Riko had done it now. She had guided her friends through the process of choosing a place to eat at for an entire group, one of the most difficult decisions anyone would have to make. They were now, however, thrust into the next most difficult, that of what to order!

Well, Riko wouldn’t have that much trouble thinking of what to get for herself. She didn’t spend too much brainpower thinking about any one topic at all. There wasn’t enough time in the day, and thinking burned energy she could be spending on fighting, singing, or loving. If it came down to it, she’d choose something at random. After all, calories were calories.

This wasn’t about Riko, however. This was about getting her companions out of their comfort zones so they could grow stronger. And tackling these problems distracted her from some things she’d rather not think about. Government conspiracies, involuntary esper experimentation, psychic electronic implants, and her own father’s involvement in such things. She’d perhaps have to tackle the reality of them, some day, but she certainly wasn’t going to tackle anything like that on an empty stomach.

Speaking of things she did want to tackle…

“Hey Aimi! You had better choose what you’re going to get soon or I’m going to hug you!” proclaimed Riko. She thought Aimi looked a bit too on-guard to actually allow herself to be hugged right now, but the threat got her attention.

“You choose for me,” Aimi muttered. “This was your idea. You choose. I don’t care,” Aimi muttered, watching Riko carefully, just in case she opened her arms for that hug. Riko moved side to side, keeping her on edge.

“Oh, I’ll tell you what to get,” Riko replied with an evil grin spreading across her face, “but you’ll have to read my mind to figure out what my suggestion is.” Riko crossed her arms, looking smug.

Aimi’s cold, annoyed aura was growing stronger. “If this is a parapsychology training exercise, why isn’t Ishihara here?”

“Because our leader doesn’t fear her abilities or have trouble controlling them,” Riko laughed. “Now get in my head or pick something on your own.”

Aimi sighed. “You’re thinking of… the two of us, at a health resort, on a shared futon… wearing nothing but robes… hair soaked from the outdoor bath. You aren’t thinking of food at all.” A blush was radiating across her cheeks with the same intensity as the killing intent from her eyes. “Stop wasting time, Nomura.”

Riko giggled and replied, “Oh Aimi-chan, I never said we were playing on Easy Mode. You need to look harder!” Riko closed her eyes, making it easier for her to visualize how she pleased. The inside of the bakery was getting louder as more people filed in—a lot of other school girls, conversing enthusiastically. Every moment of time wasted meant it would be harder for Aimi to concentrate. She'd better hurry, Riko thought.

Aimi gave it another try. “You’re thinking of brushing a wet strand of hair from my face as you look in my eyes. Still nothing to do with food… well. There are two glass bottles of chocolate milk besides the futon on a tray. You, out of tradition, drink chocolate milk after a bath. There is a plate of food on the tray as well. A banh mi style baguette stuffed with what looks to be tofu, vegetables, and a sauce combining ginger, mayonnaise, and other spices.” Aimi, figuring out she may have finally gotten this over with, began rubbing her forehead with her hand to try to clear the visions.

“Not something they usually serve at a countryside inn and onsen. One tofu banh mi for Aimi-chan!” Riko flashed a V sign by her cheek as she gave Aimi a playful wink, and went over to Kyo’s side, who was still making sure she thoroughly examined every kind of sandwich on display.

Kyo was, purely considering her test performance, Kagakujo’s top student. You could ask her any question that you could look up the answer to in a book or search engine, and she’d most likely know it offhand. What she had problems with was any question pertaining to herself. She certainly didn’t know what she wanted to be—possibly why she hadn’t skipped ahead to college, or even further beyond. And she couldn’t decide what to eat for lunch.

Riko grabbed up three tofu banh mi sandwiches. That was herself, Aimi, and Nana taken care of. They were the last three tofu banh mi sandwiches as well; Kyo and Chikyo would have to choose something else. As she grabbed them, she asked Kyo, “Do you really need to examine every sandwich? Your glasses give you 20/20 vision, right? Haven’t you already memorized every label just by walking in?”

Kyo glanced down at her frames, before returning to what she was doing; poking the label on each wall rack describing each sandwich and giving the price. “To be precise, I have 20/10 vision without eye wear. Incandescent and fluorescent light bother me, and the glasses contains filters to mitigate the deleterious effects, like headaches.”

Riko thought about it. Everyone had their way with dealing with the way their abilities made them interact with the world. Aimi shut it out as much as she could, and avoided physical contact, so she could control when and where she thought people’s thoughts. Chiyoko could very well be sensing ghosts and foreboding omens wherever she went, but being able to share her drawings with others let her feel she wasn’t crazy. Nana was like a ninja; she was seen mostly when she wanted to be seen, so that way she could come and go without causing alarm with her sudden disappearances.

For Kyo, every second she was awake, she was being flooded with data, both useful and useless. She had enough to deal with filing it all away inside the infinite library of her mind. Cutting down on some unneeded contrast could alleviate the information overload a bit.

“Every option needs individual consideration if I am to make a fully informed choice,” Kyo explained further. “If the choice was without consequence, you could have just picked up a meal for everyone, correct?”

“Imagine a terrorist with Human Hazard class fire abilities is about to burn down a train station, unless you pick out lunch right now. What do you choose then?” Riko would not have been able to ask that question with a straight face a week ago.

“That seems like a ridiculous scenario. First of all…”

“Ok, what if someone attacks Chiyoko? Do you think about every martial arts move you’ve ever seen and spend an hour picking the best one? Or do you react immediately? The world is a dangerous place, you know.” Riko started to get into Kyo’s face, like she did earlier this morning.

“But… it’s just a sandwich,” Kyo stammered out.

“You’re the one treating it like a life or death decision,” Riko said, raising her voice. “Here’s an idea: Why don’t you choose for Chiyoko? She admires you, you know? She’s always drawing you. You’re more than her ally, or friend, or even her best friend. You’re her knight in shining armor.”

Kyo adjusted her glasses. “Knight in shining armor?”

“You know, like courtly love in medieval Europe. Lancelot and Guinevere. Tristan and Isolde.” Riko let out a little giggle.

“Lancelot consummated his relationship with Guinevere, causing a destructive schism in the court. Tristan and Isolde's titular relationship was an adulterous tragedy.” Kyo sighed. “Your analogies could be improved. And what’s this about armor?”

Riko grinned, and gave Kyo’s glasses a poke. “Armor. They’re protective, not corrective, right? As for consummation, well, unless Chiyoko has a husband, I don’t see why that’s a problem. But that’s a lesson for another time. Just think about what you know about her.”

Kyo tilted her head, and continued to scan the sandwich racks. “Well… she has a predilection for childish things. If she responded well to anything from a bento, it would be sausage cut into the shape of octopuses. She buys a capsule toy whenever she has spare change and passes a dispenser. Her attempts at creating manga characters are primarily things like magical girls and animal mascots.” Her finger touched a rack containing grilled ham & cheese sandwiches, cut into the shape of pigs using a large cookie cutter. “This sort of calls to mind a sausage octopus.”

“Get two of them. She’ll like it more if you both have them.” RIko’s smile was almost bigger than her face.

“Were you going to cover the cost, or…”

“Let Chiyoko see you buy them. I’ll compensate you later.” Riko had dived into a deadly battle with espers in order to help her friends. She was good for some lunch money.

Riko watched as Kyo took the sandwich pigs over and showed them to Chiyoko. As Chiyoko’s eyes lit up, Riko was filled with pride. Maybe it was just because of the novelty of the sandwiches, but Riko believed Chiyoko would like anything if Kyo gave it to her.

Loaded up on sandwiches, it was time for the four of them to choose some place to eat their sandwiches. The sun was out, and there was plenty of park space with tables and seating along the way back to school, so once all their purchasing was done, it was an easy decision for Riko. Now for the intended hard part: getting this pack of socially awkward misfits to have a conversation.

Sitting down and opening up their boxes, the girls pulled out their sandwiches. Aimi chewed thoughtfully on the banh mi sandwich; it was unlikely to be something her grandmother would make for her, and hopefully the spicy flavor would give her something to concentrate on that wasn’t other people's thoughts. Chiyoko, meanwhile, spent a moment considering her sandwich pig, before finally taking a bite, mercifully starting with the head instead of the limbs.

Unable to think of anything better to start a conversation with, Riko began, “So, Kyo, you’ve been keeping up with the news, right?”

Kyo nodded. “I always read the news from my phone on train rides. I used to read books, but I used up my allowance too quickly buying them, and the news is free.”

“What have you seen about the incident at Naka-Megura Station? You know, where Aimi-chan, Ishihara-sama, and I fought a flying fire girl and an out-of-body projection hacker?”

Kyo tilted her head upwards in reflection. “The news only mentions a JSDF training exercise that got out of hand and caused an emergency stop of the trains. The Human Hazard warnings were declared to be in error.” Kyo looked suddenly bothered by something. “You, Aimi, and Nana all told consistent anecdotes regarding last night’s incident. Why is the news so different?”

Riko thought about it, reflecting on what she’s seen as a politician’s daughter. “Well, think about it like this. What if Ishihara-sama wasn’t our great and honorable leader? What if she went around inside of jewelry stores and bank vaults, taking everything she could find? Everyone would immediately go and try to withdraw their money all at the same time! There would be chaos. The government hates chaos, and no news agency wants to make enemies with the government.” Riko rubbed her head. Kyo was too smart to be needing so much help from her.

Kyo tilted her head. “But the news is the news. They cannot tell flagrant untruths, or omit details of broad public interest. Otherwise, they would completely lose the public trust. They may have an editorial bias towards justifying the status quo, but their primary function remains accurately reporting on current events.”

Riko huffed. “Oh come on, Kyo. You know even nowadays, the best place to hear about espers are the tabloids and the independent TV channels. You should be reading those if you expect reporting on the strange and unusual.”

Kyo gasped a bit. “You mean, with all of those mentalists, conjurers, and exorcists that turn out to be frauds? That’s not information, that’s entertainment! I can’t spend my time on that kind of frivolity.”

“They don’t all turn out to be frauds. Some of them are like you guys, I imagine. There have to be plenty of espers out there that can’t make more money in an office than they can on television.” Riko stood up, tossing the remains of her sandwich down on the plastic wrapping it came in. “That’s it, you guys. I know what the parapsychology club needs to be doing! We need to publish a newspaper, or journal, or blog, or video series, or something like that. Tell people about the amazing world we live in.”

Kyo looked up at Riko. “How do you figure?”

“Well, we have a great artist, and if her nensha works on cameras too, photographer. We have an editor who’s an expert in languages, computers, physics, and probably any other subject I can think of. And what better investigators could you ask for than a person who can instantly send themselves anywhere they want to go, and the world’s greatest and most beautiful telepath? Whatever we put out, I’m sure we can get someone to read it.” Riko crossed her arms. “Even if it’s weirdos on imageboards. If we want to be more than a probationary club with no funding, we have to produce something of value, right? This can be how we do it!”

Aimi had begun to glare up at Riko for her teasing, especially now that she felt she had eaten enough of the sandwich to be polite. Setting it down, she grumbled, “And what exactly will you be doing to contribute?”

Riko smiled. “Whatever is asked of me, junior member Riko-chan! Fetch food, fetch drinks, clean up the club room. Plus, we’ll need to write more stuff than we’ll actually use. I can write a bunch of things, then Kyo can trim it down and make it sound smarter. There’s lots of things to talk about. Like the Latent Potential Rating system, and all the super cool esper abilities that are out there.”

"Should we report on the time we fought an esper terrorist in controlled airspace? Left her plummeting towards certain death?" asked Aimi. She only posted rhetorical or sarcastic questions. She knew Riko wasn't going to talk about that.

Riko shook her head. "That's not of broad public interest." Looking over, she saw Kyo and Chiyoko were seated pretty close together. This had been a lunch well spent.

The girls made their way back to school, where Riko explained the plan to their esteemed club leader. Nana nodded along as she ate her sandwich, looking amenable to the idea: a monthly journal, chronicling anything the club had found interesting, whether it was of academic interest such as a recent lecture, or sensationalist reporting such as investigating rumors of ghosts or esper terrorists. With this, they would prove the club legitimate enough to be worthy of funding. 

There was one last question: what to name it?

“Jiyuuna Kokoro”, Nana stated decisively. The ‘free’ or ‘unfettered’ mind. Nana probably meant it in the context of a mind existing far beyond the natural world people understand.

Glancing at Aimi, Riko couldn’t help but think of a mind unbound by heterosexual norms.

There was a world of possibilities when it came to things Riko would write about. Maybe she could find some ghosts at the beach that needed to be exorcised, and make her horoscope drawing come true. Maybe a bit far-fetched, but Riko had seen and heard about all sorts of far-fetched things lately. But she had other duties to attend to first.

“Junior Member Control Sample-chan. Go to the student newspaper room after classes, and convince them to let us use their digital press. The Jiyuuna Koroko is going to be an offline zine.”