It was quiet and empty within the Kamijou Household.
That sentence alone was strange enough as the dormitory room itself housed 3 times more occupant than it was initially designed for. It was rather surprising how other rooms adjacent to them had not reported them for excessive noise at this point.
For now, two permanent occupants of this dorm room were off for a holiday.
Kamijou Touma, on the insistence of higher ups, went off to a brief retreat in order to escape the steady chaos growing within the Academy City. The fall of the number one dismantled the entire food chain of power within the city, like jenga blocks falling rapidly after one wrong move. The basic mentality of the dark side of the city was: defeat the one who defeated the strongest, and that would place them above the Accelerator.
It was a flawed logic, really. The match between Tou-man and Accelerator was like a game of rock–paper–scissors. They were simply incompatible; it was not as simple as "who defeated who", but in the end they didn't care. And unfortunately he was stuck within this dangerous household, bored out of his mind. Apparently they did not think it was necessary to inform the third occupant of the house of their opportunity for a beach resort. All he found when he got home was a sticky note stuck on the fridge, informing him of their reason for absence.
Sigh...
Things would have been more exciting if Haru dared to use the electrical utilities around the house, but he was not idiotic enough to attempt that. The whole point of Touma and Index retreating from the Academy City was to avoid trouble from other espers, and even turning on a simple light would totally defeat the purpose, as it would inform others that someone resided within the house, and launch attacks accordingly. He didn't even dare to use the gas too much, lest his throat got slit within his sleep.
He thought of drawing the curtains completely and using some electrical appliances during daytime in order to avoid exposing himself, but that was his last resort plan before he went insane from the lack of activity. Seriously, why was he receiving the full brunt of this unfortunate development? Perhaps this apartment received some dosage of misfortune from Kamijou Touma? That was how Japanese urban myths worked, was it not? If he had to kill an assassin while sleeping within this house he was definitely going to blame Touma for the mess.
Uiharu was angry.
Well, the word "angry" was too insufficient. A better adjective would have been "furious", or "enraged", or even "incensed".
"OLLERUS!" she yelled at the top of her lungs. "WHAT THE %^!# IS THE MEANING OF THIS!?"
Sounds of objects crashing in the distance were heard. Within seconds Kakine rushed into the room, wearing for some inexplicable reason a bucket on his head.
"Ah, that," Kakine nervously scratched his head, I mean bucket, in response. "Well, they had nowhere else to go, and they were being neglected by the zoo owners, so um, I had to bring them here. Sorry?..."
Their entire apartment was not littered by land animals as one might deduce from his explanation. The entire room was filled with... sea otters.
"Sea otters! They are everywhere!"
They were all piled up over one another in their previously clean room. Their fur glistened with sea water and the floor was covered in shiny sand. There even were some clams scattered here and there for some unexplainable reason. The beady eyed, ninety pound sand bags loitered around the room peacefully, expecting fish sooner or later from their new masters.
Uhiaru sighed while massaging her temples. How in the world would she explain this situation to the landlord? And why was she living with an idiot like him in the first place?
"You have 30 minutes to clean this mess up. Throw the otters out, for all I care." Uiharu flatly replied as she walked out of the room. She had a mild headache and was not about to waste her energy punishing this moron.
"But, that's too cruel!" Kakine protested. "They have nowhere else to go! Don't tell me you are someone's animal-hating mother!?"
"Either you get them out of here or I get them out of here, using a far harsher method."
"Silvia-hime, you can't just dump them within the nearby water! The temperature is far too warm for them! Their bodies were made to be living within colder waters!" Now, Kakine had zero knowledge on the habitats of water animals, and consequently he was pulling this "fact" out of thin air. He was rather hoping that Uiharu would not know anything about aquatic creatures either.
"Well, they can all die for all I care. This room is covered with sand and salt. Try not to think of what will happen to you if everything is not cleaned by the end of the hour." Uiharu slammed the door shut on her way out, leaving a dismayed Kakine within the room full of sea otters.
*Ring-ting-aling-ting-aling-ting-aling-ting-aling…*
Rather a rude awakening, Haru observed as he was unceremoniously stirred from his sleep by the racket his alarm clock had made. Due to drawn curtains his gauge of how early it was was a bit skewed. Getting out from the comfortable futon was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had already risked enough of his life by sleeping during the night when he should have been awake, keeping watch. The earlier he rose from the bed the more ready he would be against any kind of adversary he might encounter.
But irrationally, he soon went back to his peaceful slumber, unable to resist the hazy temptation of drowsiness drawing him closer to unconsciousness...
*RING-TING-ALING-TING-ALING-TING-ALING—*
Cursing in colorful language, he pulled out his pistol from his pillow—readers, observe the increase in his paranoia—and fired it toward the alarm clock.
*BANG*
The alarm clock toppled over, its cries miraculously ceasing at once. Yawning, he dragged himself out from the bed, readying himself for the new day... after all, no rest for the wicked. Stumbling toward the kitchen he opened the fridge, hoping that Touma bought something nice with the huge wealth Haru lent him for rent.
Ah... black honey pudding. After pouring himself a glass of milk he walked back toward the living room and plopped himself down behind the table. Upon the notification beep of his Gekota phone he began to check the device, realizing that he had missed several calls while sleeping. He redialed the number and began to wait.
"Uh, you called me.?" Haru inquired into the phone.
"Um, I'm currently staying at the home of a student in Academy City for a while. Why?"
"What? It was destroyed?"
"That's huge news. Do you know how this happened?"
"A laser!? What kind of laser could do something like that?"
"Hmm, so you told me to steal the remaining pieces... You'll give me the information later, right?"
"... Do as you please. I'll check the situation out. Goodbye."
Flipping the phone shut, he briefly went into a deep reverie.
Tree Diagram.
The best supercomputer world had ever see—it was a wet dream of any computer enthusiast to play around on that machine. And it was destroyed. Somehow. Was he relieved that a nation was stripped of that valuable piece of equipment? Or was he disappointed that such a machine was destroyed in the first place? At any rate, many countries were scrambling right now to launch space rockets in order to retrieve the leftover debris–yes, even the stuff left over from the explosion was exponentially more valuable than their own equipment. It was that powerful. And he was given the mission to purloin the pieces Academy City had most likely had already retrieved, the most valuable of the bunch. At times like this he felt like he was back at his home, taking on Special Missions assigned to him by the government.
Standing up, Haru strolled toward the closet. If he was going to successfully fulfill this task, he would have to do some legwork. Some snooping around, to see the general public's reaction to this event, or their lack of. Opening the wooden cover he peered inside, hoping to find something fashionable. He always did things in style, his aesthetic sense taking the top priority.
"Ooooh..." Haru was instantly attracted to one of the scarves within the cabinet. It was long, had black and red stripe pattern, and as a bonus it had the texture he liked; none of those furry, stuffy fabric types. Snickering, he snatched it out from the closet—hopefully, Touma won't miss this item too much... it wasn't too much to ask for compared to his black card, after all.