0700. Behind Korolev Senior.

Although there was only one open entrance to the grounds of Korolev Senior on a normal day, the school building itself had many entrances besides the great front steps. There weren’t that many nooks and corners, but shrubbery was plenty and this was where they gathered one by one, trickling onto the school grounds independently to dissuade the attention of any casual observers.

The two boys yawned, however, in contrast to the two girls on high alert. They were about to commit a petty crime, after all—at least in the eyes of the school. Cecilia constantly wondered what kind of disciplinary action the school would make in response, as this was more than just mere tardiness. Terrifyingly, the others gave it little thought.

“Do you really wanna come with us? We can do it on our own, Celia.”

“No, no, no. This is something that’s being done for me. I have to take responsibility for that.”

“That’s what I’m saying! There’s less chance of discovery and a better fake alibi if you weren’t here!”

“We went over this already, Mayumi. It’s not a secret that we’re all friends with Celia here, especially not to Class C, so it doesn’t matter if she’s here or not.”

“Ugh…”

Caius interjected to silence the objecting Mayumi, tucking in his knapsack close to him as they crouched in a circle among the cramped bushes. The fresh morning air stung his nose and was itching to get inside as quickly as possible, but there were a few more pieces to the plan to put in place before they could enter.

While school opened at six-thirty every day to invite morning-going students to come and prepare for class or to attend extracurriculars, not all classrooms were accessible from the get-go. Though there were no limits to accessibility technically speaking, in practice they were limited to whoever had the keys arrived and unlocked the classroom first. If you had a homeroom teacher who consistently arrived at school just before the bell, then tough luck—you wouldn’t be able to use your homeroom for any of your morning routines.

For extracurriculars, generally the responsible teacher would make a commitment to arrive first and unlock all the necessary rooms, but oftentimes these efforts could be delegated to a trusted student. Kato was doing exactly that for the third music room for a few weeks, and the Elites themselves were in their fourth floor mini-studio since.

They held five keys in total: one for Class 3-F homeroom, one for their fourth floor studio, one for access to the rooftop, one general master key for the regular classrooms, and one master key for office equipment and electronics. One of them was not necessary as the other Elites were likely almost there on the fourth floor to start their daily routine, but the others were necessary to secure their insurance.

“In essence, all we need is Mayumi to be near Class 3-C’s classroom, probably best from the girls’ washroom across from it, and start using her future sight to write down answers into her notebook. To make sure we avoid being suspected and discovered, we have to prepare for certain contingencies.”

Caius tossed each of them a walkie-talkie—the same set of electronics from when they used it to crush Class 3-F’s Ethan Henderson and his extortion streak against Yui. Caius’ father was a reservist and had a whole platoon’s worth of personal squad equipment; since they lived in a detached house, there was enough space to reliably store them.

“The ultimate evidence against us is a positive readout from a Teller sonograph. We have to ensure that no such machines are running, however unlikely they are to be running at this time of the day. In any case, the discretionary use of self-originating alchemy is prohibited on school grounds, and future sight is in such a category, so on top of using it to cheat on an exam, we’d better cover our tracks completely.”

On a side note, because there was no realistic way to prevent Mayumi from using her future sight besides sealing her in a closed off white room with a Teller sonograph equipped with an exorbitant amount of cata-papers, schools had to implement rules around Mayumi instead. Usually, that meant Mayumi always had her own set of exams to write, different from her peers, and a Teller sonograph running for the duration of the examination.

“Mayumi will go in first through a back door and lay in wait in the said washroom. The point is to not have any witnesses or evidence of you being here at all.”

He motioned to Eon’s guitar case on the grass turf.

“Then, I’ll go in through a different back door to start work on the third floor immediately. It’s a lot more work, after all. Eon will then enter from the front and sit on the fourth floor, as if you’re going in for practice as usual. You’ll put this away in the studio, but instead of practicing with the Elites, you’ll be patrolling the fourth floor.

“Finally, Celia will enter from the back through another different door and begin patrolling the second floor. Neither I nor Celia has as solid an alibi as Eon’s to loiter on these floors, so we likely can only make limited patrols. If Celia was going to patrol the third floor, she could use the library as an alibi, but the third floor is exactly where she should not be when Mayumi does the deed, so that can’t be helped. We’ll just have to be careful. I can stick to my homeroom, and Celia can stick to the second floor washrooms.”

A Teller sonograph’s detection range varies from device to device, but most desktop versions can only measure laterally in a fifty feet radius, like a circular disc, with the depth limited to about seven to nine feet. At first glance, it might seem like only patrolling the third floor was needed, but the detection area’s disc could be oriented onto another axis, meaning the classrooms directly above and below could also house Teller sonographs. Technically, larger sonographs had larger, different detection ranges, but they could only form contingencies for the portable versions. If the enemy had larger sonographs, which was very unlikely for a mere secondary school institution, then hats off to them.

“The three of us will perform a first sweep of the floors around the area of Celia’s homeroom, double check, and report if any classrooms in the vicinity have anyone in them operating a Teller sonograph.”

There was a problem, and that was if the would-be snoopers locked themselves inside a classroom. They had already pilfered a general master key from the student council’s office, but there was only one of it, so it could only follow one person. Plus, if there really was an ongoing stakeout, they would immediately alert each other the moment they unlocked the door. While they could call off the exam-cheating, they would have another problem to deal with: to explain why they were there and have stolen a master key. So, even with a master key, using it came with its own headaches. Honestly, there were many, many things that could go wrong.

“If no one’s seen us, then we continue patrolling. However, if anyone did see us, those of us who were seen would have to retreat to their base and wait a few minutes before setting off to patrol again. It’ll be way too suspicious for us to be out in the hallways for too long, continuously peeking into classrooms like stalkers.”

This was more for Cecilia and Caius himself, as they were patrolling the second and third floors. The fourth was supposed to be mostly vacant.

“Mayumi will normally take a few minutes to copy down a question and a skeleton answer to it, so for a good chunk of the exam, she’ll need about ten to fifteen minutes of time. By seven-thirty, we’ll be done with it, and for another thirty minutes, we’ll have to continue to patrol before the affected mana fields dissipate into the ether, though technically we can relax as soon as she’s done. It’s more for insurance than anything else.”

The residual fields would linger for a while, but by themselves they were way harder to trace to Mayumi’s future sight. They were like footprints, but had been thoroughly washed out any details of the outsoles. For this, they already had the perfect alibi.

“So, are we clear with the plan?”

Mayumi, Eon and Cecilia stared back intently and nodded in unison. They spent the last week scouting out the area and preparing this operation, so they were as anxious as they were determined to see this through. Caius nodded in return.

“Let’s go.

As they had planned, Eon had walked through the front doors just as he did on any day, made a detour to his locker to put down his schoolwork, and headed to the fourth floor with his guitar case. The other Elites weren’t there yet, but they would be shortly.

While Eon stalked the floor and peered into each of the dark and empty classrooms, he pondered for a moment whether their plan was going to succeed. According to Mayumi, this was mere child’s play for her back in Regia Miriam, but there was a reason why this was the Eternian school. Thankfully, Eon was in a position to salvage any impossible situation that could come up, but it would be at an immense cost to Eon, so he was adamant that they prepared as much as possible.

Each swinging metal door had long, vertical rectangular glass windows on the doorknob’s side, while sliding doors had standard square windows situated in the centre at eyes height. Each classroom had at least two doors, and most, if not the whole of the classroom was supposed to be viewable from these doors’ windows, as classrooms were purposefully engineered to do so as a preventative measure against accidents or suspicious acts. Students were not allowed to obscure these windows, real accidents could be discovered quicker, and students had less uncovered corners of the school to do stupid things.

Lights on or off, they would be able to see anyone using a portable Teller sonograph as the school’s were motorized and not battery-powered, meaning they absolutely needed to be plugged into a socket, and a regular classroom had a limited number of sockets for obvious reasons. And while the sonograph itself was typewriter-sized, small enough to be partially concealed with effort, it consumed too many sheets of cata-paper to not be noticeable. It would print out rolls upon rolls of dot-matrix cata-paper, at around twelve sheets per minute of operation. In other words, it was supposed to be quite a conspicuous operation.

It wasn’t a surefire guarantee they could see it operating, and anyone on an intentional stakeout who gave some thought ahead could take appropriate countermeasures, but it was the best they could do on their own. They were in fact more worried about someone using the device in a science room by coincidence rather than a deep-state conspiracy against Mayumi.

“The coast is clear on the fourth floor.”

Meanwhile on the second floor, Cecilia did the same to the area beneath her homeroom, which consisted of a few other second-year classes and classrooms belonging to the humanities department. There were also a few club rooms to peek into, which on the surface seem like better stakeout locations, but actually these smaller rooms had even less sockets available. The best stakeout locations were probably the janitors’ storage rooms, but those were places even the student council didn’t have the keys to, so unless the school had a direct hand in such a sting operation, or their enemies in fact stole them from the faculty, they needn’t worry about these rooms.

“The second floor should be clear.”

Caius made a sweep of the third floor, but for a much wider number of classrooms than what was required from the second or fourth floors. He took the liberty of using the general master key to quickly verify the regular classrooms without lights on. If worse comes to worst, he and Eon would have to lean on Ariel’s grace to worm out of any sticky situation.

“The third floor is clear.”

However, by the time he finished one cycle, there was already a trickle of students filtering into the school. People came in the morning for various reasons, and since the library was on the third floor, it definitely was a legitimate destination for these early-risers. Caius would have used it as his hideout if his own classroom wasn’t closer to the epicentre of the crime.

As Caius retreated to his classroom, he spotted Kato and his household across the atrium’s opening climb up the spiral staircase. He paused for only a second, but he continued to stride for his classroom. His task at hand was to do almost the same sweep of this area five minutes later, after which any student who could have seen him on the first round, should have made it to their destinations.

However, he couldn’t help but feel a little lonely, even jealous, that the other Elites were continuing with their music practice and putting a show on their own. He wanted to participate in it just as much as the rest of them, but at the same time he couldn’t find it in him to face Kato again, or to reconsider his allegiance to Mayumi. He knew that his feelings would never be reciprocated, yet he felt compelled to forge down this fruitless path at the expense of everything else—including his most loyal friend.

Ah, I’m still madly in love with her, he admitted to himself. The rational part of his brain told him to let go of the past, but alas, every time Mayumi’s face surfaced in his mind, his heart twisted once more and was again convinced against it. As he sat down in his usual seat in his empty homeroom, he wondered if he would ever break free from this curse.

“I’ll be starting now.”

Mayumi began using her eye, warping her consciousness into the familiar low-resolution tunnel vision of her future sight. Although looking more than a minute into the future required immense concentration and skill, she was more than practiced to do it—not easily, though, as the recoiling fatigue would show. Even if it was an ability she could only use sparingly, she still was not a notorious cheater back in Regia Miriam for nothing, using her future sight to both cheat on tests and crush her enemies within the school.

While self-originating alchemy was forbidden in any school, it worked analogous to a prohibition; if you could get away with it, you did. Alchemy was forbidden to prevent students from blowing up the school, but her future sight didn’t have any physical effects, so without a Teller sonograph, it was impossible to levy any accusation against her. The only difference in Korolev Senior was that it was a little more likely to be spotted.

She dove a few hours into the future, a formidable feat by any metric, and waded into the nearby 3-C homeroom to check the class writing its exam. As if she was the all-seeing game master floating a pair of invisible eyes above the class, she could see clearly the questions and answers on the exam of every student. Like a videocassette, she fast-forwarded to near the end of the period and paused, where she could peek at everyone’s near-complete exams.

It was a simple operation. Mayumi would pick out a question, survey the class for their answers, and pick out both the question and the most common answer among them. In most cases, having knowing the question in advance was already a massive advantage, but having the most common answer also had its merits as a way of deciphering what kind of answer was expected.

However, as hard as she might try, using her power for something so specific was very difficult. Though her visions were much clearer than an average person’s dreams, the cognitive latency and forgetfulness effects were roughly equivalent to awakenings from dreams during the final phase of REM sleep. While it was easy to accurately recall select conversations or eye-catching scenery, it was hard to recall things that normally required calm and concentration—like the details of a written examination. Dreams were a sea of turbulence in one’s mind, after all.

“…”

For good or for ill, though, Mayumi practiced this for years. To account for the inevitable forgetfulness effects of waking up from a dream, she would usually memorize one sentence at a time, return to reality to write it down, and dive back into her future sight to the same location in space and time to read off the next sentence. Since each of her forages to the future were instantaneous to the outside world, she could be seen writing answers in her notebook continuously, but Mayumi’s consciousness would experience close to an hour of dream time in order to copy down a few questions. It was like clockwork.

But of course, it took a toll on her person to dive back and forth continuously like that, and for that far into the future. It didn’t get any easier as she got older, and experience could only extend her resistances to the backlash fatigue so far. It was still much better than when her eye was destructive and incomplete, but it didn’t mean it was sunshine and rainbows now. Her hands trembled and sweat flowed out profusely. The migraine you would usually get from sleeping in for too long was hitting her like a truck, threatening to break the concentration required to dive again and again three-and-something hours into the future.

A few minutes later, as Mayumi was writing down a draft answer for the first question, both Caius and Cecilia got out of their hideouts to patrol the halls again. Caius would take much more time to do a once-over, so their sweep timings would be out of sync after this. Eon remained on the balcony of the fourth floor, ever vigilant of randoms in the wrong places at the wrong time.

“Still, nothing’s here on the second floor.”

Peeking into the fifth dark and locked classroom, Caius was about to leave for the next one until suddenly, the lights turned on and revealed more clearly the science lab it hosted. More importantly, though, two familiar students were visible in the lab, and Caius was instantly doused in cold sweat. This was exactly what they had feared.

One of them returned to the other—presumably from turning on the lights—who was busy with something behind a stack of textbooks on one of the lab counters. Each countertop had sockets and sinks, and by the looks of the occupied socket the other man was operating motorized equipment.

“Everyone, this is code orange. Emergency. Stop what you’re doing and come to the third floor, now.”

Caius murmured into his walkie-talkie, though clearly frantic from the shaking in his voice. If this was a false alert, then getting Mayumi to come over to confirm that wouldn’t cost them anything but a couple of minutes; she would use her future sight to peek into the classroom and try to infer what they were doing. If it was truly a conspiracy against them came true, then they would’ve already captured enough evidence already, and any more mana field disturbances wouldn’t matter.

“What is it?”

Impressively, in under fifteen seconds, Mayumi had bolted from the washroom stall, sprinted to where Caius was and hissed into his ear. She was obviously irritated by the dizziness from using her future sight. He pointed to the door’s rectangular window.

“Look. It’s Liam and Stephen behind that stack of textbooks, operating some kind of machine. It’s gotta be it.”

She didn’t like a single word coming out of his mouth. Mayumi immediately smudged her face to the window to try and peek into the science lab, and at the same time use her future sight to peer further into it; into areas out of sight of normal eyes. It really was like a cheat. In no time, she peeled away to face Caius in sweat and terror.

“They’re operating a Teller sonograph.”

So their fear had come to pass. At the same time, Eon and Cecilia arrived together by coincidence, both catching their breaths.

“It’s code red. The operators are Liam and Stephen.”

Caius explained curtly as they huddled close together, still whispering in hushed tones even though there was literally nobody else around. Cecilia hung her head in despair as she was already overwhelmed thinking of what could happen to Mayumi for cheating. Eon’s face was etched in stone, clearly perturbed by the worst-case scenario unfolding in front of them.

“What do we do now?”

Mayumi asked the other three, but none had a good answer to say aloud. It wasn’t that they hadn’t planned for this, but their available courses of action from here on out were rather limited and costly. There was only one real way to move forward at this point. Eon nodded at Mayumi, to which she also nodded solemnly.

“We’re going with a raid, obviously. Are you all ready?”

The other two nodded, though Cecilia’s eyes widened in horror. They were about to do things that would normally get them suspended, but because this school was run by students, there was always an avenue around the norm. It was just a matter of hitting the mark, and they were about to gamble on it—just like with everything else they did.

“Eon, let’s go.”

“Yes, let’s.”

Eon stripped away his glasses to reveal his rainbow-coloured eyes and initiated his own future sight as Mayumi did the same.

It was their trump card. Compared to Mayumi’s, Eon’s clairvoyance was so much more powerful that it would overwhelm Mayumi’s on the Teller sonograph, not unlike radio interference. Now, they just needed to make sure that any measurements from before Eon used his clairvoyance, were removed and shredded.

Unlike Mayumi’s clairvoyance, however, from the start Eon’s abilities were whole and complete. It was not destructive on his body, it didn’t create long-term health complications, and it could truly be activated at will. The reason he wore polarized glasses was for tuning down the ultra-sharpness in image quality that his clairvoyant eyes gave, and to filter out the vibrant visualization of the sixth sense—the mana fields of the ether. In a sense, his natural vision was essentially the holy grail of Teller sonographs.

However, he still suffers from the backlash of using his abilities, similar to how Mayumi becomes fatigued, but many times worse because his powers were simply too potent. It was not uncommon for him to be bedridden after using his powers.

He did not enter visions through dreamlike trances. The accuracy and quality of his future sight were many times greater than Mayumi’s, and there were no side effects upon returning from the trance. In fact, it was no different from watching a television programme, complete with freely manoeuvrable three-dimensional vantage points and timeline controls.

While Eon was also forbidden from using future sight on school grounds, because of the sorry state he would get himself into for using it in any significant capacity, the most he would get from the school was a light reprimand. Compared to Mayumi, who had a very sketchy academic record that was rather thoroughly documented, he could take a few hits before the authorities realized what was going on, they concluded together.

Quite importantly, Eon’s powers could see beyond the event horizon. This meant that observable events dependent on random chance, such as revealing cards from a randomly shuffled deck, was something Eon could see straight through, unlike with Mayumi. It was a game-breaking power, though causality was usually preserved by knocking him out unconscious depending on how much he saw and how much knowledge he gained; the greater the deviation was from the predetermined arrows of time, the longer he would remain comatose.

Luckily, he needed not to look beyond the event horizon this time around. There were only a few predetermined future paths to take, and Eon needed to peek into the consequences of the decisions they were about to make—and Mayumi was doing the same.

They considered having Mayumi to arrive even earlier to scout out the entire place using her future sight, but doing so for each and every room for at least an hour and a half into the future was just too much for her to handle. Just inspecting the few neighbouring classrooms were enough, they thought, before Mayumi would be too tired out from carrying out the actual deed.

Only a second later, they both returned from their dream worlds drenched in sweat. They stared at each other as they panted exhaustedly at using their powers, and when they noticed each other glancing at Cecilia at the same time, mutual understanding flashed across their eyes. Eon’s consciousness was struggling already, and he had a few minutes left before he would collapse from the backlash. They both saw only one path forward that would favour them, and they quickly approached Cecilia together.

“…is something wrong?”

She questioned hesitantly as the two of them loomed over her; figuratively since Mayumi was much shorter than Cecilia. They both nodded at her, and Mayumi put a hand on her shoulder.

“We’ll take care of all the rest. For you, we need you to do just one thing, and only you can do it. Don’t worry, it’ll work out, okay? We saw it already, so you just have to do it.”

After a minute of whispers, Cecilia recoiled at Mayumi’s explanation of her mission, but it made complete sense. It was the best and only way out of what they got themselves into. She didn’t realize what Stephen meant by the consequences of hitching onto the Mayumi wagon, but she did now, and curiously she found that she had no regrets doing so. Cynically, at the end of any trials, really only Mayumi would be punished for pulling a stunt like this, so Cecilia was comfortable to be merely an accessory to Mayumi’s Armageddon; though she worried deeply about how it would manifest. It also called into question why she agreed to do this in the first place, but it was too late to muse about that. For the first time in a long time, she felt alive off the theatre stage, as if she was finally the star of her own story.

“Okay, let’s do it.”