Apparently, Touma had still not returned by 9 pm. This was evidently enough reason to be greatly concerned according to Index as Touma was a type of person to break curfew not for personal leisure but to fight other hostile enemies. Index was ready to swear that Touma right now was fighting some unknown enemy for all the wrong reasons. And most likely, there was a damsel in distress involved.
Greatly frustrated for being detained like a crippled in a hospital, Haru began to fiddle around with the security systems of the building. In online hacking communities he was famous under the alias "Sleeping Dragon", this nickname was earned because while he was not involved with significant hacking events and was relatively in seclusion compared to his fellow hackers, his reputation as a genius at coding still grew over time. He was not a malicious hacker by any means—perhaps that contributed to the lack of zeal by the authorities to properly detain him—but he was rather mischievous with his powers. Rather than hacking for profit or damage, he aimed more for mockery and aesthetic purposes, purely driven by his urge for adventure and the doped up feeling he gained while actually engaging in adventurous behavior. One can relate to the fact that when one does something exciting, their heartbeat goes up, their blood flows faster, their hands go cold. He drove for these feelings constantly; he turned to physical combat for endorphin and hacking for sheer thrill. He would do anything for such emotions to rush through his system.
A few hours of fiddling around with the hospital security gained him good access to the majority of their systems. Contrary to what people saw within the media, hacking was not an easy task; they must first gain the main access code that made up the system they were infiltrating. It was akin to accessing the wires and circuits within a physical machine, opening past the outside cover. Then one had to understand and decompile the original code in order to properly access them. Only then can one start to actually construct the code designed to invade the system, and don't even get him started on what purposes the code itself has to achieve, including covering up your tracks, trying not to trigger every single trap along the way, disguising itself in various ways not to raise flags, and et cetera. To an ordinary person the level of the coding system used in a professional hospital like this would take them days to complete above tasks with proper equipment. Only Haru's expertise allowed him to do this within mere hours on his Galaxy S3 (his blue Gekota phone he mainly used for calling purposes)... granted, it was a smartphone that was rooted and had additional applications installed, but still an impressive feat, nonetheless. And this was only if Haru merely relied on his professionally trained computer skills. If he also decided to use his powers while hacking, he would be able to take it to another level.
Thank goodness for the Swype function on Android, allowing him to type faster—otherwise it would have taken him three times as much time to code, as he would need to click those buttons one by one.
All throughout the dark and silent night he hacked through the hospital records, trampling without care on the laws and regulations surrounding the privacy of those informations. He had no intention of doing harm to the hospital—he was just having some fun. Automatically did he already began to justify his actions while scrolling around, finding out that the patient at room CB143 had his appendix removed 3 hours ago... Patient in room BA045 had cardiopulmonary problems...
Eventually becoming bored with rifling through other patient's medical info, he decided to try his hand on infiltrating the security cameras around the city. Who knows? Maybe he'll catch some people doing funny stuff. He had already done the infiltration days earlier with the help from the clone, allowing him to watch some of the recorded surveillance.
Eying the previously deactivated security CCTV on the ceiling of the room (of course he was the one who disabled it—only amateurs would decide to hack into things without disabling any recording device that could potentially incriminate them. And besides, all he did was to cut off the power source, making it look like an accident. What? It happens all the time.), he contemplated on his choice of connection before deciding on wireless.
Ah, the onion routing! One of his most favorite method of encryption! As the name suggested, it concealed the ongoing flow of information with layers upon layers of encryption. The circuit of information it was sent into had randomly selected checkpoints where each checkpoint unraveled another layer of encryption one at a time. The final checkpoint would peel off the final encryption and deliver the information without ever revealing them, even if one decided to delve into the path the information went through. It was ingenious. Grinning ear to ear, he began to delve into the innermost parts of the Academy City, watching the streets at night...
Only to find out that practically everyone was inside their homes because of the curfew. As the majority of the residents in Academy City were students, they all were inside, sleeping or awake.
Grumbling at the rather disappointing view, he decided to scroll through the previous records, weeks ago, months ago... He decided to try out the records from last Monday.
A few people walked around... he fast forwarded... A truck with an interesting logo hauling some cargo... he fast forwarded... A child, crying on the streets over the dropped ice cream... He fast forwarded...
He was about to give up looking for interesting sights to see before spotting a large, gray truck parked near the ghetto area of the Academy City he dug up from a few days ago. It had its back cover opened, and several men, dressed in regular clothing were carrying something toward the truck... His mining pod! Upon closer inspection it was obvious; his own mining pod, complete with diamond bit drill and shiny titanium cover... Gritting his teeth in anger, he immediately began to analyze the men carrying his precious vehicle.
One was a teenager with unruly blonde hair, mustard yellow jacket, blue jeans, brown shoes, and a nose piercing. Another teenager had black flat hair with a brown shirt and blue trousers. The third teenager had a weird Mohawk, with overall a tacky outfit to match; ripped pants and a blue vest with white shirt. The fourth teenager had shaggy hair, with his red t-shirt and black shorts. Even with all four of them helping, they all struggled to carry the large and heavy piece of machine; apparently they were not able to enter inside the mining pod. Haru gave a proud smirk as he recalled his foolproof way of door activation—a particle scan of his signature tachyonic energy. Unless they decided to force their way in no one would be able to enter the machine itself.
If he was not confined within this hospital, he would have tracked those four down within minutes and beaten them into pulp onto the surface of the pavement. But he had no such luxury. Cursing at the thieves stealing his pod, he began to record the surveillance video from the beginning of the theft, taking care to jot down the license plate of the gray truck. Continuing the video he tracked the progress of the lorry driving through the area. Passing through the District 7, the vehicle parked itself within a run down building, and the garage door closed behind itself.
Well, that building won't stay in one piece for long—The moment he got out from his hospital he was going to demolish the entire structure to the point where a single brick won't be on top of another—
*knock knock knock*
"Wha..." Haru muttered while staring at the door. Who was that? Couldn't be one of the nurses as it was a bit over 10 o'clock...
"One minute," Haru called out to the door as he hurriedly hid all the evidence of his law breaking. Placing his equipment safely out of sight, he walked toward the door and opened it.
It was the clone who was standing in front of the door. She was for some reason dressed in her normal attire as opposed to wearing a hospital gown.
"Oh hey, Imouto." Haru greeted. "How's it going?"
"Misaka needs your assistance immediately." She went straight to the point. "Misaka understands that you can transport people over large distances. I need to be somewhere as soon as possible."
He couldn't fathom the reason for her sudden need for departure. "Well, um, uh... isn't this a bit late?"
"This mission is of the utmost importance," the clone replied. "Someone else is fighting against Accelerator for us."
...WHAT.
Seriously? Now?
"Alright, how do you exactly know this?" Haru stared at the clone, flabbergasted. "I mean, unless you received a call or something—"
"Misaka will explain once Misaka gets there. He needs our help immediately. He won't last long if we do not intervene." The clone monotonously replied.
Well, she was right—he himself didn't last over 10 minutes with that monster. "How far do we have to go?"
"Misaka needs to be at the nearest unoccupied wind turbine."
… Wind turbine? He had no idea how standing near a wind turbine would help, but if she said so... Taking out his phone, he began to search for all the locations of the wind turbines within the city.
… The nearest one to the hospital was several hundred meters away.
"Okay, here is the thing. If we are to go over long distances, I need some time to map out the calculations. I'll need about 5 minutes of silence... You can sit over there for now." He gestured toward an extra chair as he sat down on the bed, closed his eyes, and began to concentrate.
Traveling through time he was comfortable with, as he did it more frequently, and it required less calculation than moving over large distances (funnily enough). Traveling through time was simple; he converted himself into tachyon particles and by going faster than the light he traveled to his past. This action was for the most part stationary; the particles he transformed into moved around within the confined space dictated by himself and transformed back. He did this numerous times, and had a set of equations already memorized within his head, ready to be used at any time.
Selecting a specific geographical point to travel to, however, required a little more effort. Each different destination and starting points needed their own specific equation just to calculate the route. Light in vacuum is able to cycle the earth approximately seven and a half times within one second. Particles traveling faster than that even more so. It was not as simple as going from Point A to Point B; he needed to transform into tachyon particles, start from Point A, circle around the earth at least over 7 and a half times, and arrive at Point B. Of course he could skip that extra step if he wished, but his control over the hyperactive particles would be very unstable, increasing his chances of self-obliteration through scattering of particles. By giving himself a breathing room of an extra second he would be able to greatly stabilize the transmigration. It would be no exaggeration to compare calculations he needed to achieve to brain surgery and rocket science combined; only his genius intellect allowed him to form and test and check all the calculations within his head in such a short amount of time.
"Alright, I'm ready." Standing up, he grabbed the clone's hand tightly as he mentally prepared for the travel. "Brace yourself."