A Certain Lost Episode

	As someone with a truly unreal figure for a middle school girl, Shokuhou Misaki was no stranger to the everpresent lust of energetic teenaged boys.  Most of her life was spent in a welcome shelter from such things, as the School Garden was restricted to girls only, though that didn't stop the occasional girl with... less than orthodox interests.  Well, those who had the (mis?)fortune to meet her in person soon found their attention drifting elsewhere, sometimes permanently.  It wasn't as if she was particularly against casually abusing her powers in ways that would make ethics committees resign en masse at their sheer audacity, but due to the sheer girliness of the whole thing she found herself inexplicably justifying her behavior to herself.

	For someone fantasizing about the Level Five Mental Out to be confronted with Academy City's greatest mind reader in the flesh was somewhat akin to having a girl walk in on you while you were conducting your personal business.  Most of those people reacted to her presence in predictable ways.  The most polite simply averted their eyes and moved on with life, and Misaki mostly left those people alone.  Sometimes.  Occasionally.

	Others fell into a typical mental trap.

	"Ohhh?  Isn't that Shokuhou Misaki, that Mental Out?  I've never seen her before in person - is she really a middle school student? I mean, those are even bigger than - oh wait, shit!  Is she listening to me right now?  Shit!  I'm not thinking about your breasts or anything!  I'm definitely not thinking about how great it would be to  - shit!  Fuck!  My bad, please don't lobotomize me!  Ah, ah, now that I think about it, there are a lot of people here, so she might not be listening, right?  Yeah, she probably respects people's privacy enough not to casually scan everybody around her, that must be it, so . . . oh, oh shit!  Is she looking at me?  She's definitely looking at me, right?  Ah, ah.... aaaahhhhhhhh!  A crepe stand!  Man, I sure do love crepes!  I think I'll go right there right now and eat one right now!  I think I'll get one with banana and, you know, banana, and, banana!  Maybe I'll even get two! Ah hah hah hah hah!"

	It wasn't that Misaki, frustrated with this sad pervert, had simply reached into his mind and casually given him a mad obsession with banana banana crepes.  The subtle mental pressure she permanently radiated as Mental Out aside, she had not actually yet done anything to him.  What had actually happened was that our hero, flailing about, had cast his eyes on the first thing he could use to flee the scene and latched onto it in sheer desperation.

	Misaki sighed and put our hero out of his misery despite his heroic efforts.  No doubt certain... adjustments would help him back into a life that he could live proudly.  It's not as if she was particularly into offering unsolicited psychiatric help to random strangers, but every now and then you came across someone who needed a bit of help living a wonderful life.

	It wasn't actually clear whether these people were any better off than those truly shameless perverts.  The normal reaction to being walked in on would be instant mortification, but certain incorrigible perverts were far gone enough that they had converted it into pride.  In situations in which other people would exclaim "shit! my bad!", they would probably offer something like, "oh? want to join in?"  The thought of being spied on by the girl they were not-so-covertly leering at only excited them further.  In short, these people were the scum of society.

	Somehow, every time, she had managed to resist simply lobotomizing these people and calling it a day.

	She was very proud of her self-control in this regard.

	In the light of all this, the most recent episode with the dream cards was not exceptionally shocking.  When the internet had first been invented, and humans had been given the opportunity to freely explore a whole new world of informational freedom, the first they they did with it was send each other pictures of naked girls.  Boys will be boys, after all.  The way the blue-haired S-rank dream ranker had put his cards to use were, if fairly shocking, not altogether unexpected.

	Of course, just because it wasn't unexpected didn't mean it didn't disgust her.  She had gained some small measure of satisfaction of having that short-tempered idiot take care of everyone for her, but not enough to wash away the residual anger.  In fact, in exchange for that, she had received something that had pissed her off far more than a couple of perverted boys casually discussing all the ways they would have with her.  It wasn't a matter of flying into a rage like a certain far less civilized Tokiwadai Level Five might do.  This was an irritation that would simply eat at her for days to come.

	And that something was...

	the memories of a certain blue-haired incorrigible pervent.

* * *

	[[[ A Certain Morning ]]]

	A certain spiky-haired, almost-delinquent boy barged into the door, gasping, shivering, and out of breath.  Though there had not been a cloud in the sky that day, he looked like he had been the victim of a sudden freezing downpour.  His teeth were chattering, and if one strained to look one could imagine that his face was almost blue.

	"S-s-sorry I'm l-late!  This morning, o-one of the... eh? -  C-c-class hasn't started yet?"

	Morning sunlight streamed through the window as Kamijou Touma stumbled into the classroom, looking for everything in the world like he had been through a morning swim in the Arctic Ocean,

	"Morning, Kami-yan!  Did you fall into a drainpipe on the way to school again?"
	"Ah, Komoe-sensei's running late, so you're just fine.  Oh?  Looks like you've been having fun, yeah?"
	"N-n-no, it's just that, one of the pipes in my dorm blew open this morning, so..."

	A certain huge-breasted class representative chose that moment to throw a huge fluffy towel at his head and proceeded to give him the first few rounds of a full-knuckle massage.

	"I saw you on the way in.  Honestly.  You really are completely hopeless."
	"Ah, thanks - ow, oowwwww!  That's too harsh!  Owww!"
	"As expected of our leader!  All kinds of misfortune turns to unexpected glory in his hands."
	"Ow!  It hurts!  Owwwww!"

	This unsubtle flirting continued briefly before Fukiyose marched off in a huff, leaving a host of murmurs in her wake.  Having settled that with no small amount of jabs and potshots, all at Touma's expense, the conversation managed to continue.

	"So?  How was it?"
	"How was what?"
	"That card I gave you?  It was amazing, right?"
	"Ah... in the end, I couldn't remember anything at all."
	"Oh?  It's that ability of yours, isn't it?  That miracle destroyer of yours...  Wait, don't tell me - don't tell me you managed to break it!  That was one of my best!"
	"Ah, this?"

	The boy pulled out a card and handed it over.

	"No, it doesn't seem like anything's happened to it... these were supposed to be scientific, right?  Ah, well, if it can destroy miracles and luck, it can probably destroy hopes and dreams as well."

	Aogami looked somehow disappointed as he received the card back, muttering something about how he might have to burn it.

	"Ah, well, in the end, your whole life is probably like this from start to finish anyway.  In the end, people who don't have girls fall out of the sky into their laps have to rely on things like these..."
	"So it was one of those dreams after all!  How could I, Kamijou Touma, have been taken in so easily -"
	"You've always been dumb, Kamijou, but I didn't think you would be this dumb."

	The sound of the door opened again and a girl around three and a half feet high walked into the room.

	"Sorry, everyone!  One of the morning meetings ran late, but if you are all good students, teacher won't cut the time out of your break, so everybody listen up!  Oh?  Kamijou-chan?"

* * *

	All of this was being replayed in Shokuhou Misaki's mind at the speed of thought.

	In the end, even her white knight on a shining horse was a high school boy, after all.  This kind of thing wasn't too different from trading dirty magazines or having the usual unsightly boys talk, so it was only to be expected.  It even seemed like that he had made a half-hearted effort (probably just for show) not to be taken in, so truly Kamijou Touma was doing his best to live an upright life.  She should have been happy that that boy had found new friends, even if some of his new friends had extremely questionable twice.

	But, of course, none of these wonderful notions did anything to dampen her anger.

	If that dream card had just been any unsavory dream card, she might have been able to forgive him.  After all, everything that she had been seeing (and she had seen more than a few things that she had not wanted to see) were only due to her unsavory ability that crushed privacy and decency underfoot.  A boy was entitled to enjoy himself in his spare time. safe from the prying eyes of others.

	But, of course, _that_ was not the issue here.

* * *

	[[[ Later That Day ]]]

	Yawning, two of three idiots strolled into the courtyard for morning recess.  Kamijou had managed to thaw out somewhat during morning lecture and had regained some of his coherence.

	"Ah, no... even though I said I don't remember anything, how do I say this..."
	"Hmm?  Oh ho, so you were lying about that after all, right?  You're hardly a shy boy, so there's no need to lie about such things among friends."
	"No, I definitely don't remember anything at all!"
	"Hmm?"
	"But, even thought I don't recall a thing, well, in the morning, ah, how do I say this... well..."
	"Ah, say no more, Touma, I get it, you woke up and ~that~ had happened, right?  Well, we're all men of the world, so you don't have to say anymore."

	Touma's face had inexplicably become as red as a tomato.  A hand reached out and slapped him on the shoulder.

	"So it didn't go complete to waste.  But you really didn't even get to remember any of it!  Ah, you really are unlucky, that was one of my best, you know?  Actually, that electric princess Misaka-chan - "
	"Hey, I actually know that brat in real life, you know!  You can do whatever you like in your own time, but don't get me involved in that!"
	"Yeah, that much is obvious, even I have standards, you know?  And dreams can't compare with the real thing anyway, so I'm not going to give you something like that."

	"After all, we all know you like big-breasted nee-chan types better, right?  That's why..."

* * *

* * *

* * *

	"If you're going to do THIS and THAT to me (in your dreams), then you should at least have the decency to remember them!  I didn't pay that price to save your life so you could do THAT!  I won't forgive you for this!  I definitely won't forgive you for thiiiiiiiiiis!!!"

	A thousand ways to inflict suffering jumped to her mind.  She was behaving in a very unsightly manner.  She was vaguely aware that she was acting like a certain other idiot from her school but she was so angry that she didn't even care.  Maybe she would have have ~her~ kill him for her.  That would undoubtedly solve everyone's problems.

	"Ah, it seems like I've been making that idiot do all my dirty work lately.... even these 'special exceptions' I'm making seem to have increased lately.  Somehow, I'm only getting more irritated... ha ha ha... ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..."

	The last part of her mental rant spilled out of her mouth.  She gradually became aware that she had been pounding her fist against a wall for some time now.

	"...een?  Queen, are you okay?  You've had that complicated look on your face for a few hours now... I humbly apologize for my audacity , Queen.  If I had known you hated Misaka to that degree, I never would have presumed to - "

	~click~

	" - limited edition Gekota phone strap!  After all, a true fan would never - huh?  Ah, sorry, you said earlier you had no interest in this kind of thing, so I'm not sure why I suddenly started..."
	"Don't mind me, just keep talking.  Anything is fine.  Take my mind off this."
	"Ah, well, if it's an order from the queen... well, if we start from the beginning, the foundation of Gekota is..."

	It was good that that girl had learned to laugh again.