Misaka Has Power-A Lot of Power

The carnival was exceptionally lively. The countless ideas that the myriad races of all worlds had squeezed out to flaunt their strength or curry favor with the Empire were no joke. Pick any two or three performances from here, and stuff like x Night would be utterly outclassed.

That was certainly a good thing, but it also had its headaches: faced with an overwhelming array of programs, each sounding more awesome than the last, you would find it difficult to choose between them most of the time.

I had just dragged along Child's Mother, carried the maid crow, led a curiosity-filled Hatsune who had barged in out of nowhere, and watched the civilian recreation of Season Two of Transformers from Cybertron. The electric tricycle whose brake line snapped halfway through the performance had left a particularly deep impression on me. Now I was standing at a three-way intersection in C-5 District, discussing with Bubble whether we should watch the 2011.12 King of Fighters thing that Yashiro Nanakase and the others were putting together, or the thousand-person skeleton dance from Undercity. Somehow, either choice felt deeply depressing.

"Um..." A soft but incredibly magnetic voice cut in just then. Hatsune, who had been utterly confused ever since we started dragging her everywhere, hugged her treasured giant leek—honestly, I was really curious why she valued a leek so much; even if it was an important performance prop, this was a bit excessive, wasn't it?—and timidly offered her opinion. "Wouldn't the skeleton dance be better?"

I immediately stared at her in horror.

"I just... like dancing better." Hatsune shrank back, her big eyes still blinking.

"Are you sure? That's over a thousand skeletons dancing!"

Hatsune: "..."

Well, it seemed that Miku, who loved singing and dancing, had indeed failed to grasp the subtle distinction