| abstract | - The chapter opens with a Amai running into Nokleben’s room, questioning him about the other countries that had taken responsibility over The Level 6 Shift project. Nokleben explains if Mikoto attacks any of the 183 factories, Nokleben would not have to pay them, making Mikoto’s factory attacks essentially useless. Mikoto stumbles out of a telephone booth, finding out about the new deals. She returns despondently returns home, much to Kuroko’s anger (As she assumes Touma was the source of her misery). She tries to figure out ways to stop the project and can only think of one. Mikoto asks Kuroko what would happen if she did something that disturbed something that was “fundamental to Academy City”. Kuroko replies that it is her duty to do so, and Mikoto being the culprit would make no difference, much to Mikoto’s relief. She sleeps later that night and has a dream about the past; She remembers herself as a child breaking a Gekota plush toy and crying. Her mother, Misuzu, promises Mikoto that she would ‘call up Santa’ to tell him to fix the toy. Young Mikoto wakes in the morning, to find a fixed Gekota next to her and she runs up to her mother. Present day Mikoto thinks to herself that when she was small, “Mama would always solve everything while I was asleep”, but now, she would have to handle her own problems. Kuroko jumps out of her bed to affectionately hug Mikoto and instead of being hit in retaliation (as she expects), Mikoto pats her on the head with a weary smile on her face. Walking outside, she looks up at the ‘Tree Diagram’ as it makes the weekly weather forecast and hopes that her actions will not affect her friend’s reputations. As she is thinking, Touma calls out for Mikoto, talking about his previous meeting with Misaka 10032. In the middle of him talking, the Tree Diagram interrupts with the weather forecast (again), causing Mikoto to express her hate of the blimp. Touma asks why, to which Mikoto replies that “Because humans are following a plan that was created by a machine”: the chapter ends with Mikoto promising to destroy the project, so that it’ll never give another order again.
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