Kinetic Chap 3

First of all?

Deepest apologies. I had this chapter done a while back but I had to think and re-re-review several times to make sure that the logic is sound. In addition, tests and homeworks has been harassing me.

Has anyone here been doing their friend's share of groupwork for them ?

If anyone here thinks the logic is unsound PLEASE tell me. And by logic I meant how the characters act to each other, and especially, especially Misaki.I couldn't find any part of the VN online so I had to characterize her based on her power, i.e how her powers and part of the backstory I read on the wikia would probably influence someone. I place a very strong correlation between a person's talents or ability to their personality, especially if they grow up with it, which they did in the case of Misaki. I'm guessing that she's a dead logical person hidden behind the guise of the Queen which I've glimpse in the Railgun S Anime.

The next project after this for me isn't chapter 4 but retouching chapter 1 because it's atrociously written compared to this one. And the first chapter matters the most.

What. I like my reviews mkay.

Now, where's that quote...

Okay I forgot to look up one, will re-upload. Ciao!

The first statement that needs to be stated is that she most definitely isn't lost.

The second statement that needs to be stated is that anyone whom needs to add most definitely in most sentences is most definitely lying.

The third statement is that this message is looping repeatedly through Kongou's head, a broken doomed radio about as doomed as her sense of direction. Somehow she managed, in the world's most technologically advanced city, the vanguard of the science front, to be without a phone, without a map, or PDA, and unable to find anything that could help her find her bearings back. Correction: she did have a map, but she couldn't really read it, and in any case the location of the store is in a part of the city that she never was familiar to begin with.

This is not her fault, at least not completely. There are certain parts of Academy City that can be considered as a sort of outskirts, where the electric hand of science has not yet reached or refuse to grasp and claim as theirs, due to various reasons.

One of these reasons rears its ugly bald head and eight separate chest muscles, staring down at the curiously unafraid but still very much lost little girl.

It thought for several minutes, and then after that, managed to piece together the words from the various corners of its brain : "Get lost, girl. I ain't gonna say this twice."

"But, I'm already lost. Can you please tell me the directions to…" Kongou's eyebrows meets together in a slight V, creasing her normally smooth forehead, and smiles as she remembers. "I think it was Kou-Rin-Dou?"

The muscled man takes a step back. He isn't used to people talking back, smiling back, or indeed, doing anything but run whimpering for their grandmothers and leaving a conspicuous trail of yellowish droplets as they turn the corner. Kongou, on the other hand, is waiting patiently for the man to show her the directions or at the very least take her to someone whom DOES know where the elusive shop is.

It is the classic battle of the idiots as the two stare down each other in mutual befuddlement.

"I ain't gonna say this twice, girl, and don't play smart with me!" shouts the more muscled of the similarly-minded duo.

"You've said 'this' twice already, though," points out the blissfully oblivious Kongou, whom is getting more annoyed by the second. There are limits to outside courtesy. She's showing courtesy, why isn't he doing the same to her? Why can't he help her or try to? Okay sure, he might not know how great she is, how she's a decorated hero whom defeated some sort of army of Skill-Outs for the sake of her friend, but shouldn't he show basic manners?

If everyone had manners, she thought, then the world would be ever so much more peaceful.

On the other end of the thought spectrum the mobile mountain cracks its fists and roars. "You've asked for this, little girl!"

The mountain man points his two feet, strangely small for his size, downwards, and jumps from one leg to the other, swaying back and forth like a boxer. His arms describe circular motions in the air, like pedaling, only with hands and fists bunching together. Altogether he looked as if a bodybuilder whom never decides to train his legs began to take up boxing, which actually isn't that much far from the truth.

Nevertheless not even Kongou can mistake the intent of the man, whom is now bobbing back and forth slightly and advancing slowly towards her.

"Oh," she says. "A robbery, or something similar."

The man starts to smirk. "Girl, you must be DUMB or what not to realize dat, huh! You in District Seven now, hah!" He accentuates the last one by jabbing at the air with a rock-like fist that still whistles to the air through sheer speed.

"Right," says the crestfallen Kongou. She was hoping that he would actually turn out to be someone nice, but attempting to rob her of all people…

"Look, you obviously don't know who I am," says Kongou, slightly annoyed this time. "Do you know what I can do to you?"

"I know a bluff when I see one, girl! But go on, show me what you can do! Ain't nobuddy evah defeated may!" grunts the man back.

…

At the very least, proper manners should be followed, right? says Kongou's confused, annoyed, but ultimately kind little brain.

"Help! Help!" she screams.

"Too bad, girlie, ain't nobuddy gunna help you now!" shouts the mountain man back. He tosses back his fists, thumps his chest once, and then charges.

His opponent merely sighs. "That wasn't for me."

The man pauses mid-charge. "Whut?"

Witnesses* would say that there was a sudden gust of extremely strong wind that slams the highly oversized mass of muscles into a nearby wall, cracking it. Witnesses would say that the girl would stroll casually towards the downed man and puts her palm on his chest, and strolls out calmly. And then witnesses would say that around five seconds later a miniature explosion of air slams the man into the wall again, creating a crater and causing some bricks to bury him in a small avalanche.

"Well, he did ask," says Kongou as she walks out of that alleyway. "Now, where did I want to go again?"

She sighs.

She then starts to walk out of the alleyways and into the City again.

*Everything has a witness, or else it wouldn't exist, which is what most people in Academy City said. By logic, then these murders also never existed, or so they say.

She didn't need to go very far before she lost her way again, although that would imply that she would know where she was going in the first place.

The good news for her, however, is that she manages to somehow bump into one Shirai Kuroko out of her hiding place. This also constitutes as bad news, because when two hard-headed girls bump into each other both literally and metaphysically, trouble is bound to arrive in more than just a lump on the head.

One of them – she is furious.

"You don't simply bump into me while I'm spying on someone, you asshole!" shouts one girl.

"Well, I'm SORRY for just wanting to ask for directions!" shouts back the other.

"I'm hiding in the bushes! Do I look like I have the TIME for DIRECTIONS?" hisses one back.

"How am I supposed to know that?!" replies the other in exasperation.

Kuroko relented slightly. This is, after all, Kongou.

"You should after all respect your betters, Kuroko," continues the blissful Kongou walking blindfolded into a minefield, which promptly explodes.

Kuroko blew up. "BETTERS? BETTERS? I REFUSE TO –"

The shouts can be heard all over the block, and across the street, and the sound seeps into the blocks and through the windows, and it woke up one extremely tired young boy in the apartment opposite. It also caught the attention of a blonde Queen sitting in a pose of relaxed alertness.

Waking up involuntarily is perhaps the third worst experience in the world, next to receiving a sudden brown letter from your tax collector and being in the company of lawyers. Like the other two, it made sure that whoever the victim is he or she would be in a murderous rage mixed with hazy disbelief or grogginess during and after the ordeal. Anyone is subject to this. Kings. Queens. Presidents, authors, and in a twist of fate, also lawyers and tax collectors.

The boy however didn't get angry. He simply stares at the world through red-rimmed eyes in quiet expectation, although his expression suggests less expectation and more grumpiness in general. To summarize: his face looks absolutely terrible – grey and frazzled, and although he has no mustache or beard he might as well have one, because the one word to describe him right now would be unkempt.

What he can see is this: a room, decked out in warm, comforting pink, messy with papers and miscellaneous objects strewn about on top of tables, chairs, and pencils all over the floor, each brown stick pointing at each other or something else. A chair, positioned opposite him, and a blonde girl – no, is it a lady? His male gaze suggests that the person sitting opposite him is more decked out to be a lady, but he could be mistaken.

What he does know is that he couldn't see a bloody thing, the sun is too bloody bright, and something is buzzing in his ears, and that the insides his head is stuffed in cotton wool soaked in alcohol wrapped in chloroform and covered with honey and lather.

The lady across him doesn't seem to mind, or care about the state of his mind or body, because the morbidly curious girl began to ask questions rapidly.

"Alright, boy, you've had your rest. Your long rest, I might add," she said, glancing quickly at the clock.

The boy boggles vacantly at her.

"Who are you and what is the purpose of your coming here?" she asks calmly.

"Hng."

"You have no papers, no identification, the Academy City database has nothing on you, and yet you penetrate us so easily," she continues.

"Hng."

"And it appears that you are incapable of talking, except in grunts, which frankly is a stark contrast from yesterday's more eloquent speech."

"Hnnnnng." The boy is on the verge of collapsing, and it shows in his eyes. It says: Why are you doing this to me? Have you no heart? Must I kill someone? All I want is more sleep.

"No, I won't allow you to sleep," speaks the girl again. "You've slept for far too long, and it's time for you to come clean."

This girl, though the boy, is alive only because humanitarian senses still predominates a part of my thoughts, and the size of these senses are inversely proportional to the amount of her speech. That, and when I do kill her I'll have to deal with sleeping in blood.

"You do owe me you know. For giving you lodgings. And breaking apart my window, door, and various other furniture," she says, as she stares at the various wooden splinters still littering the floor. "And you can start by telling me who the hell you are and what do you want with me."

"Hnnnmmfuuuup."

"I'm sorry?"

"SHMUUUT HUUUP."

The conversation has begun from nowhere and is clearly heading even deeper into nowhere, so Misaki sighs and picks up her glass of water.

She takes a sip while registering the sleepy state of her half-prisoner half-captor. Given the uncertainty of power in the room she prefers to be on the safe side and assume nothing.

As the boy's body begins to inevitably drop, which would happen to anyone whom got waken up forcibly, she hurls the glass at him, water and all.

The glass collides with his hand that suddenly became outstretched from its inert position but a few seconds ago. It didn't shatter. It didn't fall. What did fall was the water from inside, propelled by force of momentum, onto the young boy's face.

"BLUH." The water is warm, almost piping hot, because it wasn't water – it was tea, earl grey, the butter in the Queen's arsenal of breakfast bouquet and implements. But today, she didn't mind throwing it away – due to the boy's arrival she had to make her own, because anyone whom enters her room would know of the boy and she couldn't brainwash everyone. Okay, she could, but that would be even more troublesome.

The poor, poor young boy shook his head, having been brutally woken up by way of hot water, and Misaki felt the slightest tinge of sympathy, because no one, not even the world's worst villains, deserve to be woken like that.

Just a really tiny tinge, like an itch you couldn't feel but know that it should be there.

"Mmmmmrgh." The boy shakes his head wetly and slowly, heady with the warm wakeness that threatens to plunge him back to his sleep again. The glass which was previously sticking to his hand, falls and shatters on the ground, some of the shards piercing the wooden splinters already on the ground, sticking up, refracting the light streaming through the window.

"More awake now, are we?" speaks a bemused Queen.

"Okay, okay, you got me," said the boy, wiping his face with his tattered sleeve. Eyes puffy, he stares at the annoying lady that just woke him up, and drowsily wonders why he isn't choking her yet.

"Thinking of choking me? Sorry, I don't do that kind of thing. I like things nice and sweet~ so be nice and you might get a reward," she winks at him.

Far from being surprised, boy simply stares at the girl in slightly angry silence. Misaki begins to wonder how much he knows about the city – because unless he's too sleepy to register that she just read the contents of his mind, which increasingly becomes a likely chance, then he knows about her most basic ability of reading minds without having to actually touch her remote continuously.

It's something that she uses far, far before she can control people's mind, and in some aspects it's far more useful than that – nobody knows she can, nobody prepares for it, so it's far easier - and far more rewarding – to manipulate someone without being suspected of manipulation at all by others. It's a subtle art that has been benefiting far more than brainwashing anyone. The fact that she is a psychic is commonly known throughout Academy City so anyone whom is friends with her is accustomed to her reading their next sentence in their brain, which accounts for the slightly awkward silence in their conversation. Even if a person isn't her acquaintance, then he or she would still suspect that she is reading their thoughts because, well, psychics. Who can trust 'em?

Except that the man before her isn't from Academy City. She checked him the best she could, and found no evidence of any electronic material anywhere near his body, which is already transgression number one of the common rule of Academy City – don't go anywhere without something that can identify you electronically.

So a foreigner to the city would have to time to ask around, which this man obviously doesn't, because otherwise, he wouldn't dress like this. Not like a rambling hobo with torn holes around the sleeves, although she grudgingly gives him points for having a very nice jacket, albeit a scorched one.

And yet…

"Ken uh gbf beck to slip new," says the boy, still drowsy.

"If you do, I'll call the authorities on you."

"Wuld dun it lez nite."

"What makes you think I wouldn't do it now?"

The boy blinks once.

"Well then. Now that you're starting to take things more logically, I think that we can start talking properly," he says in a single breath. All traces of drowsiness that was firmly entrenched in the boy is gone.

Surprise, which is something that is rarely felt but still rather unexpected for a psychic like her, made itself known through her brain. Luckily enough, her face never once flickers, because at a very young age she's already used to surprises and had years of practice to keep her face calm and composed.

But her eyes may twinkle however they want, and they still can't hide the slight twitch that alerts both of them that she let her guard slip.

"I'm impressed. I couldn't even read your mind."

"I came prepared," yawns the boy, stretching like a person recently awoken. "Don't get me wrong, I'm still cranky and rather sleepy, so don't you ever dare try to do something to me."

"Like I said, would've killed me last night."

"Still can cause you plenty of pain."

"I don't think you would, somehow."

The boy stops for a moment, and then stares at her. "You know, I think you're right. I probably won't."

He yawns a little bit more, and then he stops, stretching and rolling on the bed. "Alright," he says, "I think I'll answer some of your questions now. What'cha gonna ask?"

"Your name, for starters." She answers quickly.

The boy didn't even stop as he leaps out of the bed. "Sparkles."

"Real name."

"Sparkles."

"Given birth name."

"Spar-kles. Do you need a pronunciation guide or are you able to find your ways in the abyssal depths of the English language? And now, if you don't mind, I'd like to deal with the person that is listening intently to our conversation. Don't you people pride yourself on security?"

"Oh, I know about them," said Misaki nonchalantly, waving a gloved hand in dismissal. "They wouldn't have posed a threat until you pointed it out, and – oh – they're running away."

"Eh? Why wouldn't they pose a threat?" asks Sparkles.

"Because one is an idiot and the other thinks that I'm chatting with someone online, and I don't need to read minds to know that much. They're quite distinctive in my school. They really are getting away, you know. And now rumors will spread all over the school that I'm with some guy, although it helps that your name is a name that even I, quite frankly, wouldn't believe a parent would give to a child."

"My parents could've hated me. You never know."

"They do?"

"Nah. Now allow me to catch dmph."

He was about to step out of the door when he walks into a wall of bust.

"Not so fast. How do I know I can trust you being loose in this city? For all I know, you could be some murderous bastard planning to burn this city to the ground."

"Would've done it last night," he mumbles, still buried in a chest full of bust.

There is a sharp motion with Misaki's leg, which would have resulted in the Sparkles generation being unable to give birth to another generation of children with sadly terrible names, but he caught her upward motion without even looking, before pushing down her leg gently.

"You pervert! Out!"

He momentarily disengages. "It's nice and warm in here, and I'm not gonna move unless it's towards a way out, and it just so happens to be that your bust is right between my destination, so either you move or I don't." He re-entrenches himself again. "Did I mention it's warm in here?"

"Why you – "

She swings her arms towards him in a pincer motion, trying to catch him.

But her arms caught thin air.

"Well, I'm honored that you'd try to hug me, especially the Queen being the Queen and all, but I do prefer it if my entrance to the city isn't known, no matter how silly the rumors spread by two alleged idiots would be," the boy comments, suddenly leaning against the far wall, slouching against it as if nothing in the world matters anymore.

"I'll return, you can bet on it. But for now…."

"Don't you dare go out before answering my questions. I am the Queen of Tokiwadai herself, who do you think you're dealing with?"

Ah. She's becoming angry.

"Two idiots. My fight ain't with you."

She took a single step towards him in the manner of a person about to continue to step two, but step two never came on the account of the room being filled with what feels like a small gale. The air pressure shifts, worthy of italics, and then the door blows open.

Blows open is about correct. The door is wrenched off its hinges, and a man-shaped hole dominates the woodworks now.

She fell to the ground, and then registers the fact that Sparkles, if that's really his name, is gone for now.

After venting for a while and then brainwashing another repairman to replace her door – again – she found a note in the debris of her room.

It reads, in very messy handwriting –

"Sorry about the door. Here's some money to pay it back. Will be back, because I'm sure I paid more than what doors are worth these days, which is jack shit considering they can't stop me. To be fair, little can.

Sparkles.

PS: Here's a photo of your aunt and uncle. They sent me here. Y'know. Those two researchers at B-"

The rest of the paper is slightly torn off, but she didn't have to have the rest of the paper to read Baggage City.