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Psychic Squad
The Children—comprising three Level 7 ten-year-old espers named Kaoru Akashi (a psychokinetic), Aoi Nogami (a teleporter), and Shiho Sannomiya (capable of psychometry)—are members of the Base of Backing ESP Laboratory (B.A.B.E.L.), though are unhappy with the woman assigned to lead them in operations. The Children are deployed to apprehend a criminal esper known as Muscle Ōkama, and while he initially gets away, they are later able to stop him from stealing a gold statue in a museum with the help of Kōichi Minamoto, who had recently been transferred to take over as the field leader of The Children.
During Minamoto's orientation tour of B.A.B.E.L. headquarters, the precognition division issues an alert that there is a high probability of a fire at a certain gas station. The Children are sent to the scene and manage to stop a plane in mid-flight before it crashes into the station, saving the pilot's life. However, Kaoru forgets about the plane, and it crashes into the gas station anyway. During a medical examination, Kaoru destroys an expensive medical device to assess her psychic abilities, and during a later operation, Kaoru's powers go out of control. She uses her powers to stop her heart and regain control, and Minamoto manages to bring her back to life.
Minamoto moves into his new apartment, but is uninformed that the chief of B.A.B.E.L. had approved that The Children would come to live with him. He initially dislikes the notion of sharing his apartment with the girls, and gets angry at them after they uncover a yearbook from his elementary school days. The Children go into the town after he yells at them, and become hostages when an esper holds up a bank. The esper notices their limiters and tries to get them to help him since they are all espers, but they decline and help apprehend the criminal. Afterwards, Minamoto decides to let The Children stay at his apartment.
Naomi Umegae, a Level 6 psychokinetic otherwise known as "Wild Cat", is having trouble controlling her powers while out in the field, and her field leader Ichirō Tanizaki asks the help of Minamoto and The Children to find out what her problem is. They secretly spy on Naomi when she goes to school so as to get some indication, but they do not find anything strange. However, Shiho gets an indication of what is wrong via her powers, and asks Kaoru and Naomi to have a psychic match where Kaoru can only attack Naomi's clothes, and Aoi gets to help Naomi with her teleportation ability. During the fight, Naomi is called out on a mission and Ichirō comes calling Naomi "his Naomi". Naomi finally gets very angry and attacks both the criminal and Ichirō for being perverted old men. Her problem with focus before was due to Ichirō trying to make Naomi into the perfect wife which she greatly resents him for.
Minamoto realizes that The Children want to go to school and tries to get the chief's endorsement thereof only to learn that their school attendance is precluded by their high psychic powers. Minamoto spends an entire night formulating a mission for them to go to school, and shows it to the chief who likes the proposition. During a simulation to emulate the school classroom for them, Kaoru gets angry when one of the robotic children starts talking bad about espers and she uses her powers. Afterwards, the robots start to go berserk and it is suspected that the Normal People, an anti-esper organization, is controlling them. The robots are soon stopped, but one of the Normal People almost gets away with data showing Kaoru's earlier outburst in the classroom simulation.
The Children finally get to attend their first day of school, and during this time B.A.B.E.L. is keeping a close watch on their actions. Minamoto even infiltrates the school wearing a suit which renders him invisible so as to stop Kaoru if she goes too far and uses her powers against someone. One of their classmates notices the limiters on Kaoru, Aoi, and Shiho, and shows them that she too is an esper and wears a limiter. A boy named Tōno in their class dislikes espers and picks a fight with Kaoru, and an eraser flies and hits him in the head at this time, which makes him think it was Kaoru using her powers even though she did no such thing. Later, during physical education class, Tōno challenges Kaoru to a game of dodge ball, but if she uses her powers, he will never acknowledge espers. During the match, Tōno realizes that it was not Kaoru who threw the eraser before, and suspects that there are some invisible people around, which are in fact Minamoto and the other is later found out to be the chief.
A new Esper Counter Measure (ECM) device which can block psychic abilities is tested on The Children without them knowing, and Kaoru injures her hand because of it, and gets very angry at the chief. Later, The Children fall into a trap set up by the Normal People who has stolen the new ECM and capture The Children and Minamoto. They torture him to tell him the password into B.A.B.E.L.'s computer mainframe, but he does not tell until they bring in Kaoru with the threat that she will get hurt. However, the password he tells them deletes all the files they attempted to access, and activates a temporary Esper Counter Counter Measure (ECCM) device which gives The Children back their powers for a short time. After the battery in the laptop runs out, one of the Normal People almost kills Minamoto which causes Kaoru to go berserk and cause the culprit considerable pain, nearly killing him. Minamoto manages to calm her down before she goes too far.
Kyōsuke Hyōbu, a very strong eighty-year-old esper that appears much younger due to him psychically altering his cells, briefly appears before The Children and at B.A.B.E.L. which brings the chief and Minamoto to go to the maximum security prison for espers where he should be, but is not able to be contained because of his enormous power. During this time, one of the guards helps some of the esper criminals to escape—a mere diversion to allow a single prisoner (the actual ringleader) to get away. In her excitement during the battle, Kaoru tries to overpower the prisoner with a telekinetic blast that ends up breaching a reinforced outer wall and making it easier for the prisoner to rendezvous with a submarine. Kyōsuke appears before Kaoru to guide her through focusing her powers. With the submarine destroyed and the ringleader, along with the other fugitives, subdued, there is little comfort when Kyōsuke's instruction proves overwhelming for Kaoru whose powers soon go out of control. Kyōsuke departs during all of these events but not before contributing to stopping Kaoru's psychic powers by guiding Minamoto and his crew to his cell which is lined with ESP Counter Measure generators.
The Children are annoyed that Minamoto constantly treats them like children, and Kyōsuke appears before Minamoto to hypnotize him into perceiving The Children as adults to test him to see if he would be sexually attracted to them. This tires him out quickly, but Kyōsuke later shows up and tells The Children about the situation which entice them to see how Minamoto will react around them. The Children are dispatched during a mission and easily manage to apprehend the criminal, but afterwards they continue to torment Minamoto. This causes him to snap and he yells at them for how they are acting which makes them cry. The hypnotism wears off after this, and he reconciles with them.
The Children get called away as they are going to school on a mission to save a sunken ship named the Namikazemaru. They use a special submarine named B.A.B.E.L. 2 to teleport into the ship, and find that there were many stowaways among the survivors. Aoi transports all of them back to B.A.B.E.L. 2, but since it has nearly reached its capacity, Aoi transports herself back, which leaves Minamoto with Kaoru while the survivors are unloaded back at B.A.B.E.L. headquarters. Kyōsuke's hypnotism activates once again when he calls Kaoru a kid, much to his shock. Kyōsuke appears before them and informs Minamoto that Kaoru has lost a lot of body heat due to retaining the psychic barrier to keep the ship from imploding. Kyōsuke tries to make Minamoto submit to him, therefore letting him cast a near-permanent form of hypnosis on him, but Minamoto resists long enough for Aoi and Shiho to come back and save them. It is later discovered that Kyōsuke's hypnosis on Minamoto has completely disappeared.
The Chief decides to give the main B.A.B.E.L. staff a company vacation at an outside onsen retreat in the mountains, and everything is running smoothly until Minamoto starts suspecting two foreigners due to suspicious circumstances after the chief's and Ichirō's yukata go missing. Minamoto and Shūji tail the blond man with sunglasses, while The Children secretly follow the foreign woman. The woman restrains Aoi and Shiho and incites a fight with Kaoru that ends after Minamoto interferes. The blond man reveals that he and the woman are special espers from Comerica, and are here to capture internationally-wanted criminal espers. Following this, the criminals are revealed, and the children help in their capture. The members of B.A.B.E.L. spend the rest of their vacation in leisure.
Minamoto is given a very important mission together with Aoi to take something in a briefcase to the prime minister of Japan, though he is currently about to attend a conference in another country. Aoi gets in a fight with Kaoru and Shiho before they leave since she thinks they do most of the work on their missions. During the mission, Minamoto and Aoi get captured and thrown in a holding cell due to the actions of a government spy intending to interfere with their mission. Minamoto extracts a portable Esper Counter Counter-Measure to allow Aoi to teleport them out and continue with the mission. Minamoto stays behind to apprehend the spy who has escaped in a plane and caught up with Aoi. The spy fires homing missiles at Aoi who turns them against him, destroying his plane and leading to him being apprehended. Upon delivery of the package, Aoi finds out that inside the briefcase is a pillow since the prime minister cannot get to sleep unless using this pillow, which angers Aoi. Aoi later reconciles with Kaoru and Shiho as the three stick together as a team.
The Children are given an assignment to write up a composition on their families. Kaoru's family consists of her mother and older sister who are both popular in the media. When Kaoru arrives at her mother's and sister's, her family is not there, though some overzealous fans of Kaoru's mother and sister try to come in which causes Kaoru to destroy her family's home with her psychic powers. Members from B.A.B.E.L. help them move into a new home, though Kaoru's mother and sister constantly try to get closer to Minamoto. Kaoru confronts them, saying that they are too afraid of her to even scold her and runs off. Minamoto, Aoi, and Shiho go after her and find Kaoru talking with Kyōsuke about joining with him if she wants to in the future. Minamoto gets word that Kaoru's family has been abducted and B.A.B.E.L. mobilizes, tracing the abductors to a warehouse by the coast. When The Children arrive, they find a crowd of fans wanting to take pictures of Kaoru's mother and sister, though they start taking pictures of The Children as well. The culprits are apprehended and Kaoru reconciles with her family.
Accosted by a trio of thugs one night, a young man makes a life decision to wield his newly-discovered Level 3 telekinesis as the vigilante Masked Justice by occluding the trachea of his quarry. Frightened for her normal development being disrupted by the psychometric police work being asked of her, Minamoto seethes with resentment as he watches Shiho in action and intercedes. The National Police Agency director arrives with the perspective that age is not an excuse against a citizen being obligated to assist in criminal investigations. The revelation that Shiho is the daughter of the Director marginalized for the moment to subside, Minamoto quickly departs with Shiho after making it clear that there better be a logical rationale for ordering Shiho's psychometry wielded in policework before he cooperates. Not being able to see anything insightful with her psychometry during Detective Uchida's initial tour through Maked Justice's journey, Shiho eventually reasons that Masked Justice actively hunts for quarry to attack without warning rather than randomly encountering it. Shiho successfully identifying the perpetrator does her little good as she is suddenly abducted after being isolated from her teammates. The abduction foiled with a couple of telekinetic shoves from Kaoru and a dropped object on Aoi's part, Uchida's attack is foiled by the Director's timely intervention. During the car ride home, Shiho assures Minamoto that she is accustomed to there being a dysphoric face to the world because he protects her right alongside Kaoru and Aoi.
The Japan Prime Minister detecting the treachery of Colonel J.D. Grisham prompts him to summon B.A.B.E.L. with the exhortation to apprehend the Comerican renegade. Sakaki sets off by car while the Wild Cat and Doubleface teams set off by helicopter to pique the Colonel's interest and instigate something for the B.A.B.E.L. Precognition Department to detect. Even after all she has seen and endured with Kaoru, Mary still cannot believe that Kaoru is a Level 7 telekinetic. The rivalry is set aside for the moment when the Colonel is detected at a dam. En route to the scene, Minamoto explains that the objective is to illuminate and apprehend all the defectors (the Colonel as well as the adversary agents) while Kyōsuke sees this event as entertainment and heads out to watch. After several hours of waiting, Shiho decides to approach the Colonel to discern his intention only to find that the Colonel's Level 7 telepathy affords the ability to wield any nearby esper powers to his advantage and has earned him the title Esper Killer. After the Colonel evacuates from the battle scene (probably by using Aoi's teleportation), Ken detects an abandoned cell phone and Mary telekinetically retrieves it. Shiho's psychometric inspection of the phone reveals that the Colonel's plans to head to a dam at a certain time the next day, basically inviting B.A.B.E.L. and Liberty Bell to come witness the event and challenge him there.
While Colonel Grisham reminisces about his former military days in which his bomber was destroyed by an esper soldier, B.A.B.E.L. uses its nocturnal layover in a nearby motor hotel to process the previous confrontation for clues as to how to do better next time. Kaoru and Mary's rivalry flaring up again is only extinguished by Ken's cacophonous recital of Colonel Grisham's back story of his recuperation expedited by no small margin at the hands of a young Japanese girl named Saya, prompting Minamoto to investigate the epilogue. The decision to only use telekinesis in the ensuing confrontation is complicated by the Colonel having telepathically predicted the assault and wielding the telekinesis to double the detrimental effect. Angered about the Colonel's mammary depiction, Kaoru and Mary's combined telekinesis starts to drain away the reservoir to reveal an abandoned city. As Naomi accelerates the process with her telekinesis, Minamoto explains that Colonel Grisham's defection is a mirage driven by his desire to have both Japan and Comerica drain away the reservoir so that the terminally-ill Saya (who he had Aoi and Shiho transport to the scene) could see her birthplace one final time. After they take a short respite to recover themselves, Kaoru, Mary, and Naomi rally their combined telekinesis behind the Colonel to finally drain the reservoir and set the water aside. Recalling his role in Colonel Grisham's current status, Kyōsuke even decides to lend his hypnotic assistance to cast Saya as the young girl with her house as it was 60 years ago and smooth out the political aftermath with the Comerican government.
After being shown a video of the level 4 metamorph Hatsune and the Level 4 metempsychosist Akira being directed through a B.A.B.E.L. candidacy test which they did not quite pass, Minamoto is charged with helping to polish Hatsune and Akira into induction as B.A.B.E.L. Special Espers. Unfortunately, Minamoto devotes so much to this assignment that he frequently overappraises Hatsune's inhibitions with regard and proximity to food and begins to neglect his esper charges who jealously accuse him of abandoning them. After Hatsune is refined to avoid capitulation to her hunger for an hour, it is decided that Hatsune and Akira be wielded against Kaoru, Shiho, and Aoi at their natural Level 7 potency designation in a sort of flag football/scavenger hunt exercise. When he and Taizō decide to play hardball, Hatsune makes a frantic flight with Minamoto as her payload after developing the fallacious and feral notion to claim him for herself. Forrtunately, Kaoru signaling her mortal intentions against her convinces Hatsune to stand down and return Minamoto who declares that he intends to stay The Children's supervisor after Hatsune and Akira's induction into B.A.B.E.L. as The Hound Special Esper Team.
During the prelude to the school day one morning, Kaoru's despondency at discovering a love letter from a girl at her grade level intensifies when Shiho and Aoi find their shoe lockers full of love letters from various anonymous suitors. Unfortunately, Shiho and Aoi being invited into a weekend outing prompts an anxious and overprotective Taizō to engage in research on Shiho and Aoi's infatuated suitors and to expect the worst of them as he orders illegal surveillance established. Finding that they have left early in the morning for their euphoric diurnal engagements, Kaoru reminisces back five years ago when she met Shiho and Aoi after arriving at B.A.B.E.L. and sets to spying on her teammates frightened of her special esper team disbanding. Minamoto finds Kaoru sulking and decides to engage her in a one-on-one euphoric diurnal engagement. Minamoto's protests of hauling a large payload of purchased items of dubious necessity and utility gives way to seeing the B.A.B.E.L. One helicopter flying overhead complying Taizō's volition to disrupt Shiho and Aoi's dates at all costs. As Minamoto reads Taizō the riot act for his behavior, Kaoru telekinetically demonstrates her intense jealousy but fortunately sees the light when a B.A.B.E.L. soldier is forbidding romantic relationships between espers and normal people before having Shiho and Aoi led away. A thoroughly-demolished E.C.M. generator and a bunch of telekinetically-scattered B.A.B.E.L. soldiers later, Taizō is read the riot act for the wasted company time and taxpayer money while Kaoru reconciles with Shiho and Aoi who (after having broken up their incipient relationships) are jealous of her extra one-on-one time with Minamoto.
Disgusted with both the now unconscious weaponry smugglers and one incidence of lecherous affection too many, Naomi abruptly flies off into the night against Ichirō's protests. Back at B.A.B.E.L. Headquarters, a very anguished Ichirō shares a collection of photographs that he has taken of Naomi. After the sentiment of him having dubious ethics subsides for the moment, Ichirō shows some recent photographs that show Naomi confronting a boy and of her shoplifting. Despite the feeling of deja vu, Kaoru, Shiho and Aoi realize that Ichirō is sincerely worried about Naomi; at Minamoto's behest, Akira begins the investigation by metempsychotically possessing a hamster and searching through the Kuretake B.A.B.E.L. Girls' Dormitory to find Naomi's room—the journey thereof being quite an adventure. Minamoto and Sakaki continue to watch Naomi conduct herself through a normal school day to find nothing of interest until Naomi (after dressing the part) sets course toward a biker bar to ask the gang there about a rash of robberies vectored at junior high students that have taken place in their neighborhood. During her explanation, the photographs that Ichirō recently took are of Naomi confronting a boy (who had sold some stolen property and given the revenue to the gang) and then secretly returning the stolen item. After an argument about the merits of believing the best of people versus always assuming the worst, the bad apple Yatsu is illuminated. A chase ending in a joint Kaoru-Naomi telekinetic bungee cord and a tearful embrace exchange between brother bikers before the police arrive to arrest Yatsu later, Naomi finds herself with a personal protection and inspiration detail within the Young Tigers Motor Gang Red.
Interrupted from reveling at the full moon by his growling stomach, Momotarō decides to seek some sunflower seeds and becomes infatuated with a female squirrel prior to transporting his payload. Unfortunately, Momotarō loses his balance and unwisely tries to save the seeds—the penalty of which is induction into the slipstream of a passing truck and being electrocuted. Several hours later, Kaoru discovers the unconscious Momotarō during the return trip home from school and immediately decides to nurse him back to health at home—a decision that Shiho and Aoi are not entirely thrilled with. During his metempsychotic possession of a bird, Akira spotting an abandoned laboratory in the forest prompts Minamoto to call a recess and investigate. Meanwhile, after Kaoru cautiously attempts to feed Momotarō (who snaps awake to angrily chomp her finger not understanding her intentions), Shiho psychometrically discovers that Momotarō has no memory. Kashiwagi's arrival to keep an eye on the girls complicates things with the prospect of Momotarō's dysphoric discovery. Another psychotic episode of Momotarō acting out prompts Minamoto to explain that residential coexistence with Momotarō is impossible because of the wartime experimentation done on him. As if to prove Minamoto's situational ethics correct, Momotarō recovering himself to again jump to conclusions ignites another battle. After objecting to Minamoto chasing after Momotarō on the grounds that he is what she along with Shiho and Aoi once were—a maltreated creature whose life is of the same priceless value that theirs are, Kaoru leads her teammates after Hatsune and convince her to stand down before confronting Momotarō. Kyōsuke arrives to aid Kaoru with the sentiment that espers can only be truly understood by another esper before departing with Momotarō (who has come to his senses enough to truly understand Kaoru's intentions). In aggregate, it has been demonstrated that Minamoto truly practices what he preaches regarding the ethical challenges of using defensive force and of all life having the same priceless value.
