After Action Review

School Shorts #3: It's like a safety blanket

"So, shall we review what you did wrong?"

"Please…" Connie's voice was usually firm and calming, a little deeper than the typical Japanese girl's, while distinctly feminine, almost maternal. At this exact moment, however, her voice was dry and husky, muffled as if she was already in the grave. Which, given how exhausted she appeared, was not far from the truth.

They were in a smaller café near the edge of the School Garden. It had taken them nearly three hours to navigate there after the buzz that Connie had generated in the last few days. It had been so extreme that even Mikoto had been able to freely move through the Garden, with no-one sparing a glance for the #3.

It was really quite relaxing, actually, Mikoto thought as Kuroko pulled out several binders: papers overflowed, which was an unusual site in Academy City. However, a number of them were apparently Judgement reports—or copies of Anti-Skill reports sent to Judgement—and there were strict rules regarding such records and the systems they could be on.

Well, relaxing for her: it was a nice change of pace from having to deal with strangers that would approach upon recognizing her, especially when she was alone. On top of that, she had found a new toy for Leif, who was rolling about on the table attacking a string of light-brown hair she was twirling about. The twintailed girl who that hair belonged to would have protested, but it gave Kuroko an excuse to be pressed up against Mikoto, as well as having the older girl messing with her hair.

Combined with being the official archivist, which enabled her to place herself between Mikoto and Connie without protest, it was an almost perfect win-win situation. Aside from the neck pain that came from having to keep her head tilted and occasionally pulled. In fact, it had gotten so severe after the last half-hour that she finally had to admit defeat and reclaim her hair, cracking her neck.

Leif wanted to keep playing, leaping at Kuroko's head as she tried to get feeling back in her neck by rolling her head. Mikoto ended up moving to the other side of the round booth, luring him over with snacks from the staff. He had already won the hearts of the young women running the restaurant the first time she had brought him there. After he was thoroughly distracted, and checking that Connie was still hiding and Kuroko was getting her reports ready, Mikoto immediately plunged face-first into the fluff, completely ignorant of how loud her giddy giggling was. Leif tolerated the tickling and bellyrubbing, while trying to groom the irritatingly sparky-and-staticky girl the best he could.

Well, it was still worth it, the youngest girl thought happily, basking in the afterglow, ignoring the creaking and crack as she attempted to turn her head. If a certain older girl had been in a better state, she would have been up in arms about a thirteen-year-old's neck making sounds like that, but she was effectively out of commission.

Specifically, Connie had her face planted on the table, flannel covering her head, her hands inside and pinning it down. It looked a little like a blue-green tent had been setup. The pained whines prevented any illusion of a happy camping practice.

Part of the issue had been moving across the Garden on a spectacularly humid day. According to Connie, high humidity tended to overwhelm her ability's passive tendency to track hydrogen compounds. When Kuroko and Mikoto had glanced at each other, unsure what that meant, she had attempted to elaborate between sighs and groans.

Connie attempted to explain this aspect of her ability as being similar to watching an analog TV—not knowing that the younger girls had little personal knowledge of such things. They had enough experience with technology in general to compensate, and were more than intelligent enough to parse through her groggy explanation.

Hydrogen Diktat encompassed a number of applications, some of which were completely autonomous and others that required Connie's deliberate focus. A semi-passive aspect of her ability enabled her to build up a detailed image of the world around her. She saw most of the world in general vague shapes, giving the most attention to people and animals, allowing them to appear crisp and clear. The clarity of these objects and individuals was heavily dictated by the amount of hydrogen present in, on, and around them—which, in normal situations, referred to water and the multitude of related mixtures that made life on Earth possible.

It was similar in function to sonar or radar, albeit it returned far more information than just outlined shapes and objects. For Connie, it was created using a subconscious pulse that read the properties of water around her, rather than sound or radio waves being bounced off the environment itself.

Kuroko herself had no experience with an ability like that: while her form of teleportation required eleventh-dimensional calculations, it didn't require—or enable—her to be aware of the properties past the third-dimension. A significant chunk of time ended up being spent on trying to explain it to her as a result.

On the other hand, Misaka Mikoto had a clearer idea of what she was talking about: she could do something similar by expanding the electromagnetic field that she unconsciously emitted, allowing her to build up a general image and view of the world around her. Effectively Mikoto turned herself into a humanoid radar by bouncing electromagnetic waves around, as well as gathering information from them passively. Connie accomplished something vaguely similar, although it operated on a radically different principle. It sounded like Connie's wasn't something she could readily turn on and off, which was the primary difference as far as utility went.

"I think I technically could," she replied as they snuck through alleys and deserted side streets. "If I try to suppress it too much, it feels like I'm covering my eyes or plugging my ears while holding my breath. I'm stuck either half-drowning in data or practicing self-asphyxiation."

On the other hand, she could build images of the world around her without using any of the traditional senses at all, and could even print those images with the right tech available. Those images, from what Mikoto had seen, ranged from basic, cheap-camera-level quality, to hyper-high-definition that would rival a spy satellite's clarity.

When there was a great deal of water vapor in the air—such as days like this with high humidity—the television signal was swamped, covering the image in static. She could still see things beneath it, but it took a great deal more effort and energy to refine it, and her resolution everywhere else would begin to drop.

It meant she had to constantly be shifting her attention, attempting to multitask while taking in a veritable deluge of data. The human brain, of course, wasn't capable of true multitasking on a conscious level, so it meant she had to keep shifting focus frequently to avoid having the screen flooded in static. Although Connie hypothesized that her brain could manage it, it wouldn't do so if she didn't allocate her full mind to it. The other girls considered to be the result of her ignorance of the function of her own ability. She was an esper from outside Academy City, so it wouldn't surprise them to see that, as talented as Connie was, she didn't understand the limits of her own ability.

The Tokiwadai espers understood part of the explanation, as it effectively boiled down to Connie being overwhelmed by data that she couldn't filter out. If she attempted to do so, she stopped being able to "see" what she actually wanted as well.

"…Yeah I guess that's a simpler explanation," she acknowledged after some back and forth to clarify her explanation. At that point she had finally loosened her flannel from her waist and hid under it, leaving her ignorant of the concern flashing between the younger girls.

"I can't imagine that Shokuhou Misaki is going to be happy about the number of admirers," Kuroko observed sometime later, after they were served, "but I'm sure that'll take care of itself."

"Probably sooner than you think," Mikoto grumbled. Her expression was dark, despite being grateful that Shokuhou hadn't realized she had befriended Connie yet; earlier that week, she had tried another "prank" that come close to a hyper-aggressive power-play. The same issues that plagued any middle school in the world still existed at Tokiwadai. They just tended to be a little subtler. Usually.

Unfortunately for the rest of Academy City, if not the world, teenage rivalries and pranks grew exponentially more dangerous when ability users were involved. And when the espers in question were both Level 5s... well, there was a reason that Mikoto did her best to avoid her and keep the people precious to her far away at the same time.

As far as she was aware, Shokuhou had no concept of "friends", only "enemies" and "minions".

"So, let's just pretend we're already over your elaborate and idiotic public display of your ability at the gates." The blue-green blob trembled. "We're also going to pretend that the incident dealing with those things didn't happen, because thankfully nobody in the Garden wants to talk about the natural enemy of mankind."

"Gckgh!"

"Connie, did you just swallow your tongue?"

"N-no…" came the meek reply. The blue-green mass was unnervingly still.

"So, that just leaves dealing with the flowerbed fire, where you managed to extinguish it without even a damaged petal," Kuroko continued, still in a pink-haze, completely ignorant of the damage she was inflicting. "Then there was the track and field practice, where you even managed to humiliate Onee-sama."

"It wasn't humiliating, it was humbling," Mikoto protested over another cry. "Besides, I prefer swimming, but she was right: I should aim to be more-well-rounded."

"Just because you forgive her Onee-sama, doesn't mean I have to. Besides that, she also defeated every single member of the actual track club except for the captain with her friction modification ability."

"I didn't know we could use abilities…"

"Which only increased the buzz when people realized that you weren't using yours! I still don't know how that's humanly possible!"

A pained, choking sob came from beneath the green-blue flannel.

"After that, we, of course, had the 'knightly and princely introductions' that somehow happened in no fewer than eight of your fourteen classes. The hour you spent in your first classical strings class fixing not only your own loaner violin, but the instruments of every other student, to the point where they all sounded objectively better, no longer left splinters, and so on.

"Which caused the instructor, one of the most notoriously vicious and hardshelled teachers in Tokiwadai, to gush your praises to everyone who would listen."

"I think that was because of the hydro-massage I offered."

"Okay, now why the hell did you do that?!" Just thinking about it was enough finally snap Kuroko out of her happy daze, standing up and shouting at the quivering bulge of blue-green.

"She was clearly suffering severe lumbar pain! I just insisted that she let me try to resolve it. I have the knowledge to treat that; I couldn't ignore it!"

"You forcibly laid her down on her desk after pushing everything off of it, massaged her, and caused an expression to appear on her face that will haunt me for the rest of my life." Although I'd love to see that on—no, no, not the time Kuroko!

"It wasn't that bad!"

"No, it really was," Mikoto confirmed, shuddering, hoping that it concealed the heat rushing up her neck. She was a healthy fourteen-year-old girl, after all. Seeing something like that would generally cause a reaction from anyone with even a hint of self-awareness.

Although that didn't explain why she thought someone hiding underneath her clothes would notice the rising blush.

"She's been in such a good mood the last two days that none of her classes can actually focus," Kuroko said with a trembling voice, her eyes growing distant. "We're all waiting for the moment when the beast returns."

"It won't if she just follows the exercise regimen I gave her!"

"For the love of—are you a physical therapist too?!"

"Only as a hobby…"

"…"

"…"

"…"

"You had way too much free time before coming here, didn't you?"

"…Yes." Never before in history had an overaccomplished sixteen-year-old's voice been filled with so much shame.

"I understand that cultural values can differ greatly, especially across an expanse as great as the Pacific Ocean." Kuroko sighed and rubbed her temples with both pointer fingers, sighing like an overworked guidance counselor. "But I have a great deal of difficulty believing that this sort of behavior would be the norm in American schools."

"Well, I wouldn't know about that… I haven't been to a school lower than university since I was five."

"…Huh?"

"D-don't worry about it, Kuroko," Mikoto quckly cut off. Connie hadn't explained her full circumstances to everyone yet, apparently due to a warning from the Chairwoman. Mikoto had even been called in to ask her to stay quiet as well.

Connie still intended to share her history, but she was trying to wait until she had been able to establish a routine, or any sort of normality.

Unfortunately for her, her own actions over the past week had eradicated any chance of that happening soon.

"Well… if you say so, Onee-sama." Kuroko's glance in Mikoto's direction made it clear that she wasn't going to exactly drop it, but she'd let it rest for now. "So, continuing on from here…"

"Ugh-ggaaaah…"

"You have no-one to blame but yourself, Batutta-san."

"Shouldn't it be 'senpai'?!"

"I can't even manage that as a formality at this point," the young teleporter flatly snapped.

"Grrrk!" The blue-green hill shuddered and trembled, having taken a critical hit! Smoke and steam rose from beneath the flannel, even seeping out from the fabric!

"K-Kuroko, she's down! Hold your fire!"

"Well, too bad, we're not even halfway through."

"I don't think—"

"No, no, Mikoto-san… let her finish. This is important." Somehow the oldest girl was still managing to hang on, despite being at -1 HP.

"(I still can't believe she has the gall! To be so casual with Onee-sama…)"

"I heard that one, Kuroko."

"So did I, Shirai."

Kuroko coughed, shielding herself with the bundle of papers. "Well, anyway…"

The list went on and on: she had rescued several lost children, taken Child Errors from Asunaro Park on a tour of School Garden sweet shops, actually retrieved numerous pets from trees (including Kongou Mitsuko's python, somehow), interfered with several fights, rescued numerous young girls from harassment encounters, saved a favorite traditional shop from bankruptcy through a new business strategy, convinced a number of Skill-Out members to return to school, reunited a set of long-lost identical triplets, rescued and carried (bridal-style, of course) no fewer than twenty-three girls from falls, restored four broken friendships, found an antique jeweled pendant that was the priceless heirloom for a foreign nation's princess…

Kuroko was reading off the printed events, half of them Judgement reports, placing the finished ones onto a pile on the table. As Leif was busy grooming and wanted no outside help, Mikoto started going through them as well.

"…I'm honestly confused as to how you had the time for all of this. And this is all ignoring the rumors that Saten-san keeps finding that are probably about you."

"I'm sorry, Connie-san, but I have to agree with her on this too. How?"

"I never had a chance to run around and actually… do things on my own. Apparently this is what happens if I just meander…"

"I thought you didn't like fighting," Mikoto asked, remembering Connie complaining about one of the poorer results from her practical exams. "How do you keep breaking up these things?" There were at least six different fights she'd interrupted, literally knocking people out or sealing them into a strange pseudo-ice, usually trying to flee—poorly—when Anti-Skill or Judgement arrived.

"I dunno. I just sort of walk into them, people get angry at me, and I let them hurt themselves. I don't tend to throw any punches or the like."

"Why don't you just use your ability?"

"Maybe she's not as reckless and fond of flouting the rules as you are, Onee-sama," Kuroko suggested, reviewing what they had covered so far.

"Kuroko!" The fact that her kouhai was absolutely correct only made it hurt more.

"I don't like using my ability like that. I'm still… very uncomfortable with it." There was a slurp as she managed to drain yet another cup of a dark, fizzy drink. "Hell, I feel like a creep just letting it scan the people around me, but Aniki and the Chairwoman both have lectured me about getting over that."

"You really do," Mikoto confirmed, warning in her voice. "Even if you can get through all this stuff without it, well…" She trailed off. She'd almost started revealing what had caused her to reassess how to use her own ability, but Kuroko was still unaware of the truth of that time.

Why would I feel like it's appropriate to bring that up to Connie, though? Mikoto wondered. While it was mostly driven by jealousy, Kuroko's claim that she had started trusting the American unusually quickly wasn't completely wrong.

"Triplets? Really?" Kuroko's flabbergasted question interrupted her thoughts.

"That's what you take the most issue with?!"

"It was some wacky experiment, apparently…"

"I wish I could say that's ridiculous, but I know this city too well for that," Kuroko said, shaking her head.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Mikoto gave a mirthless chuckle. "We still have to catch you up on what we've been up to—wait! That shop was Kendei's?!" Mikoto exclaimed, jumping up and shaking the older girl, ignoring the startled yelp. If there had been any lingering thought of darker issues, they had been blown away by the urgency of this revelation. "I can't believe it, how were they about to close?!"

"I think it was because they weren't making very smart purchases. But since we have the busybody right here, Battuta-san? Care to elaborate?"

"Is it that big a deal…?"

"Yes!" both girls snapped. The little blue-green hill trembled more, only now gaining an appreciation of what that particular sweets shop meant to the population of the Garden.

"She just wasn't shopping for proper supplies, and she kept going to the same suppliers who were scamming her. Something like a 500% upcharge, it was ridiculous. Plus they just need to refurb the furnishings and update the menu a bit. There's a British master chef who could've done all that that a lot easier."

"I don't think she could have dealt with the abuse that would have required."

"Well, true…"

In the time it took to discuss ninety-percent of her antics, they had been served an early supper and several rounds of tea, Connie was having trouble adjusting to given her long dependence on soft drinks. That was without the added difficulty of refusing to leave the safety of her flannel cave, as well, but she had someone managed it.

Mikoto had the image of an anteater or elephant simply sucking up everything it could…

While Leif was finishing off his own meal, whose price Connie would have protested if she'd seen it, the younger girls managed to reach a conclusion.

"Yes, I think our original assessment is correct, Onee-sama," Kuroko confirmed, teleporting over to her. They had put their heads together, looking at the final sheet during a final, whispered consultation.

"I have to agree, Kuroko," Mikoto grimly replied.

"Well, it's—kyaaaaak! You vile beast!" Kuroko screeched. She'd started shaking her head, which of course shook her tails, which immediately drew Leif's attention. The apex predator of the restaurant had immediately pounced. Whatever she had been about to say was lost in the subsequent brawl.

"Which is? What do you think?" Connie pleaded, hope clear in her voice.

"You're screwed," the Asian girls told her, one having to half-shout it. She collapsed into tears. The cloth-sloth slid over and wrapped her arms around Mikoto as she did so, wondering aloud how she'd gone so wrong.

Part of Mikoto wanted to tell her the story of a certain spiky-haired idiot whose desire to help anyone and everyone got him caught up in far bigger problems, but it wasn't the time or place for that.

Especially since she'd have to share how she knew his proclivity for getting into trouble so well…

I don't feel like her emotional maturity has caught up to her physical age yet, Mikoto rudely, if affectionately, thought while rubbing her back as Connie embraced her. She ignored the black clouds and dimensional rifts on the other side of the table, where Leif was in a standoff with her roommate after being separated by staff.

"So, uh, Connie-san?" Mikoto prompted, ignoring the angry glares from the waitresses. The quiet, relaxing atmosphere the staff cultivated had been on a knife's edge for most of the last few hours, but now it had tottered over into a three-person (and one cat) bedlam.

"Sob… Y-yeah?" the flannel-covered girl managed to get out between sniffs.

"You're going to have a roommate soon, right? You're moving into the dorm on-campus, aren't you?"

"Oh… yeah, that's true. Think there's a chance for a fresh start? …Mikoto-san? Mikoto-san? Mikoto-san, I can feel that you're not looking at me even without using my ability…"

"U-um… well, maybe they don't pay attention to rumors? Or they could be a shut-in!" The needle of hope that Mikoto managed to find jabbed straight into Connie, who seemed to deflate even further, collapsing onto the booth seat.

Author's Notes:

This really was meant to go up last week, but uh, life sorta kicked my ass. Sorry about that! Ideally I can get another update out this week, despite Trails of Cold Steel III releasing in about 25 minutes. I have plenty of chapters and short stories ready, but I need to verify them in editing and proofreading... and some of them are already scrapped for not being good enough or revealing way more than I'd like.

But hey, I can finally see the end of the "School Shorts" stories, at least as far as it goes before getting into Connie's "true arc"! It helps that I finalized the timeline, and realized that having to tell every single story before that isn't really a good idea.

Odds are that the next update will include another "out of context" report/infodump, or I'll finally start showing a bit of what a certain telepath is experiencing... Just a matter of deciding which really works there.