I wouldn't have gotten you if she had stepped outside or was in the bathroom. I've already been looking."

"I wish you hadn't. This is a very bad sign." Hikaru said. "I'd much rather it just be you getting freaked out over nothing."

"So do I." Kazuki said. "But I think she's really disappeared."

"Okay. Um, see if you can figure out who's been in and out of the building and when." Hikaru said. "The door has a buzzer so that the clerk can get the tokens ready. If we're lucky, there will be an electronic log of times the door's been opened. We might be able to figure out when exactly she left from that." Hikaru drew up the mental list of the games that Sayaka enjoyed, spotting one of the cabinets. "I'm going to see if there's any information we can get from where she's been. I don't expect anything… she was in the building for fifteen minutes at most, so there's not going to be much evidence left behind. Still, I'll check. If anyone can put together context clues, it's me."

"Meet at the door in three minutes?" he asked, and Hikaru nodded. He headed off to the token booth, while Hikaru began to examine the gaming cabinets that Sayaka would have been likely to stop at. With such a short timeframe, she likely only got through three or four games; she might have only visited one cabinet. Picking the target closest to the door, Hikaru checked the cabinet over. She couldn't care less what the game was, but it flashed visuals distractingly at her and she found it hard to ignore. There wasn't any signs of use or any clues, not that she had expected there to be any.

She was about to leave when the screen flashed to the scoreboard. There was an all-time board, as well as a daily one. 'SAY' held the top three slots on the daily scores; she appeared to be the only one to have played this cabinet today. The top two scores were both above 200,000; Hikaru had no idea if that was good or not. The third score, however, was down below 50,000, and the timestamp recorded it as being the third game played. Hikaru felt a little worry flutter in her chest. The only reason that the score would drop like that was either that she had become extremely distracted by something… or she had been removed from the cabinet before she could finish a game. Neither boded well. At the very least, it suggested that Sayaka's removal from the building was not by her choice.

Hikaru gave the cabinet a final search, then left to wait for Kazuki's return. He appeared shortly thereafter with a short list in his hand.

"As it turns out, they don't usually give the entrance lists to people. Unsurprising, but annoying." Kazuki said.

"Any around 17:03?" Hikaru asked.

"Uh, two actually. We have a 17:03:43 and then a 17:03:50." he frowned. "There's barely enough time between those for the door to have closed fully."

"The last game of hers I could find was timestamped with 17:03." Hikaru said. "I think it's safe to assume that the 17:03 exit was hers." Hikaru sighed. "And, you're really not going to like this, but it looks like it was not by choice. She appears to have abandoned her game in the middle of a round. Something external caused her to leave."

"She was taken?" he asked, incredulous.

"Not necessarily. She could have seen something or someone that convinced her that she needed to leave. Or maybe she saw something great and decided to follow it out. We have very little to go on." Hikaru checked her watch. "It's 17:12 now, so we're only nine minutes behind her." she looked around. "But I haven't the faintest clue as to where she could have gone."

"Wait, hold on." Kazuki took out a cellphone and dialed quickly. "It's ringing, but she's not picking up." he said after a pause. "So she can't access her cellphone, whatever she's doing."

"Don't hang up." Hikaru said, extending her hand. "Give me that phone." Kazuki did so, and Hikaru listened in carefully, concentrating. "She's moving." she said after a moment. "Somewhere between 65 and 80 kph. I can tell because of the slight fade out as the signal switches active towers. I have no idea where she is, but she's in a vehicle."

"So she has been kidnaped." Kazuki said.

"Shh!" Hikaru said. "I'm going to try to see if I can figure out when they stop moving."
"We should call judgment, or, at this point, Anti-Skill." Kazuki said. "This is way bigger than us."

"She's a level 1 girl with no social connections, Kazuki. Unless she's been kidnaped by some big name organization or individuals, they have much bigger things to be dealing with. No one is going to come to help us." Hikaru said. "If it'll make you feel better, go ahead and report it, but they're not going to move nearly fast enough if she's really in danger."

"What's your plan, then?" Kazuki asked. "Neither of us have any ability to take on even adult level 0's, and we have no idea where she is."

"I'll… think of something." Hikaru said. "We can't just leave her." she looked down. "I got her into this. You two were right, we shouldn't have come out to this place. We would have been safer closer to the business sector."

"This isn't your fault." Kazuki said. "And you can't let that guilt make you do something stupid."

"I know, but…" Hikaru paused, then handed the phone back to Kazuki. "They've stopped." she paused again. "Do you have an image sending app?"

"Uh, yeah." he said. Hikaru took out her phone, switching around until she'd entered hers.

"I'm going to send you an image. I want you to go to your phone's settings and change your home tower to tower 17, and then set the phone to only route through that tower. Then, send the image I send you to Sayaka and tell me how long it takes between when you send the image and you receive the 'image received' message." Hikaru instructed. Kazuki's phone beeped, and he went about following Hikaru's instructions. About a minute later, he turned to her.

"About five seconds from when I sent it to when I got the 'image received' message." he said.

"Okay. I routed through tower 12, and it took seven seconds. That means that the distance between her and tower 17 must be less than her distance from tower 12, as both towers are the same distance from us." Hikaru paused. "Hold on." Kazuki's phone beeped again, and Hikaru nodded. "Round trip from tower 12 is four seconds, so it must be two each way. Rate of data transfer decreases roughly linearly by distance, and the time the return packet would take is tiny in comparison to the image file, so she must be roughly 1.5 times farther from tower 17 than we are, and roughly 2.5 times farther from tower 12. Those two circles won't have much overlap. If I can get a map…" she opened a map program, plotting some points. "I've figured out where she is, give or take 100 meters. Quite a bit of error in the calculation, but we have an area."

"Okay. Hikaru, we really should just tell someone now." Kazuki said. "Not many kidnappings get reported within 15 minutes and pointed to a 100 meter radius. The authorities can take care of it from here. The only reason they can't step in immediately for things like this is that they don't know where to go. If you've got a location, we really should just leave it to them."

"Are you going to trust them to help Sayaka? She's your friend too." Hikaru accused.

"Are you sure your general distrust of the establishment isn't clouding your view?" Kazuki said. "Hikaru, just about anyone in the world would be better able to do this than a ten year old girl who's never even been in combat before."

"I can't take the chance." Hikaru said. "Look, you don't need to come with me."

"I'm not letting you go alone." Kazuki said. "But I'm also going to call Anti-Skill. That way, if they really are slower than some ten year old with a death wish, we'll get their first anyway, and when we get ourselves in trouble, which we will, they'll show up and rescue us."

"If it makes you feel better." Hikaru said. "We're thirteen minutes behind her now, and she's a good half-hour's walk away. We don't have time to lose."

Hikaru left the building quickly, Kazuki talking into his phone and following behind her. She felt a rush in her blood. This was what an adventure was like. She almost found herself smiling, but she forced the childlike glee down. This was a dangerous situation. Despite everything, it was true that she'd never actually done anything like this before. And no matter how well she thought she could do, putting that into practice would be another story altogether. Real life was never as clean as you wanted it to be, and there would always be unforeseen variables. Still, none of that changed the fact that Sayaka was in danger. She needed to do this.

They crossed from street to street, making good progress through the city. Minutes dragged on by as they slowly drew in on their target. As time passed, Hikaru began to feel increasingly unsettled. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. After all, she was a ten year old, taking on a group of unknown size and ability, with no experience. Perhaps she'd let the heroic ideal get a little too ingrained in her thoughts. And she was dragging Kazuki along too; as bad as her chances were, his were even worse.

Twenty minutes in, she stopped. Kazuki caught up to her, looking worried. "Is this it?" he asked.

"No." Hikaru said. "I think… maybe… you're right. I've been thinking about it, and this really is over our heads. We can't do anything here. We should leave this to the experts." She looked down. "I was just scared and wanted to help. I feel useless just sitting back and letting other people try to fix the problem when it's my friend in trouble."

"So do I." Kazuki said. "But if we just get ourselves hurt in the process of trying to feel useful, we're going to make things worse."

"Too late for that, I'm afraid." A gruff voice said from behind them, and Hikaru didn't quite have enough time to turn around before she felt a sharp pain on her neck, and everything went dark.

-:(&):-

"Hikaru!" Hikaru blinked blearily, the world around her dark. "Hikaru, are you alright?"

"Sayaka…" Hikaru said dazedly, then shook her head. "Sayaka!" she tried to make out the other girl's face, but she couldn't see anything. A throbbing pain shot through her head, and Hikaru moaned loudly.

"Hikaru!" she felt her body being pulled into a hug, and smelled Sayaka's ghostly mint shampoo mixed with humid, sweaty fear. "You're okay. I've been so worried! You haven't moved in at least an hour."

"Where are we?" Hikaru said. "And where is Kazuki?"

"Here." Kazuki called in the darkness. "I woke up about ten minutes ago. Sayaka says that they've thrown us in some kind of old storage locker. We're trapped in here."

"Hold on." Hikaru said, concentrating for a moment. In the palm of her hand, a small glowing blue orb flickered to life, and she strengthened it until the room was well lit with the sapphire glow. The room was small, though not tiny, maybe four meters to a side. Sayaka and Kazuki looked scared, and Kazuki appeared to be bleeding, though not significantly and not from any worrying locations. Hikaru touched the back of her head, wincing in pain from the contact. Drawing her hand back, she was relieved to find that she was not bleeding. It appeared that, while certainly not happy, the three of them weren't in any immediate danger. Her backpack had been taken away from her, though it appeared that she had been left her watch. One of the lenses of Kazuki's glasses had shattered, and he was now squinting to see through his single lens. "That should be better."

"Let there be light." Kazuki said. "Thanks, Hikaru."

"Do you know why we're here?" Hikaru asked, and Sayaka shook her head.

"I told one of them that I'd just made it to level 1, and they got really scary and tried to grab me. I tried to exit the building, but then I saw a few more guys standing outside waiting. I tried to go back in to alert you two, but the first man grabbed me just as I got the door open and dragged me outside." Sayaka said. "I don't know what they're after."

Hikaru checked her watch. "23:19!" she said, shocked. "We've been out way more than one hour. More like five and a half."

"Five and a half hours?" Kazuki said.

"Yeah. And six since you called Anti-Skill." Hikaru said.

"Now is really not the time for an 'I told you so'." Kazuki said.

"Believe me, you have no idea how much I wish I'd been wrong." Hikaru said. She looked up, seeing the other's expectant faces looking back at her. "What?" she asked.

"Well…" Kazuki said. "I believe it was said that no obstacle is insurmountable if you're willing to put in the effort to discover a creative solution."

"It's a locked steel box. We have no tools, no weapons, and no information on what's going on. We're injured, tired, and unprepared." Sayaka said, grinning. "I don't know. Fifteen minutes?"

"This is Hikaru we're talking about." Kazuki said. "Ten."

"Oh, wow. No pressure, huh?" Hikaru said. She stood up, pressing her hands to the side of the door, letting her light float behind her. She carefully felt the seam. "No airflow, so either the pressure is equalized, or the door's sealed very tightly. It looks like the locking mechanism is on the outside only, though the bolts are on our side." she cast her gaze around the room. "Two air vents on the ceiling, which explains why we haven't asphyxiated yet. They're a bit too small to be useful, though. No electrical equipment, which is good, because it means they're not monitoring us, though it does limit our options slightly…" Hikaru paused, thinking. "Did they leave any of you with a cellphone?"

"No." Sayaka said.

"Wait, I think they've…" Kazuki started, then sighed. "I still have it, but it's very broken. I can see some of the wires." he paused. "Oh, and it looks like I have one of those little plastic prize containers that you get from those coin machines. If that helps."

"Okay. So, we have a broken cellphone, a broken pair of glasses with one working lens, a watch, a small clear plastic container, our clothes, our bodies, and the ability to generate blue light." Hikaru paused. "Actually, Sayaka, what is your esper power?"

"Nucleosynthesis." Sayaka said, and Hikaru coughed in surprise.

"What!?" Hikaru exclaimed. "Sayaka, that's ridiculous. You…"

"What is Nucleosynthesis?" Kazuki asked. "Is that good or bad?"

"Good. Very good." Hikaru said. "That's the ability to turn one element into another. Lead into gold, that sort of thing. Only two espers in the whole city can manage it; I suppose Sayaka makes three."

"I can only go up in the table, not down. So, actually, I could only do gold into lead." Sayaka said. "And I can only increment by one element at a time right now, and only in very small amounts. I am only just barely level 1, after all."

"Okay, less immediately useful." Hikaru said, backing off a little. "But still awesome." she paused. "And now I can get us out of here." she turned to Kazuki. "I need your glasses. Sayaka, stand by for instructions."

Kazuki handed her his glasses, and Hikaru approached the bolts. Moving her light to the right distance, she used the lens in the glasses to begin to heat the bolt. A few seconds past, and not much happened.

"Are you sure that's going to work? Can you really melt the metal?" Sayaka asked.

"With a better lens, I can make enough light to melt steel easy." Hikaru said. "This lens? No. But I can heat it to two or three hundred degrees, which is what I really need." she handed Sayaka the small plastic container. "Start converting the nitrogen in the container to oxygen. There isn't much in there at all, so it shouldn't take too long."

"Okay." Sayaka's brow furrowed, and she grunted lightly as she concentrated. About ten seconds later, she let out a deep breath. "Done."

"How much control do you have over the reactions?" Hikaru asked. "Will the chemicals mix when you're converting them?"

"I don't think so." Sayaka said. "Though it's very hard to keep them like that for any length of time."

"Can you manage it in that container for, say, thirty seconds?" Hikaru asked, and Sayaka nodded after a brief concerned pause. "Okay. Sayaka, I want you to very carefully change the oxygen into fluorine. As soon as you finish the conversion, tell me to duck out of the way and throw the container at the door. The hot metal should spontaneously catch fire in the fluorine gas, and if we're lucky it'll both melt the lock and use up the fluorine."

"Are you sure?" Sayaka said. "Um, I've never been much into chemistry, but isn't fluorine really, really bad?"

"Yes. That's exactly why we want it." Hikaru said. "Fluorine is awful. Steel burns in fluorine gas at room temperatures sometimes. Heat the metal to a few hundred degrees, and it'll burst into a fireball instantly. Which is exactly what we want."

"This seems like a really bad idea." Kazuki said nervously. "Fireballs in an enclosed space are never a good idea. Not to mention the chance of the fluorine gas getting back on us. If it can melt steel beams, I'd hate to see what it does to skin."

"We have really, really limited options." Hikaru said. She paused for a moment, thinking. "But, uh, yeah, maybe I was letting theory get a little bit ahead of practicality there. I'll try to think of something else first."

"Um, I've already started making the fluorine." Sayaka said, and Hikaru felt her heart sink.

"Okay. Uh, just stop where you are." Hikaru said. "Um. Can you forward that to neon?"

"I'm getting really, really tired." Sayaka said. "I don't think so."

"How long until you lose control?" Hikaru asked.

"Ten seconds." Sayaka said.

"Okay, back to the original plan." Hikaru said. "Everyone take a deep breath, then throw it at the door as hard as you can!"

Hikaru drew in a breath and dropped to the floor. There was a terrible explosive rush of heat, and then silence. Shakily, Hikaru turned her light back on. The metal bar had, it appeared, been partly melted by the heat of the reaction, so at least they had made progress. The others looked unhurt, though Sayaka looked stunned like she didn't quite believe what had happened.

"Pure oxygen and fluorine pack quite a punch." Hikaru said, though it was barely audible over the ringing in her ears.

"Did I do that?" Sayaka asked slowly.

"Yes." Hikaru said, standing up slowly and walking over to Sayaka, putting her arm around the other girl's shoulders. "Congratulations. You know how to turn air into a very toxic high-explosive high-corrosive capsule now." Hikaru sighed. "We're just lucky we were dealing with such a small amount, only a few micrograms. Really, that was a very dumb idea. I don't know what I was thinking."

"Well, it does look like it worked." Kazuki said, pressing on the door. It stuck a little, the yellow hot metal bending slightly before giving with a wrench. "So that's a plus."

"Before we go, we need to come up with a plan." Hikaru said. "Sayaka, you were conscious when they dragged you in here, right? Did you get any look at the floorplan? Do you remember the way out?"

"No, not really." Sayaka said. The exhaustion was clear in her voice, and she looked like she was barely standing up at this point. Hikaru's heart sank. It looked like Sayaka's new power was very, very taxing.

"Can you still run?" Hikaru asked, concerned. "Or do you need to sit down?"

"We just let off an explosion, Hikaru." Kazuki said. "They might not have been monitoring us, but they certainly know we're up to something now."

"Right." Hikaru said. "Remind me never to get caught in a dire situation without you, Kazuki. For all my knowledge and intelligence, you seem to be the only one with common sense." she paused. "Do you need help, Sayaka? Because we really need to go, right now."

"I can still run." Sayaka said, determination crossing her eyes and filling her tired form.

"Okay, we just break for it on three. If we don't know the floorplan, any direction is as good as the other – so just head straight, and turn left if there's no door leading straight. Any dead ends, back out and try any other exit. Hopefully the building isn't that big." Hikaru said. The others nodded, scared but still determined to make it out. "One…" Hikaru steeled herself, ready for the dash. "Two…" the others leaned in on the door, preparing to push it open. "Three!" Hikaru yelled, and the three children threw themselves at the door.

It slipped about five centimeters before getting caught by the internal deadlock with a sickening clang.

Hikaru sat down, defeated. "Well, that's that." she said numbly. "There's an internal locking mechanism, a bolt inside of the doorframe. We'd have to cut half way through the solid steel door just to get to the bolt, and then we'd have to cut the bolt somehow. The lens is burnt out and wouldn't have worked anyway, Sayaka is running on empty, and there isn't anything I can really do with a broken cellphone. I think we're stuck, at least for the time being."

"We can't give up." Kazuki said. "Whatever these people have planned for us, it can't possibly be good. We need to get out of here."

"I know, I know." Hikaru said. "But I can't think of anything."

It was at that moment that a defining clang rang out, and the door began to slide open. Hikaru summoned one of her orbs of light, keeping it steady. As poor of a weapon as it might be, she could theoretically blind someone with the light if she was lucky. It was really her only shot. "Cover your eyes!" Hikaru shouted to the other two, then flared her power as hard as she could as soon as the door opened enough to see past.

It was more powerful then she'd expected, enough to warm her hand uncomfortably and blind her through her closed eyelids. She could see the shadows cast by the objects through her closed eyes, ghostly imprints of their shapes burnt on her retina.

"Fuck!" one of the people yelled, clutching the side of the door. "I think that blinded me through my visor!"

"Suck it up." another said. "You'll be fine. Those visors are rated to work against light-based powers, so there's no way the girl's done more than stun you." Hikaru couldn't see the person very well, her vision still blotchy and blurry from her flash. They took a step closer to her, and Hikaru tried to backstep away.

"Hey, no need to be frightened." The man said. "We're Anti-Skill. Someone called in to tip us off to a potential kidnapping, and we've come to get you three out of here." he paused. "We'd appreciate it if you'd stop trying to blind us.

Hikaru noticed that she'd keep the light on, not nearly as bright as the flash but certainly difficult to look at. She sheepishly turned it off. "Sorry."

"Setting an ambush for your captors. Ten, and already taking things into your own hands." the uniformed man said kindly. "Don't worry, we're not angry with you."

"Speak for yourself." the other one grumbled. The first one elbowed him.

"Come on." The uniformed man said, reaching down and helping Hikaru to her feet. "Let's get you home."

Hikaru, Sayaka, and Kazuki let themselves be led out of the building by the Anti-Skill officers. Any sign of the group that had attacked them had disappeared, leaving only an empty building and some abandoned equipment.

"Third time this month that Skill-Out's done kidnapping." one of the officers said, quiet enough that it was obvious that they didn't intend on others hearing but not nearly quiet enough for Hikaru to have to strain to hear.

"They're going after little kids level 1 and 2 now. It's not a good sign." another officer agreed. "We've had no deaths yet, but it's only a matter of time."

"Shh, not in front of the kids, idiot." another hissed at them.

Hikaru, for her part, was only partly listening. Her mind kept playing the events of the last few hours back in her head. Things had turned out okay, she guessed, but it was only through luck. As bad as things had gone, a lot had also gone inexplicably right. If any of their lucky streaks had turned, even for a moment, that would have been that. Had they stayed unconscious for slightly less time, their escape attempt would have signaled their captors. A little longer, and the Anti-Skill officers would have passed them by, unalerted to their presence. A small plastic capsule that should have been trash, a pair of glasses that should have been smashed, and an insane plan hatched in desperation by a girl genius with no real experience had all, by some impossible stroke of fortune, lined up for them. They shouldn't have succeeded. That was blatantly clear to Hikaru. It was like a scenario from a story; all the pieces technically fit together, but there was no way that all the events required could ever reasonably be expected to go off just so in real life. And even still, they hadn't really succeeded. If Anti-Skill hadn't been on the other side of that door… there would have been nothing she could have done.

She had to have more options. Suddenly, the possibilities of danger had become a reality. It was no longer the realm of thought experiments, but that of practical application. She lived in a world where the ability to defend oneself was required on a regular basis by a not insignificant fraction of the population. Until today, it hadn't been her. Now, it seemed, it was. Once trouble found you once, it had a habit of showing up again. And she wouldn't sit around and just let life happen to her, not if she had the ability to foreplan.

I need a weapon. Hikaru thought. And I need it soon.

Author's Note: Unless specifically mentioned as otherwise, please just assume that the correct honorifics are being used. It makes things easier for me, and eliminates the possibility of the many, many mistakes that I would make otherwise.