Story: Croce di Eros

It should not be this difficult for the number one Esper and the number five Esper in the city to locate the number three. Especially when they know where Misaka lives, and especially when the number five can read minds!

It's surreal. It's unbelievable. It's as if something is manipulating them without actually touching their minds. Because Misaki would know if something was touching their minds - and literally nothing touches Accelerator unless he wants it to.  Nonetheless! Things keep on happening around them to distract them. It's as if they're being deliberately lured away from wherever Misaka is at this very moment.

For example, an explosion in a factory caused condoms to flood one street. Accelerator could blow right through that, but it had felt like a waste of their time. Then a cute puppy wandered by being led around by a quite busty woman, and Last Order had rushed off after the bitch. The dog, she meant. Don't even get her started on the banana cream pie!

"This is ridiculous!" Misaki huffed. "We are two of the strongest Espers in the city! I have the strongest telepathy possible, and the two of us cannot find Misaka?! When we already know where she lives!"

"It's not our fault she's not there," Accelerator said. He sounded bored. Frustrated. That was the trouble with the Number One Esper in this city. He had all sorts of personality problems, no doubt caused by wielding so much power that he was practically invincible. Even to the other Level 5s. At the very least it explained his complexion. His body was automatically filtering out harmful parts of sunlight (among other things), which caused his skin and hair to turn white, as though bleached. "So how about it, Mental Out? Can't your abilities probe the city to find her?"

"Oh, I would,"Misaki huffed. "Finding that flat as an ironing board rake would be no trouble at all - If not for the dozen or so Sisters wandering the streets.Any one of them could the original, or they could be a clone - and the only way to tell is -"

A Sister on the other side of the street spontaneously got her skirt flipped by a random passerby. Now, one might think that Mental Out had just been used to make that person do that. It had not. He had done it of his own accord. In any event, Misaki was certain that she was a Sister because she was actually wearing feminine underwear. Those two facts meeting together was extremely suspicious, to say the very least!

"Well, anyway, what about you?" Misaki asked, flicking her remote in Accelerator's general direction, with absolutely no intention of pressing it. Not just because that boy could and did casually reflect even her mind manipulating powers as easily as he did everything else, but rather she was more afraid of the idea that she actually might accidentally read his mind and - Shudder! Ew! No thanks! Not him! "Can't the number one Esper locate her? Or is his power only good for battle, after all?"

Not  the smartest button to press on. He scoffed, he tutted. "Ugh, this is so annoying. Yomikawa and Aiho have become too..."

"Ara ara, Misaka Misaka suggests!"

Accelerator reached across and gave her a noogie without looking. "Even telling them I'm a student doesn't stop them anymore. They tried getting into the bath with me today. Both of them. At the same time."

Pffffft! "Well, it's refreshing to see that even the most powerful Esper has these kind of issues - "

"There's a stronger type of Esper, Misaka Misaka says knowingly."

Huh? What was that? What had the adorable little version of Misaka who was far, far cuter than the original could ever have been just cutely said like she was dropping pearls of wisdom?

"Of course, it's only hypothetical, Misaka Misaka said, now that she had their attention. So far as Misaka misaka knows, nobody in the city has this power at a Level 5!"

"Oh yeah? What's this now? Stronger than me?" Accelerator said. "Hey, hey, hey. You can't just claim something like that without backing it up. What kind of power would that be?"

"Clairvoyance! Misaka Misaka applauded cleverly."

“Huh? You know we have a lot of these, don’t you? I remember beating up half a dozen some weeks ago actually.” Accelerator questioned, trying to remember the faces of a particular small fry.

"Not at Level 5, you haven't! Misaka Misaka wags her little finger. A Level 5 Teleporter can get around your vector manipulation field. So! It stands to reason that a Level 5 Clairvoyant can get around it too! Misaka Misaka wishes she had a whiteboard or some paper to doodle on..."

Instead, she grabbed some sticks and laid them out on the ground. "A normal Clairvoyant looks through the Eleventh dimension. This lets them see things in the past, present or future according to the limitations of their own abilities. Misaka Misaka takes a deep breath because this is the complicated part. Since they are looking through the Eleventh dimension, including space and time, their powers will still have vectors that teleporters and Accelerator can interfere with. This can give them false readings of the future. However..."

Misaka Misaka furrowed her brow and lay the sticks out side by side. "We already know there is only one 'timeline'. There are no 'many worlds'. However, according to quantum theory, there are still 'many futures' that have not yet collapsed into the 'one timeline'. Misaka Misaka was sneaky, describing it as Clairvoyance, when the 'strongest Esper power' would actually be a limited form of telepathy - that enables one to read your own mind! Except... From every possible future. Tada!"

“That only lets you win fights that you could theoretically win. An ant can try a thousand strategies, but it will never win against an elephant.” Accelerator answered, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. It was a dangerous concept, especially if given preparation. But his power lacked a proper weakness, outside the new time limit at least. And he was not stupid enough to not be careful about that.

"Ah-ah-ah! But will it? Misaka Misaka asks knowingly. Think about it. He can have a potential future version of himself try out every PIN or password for any account - bank accounts or otherwise - for anyone in the world and eventually find the right one. He wouldn't even need to fight you. He would simply send you off to do his bidding for him, and you'd never even know it. That's worse than defeat in a fight! No matter how strong you were, he would know exactly what to do to get you to do anything he wanted."

"Even so -"

"He could invent anything he wanted, too! Years or decades before its time."

“And I can break anything.” Accelerator answered without missing a beat.

"Can you break the savior’s right arm, Misaka Misaka sweetly asked. He could invent a machine that negated Esper powers. He could arrange for someone else to fight you that can get around your powers, while he's sipping orange juice on a beach somewhere."

“I would still win.” Accelerator said, not a hint of doubt in his voice. “A real villain doesn’t lose to some loser trying to stack the deck in his favor.”

"Okay, okay, enough! The pair of you!" Misaki said, stepping right in between them before the debate got stupid. "That's a very nice original character concept you've come up with little one, but aren't' they a little bit of a Mary Sue?"

"I call this power Future Double, Misaka Misaka said!"

Adorable. Simply adorable. If only the real Misaka was this cute, they might be able to get along. AAh, but such things were not possible in reality. Still. The idea gnawed at her a little. The idea of a clairvoyant capable of knowing all the possible outcomes of actions they'd take - therefore being able to always choose the 'correct' path that led to the outcome they wanted... What if such a person did exist? What if they were a pervert?

It was like fighting the protagonist of a videogame, someone who could just “save and reload” wherever they wanted. Maybe even worse than that. With sufficient preparation time, if they laid low long enough, they could easily set in motion a chain of events to manage quite literally any outcome they wanted. They could learn any skill set, discover any knowledge. For all that Accelerator wasn't worried, that was born from his feeling of outright invincibility. Misaki could already imagine several other ways that such a power could be used to put him down, and unlike regular precognition he wouldn't have any vectors to manipulate because it would all be inside the opponent's own head.

Hell, even if she tried to read that person's mind in some way it would probably be too much for her. That would be far, far too many minds - functionally infinite - for her to control at once.  With the way that events were unfolding... the sheer lack of likelihood of encountering a Sister at that moment, and having her skirt randomly flipped up by a passerby... Was that being caused by their invisible enemy?

But Espers were only supposed to have one power. If someone had the power to see the future. Then they wouldn’t be able to mess with people’s minds like this. Most certainly not on such a scale. So what.. Had this person somehow found a latent genius telepath of similar interest? Two perverts with the same goal, one masterminding and the other slowly twisting Academy City into a porn parody of itself?

No.. that couldn’t be.. it sounded even more nonsensical than what she knew. It would also make her insanely paranoid, expecting some manipulation and trick behind every single thing. Which might be why Last Order had brought it up in the first place. Paralyse her with indecision, weakening her resolve so that they could enact their own wicked schemes on her before she even knew what was -

A car drove by, into a puddle full of muddy water. The water flew out all over Accelerator. Now, those that know Accelerator understand that what this means is that the water did not touch him. Not even a drop of it. Because it qualified as a thing to reject. Therefore, it was rejected. All over a certain scientific telepath.

“If I find the person who is messing with me, I am going to make them slap themselves until their face turns purple..”

"What are you complaining about?" Accelerator asked. "That's a good look for you."

"You can't go around like that! Misaka Misaka said! You'll catch your death of cold! Change clothes, change clothes!"

Ugh, it's true enough she was completely drenched through. Misaki looked around, this wasn't a part of the city she knew that well. On reading a few minds, it didn't seem like there were any clothes shops for at least a mile. Like hell she would - Wait! There was one. There was exactly one clothes shop. She was standing in front of it. A bikini shop! She turned around with dread in her starry eyes.

"Forget purple! Until their face is black!" Misaki yelled, and stomped inside while ringing out her skirt.

<hr>

Ah, women. What was the fuss even about? Accelerator didn't understand that at all. Which made this whole mess all the more awkward for him to deal with. Everyone turning all pervy? Behaving weirdly/ Strange coincidences maximising eroticism? Blegh. The only reason he was involved in this at all was because it was potentially irritating.
But it was also boring, boring, boring. How was a villain like him supposed to contend with something on this scale? It was so... petty! So unimportant! Who cared if the girls in this city started showing more skin and became more flirtatious? If there weren’t a non-negligible number of them targeting him he wouldn’t even be interested!

So here he was, watching Last Order run around in circles while waiting for Mental out to change her clothes, when what should he hear?

"Well, well. If it isn't the number one."

Someone in an absolutely desperate state of needing their ass beat. Now, believe it or not but this boy wasn't the type to pick fights usually. Why, Accelerator had even gone out of his way to cultivate an image of invincibility and cruelty to stop random idiots from going after him. Didn’t work nearly well enough, but it was worth a try.

This prick though. This prick had it coming. The Number 2 Level 5 in the city. Dark Matter. If Accelerator had the power of ultimate destruction, then this guy had the ultimate power of creation. You would be hard pressed to find two people who got on even less, every time they so much as saw each other a messy fight was bound to -

... There appeared to be three women hanging off him. Staring at him like he was the best thing since sliced bread. Oy, oy, oy! For some reason that was really starting to piss him off!

"Hehehe, as much as I'd love to drop the supposed number one today, I have other business to attend to."

A pair of dark matter arms reached out and blatantly groped the three women. They responded with great appreciation, sighs, and Accelerator could swear that there were hearts in their eyes. It looked as dumb in them as the stars did in Mental Out's.

"Really?" Accelerator jeered. "It's not like you to turn down a chance to throw down. Have you finally learend to be happy with being number two?"

"From where I'm standing, I'm not number two right now," Dark Matter jeered. He looked down meaningfully at Last Order. "Interesting taste in women."

A gust of air shot out from Accelerator, blowing past Dark Matter. It wasn't meant to hurt him. It was meant to remind him of who he was talking to. "Don't tell me you're so weak you've let this weird perverted event take control?"

"Hahahaha! Something like this? No, no! I'm not some weakling who would succumb that easily. I'm riding the wave through to the other side - and then you'll see the world that I've created. Now, you have fun with your little - "

"And after I have him beat himself black and blue I'll make him think he's a chicken for an - " Misaki yelled while storming out of the bikini shop. "Huh? Aren't you Dark Matter?! What are you doing here?"

Dark Matter and his women looked Mental Out up and down.

The blonde girl was wearing a bikini that could be called “revealing” if you were charitable. There were two triangle-shaped pieces of cloth governing the important parts. Thin stripes going up her shoulders and behind her back were somehow holding the piece in place. The amount of cloth covering her chest was so small that every movement risked certain body parts popping out, yet somehow the bikini kept everything prim and proper even as she quickly turned from one side to the other to take in what was going on.

The bottom piece was similarly revealing, a little bit of cloth at the bottom, with two strings in a V-shape holding it in place. If one were to look at her back, they would notice that her delicious derriere was barely even covered at all.

"Don't stare! It was the most modest swimsuit in there!"

After a moment of staring, Dark Matter's body language shifted. "Fine. you win again, number one. I shall defeat you next time! Mark my words!"