In Memoriam (A Certain Magical Index/Scientific Railgun AU)

[Shockz]

Scraped from here.

Someone with a Graveyard of Abandoned Fanfics as huge as mine probably shouldn't be starting on a project this large. But oh well. Several weeks ago, somewhere between realizing that the current season of Railgun is actually really, really good (leagues better than Railgun S1 or Index S2--and probably Index S1, for that matter, to the point where I'm shocked the source material was written by the same guy), reading a blog post talking about how Kuroko is massively underutilized and could very easily be a much more interesting character than she is with a little effort, and facepalming at the turn for the utterly ludicrous that the Index light novels take after the Kazakiri Hyouka arc, I got the idea that I was going to rewrite the entire Raildexverse from the ground up.

And now? IT'S HAPPENING.

This first story, In Memoriam, will roughly correspond to the canonical Index and Level Upper story arcs from Index and Railgun canon respectively.

Fair warning: When I say "from the ground up", I mean "from the ground up". I wanted this to be recognizable as Railgun/Index, so the setting is more-or-less similar on the broadest scale, many story elements and plot points are at least superficially similar, and the names on the cast list are the same, with a few exceptions. But character personalities, motivations and histories may or may not have been shifted drastically. Details of the setting may be mostly similar or entirely different. I'm not so pretentious or egotistical as to say that this will be the story Index should have been, but it's the story I wanted Index to be, and hopefully it's one that you'll enjoy. Mucho credit goes to iospace for being an immensely helpful beta-reader, editor, idea-bouncer-offer, and arguably co-writer. So here we go!

(Table of contents removed due to out-of-date links; see threadmarks!)

 

[Shockz]

Touma/Daily Life, in a Thousand Parallel Worlds

Riddle me this. A handsome teenage boy and a pretty teenage girl are standing together on a bridge. They're more-or-less alone out there, with nothing but the lights of the city around them and the twinkling stars above. They're staring into each other's eyes, faces slightly flushed. What does the girl say to the boy? Is it:

A) "The stars are so beautiful tonight..."

B) "I love you...so much."

C) Trick question; she just starts making out with him.

D) "Say...Do you know what a railgun is?"

The answer, obviously, is D, for several reasons. Reason #1: the boy in question is yours truly, Kamijou Touma, and in spite of my awe-inspiring handsomeness, if a girl this pretty ever falls in love with me, you'd be well advised to watch out for airborne swine. Reason #2: The pretty girl in question is Misaka Goddamn Mikoto, and I am currently on her shit list. For those not particularly familiar with our glorious city and the Important People residing therein, Misaka Freaking Mikoto is number 4 on the list of Top Eight People In Academy City On Whose Shit List You Never, Ever Want To Be, otherwise known as the list of Level 5 espers.

The term 'esper', in spite of its English origins, has a long and storied history here in Japan; the important thing is that it roughly means 'person that can kill you with their brain'. Which makes it a rather shitty translation of the Japanese word I am actually using, which literally comes out as "ability user", but I'll be the first to say that 'esper' sounds a whole lot cooler. Which is probably why the labcoats and/or suits picked it in the first place, since they were part of that first turn-of the-century generation that realized the world needed to be More Awesome.

Actually, come to think of it, that burning desire to make the world More Awesome probably explains a lot about their decision to buy the western third of Tokyo, turn it into a city made entirely out of schools, and populate it almost entirely with people no older than 25. And then try to give them all superpowers.

Which brings me back to the reason why I am somewhat alarmed by the current proximity of a grinning brunette with big brown eyes in a Shidarezakura Private Academy uniform, who has just asked me if I know what a railgun is.

You see, I know perfectly well what a railgun is. I know this because I have done my homework: a railgun is a gun--or, more accurately, a cannon, more often than not a fuckoff huge one--that has no need to bother with silly things like gunpowder in order to propel its highly lethal contents. Instead, it hooks the shell up to two electrically conductive rails, one on each side, and runs a whole lot of electricity through the whole arrangement. By one of the properties of electromagnetism that I have no understanding of whatsoever, the shell is thereby accelerated to a sufficiently ridiculous velocity, and sent on its glorious mission of causing property damage and killing people.

Because I have done my homework, I also know that "The Railgun" is the nickname bestowed upon (or claimed by) Misaka Please Don't Kill Me Mikoto, because an approximation of the weapon's functionality is her preferred method of destroying large things that she feels needs to be destroyed. Her particular superpower is the ability to make any of the eleventy bajillion electrons in her general vicinity go wherever she wants them to go; typically, this manifests in the form of her shooting lightning at people and things in her way. However, if the people or things in her way are sufficiently large and/or offensive to her sensibilities, she will proceed to remove a stolen arcade token from her pocket. Holding it on top of her thumb, she will extend her arm out towards her unfortunate target. She will then flip the coin up in the air with her thumb, and simultaneously begin crackling with secondary electrical phenomena. (These phenomena, incidentally, serve as a signal to the automated self-sealing earplugs she wears at all times to buckle down and brace for sonic impact.) As the coin hits her outstretched thumb, there will be an (often literally) earsplitting crack as said coin suddenly and violently accelerates to over three times the speed of sound, followed by the sound of whatever was in its path being completely annihilated.

I know all this because I have done my homework, as anyone who has a power like my own and an ounce of intelligence would do. I also know this because Misaka ShitShitShitShitShit Mikoto has been explaining the first half, and is currently demonstrating the second half. The coin has just reached the peak of its arc, and is beginning to fall back down. It is entirely possible that I will be horrifically maimed and/or die within the next two seconds. My life naturally flashes before my eyes, giving the narrative a convenient excuse to explain how this situation came to pass.

* * * * * * * *​

The thug is approximately fifteen centimeters taller than me, and a good deal wider. His breath stinks of cheap liquor. He is looking upon me with an expression of disdain, which I know from nearly a decade of experience could turn into either amusement or rage at any second. Neither will bode well for me, and I therefore need to negotiate a way to escape this situation as quickly as possible.

The urgency of the situation is further exacerbated by the fact that the thug, and his similarly thuggish comrades, have not done their homework. If they had, there would have been an audible gulp when they recognized the face of the girl their boss was talking to, followed by all of them quickly remembering that they had urgent business elsewhere. Possibly at the laundromat, depending on exactly how much they knew about the self-assured girl with the slightly jagged haircut.

Thirty seconds ago, the thug had had no comrades. He had been standing over a booth in the cheap family restaurant I was currently occupying, blatantly attempting to chat up the lone girl sitting there. Since, against all common sense, the average Japanese male has not wised up to the concept of "sexual harassment" yet, I reluctantly abandoned my cardboard-like hamburger and stale french fries, attempting to intervene with a quick, shouted greeting, and thus avert the inevitable unpleasant conclusion of this situation.

The moment I saw the girl's face, of course, I realized that it was not the girl but the thug that required protection. However, though the situation had changed, the strategy for dealing with it did not need to--I just had to figure out how to remove the girl in question from the restaurant without things ending in a fight. As I prepared my first statement, however, the front door of the restaurant opened, and several more thugs poured in, locked on to their buddy, and started making their way toward us like a horde of hair-dyed, Hawaiian-shirted, overmuscled lemmings rushing towards their doom.

You may not have noticed by now, but I have approximately the worst luck in the world.

"Right, so, uh...we really need to get going! Let's leave these guys to their...uh...whatever they're doing."

Thus the statement above. The lack of names, which also neatly avoids the problem of honorifics, is carefully calculated to make it as easy as possible for Mikoto to play along. Depending on what she felt appropriate, or even what comes to mind for her first, I could be her boyfriend, older brother, or embarrassing childhood friend for the duration of the encounter. Hell, I'll even take "gay best friend" if it means a clean getaway.

"Who the hell are you?" she says, shattering all of my hopes and dreams in an instant. The thugs all stare at me, clearly just as interested in the answer.

Well, so much for Plan A. Too bad, really. I liked Plan A. Plan A involved nobody getting hurt at all.

Plan B, on the other hand...

My eyes widen suddenly, and focus on something beyond Thug Prime's shoulder. It is merely a stock photo of the Academy City skyline, but he does not need to know that. "Holy shit," I breathe, "it's the cops!"

"Yeah, like I'm going to fall for oof," Thug Prime responds. The "oof" is a rough approximation of the sound he makes as my fist exerts approximately 2.1 kilonewtons of force upon his chest because, as it turns out, you don't actually need to turn all the way around in order for someone to sucker-punch you. Even a split second's distraction will do the trick.

Now, 2.1 kN sounds like a whole lot of apples, but I have been informed by Wikip--uh--a reliable source that it's actually about average for martial artists, boxers, MMA fighters, and other such people who are trained in the art and science of hurting other people with their fists.

I am, arguably, one of these people, which is why I am capable of carefully targeting the punch to inflict only moderate pain, not to injure or disable. In fact, it would be entirely accurate to say that its primary purpose was to incite rage and a desire for retribution.

Yomikawa-sensei would be ashamed.

Yomikawa-sensei shouldn't be anywhere near here, thankfully. And, because running away is a critical element of this half-baked plan and getting beaten to a pulp is not, neither should I. Before the pain signals from Thug Prime's nerve endings finish making their way through the alcohol-induced traffic jam leading to his brain, I vault over a nearby table and take a relatively thug-free path to the restaurant's exit. Without even looking back, I slam two crumpled banknotes--one bearing the number 500 and the other twice that--onto the front counter concealing the cash register, mumble an indistinct apology to the dumbstruck waitress and the incoming customers I damn near ran over, and burst through the front door just as I hear the first "Get 'im!"

There follows a great deal of running. Running on sidewalks, running across streets, running through dingy alleyways, et cetera. Cars are dodged, pedestrians are shoved...you know the drill. The thug horde proves remarkably persistent in their chase; it's nearly a kilometer and a half before my occasional looks back reveal them to have given up the chase. By then I've made it to one of Academy City's numerous bridges across the Tama River, and I'm pretty damn far away from any part of town I'm familiar with. I slow to a stop, panting, my shirt soaked with sweat. I'm in damn good shape, but the human body has limits. I take a minute to catch my breath, to wait for the pain to subside.

Then I turn around to check again...

* * * * * * * *​

Mikoto

...and there he is. I size him up: About my age. Average height, unremarkable face. Black hair, spiked, which isn't something you see much anymore. High school summer uniform. Looks cheap--he's not at any of the really nice schools, so he's probably not a high-level esper. Which means he's got serious big brass ones, to take on eight guys at once like that. But that's just what's bugging me.

"Here's what I don't get," I say by way of greeting. "Any single one of your responses, taken in isolation, makes sense." I hold up my fist, and raise one finger. "Try to intervene peacefully for my sake? Okay, I'm not gonna hold a little white-knighting against you." Two fingers: "Punch the guy? Sure; violence usually does solve these kinds of problems." And three: "Run away with your tail between your legs? I could hardly blame you. But." I lower fingers and fist and do my best to look thoughtful. "The end goal implied by any one of those doesn't really gel with the other two. You did all three. And it's not like you suddenly lost your nerve, either; you didn't try the pretend-you-know-me thing or the punch until after you'd already seen the reinforcements."

"What happened to them?" His expression is neutral.

And just like that, it all clicks into place. "Oh my God." I grin and snap my fingers, intentionally letting them spark. He doesn't flinch or even look surprised; hypothesis rapidly gaining further support. "You weren't protecting me; you knew who I was, and you were protecting them. You actually were. That is--wow. You are something else." I shake my head. I have a feeling I know who this guy is now. Still needs experimental confirmation, though. I look him straight in the eye and run a hand through my hair, amplifying the natural static buildup until it crackles visibly. He stands his ground. "Say...Do you know what a railgun is?"

* * * * * * * *​

Time seems to slow to a halt, as the arcade token falls back towards my outstretched thumb. I see the guy begin to dive out of the way, the expression on his face making it clear that he knows it probably won't help much. I feel the hum of the electromagnetic fields around me as arcs of electricity crackle across my arm. The coin falls lower and lower...

Until I flip my hand over and catch it in my palm. Huh. Heads.

The guy, meanwhile, has just taken a pavement dive that looks no less painful for its intentionality, and is tightly plugging his ears with his fingers. Smart of him. He opens one eye, and gradually realizes that he hasn't suffered death by supersonic arcade token.

"Jeez, is my rep really that bad?" I ask him, idly flipping the coin a few more times as he pulls himself to his feet. "People think I just railgun random dudes who try to help out? I mean, I've never even actually killed anyone. The delinquents are fine, by the way. A little crispier than they used to be, but nothing worth freaking out about."

He's brushing himself off now. "You're a Level 5," he says with a shrug. "You're all some kind of batshit crazy."

"Aw, now that's just mean." I grin at him, but mentally tick off all the other Level 5s I've met or heard about. Accelerator...Shokuhou...Meltdown...freaking Sogiita...holy crap, he's right. "What makes you think I'm crazy?"

"Well, you did just kind of string me along into thinking you were about to casually murder me."

"Which you would only actually believe if you already thought I was psychologically unstable. So now we're back to square one."

"No, I...but...uh..." He buries his face in his hand. "I'm way too tired for this. Can I go home now?"

"Not just yet," I say, still grinning. "I want to confirm one last thing."

"What?"

"I just wanna know what happens when I do this!"

"This" is a bolt of electricity aimed in his general direction. It's not a normal bolt; I'm manually guiding the electrons along a specific path instead of altering the relative electrical charges at source and target and letting physics do the rest of the work. The result is something that looks like a lightning bolt, but carries practically no energy and travels slightly slower than a Little League fastball.

And...yep, there we go.

The guy doesn't do the sensible thing and dodge this time. Instead, he raises his right hand, and holds it out in front of him, almost like he's telling the bolt to halt where it stands. At the last second, I tweak the path of the bolt, guiding it dead into the center of his palm.


And halt it does.

A fraction of a centimeter from the surface of the guy's skin, I suddenly lose control over the electron beam. Without much of an electric field to push them anywhere, the electrons go back to behaving like normal, harmless subatomic particles again. The end result is that when the light show's subsided, he's standing there unscathed. (Not that that weaksauce excuse for a lightning bolt would have done much more than stung his pride.) Hypothesis confirmed.

"So that's who you are," I say. "Never really believed it before. 'IPD fields don't work that way,' I thought; 'there's no way anyone could actually have that as a power!' Shows what I know, I guess." I roll my eyes self-deprecatingly. "So is it really just your hand, or--"

I blink. He's running away again.

...He's a really fast runner.

* * * * * * * *​

Touma

Yes, it's just my hand.

Well, technically, the effect extends up my right forearm, and ends roughly at my elbow joint. Starting at precisely 6.39 millimeters above the skin of that part of my arm, IPD fields quite simply do not form, and will dissipate within 85 microseconds of entering that space. The rest of my body has a much weaker version of the same effect; IPD fields won't form inside me, but they won't dissipate quite as quickly. I have no control over the size or strength of this anti-IPD field, with one exception: If I can touch another esper with my right hand, and maintain physical contact, their powers will stop working until I let go.

"IPD", by the way, stands for Involuntary Physical Distortion. Which is kind of a misnomer, as the existence of IPD fields is only relevant when they're very much voluntary. Supposedly, all human brains emit weak IPD fields naturally, as a simple byproduct of thinking so damn much. Espers, though, have control over the IPD fields they emit, which, through mechanisms that are as of yet poorly understood, allow them to make the laws of physics dance for them.

Except for me. I can't do anything but maintain normality. Now, granted, it's still enough to get me ranked as a Level 1 esper (Powers Too Weak To Be Useful Except Under Very Rare And Unusual Circumstances), but I have strong reason to believe they were seriously considering designating me as a Level 0 (No Powers Whatsoever Despite Undergoing the Kihara Process). It is fortunate for me that they didn't, as being a Level 1 means I'm ever-so-slightly more valuable as a potential research subject, and thus receive a slightly larger stipend for living here.

That increase helps offset the medical bills.

You see, one's social status in Academy City is largely determined by two major factors: one's powers, and the quality of one's school. Due to the aforementioned stipend system, the former tends to lead directly to the latter. As such, one's place in the overall pecking order can generally be estimated by one's Level, and--especially at the lower end of the power spectrum--trying to break out of that order can rapidly result in getting higher-Level powers violently applied to one's face.

But once in a while you get someone whose powers don't quite fit into the normal order of things. Someone who breaks the rules by their very existence. It's the kind of thing that draws a lot of attention: people hear that some Level 2 or 3 thug got the crap beaten out of him by a Level 1, and suddenly they're falling all over themselves to either praise that Level 1 as some kind of working-class hero, or try and prove that they're not weak enough to get taken down by some L1 weakling.

And when they find out that they are, in fact, weak enough (or, more accurately, unskilled and overconfident enough) to get taken down by that L1 weakling, well, the cycle begins anew.

You can probably see why someone in my position, with my luck, might want to learn as much about both esper powers and self-defense as he can.

I mentioned the thing about my luck, right? Because it bears repeating: I have approximately the worst luck in the world. The kind of luck that, on this of all nights, would lead me to turn a blind corner while walking to the bus stop and crash face-first into Yomikawa-sensei. Yes, the same Yomikawa-sensei who would be ashamed of the punch I threw earlier.

"Eh?" she inquires as I just about bounce off of her. "Oh! Hey! Touma-kun! Fanshy runnin' into you thish time o' night!" Being a full ten centimeters taller than me, she's normally the kind of person who can look imposing without even trying. The effect is almost ruined, however, by the fact that her cheeks are currently roughly the color of a ripe tomato, and her jet-black hair, normally kept in a perfectly-maintained ponytail, is now...well..."unkempt" would be putting it generously.

Almost ruined. I begin looking for possible escape routes.

"What? Touma's here?" Another voice pipes up from beside her, and I look way down to see what appears to be a pink-haired teenage girl, leaning on Yomikawa-sensei's arm and obviously just as sloshed as her elder. "Hey, Touma-kun!"

"Uh, hi," I say back, trying to sound nonchalant. "Nice evening, isn't it?" Both Yomikawa Aiho and Tsukuyomi Komoe are teachers at my high school. Tsukuyomi-sensei teaches physics, while Yomikawa-sensei does P.E., as well as being our school's assigned ACPD officer. It's well-known that they're good friends, and that they have a fondness for imbibing gratuitous amounts of alcohol if they can get away with it.

Yomikawa-sensei, however, is also a self-defense instructor. My self-defense instructor. And she is already vaguely aware that I am perhaps not doing as great a job as I could be of following the first and most important rule of the Krav Maga variant that she teaches: Avoid Confrontation If Reasonably Possible. Combined with the fact that it's the middle of the night and I look pretty banged up, well, this could get really awkward. Well, drunk as she is right now, maybe she won't notice--

"Touma-kun." She frowns and squints down at me. "You don't look so good. Did you get in a fight again?" Her posture's straightened noticeably, and most of the slur's gone from her voice. Either she's far less drunk than she was acting, or she has the power to sober up at will; I wouldn't put either possibility past her.

"Uh...not really, no."

"Not really?" She raises an eyebrow. "Then where'd all those cuts and scrapes come from?"

"They're not from the fight--" Shit.

"Oh, so there was a fight."

"You shouldn't get in fightsh, Touma-kun," her companion opines. "It'sh...bad and stuff."

"It wasn't exactly a fight per se--"

"Were people punched or kicked?"

At no point does the possibility of lying even cross my mind. "...Yes."

Yomikawa-sensei sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Tell me you didn't throw the first punch."

"I was helping someone!"

"Did they want your help?"

"Well...uh...they didn't know they needed it?"

The interrogation continues in that vein for a while, until she's extracted the very last detail out of me, informed me as to which of my actions were mistakes (all of them), and given me advice as to what I should have done. (Short version: I should have ignored it altogether, or if I felt really guilty, informed Thug Prime as to just who he was hitting on.) The whole experience makes me feel a bit like a preschooler being told why he's getting a time-out.

"...And since I have been training you for eight years and you still seem to be having trouble comprehending some of these basic concepts, you will be showing up for lessons tomorrow evening," she concludes, eyes narrowed. "Capisce?"

"Capisce," I say with a sigh.

"Excellent! See you tomorrow, Kamijou-kun," she says with a frankly rather terrifying grin. "Best get some sleep."

"Bye, Touma-kun!" Tsukuyomi-sensei adds cheerfully, as we part ways. I check my phone briefly--yep. Missed the bus. Just my luck.

Oh, by the way? Yes, "Tsukuyomi Komoe" was referring to Yomikawa-sensei's apparently teenaged drinking buddy. Yes, she is an actual teacher at my school, and yes, she is apparently of legal age. (And then some; her exact age is an eternal mystery, but she's got at least half a decade on Yomikawa.) Why did she apparently stop aging at 15? Who knows? Odds are, some kind of crazy anti-aging research was going on way back when. Hell, I'd be surprised if there wasn't. Superpowers, immortal kid teachers, quantum hypercomputers, cyborg cops, space-launch loops, and middle-schoolers with robot armies...I head home that night secure in my knowledge that this city can't possibly get any weirder.

Tomorrow morning, a girl named Index Librorum Prohibitorum will fall out of the sky onto my apartment balcony, tell me that magic is real, and proceed to eat all of my food.

See what I mean about my luck?

 

[Shockz]

I have been informed by iospace that that first chapter did a rather poor job of preparing you all for just how far off the rails things are going to go. Hopefully this chapter rectifies that.

* * * * * * * *​

Index/Free; Run

Tokyo. Population approximately 16 million within city limits. Unfamiliar to him; a distant memory for her. I spent twenty minutes looking at maps and now know it like I've lived here my whole life. It is 19:43; Tokyo is displaying its full neon splendour, and the dense traffic has thinned only slightly. We're on Route 5, heading southeast towards the harbor. Approximate speed, 60 kilometers per hour. The car is a Mitsubishi Chevalier, a mid-range family sedan. There are approximately 92,000 Mitsubishi Chevaliers in Japan. We are as inconspicuous as it is possible for visitors from England to be here. Car is equipped with the standard GoogleBaidu autodrive package. He is sleeping in the passenger seat. She remains awake in the "driver's" seat, but stares out the window, opposite me. I cannot see her face, but I suspect her expression is wistful.

The door is unlocked. They trust me. Why wouldn't they? 14 years is a long time.

The seatbelt is a problem. The sound of it retracting would be loud enough to get her attention. Retracting it slowly and quietly is even riskier; it would look extremely suspicious should she turn around and notice.

A solution presents itself. "Mind if I roll down the window a bit?" I ask her softly.

"Sure," she says, not looking at me. I nod anyway and tap the window-down button for an instant. A dull roar of rushing air and passing traffic quickly spills into the silence of the car. Not oppressively loud. But loud enough. I wait for approximately five minutes, until I am sure that she has returned to her memories, and that he has not been roused from his light slumber by the new noise. Then I click off the seatbelt.

I freeze immediately, watching for a response. She shows no sign of noticing, however, and I quickly relax.

We are now approaching the C2 junction at Itabashi. We are on an overpass and in the left lane, at the outer edge of the highway. This is ideal. I almost take a deep breath. Suppress it. This must be as unexpected as possible.

Then, in one smooth motion, I yank the door latch, shove the door open, and fling myself out of the car.

Release.

Category->defensive->passive->kinetic AND nonverbal:true AND visibility:low

Match found in: On the Heroic Arts, Archimedes, 230 B.C. "To Call Upon The Strength of Achilles". Please let this work--

I hit the pavement arms-first...and skid, leaving not blood and torn flesh but sparks in my wake, as a torrent of stored mana floods all but a few square inches of my skin. I spring to my feet and press myself against the side wall of the highway, just in time for a car to miss hitting me by barely a centimetre. There's a screech of tires from up ahead--she's already realized what's happened. No time to waste, then. The spell comes with a significant strength boost; I rapidly pull myself up to the top of the wall. I look down: the drop is nearly twenty metres into the city below. I hope I am not overestimating the strength of this spell as I leap forward.

I have never been skydiving, or ridden a roller coaster, or done anything much more exciting than ride a fast elevator. As I go into free fall, as my entire body floods with adrenaline and my every sense tells me I am about to die, I feel something amazing, something indescribable.

Is this what it feels like to be free?

I angle myself to hit the ground with my upper back first; this spell is less than ideal for landing on one's feet. The impact is bone-jarring but not particularly painful, and I'm up on my feet again within seconds. I cancel the spell immediately; the need for something nonverbal, immediately effective, and...relatively subtle has resulted in me draining far more of my very limited mana supply than I would have preferred.

Lock.

As the spell fades, so does the memory of how to cast it; as far as the geis is concerned, I am out of immediate danger. Very well; I probably will not need to use much more magic any time soon. Bystanders are gaping at me. Under normal circumstances, a stunt like that pulled in public would be a massive leak, one that would need to be dealt with immediately.

But these are not normal circumstances. This is why I chose Tokyo to make my escape, after all.

"Excuse me," I ask the nearest bystander in what I am led to believe is passable Japanese. "Where's the nearest subway station? I need to make it back to Academy City in time for curfew."

* * * * * * * *​

Academy City is not my first stop, however. My plan is not exactly difficult to guess, and I don't doubt they'd catch up to me rather quickly. No, my journey there will take a somewhat more roundabout route, and there are other matters I must take care of first.

Firstly: The stares of the other passengers on the dingy, cramped subway car confirm something I feared: I am extremely conspicuous. Japan is very much ethnically homogenous, and I am an obviously Caucasian teenager travelling on my own. Worse yet, I have a specifically identifiable feature: my hair is a rather unusual shade of silver-white, and I have it grown out rather long. I need a way to disguise it. I don't have enough time to dye it, cut it, or find a wig right now, either; these next few minutes are critical. The white dress I've been wearing (one of the ten or so that make up the vast majority of my wardrobe) is also just a touch too long and vaguely bridal (or perhaps angelic?) in appearance to fit my requirements.

In short, I need to look normal.

The thrift shop is on the verge of closing when I walk in; the manager's shouted "Welcome!" has a bit of an edge to it. I smile and reply with a "Good evening"; I'm in a hurry, but that's no reason to be rude. The shop is dimly lit and poorly organized, but a couple minutes of searching earn me an old newsboy cap sufficient to hide most of my hair under, a worn but usable backpack, and a couple changes of clothes that don't seem too old or malodorous. I am...less than up-to-date on fashion, and so go with something similar to what she wears, simple dark shirts and jeans, under the assumption that she is generally quite good at blending in. (And indeed, a quick review of the people I've noticed since coming here indicates that such an outfit will come across as appropriately plain and unremarkable.) I also manage to dig up a broken music box and a small crucifix. All of this is paid for via one of several 2000-yen bills nicked from his wallet last night. I find a public restroom to change in, then consider my old dress for a moment. On the one hand, it is enchanted with a variety of defensive spells, built up over several months to be capable of protecting me from most non-magical attacks. On the other, it is almost certainly a vector for locating me magically, and may even have a less arcane tracking device hidden somewhere in the embroidery. After a moment, I toss it in a dumpster, far enough from the thrift shop that the manager should not come under immediate suspicion.

Secondly: I am very, very hungry. The relationship of magic use with human metabolism is poorly studied. I briefly consider the possibility that my particular hunger right now is due to my using more magic than I have in years, until another loud growl from my stomach obliterates most of my capacity for rational thought. When my higher brain functions come back online, I find myself in a McDonalds, of all places. To my relief, it's much the same as the other McDonalds I have been in across the world: air that feels laden with vaporized grease, smelling of things that were once a potato but stopped being so long ago; dismally small patties of vat-grown cow meat sizzling loudly on the fryer; and a menu in obnoxiously loud colors offering dozens of variations on a simple combination of the two.

I smile a bit, and place my order. There really is nothing quite like it.

I quickly eat my way through the Big Mac and french fries. At the end, only a tiny piece of the Big Mac's bun is left, which I carefully wrap up in its paper and stuff in the backpack. The cashier watches me eat with what seems to be awe; as I leave, he asks if I am American. I smile and say I am; hopefully he will remember that and not my other features. Or the fact that I took the tray with me, along with a bottle of water. He looked far more engaged by his argument with the very angry redhead who barged her way in just as I finished, anyway. I stop in the convenience store next door and grab a small can of grape juice, adding it to the ever-growing set of odds and ends in my backpack.

Now, thirdly and most importantly: Even if I am visually disguised, they have other ways of finding me. Location spells are quick to set up and inexpensive to use, and there are few ways to block them without having access to one's own magic. And unfortunately, they do not register as a threat to the geis, making that option nonviable. There is an alternative, however, and one immediately present.

The doors of the small church are closed but unlocked, though the last Mass of the day is long over. It is, I note, a church of the Nippon Seikoukai--the Anglican Church in Japan. Not that the denomination matters. I take a seat in one of the pews at the back and begin to work.

Any holy ground is generally an excellent way to protect oneself from most magic. What holy ground is most effective generally depends on the beliefs of the person in question. I am Christian, and so a Christian church is the natural choice. Certainly, it will be sufficient to jam any tracking spell they could hope to set up within the next day or two, especially without the dress to use as a target. However, churches have the disadvantage of being static; hiding out in one is unlikely to remain safe for too long, especially with Christianity's limited presence within Japan.

Unless, of course, one devises a way to take the church along with them.

In the Catholic tradition, from which the Anglican Church originally derived most of its customs, a church has four essential components: the crucifix showing the image of Jesus Christ; the baptismal font, in which we are washed of our sins and reborn in His glory; the altar upon which bread and wine become His body and blood; and the tabernacle in which the transubstantiated Eucharist is kept.

I remove the crucifix, the water bottle, the McDonalds tray, and the music box from my backpack and arrange them around me. Then I begin to pray.

"In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti..."

​

* * * * * * * *​

​

"...et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis."

And it is done. I have the essential components of a church, in which a Mass has been said, all in portable form. I will be the first to admit that it's not much of a church, but I took pains to make it as effective as possible at its intended purpose. Saying the Mass in Latin helped, as did performing the whole ritual while inside a vastly more legitimate church. All in all, it probably won't do much to help me against serious offensive magic. But it should be more than enough to keep a location spell from locking on to me.

I load up the impromptu font, crucifix, altar, and tabernacle (currently occupied by the Eucharist in the form of a half-eaten Big Mac bun) in my backpack, and slip out of the church. I blink a few times as my eyes adjust from the darkness of the church interior to the lights of the city outside--most noticeably, the small family restaurant across the street.

...I'm hungry again.

I suppose if this 'mobile church' is working correctly, I'm now untraceable enough to risk staying around a little while longer. And if it's not, well, it's not as if it matters much where I go.

* * * * * * * *​

I leave the restaurant temporarily satisfied, having devoured a plate of some kind of noodle dish called yakisoba. Whatever it was, it was absolutely delicious; it took significant effort not to order another plate of it.

But now I must move on. I head back to the subway station, thankful that Tokyo's transportation system runs twenty-four hours a day. It's now nearly 22 o'clock, and the station is far less crowded than it was immediately after my escape, but there's still more than enough people heading home after a late night at work to make it feel like a Tube station not long after rush hour. As I walk through the turnstile and head towards the train, I look around me, observing the people I pass. From their reactions, it seems my mission was successful--though I still draw a few curious looks, the proportion is far less than it was before. Good. Next stop, Academy City.

* * * * * * * *​

The sign above the station exit has two arrows, pointing to two separate queues. One arrow is marked "RESIDENTS & COMMUTERS" in Japanese, English, Chinese, and Korean; the other says "NON-RESIDENTS" in the same languages. There is no sign of officials from the Immigration Bureau, only the Academy City Police Department, but it is nonetheless clear what I am looking at: an immigration checkpoint. This is both unexpected--I knew Academy City was very nearly self-governing, but to this extent?--and a major problem: Not only do I have no legitimate reason to be in the city, but I also lack any sort of identification. My passport is back in that Mitsubishi Chevalier.

For a moment the possibility of calling off this entire endeavour occurs to me. I know how valuable I am; none of them would ever think of harming me, or allowing me to be harmed. I could call his mobile phone, arrange a rendezvous location, and within hours we would be on a flight back to London, as if this had never happened. True, my nearly-successful escape attempt would likely result in the geis being reapplied, with much more strictly and carefully defined release conditions, but little else would change. I could return to a life full of comfort, study, and delicious home-cooked dinners.

But then I recall that moment of my heart pounding, of my adrenaline rushing, of the lights and sounds around me suddenly seeming real and present in a way they never had been before as I plummeted from a height no human being was meant to survive a fall from. If I choose to go back now, I will never feel so free, so real again.

I find that to be unacceptable. And even as my resolve strengthens, a plan begins to form.

I pick up a nearby informational brochure which states, in easy-to-understand terms, what information and documents one needs to enter the city, for both residents and non-residents. Non-residents need a valid passport or Japanese national ID card, plus one of several fully completed forms stating their reason for visiting Academy City, the length of their stay, and contacts (if any) within the city.

On the other hand, residents and commuters only need a valid Academy City ID card. And considering why I chose to flee to Academy City in the first place...

I smile at the ACPD officer as I come to the front of the 'Residents' line. He smiles back, though it seems a bit forced. I suppose it is rather late. Only he and the terahertz scanner he operates now stand between me and freedom. "Hello," I tell him. "I'm very sorry, but I seem to have lost my ID card. I really do need to get back home soon; could you let me through?"

Now his smile is very forced. "Sure, kid. I'll just need your name and the name of your school, so they can send me your information."

Of course it wouldn't be that easy. But then, it's not as if I expected it to be. "Well, you understand, I'd rather my school not know I was out this late..." I start to stride forward, through the scanner.

"Hey. Kid. Stop. Stop!" I break into a run; with any luck--

Release.

There. He must have pulled his gun. Or a taser. It doesn't matter, though; what matters is that I am free again. I want to stop, to savor the rush, but I know I am a bit short on savoring time right now. I need something that will help me disappear. Literally disappear; there aren't enough people around to do something like a crowd-blending spell. But with this many people around, I can get away with something a little less draining than true invisibility. I run a search:

Category->stealth->camouflage AND mana usage:low
Match found in: OSS MANTA EIGHT Training Manual, author unknown, A.D. 1943. "Instantaneous High-Efficiency Camouflage."

It is not totally nonverbal, unfortunately, but at least it doesn't require perfect clarity or careful enunciation; it was designed for spies, after all. I focus in the way the spell requires, release a trickle of what remains of my mana supply, and whisper the words: "Let Liberty be my cloak in the night." Appropriate enough for the current situation, all things considered.

Search and spell both finish in just a couple of seconds. Mid-stride, my skin and clothes spontaneously turn...not translucent, not quite, but very close; they shift into a rough, blurry approximation of whatever's immediately behind them. It's less than adequate at making me unnoticeable, especially while I'm running, but I can't help but imagine it would make trying to aim at me rather difficult, especially in the middle of a crowd. I turn a corner, and the stairs leading out of the station are right there. I sprint up them, nearly trip but recover, and sprint out into the night.

I keep running for a long while, until the combined strain of the run and the spell leave me nearly ready to collapse. The spell fizzles out, and I feel the the lock on the vault of magical knowledge stored in my brain snap shut again. As frustrating as it is, it comes as a bit of a relief this time: it means I am out of immediate danger, at least. I slow down to a walk for a while, and take in the sights around me.

Academy City has little in common with central Tokyo, or indeed most of the cities I have visited. There are high-rises and skyscrapers aplenty, yes, but they are far less dense; the streets are busy but not jammed with cars. It has some of Tokyo's nighttime neon glow, but it's far less eye-searing. There are odder things, too: Waist-high, cylindrical robots travel in twos and threes, sometimes stopping to clean a piece of litter off the streets, other times rushing along to destinations unknown. A uniformed girl sets her soda down in midair to rummage through her purse for something; it hovers dutifully at her side until she digs out her mobile phone. A young, attractive man spontaneously appears in the previously transparent window of a convenience store; he asks if I'm enjoying my workout and alerts me that a cool, refreshing bottle of sports drink is only 200 yen inside. A considerably more solid young man with hair as white as mine leans against a wall in a dark alley; as he looks up from some manner of portable electronic device and his gaze meets mine, I feel the geis immediately unlock again...only to re-engage as he loses interest and looks down again.

I walk on for some time this way, with no particular destination or goal in mind. Eventually, it strikes me that my plans only went as far as getting into Academy City. I've given no thought to what I should do once I get there. Indeed, it's now rather late, I have no place to sleep for the night, and after the supplies and train fare I'm rather short on money.

I eventually find a sidewalk bench to sit down on to further ponder this problem. And before long, I find myself shifting around the contents of my backpack, trying to find the arrangement that will give me the least uncomfortable pillow. Before I can drift off to a fitful, uncomfortable sleep, though, I am rudely jolted back into reality by a robotic voice.

"Good evening, citizen. Identification, please."

It's one of the little cylindrical cleaning robots. I frown at it. "Identification?"

"All Academy City residents and commuters are asked to have their municipal identification cards on them all times between 23:00 and 4:30. Visitors are similarly required to possess an authorized ACPass card. Failure to show appropriate identification may result in temporary detainment. Identification, please."

"I, er, left it at home. I could go and get it, if you're willing to hang on for a moment?" I ask hopefully.

"Your failure to show required identification has been noted. Appropriate ACPD and/or Judgement personnel. Nell. Nell. Nel-el-el-el--EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!" The robot's relatively calm Japanese inexplicably switches to harsh, angry English without warning; it's nearly enough to make me run for my life on the spot.

But then I hear a high-pitched voice approaching me rapidly. "Sorry! Sorry! Forgot I had it set to 'Dalek'!" It turns out to belong to a young girl, who's quickly running towards me. Quite young. Not a day older than 12, if I had to guess, with short black hair. She's wearing a black T-shirt with English words printed on it. Something about there being 10 types of people; I can't read the whole thing in the dim lighting. She is also holding one of those huge universal TV remotes with more buttons than one could ever possibly need, and aiming it threateningly at the robot. "Don't worry, though. It's disabled. I kind of noticed it giving you a hard time and decided I'd lend a hand. I mean, I've pwned half the bots in this town, why not be a good Samaritan, right?"

Pwn is not a Japanese word I'm familiar with, if indeed it's even Japanese--it sounds more English than anything--but I can guess at its meaning. "You...hacked...the robot?"

She rolls her eyes. "Well, yeah. I swear, the security on these things is terrible. One buffer overflow via NFC and they're your faithful servant forever if you know what you're doing."

"Er. If you say so. I'm...not really very knowledgeable about computers." I have never actually used a computer, unless one counts a smart television with most of its functions disabled.

"Eh. Not everyone can be, right? Anyway, if you don't mind me asking...whatcha doin' out here so late? And without ID?" Unlike the robot's, her tone carries only innocent curiosity--not a hint of accusation to be found.

"It's...it's a long story."

She squints at me. "Long story? Come on. It's gotta be something real interesting if ya don't got anywhere to sleep. Are you foreign? You look foreign. American? You exchange or perma? Your Japanese is really good, by the way. My English, okay, but not so good!" She speaks that last sentence in heavily accented English, chuckling.

"Er, well, I'd really rather not say..."

"Come on. Tell you what. My big bro's outta town right now, so I got our apartment all. To. Myself. You tell me your story, I'll let ya stay at my place for the night. Sound like a deal?" She grins. She thinks she has me, and she's very nearly right.

"...Well..." I'm still not sure I want to risk staying in one place for too long, or possibly putting someone else in the line of fire. My train of thought is suddenly and violently derailed, however, by my stomach rumbling loudly. I remember from somewhere that 'allowing' your stomach to growl is considered rude in Japan, and hurriedly apologize.

She looks down at my stomach. Then back up to my face. Her grin widens, and she speaks one sentence.

"I have food."

* * * * * * * *​

"'Index', huh? Cool name. Kinda different. I'm Tsuchimikado Maika. Or, uh, Maika Tsuchimikado?"

"It's all right. I know how Japanese names work."

"Right! First one, then. Call me Maika."

"Maika. Right. A pleasure meeting you, Maika-san."

"Nice to meetcha too, Index-san. So, uh, that's the bedroom, there's the bathroom, and here's the kitchen. Not much, but hey, it's home."

The Tsuchimikado residence is...well, it's small. It's very small. You could fit the vast majority of it in my bedroom back in London, and I don't think I had an especially large bedroom. The bedroom is just large enough to fit a bunk bed plus a desk--barely large enough to qualify as anything more than a nightstand--that holds a TV, which seems to double as a monitor for a desktop computer. The kitchen is little more than a recess in the apartment's entryway, directly opposite the entrance to the bathroom--a pantry, a mini-fridge, and a stove/oven/microwave combo are all lined up in a row.

"Hey, so, what sounds good?" Maika asks me as I look around. She flings open the pantry and fridge, and looks through both intently. "I've got instant ramen...more instant ramen...uh...even more instant ramen...ooh, hey, quick-bake pizza! Pepperoni sound good to you?"

I inform her that pepperoni does indeed sound good, and before long we're sitting at a Japanese-style table she pulled out from under the bunk bed and somehow managed to wedge into the scarce floor space, while the smell of baking pizza wafts out of the oven.

"So, deal's a deal," she says. "You gotta tell me why you were out there in the cold, with no ID."

"Well..." I hesitate. I'm obviously not going to tell her the whole story. But how much can I risk telling her? Will she report me?

She sees my frown, and tries to reassure me. "I already figure you're not here totally legit. And I heard something went down at the subway station; I figure that's you. Don't worry, I'm not gonna turn you in or anything. Just, you know, wondering."

I sigh. We did make a deal... "Essentially...I'm running away from home."

She raises an eyebrow. "Running away all the way from America?"

"England, actually. And, well, we were in Tokyo on vacation, and I saw an opportunity." Close enough to the truth; the occasional excursion like this was the closest thing I got to a vacation.

"Wow. Why'd you come here, though? I mean, you had to have wanted to get to Academy City pretty bad to run the checkpoint like that."

"I'd rather not talk about that." That line of questioning would lead me into the awkward position of having to either pretend to be an esper or admit to the existence of magic, neither of which I saw ending well.

"Aww. Seriously? All I get is 'I ran away from home?'" She sighs. "Well, you got your secrets, I guess." The ding of the kitchen timer quickly interrupts what could have been a very long, awkward silence, and it's not long before fresh-baked pizza is served.

* * * * * * * *​

Maika lets me use her bed (the top bunk) for the night; I assume she's going to use her brother's bed, but she screws up her face in disgust at the mere suggestion. More so when I suggest I use it instead. "Don't you know what he does in that bed?" she asks, horrified.

"...no?"

She narrows her eyes, and looks around, as if to check whether her brother has suddenly returned. "He farts," she whispers secretively. "A lot."

That is more than enough to convince me that the bed in question is not suitable for use by either of us girls; however, we both refuse to let the other use the remaining bed. Her refusal ends up being stronger, and before I can do anything, she's extracted a spare futon and blanket from the closet and attached herself to the floor. I sigh and resign myself to graciously accepting her generosity.

I wake up early the next morning. Maika is sprawled out on the floor, blanket barely covering her legs, and it looks like she is in no danger of waking up any time soon. I quietly haul my backpack down from the bunk, step carefully over her, and find a sticky-note pad in the kitchen. I write a quick note of thanks and stick it on the inside of the door, then tiptoe out of the apartment.

I'd be loathe to stay too long with Maika and risk bringing trouble down on her head, but where should I go next? Almost subconsciously, I find myself walking up the service stairs to the roof of the apartment building, and before long I'm staring five stories down to the streets below. Part of me wants to go right back down, and start walking like a normal person. It whispers that this is insane, that it risks discovery, or--if I miscalculate--worse.

The rest of me tells that part to bugger off as I take a running leap into the open air.

Release.

I run a search, stretch my arms out to my sides, and joyfully cry out "Φτερά του Δαίδαλου, επιτρέψτε μου να πετάξει στα ύψη!" Shimmering veils of light form between my arms and my body and expand out to my sides, and my fall suddenly becomes a long, graceful, nearly level glide. There it is, once again: this feeling of life, of joy, of freedom. I suddenly realize that I'm laughing like a madwoman; I feel no inclination to stop, and swoop around a high-rise, watching the city pass below me at impossible speeds, feeling the wind blow through my hair.

And...there's an odd feeling of emptiness in the pit of my stomach...Oh, no. I think I'm low on mana. Very low. I did use almost all of my reserves last night, and I don't exactly generate it very quickly.

Panicking and cursing my stupidity, I look for a landing site, and spot a balcony on another apartment building, almost level with me, that looks as good as any other. I try and angle myself to bleed off speed as quickly as possible without stalling out and missing the landing entirely, and...it almost works. The wings fizzle out at the last minute; my forward momentum carries me the rest of the way, and I fall in a heap onto the concrete balcony.

It hurts. A lot.

It's not excruciating, however, and it doesn't feel like anything's broken. Bruised, certainly, but not broken. I lay there for a moment, then finally pull myself to up to my knees.

A young man with spiky black hair is staring at me from inside the apartment, bemusement evident on his face.

"Ah, hello there." Lacking any other good conversation-starters, I say the first thing that comes to mind. "I'm quite hungry. Do you have any food?"

 

[Shockz]

Mikoto/With Friends Like These

"ONEEEEE-SAAAAMAAAAA!"

Right on time.

I duck for cover immediately after entering the Judgement office, just in time for a tiny girl with an elaborate twin-tail hairdo to appear out of nowhere, flying towards—and through—where my upper body just was at a frankly disturbing speed. She lands in a heap behind me, the last "aaaaah" of her yelled greeting slowly fading into a groan.

"And...ooh, looks like she botched the landing. Y'know, Kuroko," I say, turning back to face her, "if you really want to surprise me like that, have you thought about maybe trying a different approach vector? Or maybe not yelling 'Onee-sama' until after you've already gotten a hold of me? I mean, I dunno, maybe you're trying to tip me off?"

Shirai Kuroko rises to her feet and dusts herself off, her Shidarezakura uniform—a slightly frilly white blouse and a somewhat more frilly blue-and-grey skirt, just like mine—naturally not showing the slightest wrinkle from the botched tackle-hug. Possibly because of the natural aura of Ladyness and Propertude she exudes whenever she's not trying to rapidly reduce the distance between our respective bodies to zero. Or, more likely, because of the anti-wrinkle nano-sprays I watch her drench her clothes with every morning.

Yes, I have to live with Kuroko. We shared a dorm room in middle school, and the thought of spending more than the single year after I graduated from Tokiwadai apart was apparently traumatic enough that she took Measures to ensure I was roomed with a senior that first year. I suppose I could always request a dorm transfer, but honestly, she's not that bad once you get used to her. Kuroko's a true friend, even if you have to deal with the occasional uncomfortably intimate surprise-hug.

Sometimes I really wish she'd get over me and find a girl who'd, y'know, like her that way back, though. It's not like there's a lack of choice in Academy City. Or Shidarezakura, for that matter, judging by the volume of anonymous confession letters I find in my locker per week. Heck, I know for a fact that she gets a few of those and just throws 'em away.

"Ah, but Onee-sama, you must understand," Kuroko says in a tone that makes me imagine a Duchess of Unpronounceableshire drinking tea Western-style, with pinky finger fully extended. (Which is, by the way, the only tone Shirai Kuroko is capable of speaking in.) "It's not about trying to surprise you; I'm merely expressing my joy at once again being in your presence!"

"Yeah, yeah. Nice to see you too; it's been a whole six hours. So what's up? You said you wanted me to meet someone?" The e-mail said to meet Kuroko at the office she works at, so that probably means the person in question is one of her co-workers. Her boss, maybe? Kuroko's talked about her with some degree of admiration before; she's "a true defender of justice, fair, level-headed, and thoughtful in all matters," apparently. Then again, I've heard Kuroko talk about me using even more flowery language, so maybe I should reserve judgement. Heh. Judgement.

"Indeed. Onee-sama, I would very much like to introduce you to my fellow Student Enforcer, Uiharu Kazari-san."

There's an awkward silence for a moment. Uiharu Kazari-san is nowhere to be seen. Kuroko seems to take a minute to realize this, looking around frantically. "Er, Uiharu-san? Uiharu-san? She was just—I swear, I'm supposed to be the teleporter—if you could just hold on one moment, Onee-sama?" She turns around a corner in the office, and I can hear her talking to someone else.

"Uiharu-san, I thought you said you were done!"

"Well, yes, but she was taking a while," an unfamiliar girl's voice says, "and I wanted to finish processing the footage—"

"Are you done now?"

"Almost; I've explained this before, this takes a minute, I have to—there. All right, now I'm done—hey, no, wait—"

Kuroko suddenly appears out of thin air in front of me, accompanied by another girl. The first thing I notice about the other girl is her headband, which is best described as 'more flowery than Kuroko's speech'; it's got at least eight or nine artificial flowers of varying sizes across it on top of simulated foliage, making the girl in question bear an uncanny resemblance to a bouquet—no, that doesn't even properly describe it. The top of her head looks like a freaking garden. The sheer presence of her headband means it takes a moment for the rest of her to sink in—about my age, maybe a little younger; shorter than me but nowhere near as tiny as Kuroko; short black hair, big brown eyes, bare feet, generic white-shirt-and-plaid-skirt school uniform I don't recognize—bare feet? That's weird.

"Once again, then," Kuroko says, "I'd very much like to introduce you to my fellow Student Enforcer, Uiharu Kazari-san. Uiharu-san, this is my eternally beloved Onee-sama, Shidarezakura's Level 5 Electric Princess, known to those who love her and fear her alike as 'The Railgun': Misaka Mikoto."

"Ah, hello," Flower Girl says, bowing. "I-It's very nice to meet you, Misaka-sama."

Okay, Mikoto. You're the rich, elite, refined upperclassman who this girl obviously looks up to by the mere fact of your existence. Impress her. Be elegant. Be ladylike.

"Nicetameetch—er—it's, ah, very nice to meet you, Uiharu-san. And drop the—I mean, there's no need to use '-sama'."

"Ah, I apologize!" She bows again, deeper this time. "Then, it's a pleasure to meet you, Misaka-dono."

Ah, crap, she misunderstood. "No, I mean, that level of formality is—"

She bows again, almost frantically. "Misaka-ue, I beg your forgiveness for my rudeness, and would like to restate that it is the greatest pleasure to make your acquaintance!"

This is getting really, really awkward. "No, seriously, I think you're misunderstanding—"

She throws herself to her knees, forehead almost touching the ground in supplication. "Please excuse this unworthy one's vulgarity, Misaka-no-kimi! I am thy most humble serv—ow!"

Kuroko whacks Uiharu across the head with a multi-page printout of some kind or another. "That will be quite enough of that, Uiharu-san."

Uiharu picks herself up off the floor, and I can now see that she's obviously trying to hold back laughter. "Sorry!—heh—sorry. I just couldn't resist. But in all seriousness—heh—nice to meet you, Misaka-san."

Heh. I like her already. "Nice to meet you too." I take a look around. The office of the Judgement Volunteer Crimefighting Patrol's 177th Branch—found on the second floor of a nondescript office building just a couple streets down from Shidarezakura—puts me in mind of a typical business more than what is effectively a police station. It's got a couple rows of cubicles, tons of desks both inside and outside those cubicles, often piled high with stacks of paper, phones going off, the whole ambience. On the other hand, most of the people I see working here (there's five or six others besides Kuroko and Uiharu) are teenagers, usually in some school uniform or another. "So is this is where you guys enforce justice from, huh?"

Man, I don't know what made Academy City's board of directors decide it was a good idea to make teenage espers into cops. But apparently it worked.

"Yep!" Uiharu responds. "Well, in theory. Most of the time Shirai-san just writes poetry about yOW!" Kuroko whacks her again, and Uiharu just chuckles.

"Uiharu-san, when she's not constructing elaborate falsehoods, acts as dispatcher for this branch," Kuroko says. "And despite the initial impression she may have given you, she is extremely competent at it."

"Mhm. And despite the massive stick up her agh don't hit me, Shirai-san here is the best field enforcer we've got. Probably the best in Judgement, to be honest; the way she's been handling the Level Plus cases is pretty spectacular."

"Level Plus?" I frown. I sort of remember hearing rumors about something called that. "Wasn't that something about music that could boost your powers or something?"

"Uiharu-san." Kuroko shoots Uiharu a glare. "Your flagrant unprofessionalism aside, we are absolutely not supposed to talk about cases that may or may not involve something called Level Plus. Not even with Onee-sama."

"Ah, right, hehe." Uiharu fiddles with her headband sheepishly. "Ah, so, Misaka-san, I've got another friend coming before we go, but she's still a few minutes away. Do you want to see The Rig?"

"The Rig?" I ask. I'm not sure what The Rig could possibly be.

"Aw, Shirai-san, don't tell me you haven't told her about The Rig."

Kuroko buries her forehead in her palm. "No, Uiharu-san, I have not spoken of your computational abomination to Onee-sama, because, like me, she does not care about—"

"I'd love to see The Rig," I interrupt. Kuroko just shakes her head and walks off, mumbling something about reports to file.

* * * * * * * *​

The Rig is a computer.

No, that's not quite accurate. The Rig is a "computer" in the same way that what its operator wears on her head is a "headband". It has no less than nine monitors, arranged in a 3-by-3 grid. Where most computer workstations are neatly contained inside a rectangular box, The Rig appears to have grown, fungus-like, all over the impressively sized desk in Uiharu's rather large office. Which is not to say that such a rectangular box isn't there; no, there is one. In fact, there are a lot of them, and most of them have at least one side panel removed, big, thick bundles of cables extending out of them and splitting off, sometimes heading to power sockets, more often extending into another box. The center of the monstrosity seems to be a gigantic exposed circuit board positioned directly under the center of the desk, with a pair of metallic...foot-shaped things extending out of it, connected to a vast array of copper pipes leading to almost all of the boxes.

"A friend of mine and I came up with the idea. We call it the Hecatonchires, or 'Hekka' for short; it's sort of kind of based off the old Beowulf cluster concept..." Uiharu is describing her creation with no small amount of pride, and I wish I could keep up with the jargon she's spouting, but...Kuroko wasn't wrong; I'm not a computer person. Like, at all. I mean, you'd think I could be some kind of super-hacker with my powers, but that kind of requires understanding how the whole machine...code...stuff works first. Me, I've learned enough Python to get through the mandatory computer science classes, and...that's about it.

"...gave up on parallel buses because of synchronization issues, but we were like screw that..."

"...and it's not really marketable, because freaking Oracle can sell you something with double the performance at two hundred times the price, and hey, since it's more expensive it must be more legit..."

"...came up with the OS—it's a highly customized Linux distro, naturally—while Maika came up with the hardware stuff..."

"Wait," I interrupt. "Maika." Couldn't be... "Not Tsuchimikado Maika?"

"Yes, her! You know her?"

"...The little kid? Rides around on cleaner-bots?"

"That's her! Wow, she never told me she knew a Level 5. How'd you meet her?"

"Eh? Uh, her class took a tour of my middle school a couple years back, and I ended up as one of the tour guides. She was really friendly and a lot less annoying than most of the other brat—uh, kids, and we ended up staying in touch." I fish inside my pocket and pull out a pair of transparent earplugs. "She actually got me these electric-sensitive thingies...well, she said she made them, but I didn't believe her at the time...but you're telling me she really is that good with electronics and stuff?" Wow, I gotta apologize to her for that.

"She's not that good. She's better. I kind of think of her as my protege, except...she's really, really smart. Smarter than me." She looks around suddenly and whispers. "I think she might have powers that have something to do with technology or computers, actually. Never asked her, though."

"Could be. I'll have to tell her I met you, Uiharu-san. So, uh, this 'Rig'. What exactly do you use it for?"

Uiharu grins. "Let me show you." She sits down in the office chair at the center of the mass of computer equipment, and carefully places her bare feet in the foot-shaped contraptions sticking out of the center circuit board, securing them with Velcro straps like a pair of weird metallic sandals.

"What are those for?" I ask her, indicating said contraptions.

She closes her eyes, smiling calmly. "A true hacker must always be at one with her machine. Only then can enlightenment be achieved; only then can the mind of a human comprehend the tangled web of assembly code that is woven and rewoven with every nanosecond of operation."

"Uh...right." I watch as a blinking white cursor comes up on the bottom-center monitor; Uiharu inputs a complicated-looking series of commands, which eventually disappear, replaced rapidly by something that looks more like the computer desktops I'm familiar with. She doesn't stop typing, though; a window pops up immediately with another blinking cursor, another complicated command is entered, and suddenly the view on each monitor is replaced with a very familiar sight: the video feed from a CCTV camera.

"From here," Uiharu says, "we can watch every single CCTV camera within the jurisdiction of 177th Branch. Now, this isn't that special; any given Judgement branch office has the same capabilities. What they don't have, however, is The Rig's processing capabilities. In addition to keeping human eyes on the camera feeds, The Rig can also do image and motion recognition analysis on every single frame received simultaneously, alerting us of a crime in progress even if we're not watching the appropriate feed. You can't see it, but each camera is also picking up electromagnetic and thermal information, and The Rig analyzes that, too, meaning we can often tell if people are using esper powers. You light those up like a Christmas tree, incidentally." She leans back and sighs. "I wish we could install IPD sensors on the cameras, but those apparently cost more than The Rig and the entire surveillance network combined. Each."

"You guys watch everything?" I've seen CCTV cameras all over the place, of course, but I never quite realized how...connected everything was. "Seems a little...I dunno, Big Brother-ish. I mean, doesn't anyone worry about people using it to collect personal information, or, or perv on people? Or, like, blackmail?"

"Blackmail?" Uiharu puts her hands to her face in utter shock, staring at me as if I have just suggested that she clubs baby seals for a hobby. "What kind of monster would use this nigh-omniscient panopticon for blackmail? I assure you, Misaka-san, all viewing and use of CCTV recordings by Judgement personnel is carefully regulated in order to ensure maximum possible privacy and safety of Academy City residents." She looks back at the screen and starts flipping through several different camera feeds. "By the way, Misaka-san, your Gekota pajamas are adorable."

"Really? Thanks—wait, what?"

* * * * * * * *​

Uiharu very narrowly manages to convince me not to fry the entire setup on the spot, and even then I make it very clear to her that she is sworn to absolute secrecy forever. Kuroko sees us walking out of Uiharu's office, and comes over to bother her about a misfiled report of some kind.

Right about then, however, is when Uiharu's friend walks in. The conversation immediately just stops as Kuroko looks on in awe. I have to admit, I'm pretty impressed myself. If the girl...no...the young woman who enters the office isn't a perfect match for the Japanese ideal of feminine beauty, I don't know who is. Long, perfectly straight black hair decorated only by a single flower pin. Pure white skin. A confident, yet subtle smile. She's taller than me, but not excessively so...I notice with a tinge of jealousy that she's a bit bigger than me in other areas as well. She's in the same standard summer uniform as Uiharu, but manages to make it look stylish rather than plain and generic. (I have no actual idea how that works; maybe it's just because she's that pretty.)

She turns to face me. There's a moment of silence; her smile almost seems to sparkle with beauty.

Then she speaks.

"Ohmigod holy crap you're Misaka Mikoto ohmigod ohmigod!" Her eyes widen, and she practically runs up to me. "I didn't realize—holy crap—can—can I have your autograph? Like, on my everything?"

"Easy there, Saten-chan," Uiharu says, chuckling. "Give Misaka-san some room to breathe. Misaka-san, Shirai-san, this is my classmate Saten Ruiko. She's a bit of a fan of yours."

Normally I'm pretty uncomfortable with people who are "fans" of me. This time, though, I'm grateful for another chance to make a good first impression. I smile gently up at the taller girl. "It's a very great pleasure to make your acquaintance, Saten-san."

Saten makes a tiny squeaking noise before finally managing to choke out, "...N-nice to m-meet you too, Misaka-s-sama." I think she may be hyperventilating slightly. "S-sorry, just...oh, wow. I'm t-talking to the Railgun. The actual Railgun. This...this is such an honor..."

She's getting a bit up in my face, to be honest. Wait. Uh-oh. "Uh, Saten-san, you might want to back up a bit—"

"Why, hello there, Saten Ruiko." Kuroko's voice comes from behind me, dripping with malice. "While it is a pleasure to meet you, I must insist that you make note of who is and who is not allowed to enter Onee-sama's personal space. We wouldn't want to be...improper, now, would we?"

"Ah, oh, sorry! Sorry," Saten says as she backs off a bit, more flustered than ever. "It's just...wow, this is so cool. You know, I have trading cards of you? Freshman, mint condition? Tokiwadai and Shidarezakura versions?"

"...There are trading cards of me?" This is news to me. I wasn't actually aware I'd signed off the rights to use my likeness at any point. I make a mental note to see if my mom knows a good lawyer or something. Jeez, next thing you know they'll be selling made-in-China knockoffs of me.

"Yeah! They make 'em for all the Level 5s—well, all the ones people know about, anyway—and a lot of the Level 4s. I think I have a couple of yours, too, Shirai-sama. Oh wow, I wish I had 'em with me, could get 'em autographed."

Uiharu speaks up. "Well, I'm sure we could stand here for hours just nerding out at each other—"

"Pot, kettle," Saten interjects, smirking.

"—but we'd probably better get going soon. Don't you have something tonight, Saten?"

"Yeah, yoga class at 20:30. Then I gotta study for the IPD Dynamics test tomorrow. You know how it is, always something. Still, plenty of time to grab some food and get some shopping done and—ohmigod." Her eyes widen, and she looks at me again. "Are you coming with us, Misaka-sama?"

"Uh...yeah..."

"Oh my god. I'm going shopping. With Misaka Mikoto. This is now the best day of my life!" Her voice trails off into a squeak at the end of the sentence.

"Right then. Seventh Mist?" Kuroko cuts in. I nod; Seventh Mist is a sorta-upscale-but-sorta-not shopping mall fairly near Shidarezakura Private Academy; a lot of the girls in my school like to hang out there, but it's not so high-class that it'll break the bank for Uiharu and Saten. They're also agreeable to the idea, and so it's not long before we're taking one of Academy City's ubiquitous automated buses over to the mall.

* * * * * * * *​

I spend most of the bus ride talking with Saten, with Kuroko alternating between trying to insinuate herself into the conversation and fuming silently. Saten eventually manages to come down from her epic fangirl high and start communicating normally; she actually drops the -sama without needing any prompting from me, which I guess some people would think is rude, but honestly just makes me glad she sees me as normal. I've had to deal with much weirder fans. Like my pint-sized teleporting roommate.

"But yeah, seriously, it's only 'cause it's summer vacation that I'm getting this much time off at all," she's saying. "School, cram school, power-dev classes, yoga, a part-time job to pay for the power-dev and yoga classes...not a lot of free time at all," she continues, counting off her activities on her fingers. "Nice to get a bit of time to relax once in a while, y'know?"

"I...wow. That's pretty impressive. I mean, I do violin and tennis after school, and of course there's always power-dev—wait a minute. You have to pay for your power-dev classes? That's not covered in the stipend?"

She grins. "Well, yeah, the basic ones, like at my school, are. The actually-decent ones, though? I mean, I'm Level 0, so I get enough for tuition, dorms, and food. Plenty of food, at least with my grades. But not much else. Not for much longer, though; I can guarantee you that! Any day now. Any day..." She stares out the window of the bus for a while.

I frown a bit. I mean, I know my stipend's huge, given that there's only seven other espers on the same level as me. That's how I can afford Shidarezakura, and Tokiwadai before it—my mom had some money before I went off to AC, but not that much—but I go to a separate power-development school, too, and I don't recall it being that expensive. Academy City's subsidized to hell and back anyway, what with all the superpowered soldiers and fancy toys it churns out for the JSDF. "Yeah," I respond nonetheless. "Attitude and work ethic like that, you're gonna be up there with me before you know it."

She turns from the window to face me again. "You really think so?"

"Yeah. Just keep working at it! What do they always say—you gotta spend 10,000 hours practicing something before you're really good at it? Though...I guess you don't really have any way to practice just yet..." Oh hell. Did you really just say that, Misaka? "Ah. Ha. Sorry," I say, trying to give my very best sheepish grin.

"S'okay," she says, smiling. "I get what you mean. Just gotta keep working at it, right? Just like you did."

"Yeah. Oh, hey, we're here!"

* * * * * * * *​

Seventh Mist is one of the biggest malls in Academy City. It's a gigantic, triangular five-story complex with your standard department stores at each corner; the shops on the first three levels are all arranged along walkways at the edges of the triangle, centered around a huge, open rotunda lit by windows all around the building. The rotunda is typically used for showing off large and/or shiny things; right now it's replicas of ACTech's ultraheavy powered armor prototypes. Later in the year it'll be taken up by one of the largest Christmas trees in Japan. The top two levels are just a maze of wall-to-wall stores; they're kind of a lower-rent zone as a result, which means they're where you want to go for the really good deals.

Or so I learn from Saten and Uiharu; to be honest, I normally rarely stray far from the fancier shops on the lower levels. I'm not exactly hard up for money, a fact of which I'm made acutely aware as they drag me and Kuroko away from the fancy advertisements and brand-name shops and demonstrate to us how we can get basically the same clothes and accessories for what looks like about three quarters of the price. Except they stop me before I pay for a blouse and immediately start arguing with the shop owner, who immediately starts arguing back in a heavy Korean accent. The final cost ends up being less than half the price it would be at the brand-name shop. It's...enlightening. Kuroko doesn't end up picking up much; we both have to wear our uniforms at all times on weekdays, and she has to wear hers whenever she's on Judgement duty as well.

About an hour in, we spontaneously decide to go and grab a late lunch from the food court on the third floor. I'm halfway through a bowl of ramen when I spot an oddly familiar head of spiky black hair. Is that...nah, couldn't be. Could it? Whoever it is, he's sitting across from a young, obviously foreign girl with silver hair, who's currently wolfing down spaghetti bolognese at a rather alarming rate. He glances in my direction...yep, it's him. Same guy from last night. Same "oh god why me" expression plastered on his face, even. Who's the girl, though?

I get up to try and get a closer look, or maybe just say hi. That's right about when the first bomb goes off.

* * * * * * * *​

 

[Shockz]

Touma/One of Those Days

There are some days where you just wake up and you know everything's going to work out fine. You got enough sleep and/or your required dose of caffeine, you pull yourself out of bed and make your way through your morning routine without feeling like you're on barely-functioning autopilot, and you head off to school or work with a clear set of goals in mind and full confidence that you can achieve them.

Or at least, there are allegedly people who allegedly have days like that.

Then there are the days when you know right at the start that everything's going to go to shit. You hit your alarm clock and immediately fall back to sleep, then finally wake up five minutes before class starts. You crawl out of bed with a pounding headache and bloodshot eyes, earned solely through lack of sleep rather than anything fun like alcohol. You stumble to your feet, your whole body aching for variably explicable reasons. (For me the aches tend to be a little more explicable than not; my recent bruises are layered over old fractures that have added up over time. I shudder to imagine what I'll feel like in the morning when I'm actually old.)

These days are a lot more common for me.

Of course, there are plenty of in-between days, where you get arguably-sufficient sleep, and don't really want to get out of bed but eventually manage, then bootstrap yourself up to the level of "vaguely functional human being" with sufficient amounts of coffee and/or ADHD pills that you may or may not actually need (but hey, who in this damn city doesn't take 'em?). Those are the days when you're just on time or only sort-of late, and may or may not be successful at whatever you try to accomplish.

This is a day that fits under none of those categories. This is not a Good Day, a Bad Day, or even an Okay Day.

This is a Weird day.

This is the kind of day where you wake up and find that you're sleeping on the roof of a skyscraper, halfway across town from where you actually live. Where you open your bedroom door and are nearly run over by a horde of feral cats. Where you walk out the front door and notice that as far as the eye can see, everyone but you is wearing their shoes on their hands. Where a girl flies up to your apartment and crash-lands on your balcony. These types of days probably happen all the time, but I'm pretty sure they're a lot more common here in Academy City. That might be recency bias at work, however, because that last one has just freaking happened to me.

I'm enjoying some arguably well-deserved rest—something all too rare for me, even on summer vacation—when I hear the loud thump from the direction of the balcony. I wince immediately; my sliding glass door has been the target of more than one suicidal bird. The thump is slightly wrong for that, though; it was too soft, and there wasn't enough muffled clang in it. I roll my eyes and discard the fantasy paperback I was slogging my way through. It's pretty boring anyway; I get the sense that it read pretty well in the original English but the Japanese translators got lazy. I slide off the bed, still in the t-shirt and boxers I slept in, and go to check the balcony, sliding back the flimsy curtain that covers the door along with the door itself.

There's...there's a girl there. There's a very odd-looking girl, sprawled on the narrow strip of concrete that somehow qualifies as a "balcony". As I stare at her, flabbergasted, she pulls herself to her knees and looks up at me.

She's obviously foreign, with delicate Caucasian features, very light skin, light green eyes, and—most noticeably—long, very windblown silver hair. The hair in particular gives her kind of an exotic look, like she's a princess or something. It makes a bizarre contrast with her clothes—a worn-looking pair of jeans, an old gray t-shirt, and a patched-up black backpack. Age...young. Early teens, I'd guess? She looks like she might be pretty cute in a couple years, but for now she hasn't quite escaped the clutches of her tweens.

I stare at her. She stares at me.

"Ah, hello there," she finally says. "I'm quite hungry. Do you have any food?"

I blink a couple of times while that question filters its way through the verbal centers of my brain. It sort of bounces off at the "comprehend full meaning of sentence" stage and falls into the aether, and so my next statement is a rather dumbfounded "Where'd you come from?"

"I. Er." She's silent for a moment as well. "Ah! Urban exploration. Yes. I do urban exploration. Climbing and parkour and such. For fun, you see. So I climbed up here." She reaches one hand up to the top of her head suddenly. "Ah, my hat's gone." She shakes her head. "Of course it's gone. Stupid of me."

So she's an esper who can fly or levitate and accidentally landed here, and she's one of those types that wants to keep her powers private. Which I wholeheartedly sympathize with. So I humor her. "Okay. Gotcha. Looks like it was a pretty hard climb; you want to take the elevator back down?"

"Ah, yes, that would be quite appreciated. Er, my apologies for the inconvenience and all."

I reach down to help her up. "Heh, no problem. Just wasn't expecting—" My right hand brushes against her backpack as she gets to her feet.

The backpack promptly explodes.

I've seen a few different kinds of explosion in my time. There's the big, fiery kind, that can leave a good chunk of a building (or more) blown out; there's the small, violent kind that tends to cause minimal property damage but lots of injuries; and there's the very small kind that's barely an explosion at all. This is, thankfully, the latter kind. It's more like what happens when you squeeze a bag of chips really hard than anything. Except instead of just opening up on one end, the backpack somehow just disintegrates into scraps of cloth, spilling its contents all over my floor.

I freeze, staring dumbfoundedly at the pile of stuff. She frowns, shifts her shoulders a couple of times, frowns harder, and slips the straps—the only parts of the backpack that remain intact—off her shoulders. She slowly turns to look behind her, and sees the backpack's former contents—some clothes, a broken music box, a water bottle and can of grape juice (both split open, and leaking their contents all over the floor), and other odds and ends—in a place very distinctly separate from where they should be. Then, without warning, she makes a run for it, sprinting for my front door, desperately fiddling with the lock, and running outside.

So there I am, left with a slowly spreading grape juice stain on my carpet, a bunch of other random junk in varying states of brokenness, and no idea what the hell just happened. I sigh and start to grab some paper towels from the kitchenette. I've almost gotten the stain out when a knock comes at the door.

To my complete lack of surprise, it's the same girl who just ran out. "Come back for your clothes?" I ask. "They've got grape juice all over 'em, but I'm pretty sure you can get that out."

She glares up at me. "Who are you, and how did you do that?"

"Uh, Touma. Kamijou Touma. And...what did I do, exactly?" I'm still a little blurry on that. The backpack seemed to come apart at the exact moment it touched my hand. Which would mean that either she had some sort of pressure-sensitive explosive in there (which, in addition to that being ridiculous, is ruled out by her not knowing what I did) or it had something to do with my IPD nullification abilities. But why would the backpack be held together with an IPD field? Unless it just had an IPD field with a lot of stored-up energy embedded into it, which was released when I touched it. I've seen that happen a couple times; some espers can set their powers to "trigger" on an item after a time delay. That would explain it, then. "Oh, uh, that. Sorry about that. I have this power, nullifies IPD fields. Does annoying stuff like that sometimes."

"I don't know what you are trying to accomplish by lying, but I'm afraid you'll have to try harder," she says, her glare intensifying. "Who do you work for? Rome? Constantinople? Washington? Beijing? What do you want with me, and how did you know I'd be here? If you know who I am, you must know what I'm capable of if threatened."

"Whoa!" I throw my hands up in the air. "Whoa there. I'm not threatening you or anything."

The glare breaks, suddenly, replaced by a confused frown. "No. No, you're not. But then...what? How?"

"I told you. That's my power. I nullify IPD fields with my right hand."

"IPD fields...that's what esper powers use, correct? But that doesn't make any sense. Magic and esper powers are two entirely different things, and...oh." Her eyes widen. "Ah, forget I just said anything, all right?"

"Did you just say 'magic'?" She's really going out of her way to try and convince me she's not an esper. I wonder why.

"No! No, I didn't! It was, er, something completely different. Yes, you misheard me, that's all. I said, ah, matchsticks and esper powers are two entirely different things! Yes."

Until I heard that really, really sad attempt at a cover-up, I was convinced she was just bullshitting me about magic. Now I'm starting to wonder if she actually believes it. Still, no reason to feed her paranoia. "S'all right. There's no such thing as magic; everyone knows that."

"Yes. Indeed. No magic. You, ah, clearly just neutralized my, ah, esper powers. Which I used. On the backpack. And then you neutralized them. Which made the backpack explode like that. Yes."

Now she's starting to convince me that magic is real. "Right. Sorry, my bad. If you want, I can buy you a new one." I say this without the reluctance I might normally display; I've been saving up for a new smartphone for a while, so I've got some spare cash for the time being.

"No, that's quite all riiii—er, actually, I'd very much appreciate that," she says, the sudden change of heart coming as she digs her hand into her pocket. I know that motion. Boy, do I know it. And right about then is when her first question claws its way out of the Abyss of Forgotten Things in my brain and forces its way back into my short-term memory, presumably replacing the page I was on in that book.

"Sure. Most of the shops aren't open yet, though—" it is only 7:00 in the morning— "so do you want some breakfast or something? You did say you were hungry."

* * * * * * * *​

I am trying to come up with a good metaphor for this girl's eating habits. "Ravenous" or "like a horse" doesn't really do the trick; she's just too well-mannered for it to fit. She doesn't eat in a rude or disgusting way, she just...eats quickly. And she doesn't stop. Ever. Since I made the grave mistake of suggesting to her that she could 'help herself', she's eaten through three of the seven cups of instant ramen I try to keep on hand at all times. The first two were consumed while I was frying up what I thought would be enough bacon for the both of us. The third was eaten contemporaneously with the vast majority of that bacon. She is now eyeing the fourth while munching on one of my last couple of energy bars.

It's now about 8. I'm not sure when exactly your average department store opens—you're more likely to find me pushing my way in a minute before closing time—but I need to get this girl out of my apartment before she starts trying to eat the furniture.

"So, uh, I don't think I ever got your name," I say, trying to distract her.

"Oh!" Her gaze mercifully drifts away from the last of my food and back onto me. "Ah, my name is Index. Index Librorum Prohibitorum."

...She really is bad at this whole paranoia thing, if she's trying to use a fake name that obvious. "Nice to meet you, Index," I say nonetheless. "So, I think the, uh, stores are probably opening soon. We can try and hit some of the discount shops at Seventh Mist if you like. You know, whenever you're ready."

There is, of course, a hidden motive behind me actually offering to go buy the stuff with her, as opposed to just handing her the money and washing my hands of the whole situation. One, I don't have much in the way of cash on hand; it's all in my bank account, and I'm not about to hand her my card or my phone. Two...she's obviously a pretty powerful esper, if she got herself up this high. She's also obviously not on speaking terms with reality right now. I figure I should stay with her a bit, just to make sure she doesn't hurt herself. Or anyone else.

She takes one last, mournful look at the remaining ramen, then says "Sure!" and follows me out the door.

* * * * * * * *​

I am not a huge fan of malls. Or crowded places in general, to be honest; there's too much of a chance of running into someone who thinks my face is aesthetically displeasing and wants to make it resemble a Cubist portrait. With their fists. And given the number of people who might hold that opinion of me, you can see why I try to avoid going out during the daytime. Alone, anyway. If I've got friends with me it's a different story, but...Tsuchimikado Motoharu is always busy with something, and...the other guy...I try not to hang out with just him alone, on the off chance he figures out I can't remember his name. And I haven't exactly made myself many other friends. I think people can smell the bad luck on me.

But I digress; point is, you're about as likely to find me at Seventh Mist during the daytime as you are to find Meltdown at a poetry recital. (For the uninitiated: You will not find Meltdown at a poetry recital.) Yet here I am, now, with a girl who apparently has a black hole for a stomach and a video camera for a brain.

Wait, did I mention that part? Oh, yeah, on the walk to the mall (relatively long, but why waste the money on bus fare?), I got to asking this "Index" girl what her story was. I mean, obviously she was a Coke or two short of a six-pack right now, but I was hoping there would be some hints buried in whatever delusional narrative her mind had had concocted. According to her, she's a recently arrived exchange student from England. I very gently hinted to her that exchange students don't get the Kihara Process done, and thus are generally not espers. (I did not mention that her Japanese is way too good for her to be a foreign exchange student.) Immediately thereafter, she became the daughter of English expatriates who had recently come to Academy City. Still sort of flimsy, but more believable, considering that that's apparently General Superintendent Jeikoson's story. Except she corrected me on that; apparently it was Thomas Jeikoson's father whose parents were Australian expatriates. So of course, I asked her if she thought she knew more about Academy City's history than I did. She promptly rattled off the day of AC's founding, the former Tokyo towns and villages that were incorporated into it, the names of every single member of the Board of Directors and their immediate predecessors, the twenty largest corporate sponsors of the city, and its top ten ranked universities, high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. Turns out, she apparently has eidetic memory—she remembers literally everything she sees, hears, reads, whatever.

"Yes, everything I eat, too," she says when I reply with the obvious question. "Why do you ask?"

"...No reason." Does she really not realize it? "License plate of that Corolla we just passed."

"Mi 22-59," she replies without the slightest hint of hesitation.

"Second book from the right on my middle bookshelf."

"A Dream of Spring, George R. R. Martin."

"Air speed of an unladen swallow—"

"African or European?" she deadpans. "Honestly, I'm English. I'm more surprised you've seen it. About 11 metres per second, either way."

I am undeterred. "Date Masamune's birthday."

"September 5, 1567."

Now I'm deterred. "I give up," I declare, throwing my hands up in the air. "You've got this perfect...memory...crap."

She grins at me smugly. "Of course I do. And now you owe me lunch."

"What? We didn't bet lunch or anything on it..."

"Of course we did! Don't you remember? Are you accusing my perfect memory of being faulty?"

"No, I'm accusing you of lying."

"But why would I lie to the perfect gentleman who has so graciously offered to replace the items he unintentionally destroyed? Do you think me some kind of monster, sir?"

"...I'm not going to get out of buying you lunch, am I?"

"'Fraid not."

Yep. Kamijou Touma's Incredibly Bad Luck strikes again.

* * * * * * * *​

Oh, right, I was talking about how I'm not a huge fan of malls. Yet here I am, and here she is, and she seems to love it. And not just in the normal teenage-girl-on-a-shopping-spree way; soon after we walk in, I sense that she's falling behind, and turn around to see her standing still in the middle of the crowd, people brushing past her on both sides. Her eyes are closed, her head is tilted back slightly, and she's smiling like there's nowhere else she'd rather be.

I turn and walk back towards her. "Something wrong?"

"Ah! Er, no." She shakes her head, seemingly snapping out of it. "It's just...wow. So many people..."

"What, you've never been to a mall before?"

"Well...yes. Yes, of course I have, many times. They're just rarely this crowded in London."

She's getting better at this. "Yeah. You think this is crowded, you should see how packed they can get in downtown Tokyo."

"That so?"

"Yep. Imagine an infinite, seething, writhing mass of humanity all inbound towards a sale you don't even care that much about, and all determined to get there first." I shudder, half-jokingly. "Not too fun."

"I suppose not," she says, distractedly, as we walk out into the rotunda. I see her look up and around herself, taking in the sights. "All this architecture, and engineering...all just for the sake of selling things."

"Something strange about that? The money goes in so that more money comes out."

"No. Not strange, looking at it that way, I suppose. It's just that...do you know what this building reminds me of, more than anything?"

"What?"

"St. Paul's. Er, St. Paul's Cathedral, in London," she amends, at my confused look. "It's one of the largest churches in Britain, and...it's much smaller than this, of course, except for perhaps the dome, but it's got a bit of the same feel to it. The grand, sweeping, open...bigness of it," she says, swinging her arms out to her sides descriptively. "It's different, it's less...dignified, I suppose, but there are echoes. Both are places for people to gather, to be together." She shakes her head again. "I don't know; I'm rambling on like this all of a sudden."

"No, no, I get what you mean." I have no idea what she's talking about.

"Ah, good. Anyway, so, first things first. Backpack. Where do we find one of those?"

* * * * * * * *​

I hurry her up to the discount shops on the top two floors, hoping to avoid losing more money than strictly necessary on buying replacements. With the expression of wonder I saw on her face earlier, I can't help but feel a slight sense of foreboding as the elevator dings and the doors to the fourth floor open; is she going to be running around the shops trying to buy everything she sees?

The dread turns out to be misplaced, though: while "Index" still seems to be awed by this hub of consumerism, she's relatively restrained as we walk around the shops. We do end up spending a few hours browsing around, but mostly only because she absolutely insisted on finding the best possible deal on everything. And she doesn't pick up much, either, just limiting herself to replacements for the stuff that was ruined—a couple simple T-shirts, a small black backpack, and a cheap music box. Heck, I have enough left over at the end to not be too worried about treating her to lunch.

I head into the food court with something that might almost resemble a spring in my step, if you squint a bit. Sure, I'm out a few bucks, but it looks like I just might be able to recover this Weird Day and turn it into an Okay Day. She doesn't even eat her way through much more of my pocket money; sure, that bowl of spaghetti bolognese is distressingly large, but it's also a cheap item on the menu of the cheap Italian place. Still, as we sit down and she starts to vacuum up the spaghetti and alleged-meat sauce, I suddenly realize what this whole thing must look like to someone else.

I'm walking everywhere with this girl, who is obviously not related to me. I'm buying her stuff. I'm treating her to lunch. Worse yet, she's obviously significantly younger than me, yet not so young as to invalidate the obvious conclusion.

I take a look around. Yes, there are indeed several mallgoers, male and female alike, who are staring at us. Hopefully they're just staring because of Index's obvious foreignness or eating habits and...uh...oh god. She's here. The Railgun is here. Maybe she won't recogniiiiii—nope, she recognized me, and she's starting to get up. I mentally prepare myself for her trying to zap me again.

BOOM.

That...that wasn't a zap. Or even a crackle. That was something very, very big. Way too big to be the Railgun's railgun, even. My ears are ringing. They hurt a bit. I think I hear...yeah, I definitely hear people screaming.

The first thing I hear over the ringing and the screaming is a voice, amplified enough to be heard throughout the rotunda. I see people starting to gather at the guard rail at the inner edge of the walkway, and run over there myself. Misaka and her friends do likewise, I note.

The voice is coming from a guy down in the center of the rotunda, standing in front of one of the powered-armor replicas that were on display there. He's wearing a black leather jacket, jeans, dark sunglasses, and a bandanna over the lower half of his face. There's a faint shimmer in the air around him—a force field? He's also directly in front of what used to be the entrance to a cellphone shop, and is now a smoking pile of rubble.

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Gooooood afternoon, Academy City!" he says, his voice coming through clearly despite the bandanna. "Now that we have your attention, y'all had better listen the fuck up. First off, go ahead. Call the cops. We're counting on it. Secondly, anyone enters or leaves this mall—and don't you worry, we've got all the entrances covered—or if anyone tries to harm me or one of my bros, this whole place goes up in smoke. What, don't think we can do it?"

There's another blast, slightly farther away, and the screams redouble.

"Oops! There goes Anim8. Always thought that was a stupid name for a store. I guess all you worthless fucking otaku will have to get your moe fix from somewhere else now, huh?" He laughs, crazily. "Oh, man, I can't believe this is working. Any of y'all make it out of this alive, y'all gotta try Level Plus. It is the shit. Anyway, point is: We are the Tarantulas. And today, Academy City...today, we are going to teach you a lesson."

 

[Shockz]

Mikoto/Defused

"...and today...Today, we're going to teach you a lesson."

The coin is out of my pocket and in my hand, and I've just started charging up when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn to face Kuroko, who's frowning at me.

"No, Onee-sama," she says, shaking her head. "They have hostages. For all we know, we're hostages. Let us handle this, for now."

"No, let me—there's got to be something I can do—"

"Not right now. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that this situation is extremely delicate. Allowing these lowlifes to know that you are present could be the factor that pushes them over the edge."

It's infuriating. Every instinct I have screams at me to say no to Kuroko, to go and show these psychopaths what happens when you piss off a Level 5. But...she's right. I don't know how to handle this. I didn't even have a plan in my mind besides "railgun the asshole", which...yeah, would have likely gotten us all killed.

It's a stark reminder that I usually shy away from the whole superhero thing. Kuroko's been trying to recruit me for Judgement almost since I've known her, but it's never been for me. I mean, I'll help someone out if I see them in trouble, but I've always felt like as soon as you start looking for people to save, you start wondering why you aren't dedicating more of your time to doing so, start wondering why you aren't helping out as much as possible, and before you know it you're putting on a mask and spandex and calling yourself Captain Electron. My future includes the phrases "Misaka Mikoto, PhD." and "high-energy particle physics", thank you very much, and despite what the American comics tell you, people don't generally have time to be both. (Not to mention that I don't even want to think about what I'd look like in spandex.)

Kuroko, on the other hand...Apparently satisfied that I'm not going to screw things up, she turns to her fellow Judgement officer. "Uiharu. Tarantulas?"

Uiharu nods immediately; she's already got a smartphone out and a pair of thin, utilitarian Judgement-issue AR glasses on, and is rapidly glancing through screen after screen of information. "Tarantulas. Mixed gang, not affiliated with Zero-Sum or any of the big esper factions. Zeroes and Ones, mostly; couple Twos. Leader's a guy by the name of Ikeda Tsuyoshi, a Two who can do light manipulation. Lasers, mostly. Goes by "Trick". Guy down there is definitely a decoy; his voiceprint matches Hakamichi Touya, One with sound manipulation. Explains the instant PA system. Though he's not supposed to be powerful enough to do much more than some fancy ventriloquism."

Kuroko nods. "We've got Plusers, then." While Uiharu keeps going through the information, my diminutive roommate pulls out her own phone. "Shirai from 177 to Central, priority one," she says immediately, before she's even had time to enter a number. "Two large explosions at Seventh Mist Mall. Casualties unconfirmed but highly likely. Responsible parties claim to have mall on lockdown; threatening further explosions if anyone leaves or enters. Level Plus users likely. Officer Uiharu from 177 is here with me; going to have her handle negotiations while I see if I can locate the bombs. In the meantime, I need a cordon around the mall, I need Anti-Skill watching every way in or out, I need everything."

I suddenly realize that I've never seen Kuroko in full Judgement mode before. All of the painfully refined speech and mannerisms, all of her inappropriate comments or longing looks towards me, everything that I think of when I think of Kuroko is suddenly shoved aside in an instant.

She looks over at Uiharu again, snapping the phone shut and tugging on her Judgement armband—green, with four parallel white lines around the circumference and a green shield symbol in the center. "Bombs?"

"Working on it!" Uiharu says, slightly frantically. "Cryo on the Rig's still spinning up. Should be just a couple more minutes."

"Understood," she responds, donning her own pair of AR glasses. "Let's see how long he keeps talking."

The guy down in the rotunda has indeed started talking again; he's amplified his voice even more to be heard over the screaming. "...fucking obvious! Bread and circuses, people! They're keeping y'all distracted while the elite harvest your minds and powers to feed the military-industrial complex! It's all part of it—TV, the Web, Twitter, GBPlus, everything is designed to make you into a nice, conforming...uh...conformist, too afraid to speak up!"

"Uiharu?" Kuroko's watching the crazy guy impatiently.

"Cryo's running. Processing the feeds now." I see a distinctive video through the back of her phone's transparent screen. It looks like smoke being sucked into something...oh. It's the explosion in the cell phone store, running in reverse. I watch the storefront reassemble itself in slow motion, and a marker appear at what looks like the approximate center of the blast. I try not to think about the people in the video rising back to their feet.

"So nobody complains when children disappear off the streets, never to be seen again! Nobody complains when they find huge bloodstains in back alleys! And nobody can do anything about it, because the more power they give you, the more they brainwash you! Well, not anymore! Level Plus has given us power! Power to rise up, to challenge the greedy suits and amoral scientists who play with our lives like we're characters in a sick fucking video game! Power to shake the very foundations of this corrupt city!"

"Got it," Uiharu says. "Bomber identified. Looks like delayed-release esper powers, not actual bombs; nobody in the gang has powers like that on file, but, well, plusers. Don't have a face on her yet, but I've got a profile, clothes, and probable locations for at least eight...nine...eleven bombs. Looks like they're ordinary objects in the stores, but they're emitting lots of heat. Everything's on your phone and glasses already."

"Got it. Game plan?"

"Priority one is to locate the bomber. I don't know if she can disarm the existing bombs, but we can definitely ask her. I'll handle negotiations like you said. We—"

"Wait a sec." An idea has just crossed my mind. Spiky's leaning on the balcony not too far away; I run over and grab his arm, yanking him over towards Kuroko and Uiharu. "I think this guy can probably disarm them."

"And who, exactly, is 'this guy'?" Kuroko asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Kamijou Touma," Uiharu speaks up. "IPD nullification. If anyone can do it, he can."

"Wha—how did you—" Spiky—Kamijou, I guess—stares at her goggle-eyed, then shakes his head. "Right. Judgement. Yeah, that's me."

Kuroko's expression suggests that for the first time in her life, she is grateful for the presence of a man, and she's not quite sure how to deal with that. Then she snaps out of it and grabs his arm. "All right, then. Come with me." She stands still there for a second, then frowns. "Why can't I teleport you?" Then she smacks her forehead with a palm. "Right. Looks like we're doing this the hard way. We'll need a distrac—"

"And this is your answer?!" The yell comes from over to my right: it's the silver-haired girl who was with Kamijou, calling out into the rotunda in precise, slightly accented Japanese. "You want the people in charge of this city to stop killing people, so therefore you kill people? I admit, I'm a bit confused about what exactly you're trying to accomplish there!"

"It's not about killing people, it's about making a statement! We are smashing the symbols of this corrupt society—"

"And yet peopleare dying!" she responds. "How can you expect to have people support you when they have every reason to fear you?" There are shouts of agreement from throughout the mall.

"She has a point, you know!" I hear a much louder shout from my other side, now. I look around suddenly—it's Uiharu. She's leaning over the balcony, speaking directly into her cellphone, which is doing a surprisingly good job of amplifying her voice. Kuroko and Kamijou are nowhere to be seen, meaning they've probably gone off to do unofficial bomb squad duty. "You're only hurting your cause by killing innocent people."

"Oh, look. Is that a Judgement armband? Looks like the pigs' trained attack dogs are here, everyone!"

"Call me whatever you want. Okay, look, you said people could call the cops or whatever? Well, they have, and Anti-Skill will be here soon. Let's talk about how we can make this end peacefully, all right? Nobody else has to die today."

* * * * * * * *​

Touma

Oh, good. Judgement's here in time to help. I guess one out of eighty bajillion isn't too bad. Also, apparently they're on a recruitment drive, and I looked like the perfect candidate!

Okay. I should, I should probably stop with the internal snark, but I'm not sure what else to do because bombs have gone off and, and people are dying—

No. Okay. Okay, I've got this. Okay. The tiny Judgement chick—and she is tiny, shorter than 'Index' despite her Shidarezakura uniform marking her as a high-schooler—is apparently hiding some serious muscle in that miniscule frame, because she seems to have absolutely no trouble dragging me into an emergency stairwell via her death grip on my right arm. "Where are we going?" I ask her.

She turns around and shushes me with a finger to her lips, glaring. "Quiet," she whispers. "Can't let them know we're looking for the bombs."

"Right," I whisper back. "So where are we going?"

She cocks her head in an odd way, the way that people usually do when they're trying to get reality to line up with something on their AR glasses. "Tell you when we get there."

Naturally. As she takes me up the stairs, I can't help but wonder if 'Index' is going to take this whole incident as proof that the lizard sorcerers from Mars have put magic worms into her brain, and proceed to get us all killed via attacking with the powers that totally are/are not magic. Not like I can do anything about it now, though. Best get this over with and get back to her as quick as possible.

When we reach the fifth floor, she finally releases my arm—I reflexively massage the little welts she left on it—and briefly vanishes into thin air. She opens the door from the other side a moment later. "Hmm. They're not covering the stairwells," she says, more to herself than to me. "Stupid of them."

"I don't get the feeling that keeping people from moving around inside the gigantic ready-to-blow death trap is as big a concern for them as keeping them from leaving," I reply.

"Good point. That, and I don't believe there are all that many of them. Twelve or thirteen at most; most of them would be occupied covering the exits. This way." I wince in anticipation as she reaches for my arm again, then wince harder when she actually grabs me. Pretty soon we're in front of a slightly shady-looking retro video game shop (the only kind of brick-and-mortar video game shop that exists any more, incidentally; you haven't been able to buy a physical copy of a game for two console generations), all the shadier-looking due to the lack of people inside it. The Judgement girl scans the shop quickly from the outside—I catch a glimpse of what looks like a thermal overlay on her glasses—then vanishes again. She's back a moment later. "Found the bomb. Not sure if moving it will set it off, so I'm not going to risk it. Now. You say you can do power nullification—"

"It was actually your friend with the flowers who said that," I point out.

"—Yes, whatever. But you can, correct? Does that include neutralizing delayed-release IPD emission points?"

"Yeah, I've done it before."

"Would using your powers to neutralize the bomb risk setting it off?"

I have to think about that one. "...Probably not?" I think back to Index's backpack. "There's sometimes a little energy release, maybe enough to break whatever the power was used on, but nowhere near as much as the power has to be storing in it. It should be okay."

She sighs. "I can't take 'probablies' and 'shoulds'. I need a yes or no."

"Then no. It won't set off the bomb."

"You're sure."

"Yes."

"I hope you won't mind me standing behind cover, just in case."

"Not in the slightest." In truth, I'm nowhere near certain about whether or not this is actually going to blow me up. But hey, if it doesn't, I've saved the day, right?

"Good. In the middle of the display on the right wall, there's a shelf with three discounted PlayStation 4s, out of their boxes. The bomb is the farthest one from the entrance; it's emitting a significant amount of heat. Do whatever you do."

"Roger." I smirk and snap a salute; she sighs and vanishes, reappearing a significant distance down the deserted hall.

All right. Here goes nothing.

I walk into the abandoned game shop, following the Judgement girl's instructions as I push past tables covered in dusty, obviously bootlegged DVD cases. Right where she said they'd be, there's a trio of old, slightly dusty PS4s. I hold my lefthand a couple inches above each of them, just in case she got turned around while finding the bomb. Sure enough, though, the farthest one from the exit is giving off heat in waves; it feels like holding my hand above an active stove. That's it, then. I lower my mostly-ordinary left hand and raise my Right Hand of Blatant Cheating. Then, trying not to think about all the ways this could go horribly wrong, I tap the old game console with one finger and immediately dive to the floor.

The loud popping noise nearly gives me a heart attack, but eventually I figure out that I'm not dead or horribly maimed, and I dare to lift my head off the ground. There's no visible damage to the shop, so I slowly raise myself to my feet and examine my handiwork. The PlayStation has shifted a couple inches, and it's definitely ruined—there's a huge, gaping crack across the casing—but other than that, there doesn't seem to be any sign of anything exploding violently.

Well, then. Guess I get to be the hero today.

* * * * * * * *​

Mikoto

"Heh, oh man, you Judgement assholes don't even get what we're doing here, do you?"

"Let's say no. Explain it to me."

"You wouldn't—You wouldn't understand. You're part of the system, little girl. You think we're all crazies because that's what they want you to think."

"I don't think you're crazy," Uiharu says, and despite her voice echoing throughout the rotunda, she manages to make the statement sound so gentle that I almost believe her. "I think you're angry, and frustrated, and the way you saw it, the only way to achieve your goals was through violence. I just want to know why."

"Of course violence was the only way! People don't pay attention to anything else! Y'all have been conditioned to, to react to violence in the movies, in the news; nothing else even gets your attention!"

"Okay. That's, that's fair. That's a fair criticism. I still don't understand, though; what are you trying to accomplish? What do you want?"

"We want. Uh. We want to destroy this symbol of consumerofascism, and all the others like it! Then we want to overthrow the government of Academy City and replace it with one that isn't corrupt and amoral!"

Wow. Nobody can accuse these guys of aiming low, I guess.

"All right. I'm going to pass those demands on up to my superiors. We'll see how it goes. I'm going to switch off the microphone here for a minute so I can do so, all right?" At Hakamichi's assent (combined, naturally, with various threats regarding plans against him and his gang), she puts her phone back to her ear and starts speaking in a low voice. There's a tense few moments of relative silence; after a while he starts ranting again, spouting more of the same vague anti-establishment, anti-consumerist rhetoric.

Finally, though, Uiharu lowers her phone, then holds it out again. She patiently waits for him to finish yelling, then speaks up. "All right. I've talked to some of the people I report to, and they have a couple questions. First off: Are you in charge of the Tarantulas?"

"Why—why do you want to know? You wanna know if the whole gang's gonna fall apart if you take me out? Not gonna happen, either way!"

"It's all right. We're not going to take you out. I just want to know if they'll follow your orders if you say to attack, or to stand down."

"We're not gonna stand down! You hear me? We'll never surrender to you pigs!"

"All right! All right. Okay. I understand that. I just need to know if I'm talking with someone who can negotiate on behalf of the whole gang."

The guy doesn't speak for a moment; eventually, he abruptly yanks a cellphone out of his pocket and flicks it open. Much like Uiharu, he speaks on it for a couple minutes, his voice no longer amplified, then covers the mic on it. "All right," he says, his voice re-amplified."Boss says I can tell you that, uh, I'm not the boss, and he's willing to talk. Through me.He says, uh, the mall's getting leveled either way. But if General Superintendent Jeikoson and the entire AC Board of Directors hand in their resignations immediately, and if every one of the Tarantulas is allowed to leave here free, he'll wait 'till the mall is evacuated to give the signal."

"Okay. Understood. I'm passing that on up. Is there anything else?"

"Uh, yeah. He says, uh, the AC government has to tell us who the names belong to. What happened to them."

Uiharu frowns. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Which names?"

"The fucking names, man! You don't hear them? Over and over again?! Haruue Erii! Nomura Takeshi! Harada M—"

CRACK.

Both Uiharu and Hakamichi freeze. He moves first: he crumples to his knees, a hand clasped to his chest. He pulls it away, stares at it, and even from here I can see the bright crimson. Slowly, he collapses to the ground. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I realize that this is the first time I've seen a person die.

* * * * * * * *​

Touma

It's not exactly difficult to guess what that sound was. The Powers That Be were tired of listening to Loudmouth's incoherent babbling, and decided to shut him up. Probably using a ridiculously large sniper rifle fired by a cyborg Anti-Skill Total Badass (TM) in a chopper halfway across town. What's slightly more difficult to guess, however, is why they chose to do so before this half-pint Judgement officer (whose name, by the way, is Shirai Kuroko; around the fifth bomb I pointed out that she was sending me into lethal danger without us even being introduced) had confirmed every bomb was taken care of. And, in fact, after she had reported that we had missed one the first time around.

Gee, it's almost like they had a reason to shut him up right then, isn't it?

In any case, the point is quickly rendered academic in my mind, because said half-pint—who was until now exploring a bookstore, attempting to track down that last bomb—suddenly appears in front of me. Specifically, she appears carrying an even-halfer-pint girl who's sobbing like it's the end of the world, and travelling forward rather quickly, while airborne and yelling "GET DOWN!"

Well, it's not like I have a choice about it.

Her flying tackle carries the three of us just behind a corner that blocks us from view of the storefront in question, and that's probably what saves our lives. The explosion is, without a doubt, the loudest thing I have ever heard, and the first coherent thought that pops into my head once it's gotten out of ARGH GONNA DIE PANIC mode is Are my ears still gonna work after this?, followed rapidly by Oh God I just almost died holy fucking shit. (My mind is not known for having its priorities entirely straight.)

Shirai rolls off of me and sits up, dusting herself off, then helps the little girl do likewise. "Are you all right, sweetie?" I hear her ask over the ringing in my ears. "Are you hurt at all?"

The little girl—she can't be much more than seven or eight—is still sobbing, but she manages to shake her head. "N-no. My ears hurt a little, but I t-think I'm okay."

"Okay. Hang on just a moment." Shirai holds a finger to the side of her AR glasses. "Shirai here. I'm a little banged up, but on my feet. Too close, though, far too close...No. No, I told them I had missed one, I was going back for it...I know. I've got a little girl here..." She looks over at the girl in question. "All right. What's your name, sweetie?"

"R-Rinko."

"Okay, Rinko-chan. Do you know where your parents are?"

"S-satoko-nee-chan says they're in h-heaven." Oh god, it's just sob stories everyw—shut up, snarky part of my brain. Really not the time right now.

The Judgement officer doesn't even flinch at this revelation. "Okay. Do you know where Satoko-nee-chan is? Was she here with you before the explosions started?"

"Y-yeah. When the big bang happened, everyone ran out of the bookstore at once, and then I got separated from Satoko-nee-chan, and she said if we ever got separated I should stay put right where I was, so I stayed right here. Is she gonna come back for me?"

"I don't know, sweetie. But I think it would be faster if we tried to find her. Uiharu? All right, I'm on my way," she says, tapping the earpiece of her glasses again. "Close your eyes for a second, okay? I'm going to take you to someone who can help you find her," she says to the girl. As soon as the little girl complies, they both vanish, leaving me to contemplate my solitude.

She's back a moment later. "Sorry. I have many things to deal with right now. There're at least five more gang members outside of the building, most likely all espers, and I don't want to know what'll happen when they realize their grand hostage strategy failed. Your help is greatly appreciated, but I'd rather not get civilians involved more than absolutely necessary."

"Wait, but—I'm good in a fight—" But she's already gone. Damn.

Well, nobody's saying I can't try and track 'em down myself...

* * * * * * * *​

Mikoto

Somewhere below us, there's a bang that shakes the floor beneath my feet.

Uiharu stares on for a moment, shocked. Then she shouts into her phone: "Shirai! Status!" There's a long, tense pause, and then she half-relaxes. "Thank God. What were they thinking? Did they even know the bombs were...what. What in the...that is insane. Okay..." There's a longer pause. "All right, I heard, I'll help her out. I think I've got camera locks on the rest of the gang, including the bomber; sending them to your glasses now."

"What? What happened?" I ask.

"Ah, it seems there was a miscommunication of some kind with ACPD and Anti-Skill. I, uh, can't really say more than that. It sounds like nobody else was hurt, however. Shirai-san should be back in just a moment."

Sure enough, Kuroko pops into existence a moment later, bringing a tiny little girl with her. "All right, go ahead and open them."

"Whooooa," the little girl says as she open her eyes. "How'd you do that? Are you an esper, lady?"

"Yes, I am," Kuroko responds, smiling. "Now, Rinko-chan, Uiharu-san here is going to help you find Satoko-nee-chan just as soon as she can, all right?"

"O-Okay." The little girl's sniffling a little bit, I notice.

Kuroko nods. "Good. Stay on watch, Uiharu. I'm going to track down the targets." She vanishes again.

That does it. I've had enough of standing by and watching, and maybe now that the situation's not quite so delicate..."Okay. Uh. Uiharu, I know I'm not Judgement, but is there anything I can be—wait." I peer over the guard rail again; both the cellphone shop and the anime store are smoking, half-collapsed ruins. "I'm going to go see if there's anyone I can help down there!" Without waiting for her to reply, I vault over the guard rail into free fall. I close my eyes and focus on the magnetic fields around me, feeling them, strengthening them, and grabbing hold of them. A web of electricity arcs from my body across the rotunda, crackling across the mall like the world's flashiest safety harness, gradually slowing my fall until I descend, gently, to the first floor, not far from Hakamichi's cor—no. No, don't think about that. You're helping the people who might still be alive right now.

My feet hit the ground, and I suddenly realize that the entire crowd is staring at me. There's faint whispers, looks of awe—maybe even fear?—on some faces. That was kind of flashy, I guess. I take a long, awkward moment to come up with the right words. "C-come on! People might still be alive under the rubble! Help me dig them out!" I run over to the ruins of the cell phone store and start hauling chunks of shattered concrete away, magnetizing the rebar in the bigger pieces I can't get a good grip on.

After a moment, people start rushing up to help me. First among them is a big redheaded guy in a long black coat that looks like it just came off the set of a Western, who starts digging next to me, followed quickly by a middle-aged salaryman and a couple of girls my age.

It's a long, hard, process, even with my powers, but...we eventually uncover five people from the rubble.

...Two are still alive. One, just barely. I hope an ambulance gets here soon.

The anime shop is a little more fortunate; six out of seven make it. The bookstore was empty when that bomb went off, thankfully.

But that's four. Four who...who didn't make it. There...there was a lot of blood. Oh god, there was a lot of blood.

* * * * * * * *​

Ruiko

Phew. Damn. There she goes. Jumping off a railing like gravity's a thing that happens to other people. Which for her it kind of is, I guess!

I watch Misaka descend to the floor like some kind of electric angel descending from Heaven, watch her start trying to dig people out of the wreckage of the bomb. Man, she almost had me fooled for a minute, making me think she was just an ordinary girl like me. There's nothing ordinary about her. Nuh-uh. It's not just me, either; everyone else around me is watching her with the same expression of awe. Except for that weird silver-haired girl. She actually looks kinda grumpy about something.

A sniffle from behind me catches my attention. The little girl that Shirai handed over to us is looking at Kazari, who's still flipping through images on her phone ridiculously fast while muttering something about whiskey tangos being foxtrotted into her glasses' mic. Man, how does she even keep up with that? In any case, I decide to take the initiative. "Rinko-chan?"

The little girl looks over at me. "What?"

"Kazari-chan's a little busy right now. You want me to help you find your older sister?" Kazari looks up and gives me an appreciative nod.

She pouts. "But the other lady said flower-lady would help me find her."

I laugh sheepishly. "Flower-lady's really, really busy. Are you sure you don't—"

"I wanna go with flower-lady!" She runs over to Kazari and attaches herself to her skirt, holding on for dear life.

I grin at her, then put one finger to my lips. I make a show out of walking out of Kazari's line of sight, then tiptoeing up behind her while her attention is on her data feed. Then, all of a sudden, I reach for The Mobile Flower Garden and yank it off of Kazari's head. "And lookee here," I say to Rinko. "Now I'm flower-lady. Wanna come with me?"

Rinko takes a minute to think about that, scrunching up her forehead. After a minute, she says "O-okay," apparently satisfied with my logic. Kazari's still busy being Judgement and responsible and stuff to respond properly, but I glimpse a little smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

* * * * * * * *​

Touma

Because today is apparently the kind of day where miracles happen, this Shirai girl is apparently a rather competent Judgement officer, which, I have to admit, I thought was kind of a contradiction in terms before today. Unfortunately, that means she gets to accomplish all the heroics—did I say unfortunately? Fortunately, that means she gets around to fighting off a whole bunch of homicidal Level-Plused espers long before I ever get to them. The closest main exit and the nearest emergency exit are already clear by the time I check them; I don't even get to see her in action until the third exit.

I open the door and immediately close it again, as a brick impacts the wall just to my left with a sound like a gun going off. Then I open it again, more carefully this time. There's another dude in a leather jacket with a bandana over half his face, much like the late Loudspeaker Man, looking around wildly. He finally catches sight of something, and sweeps his hands up through the air like he's trying to splash someone with nonexistent water. In response to his motion, another brick tears itself out of the sidewalk and hovers into the air. He steps back and draws one arm back as if preparing to throw something.

Then Shirai appears out of nowhere on his right, and, before he even has time to look around in confusion, slams her foot into his stomach. She doesn't let up after that, vanishing again and reappearing on his left, already shifting into a leg sweep that knocks his feet out from under him. She teleports once more, actually catching his head before it hits the ground—if there's one thing Judgement in general is good at, it's avoiding accusations of police brutality—then pulls out a small, gun-shaped device and fires it at his chest. Two wires spring out, and the guy twitches a bit before collapsing. (Huh. So that's a taser. Faster than I thought it would be.) Without warning, a number of silver spikes spontaneously materialize, pinning the gangster's leather jacket and baggy jeans to the ground. She taps her ear, says "Shirai here, got another one, east emergency exit, telekinetic, looks out cold but stay sharp, checking next point." Then she's gone again.

I let out a low whistle. Maybe it was the teleportation making her moves look faster than they really were, but I think that girl could fight me. Without powers. I haven't met a lot of people I can say that about.

In the meantime, I try and think up the next place to go. If she's circling the mall clockwise, same as I was...best way would be to skip two of the next exits. I check a nearby directory—so that's a department store exit, then another emergency exit, so...next emergency after that.

I run for the door and fling it open.

...Hey, I recognize that girl. Wasn't she the pyro mugger I saved a couple of guys from a couple weeks ago?

...aaaaaand she recognizes me. "Shit!" I hear her yell. "Nullifier's working with the cops! Bug out!" She sends a scorching fire blast in my general direction without really aiming, forcing me to dive to the ground—shit, she had trouble making fireballs the size of a golf ball last time, she's definitely hopped up on Level Plus—and runs for it. I figure she's going to run into the Anti-Skill cordon that has no doubt been set up by now, until she suddenly bends her knees, there's a burst of fire under her feet, and...does pyrokinesis even work that way?

Apparently it does, as she manages to jet-leap onto the roof of a building across the street. God dammit.

* * * * * * * *​

Mikoto

Ugh. That's...that's not a sight I ever want to see again. I don't...I don't handle blood well. Even if it's just, like, a normal blood test. And, and that much...I found a doctor, at least, and she said the badly hurt ones would probably be all right until an ambulance got here...but oh god, their faces...that does it. Judgement, Anti-Skill, I don't give a fuck any more. These murderous psychopaths are going to regret this day.

I rise from my knees in front of the last pile of rubble. My Shidarezakura uniform is ruined, soaked in sweat and blood and caked with concrete dust. Slowly, I turn towards the nearest entrance to the mall. Kuroko's out there right now, I know, securing all of the bombers. But who knows if she's cleared them all out yet?

I run towards, then through the entrance. ACPD's already here, it turns out; cops and paramedics rush by me as I leave. Kuroko's out there, talking to a couple of riot-geared Anti-Skill officers. She notices me and walks over; I quietly ask her if any of them are left.

"None guarding the mall," she half-whispers. "Several of them made a run for it; a couple are converging on a small van illegally parked on North 7th." She sighs. "Is there nothing I can say to stop you, Onee-sama?"

"No."

She looks me over, then buries her head in her palm. "White Toyota EasyCruise, license plate ka 84-51. At least try to just disable it."

I nod, once, as I dig Maika's little earplugs out of my pocket and place them in my ears. Then I'm off.

The thing about my powers is that while I can't easily make most things that aren't magnetic normally be magnetic, I can effectively magnetize myself. So if I need to get somewhere in a big hurry, well, as long as I can find something electroconductive to use as a booster...like, say, two tons of steel...

I keep running until I hit the parking lot, and jump onto the hood of the nearest car, magnetizing both it and myself so that I'm securely attached. I charge up for a moment, carefully feeling out the balance of electrical and magnetic fields, and then reverse the field around myself, letting the sudden repulsion fling me into the air, high enough to land on the nearest power line. I hook into the electric field around the line as I land, letting me balance upon it. Then, in a flurry of sparks, I push off, sliding down the the high-tension wire like a skateboarder with a death wish. I don't usually travel this way—it tends to cause blackouts wherever I go—but it's surprisingly fast when I do. I amp up the electric field higher and higher, accelerate faster and faster, carefully timing the jumps over each utility pole.

There.

I'm a few streets up from Seventh Mist when I spot the bombers' van, with ACPD patrol cars in hot pursuit. It's careening down the streets of Academy City with little regard for things like speed limits, traffic laws, or even which side of the street it's on, and the police are having some trouble catching up with it as a result.

The police have limits. I don't.

I dig an arcade token out of my pocket as I draw level with the van, and begin to direct the flow of electricity along my arm. Too unstable to do the little flip right here; I just hold it out on my finger, which I point at the van. Electricity crackles across my skin, and my earplugs seal, ready for the imminent sonic boom.

It's now or never. I aim for the van's rear left wheel, and fire.

* * * * * * * *​

Ruiko

I finally find Rinko's big sister Satoko, a high school senior who apparently forgot her instructions to the little 7-year-old and tried to search the crowd, only to remember them—and assume the worst—when that last bomb went off. She's bawling her eyes out when we find her, and just cries all the harder when Rinko runs up to her. The tearful reunion also happens right as cops and paramedics start filtering into the mall; there's a slow, surprisingly calm evacuation, and now we're sitting outside on the sidewalk, trying to collect our thoughts. Somewhere along the way, Rinko also decides to steal Kazari's headband off my head and try it on herself, then crown her sister with it after finding it to be way too big on her own head.

I'm hammering out an e-mail to Kazari when I catch sight of a news chopper a few streets away; when I look around, a whole bunch of people look like they're watching something on their phones. I pull up the ACTV news feed on my phone and show Rinko and Satoko. Huh. Apparently some of the bombers escaped into a car and—

Hey, wait a minute. The camera's moving from the car chase to a tiny figure moving along the power lines at an completely ridiculous speed, leaving tiny arcs of electricity in her wake. No prizes for guessing who that is. I mean, who else could it be? You know anyone else who can grind down a high-voltage line at 60 kilometers an hour?

"Whoa..." Satoko is as fixated on the screen as Rinko and I. Misaka's amazing, that's for sure. I mean, I've heard all the stories, seen some videos, but to actually see her in action? In real time? As it's happening? Totally different. I kinda wish I could be there in person!

The camera feed zooms out as she catches up with the escape van, and almost immediately starts getting snowy as a lot of electricity starts arcing around her. Is she going to...?

Holy shit, she is. A line of bright white light crosses the screen, and for a moment it's the only thing visible as the static gets bad enough to obscure everything else. When it finally clears up, the car is now on its side, missing its rear left tire and then some, next to a pretty decent-size crater in the road. The camera zooms in on the Railgun, still balanced on the lines, and she just smiles and gives a thumbs up. The camera zooms out slightly, and I catch a glimpse of Shirai staring up at Misaka as it pans over to the damaged car as ACPD officers rush over to pull the bombers out of the car.

"Wooooow..." is all I hear from Rinko.

I can only stare. So that's the power of a Level 5 in action.

Damn.

 

[Shockz]

Ruiko/Level 0

There's one thing they don't mention in all the brochures for Academy City. Just one tiny little fact that gets left out when they're selling parents on the idea of sending their kids off to get the best education in the world—not to mention superpowers and stuff. Actually, you can boil that fact down to a number.

Fifty-four percent.

Out of every hundred kids who come to Academy City and get the super-secret brain surgery procedure known as the Kihara Process done on them, sixty wake up as Level 0s, with no powers whatsoever. Out of those sixty, on average, only six will have the dedication, the work ethic, the sheer will to break through that barrier, to ascend to Level 1 or higher. The other fifty-four? The majority of Academy City's student population? They're stuck in Mediocreville for the rest of their lives.

Nobody actually comes out and says "oh, you only have a 46% chance of actually getting powers", of course. The raw numbers are buried way deep in the research papers; I dug 'em up myself while doing some research for a project in my IPD Dynamics class. And I get why; it wouldn't be too great for Academy City's PR if everyone realized that most people didn't actually get powers. Hell, I wouldn't say it if I was in charge of PR.

Plus, I can't let it get me down. The six or so who do get out of Level 0? They virtually always end up as Level 3 or higher; hell, the Railgun started out as a Zero, and look at her now.

That's gonna be me someday.

Well, maybe not right now, since right now I'm watching her get chewed out by a ponytailed Anti-Skill officer who looks like she's at the absolute end of her rope. I can guess why, especially since I'm hearing phrases like "vigilante" and "excessive force" being thrown around. Shirai's standing awkwardly off to the side, looking like she's not sure whose side she should be on.

Suddenly, something unbelievably cold presses against the back of my neck, as a sibilant voice whispers "Hey." in my ear. I whirl around with a yell, only to see Kazari standing right behind me, holding a can of juice in each hand. "Jumpy much?" she asks, grinning.

I glare at her. "You know, someone's gonna deck you for doing that one of these days."

"And it will still be worth it. So what are you up to?"

I shrug. "Just watchin' the show."

She follows my gaze and spots the ongoing argument; Misaka is actually starting to spark a bit around her forehead, but the AS officer doesn't let up. "Heh. Tough to believe that's Tessou-sensei. She's so sweet and good-natured normally."

"What?" I take another look at the Anti-Skill officer...wow, it totally is her. Tessou's a history teacher at my high school; I haven't been in one of her classes yet, so I've only run into her a few times. She's also our school's designated ACPD officer. But... "Huh. Where are her glasses?" The few times I've seen her, she was always wearing an oversized pair of glasses—the corrective kind, not the AR kind. She has a much smaller pair of the latter on right now, much like the kind Kazari's wearing.

"I'm not sure. I think you can get the AR glasses in prescription, though. Oh, hey, I got you this." She hands me one of the juice cans, ice-cold. "You like apple, right?"

Apple juice is my favorite, and she knows it. And she knows I know she knows it. I grin at her anyway. "Yeah. Thanks! Oh, here's this back; sorry for yoinking it like that." I hand her her headband back in exchange for the drink. Rinko did not want to give it up, let me tell you; only a promise that she'd get her own Mobile Flower Garden got her to let go. "You were amazing out there, by the way."

She chuckles sheepishly, swapping her own AR glasses with the headband. "It wasn't anything that special. I was mostly just saying what HQ told me to say, you know, put a couple of my own touches on it..."

I stare her dead in the eye. "Uiharu Kazari. I just watched you completely keep your cool while you were negotiating with actual, honest-to-God terrorists who were itching for a reason to blow you, me, and a couple thousand other people to kingdom come. I don't care if you had a script in front of you or whatever; you do not get to be all...humble and stuff after that."

"Well...yeah...I guess I did do pretty well, when you look at it that way," she says, smiling.

"There ya go. So, what's up? You off duty for now?"

She shrugs. "Sort of. The Rig's cooling off right now; the cryo on it only lasts so long if it's running at full power without me there. Tried to convince Konori-senpai to let me keep it running into the redzone—there shouldn't be any problems for at least an hour or so—but, you know. Last time I did that, stuff happened."

"What kind of stuff?"

She shudders. "Fire department stuff. So, yes, we're waiting for cooldown."

"That was you?"

"That was The Rig. And now that I've admitted that, I'd like to go back to forgetting it ever happened again."

I smirk at her, handing my drink back. "Hey, well, it worked for what you needed it for this time, right?" I remember watching Maika and Kazari build the prototype of The Rig at the apartment Kazari shares with me. It was like a hurricane of nerdiness; incomprehensible jargon (as well as waaaay too many sparks for me to be totally comfortable) was flying around so fast I don't think I could have kept track of it even if I understood all the words they were using. Somehow they managed to not set anything on fire back then, though I guess Kazari's track record there hasn't been as squeaky-clean as I thought.

"For now, yes. I'll probably get back on later, see if I can help track down the bombers that made a run for it. What about you? Did you find that little girl's sister?"

"Oh, yeah. They're both fine. She only gave your headband back on the condition that she gets one of her own soon, though."

Kazari chuckles. "Sounds like a good deal. Are you heading back home, then? Or are you gonna bask in the glory of your idol for a little while longer?" she asks, smirking a bit and glancing meaningfully in Misaka's direction; the Level 5 is still going at it with Tessou-sensei.

"Hm." I hesitate to respond, and I'm not quite sure why.

Kazari immediately picks up on it, before I realize there's anything to even pick up on. "Everything okay?"

"...Yeah."

She squints at me suspiciously. "Everything really okay?"

Oh boy. When she gets like this, there's no stopping her. "...Same thing as always."

"Ah." She nods understandingly. "Saten-chan. Ruiko. Look. You're going to break through one of these days. You will. I know it. I have never known anyone who works as hard as you do, or who deserves it as much as you. It's just taking you a while, that's all."

"It's taken me seven years, Kazari. Most of the Zeroes my age have either broken through or given up by now. And it's not just that. Just—watching you all out there today, you, Shirai, Misaka—you were amazing. And me—"

"You helped Rinko find her sister again," she reminds me.

"Yes! And I, I'm not saying that's not worth anything, but that's all I did. You three saved everyone."

Kazari's face falls. "Not everyone." Before I can correct myself or apologize, though, she continues. "That has nothing to do with powers, though. All of what I did was just training and knowledge. Anyone could do it with the resources I had."

"Resources like the big computer nobody would be crazy enough to build unless they had powers that could make it work?"

She looks down. "That's different. And, and it's not like Judgement requires you to have powers; if you want to help out, nobody's stopping you!"

"Okay, one, how is it different? And two, I don't have time to join Judgement, because I'm a bit busy doing everything I possibly can to try and break through! So I can, you know, actually help out instead of pushing papers around."

"Ruiko-chan..."

"...I know. I know. I'm sorry. It's just...I'm giving this whole...power thing everything I have. It'd be nice to get something out of it. Just...something. For once." I sigh a bit. There I go again, just dumping all of my issues on poor Kazari.

If she's annoyed by it, though, she doesn't show it (and knowing her, she wouldn't, ever). She just smiles, gently. "You will. I promise you, you will." Then her expression darkens, all of a sudden. "And promise me something, okay? Promise me that you won't go and do anything, uh, crazy."

"What do you mean, crazy?"

"I mean, you've worked so hard, you know? Believe in that. Sometimes it looks like there's easy ways out of stuff. But the easy way out is almost always the wrong way, you know?"

"Uh..."

"Look, there's stuff I can't say right now, because...well, Judgement reasons. But just...keep at it, okay, Ruiko-chan? Promise?"

"...Okay. I promise." I grin at her. "What, you think I'm gonna just give up? After all this time?"

She laughs, a little awkwardly. "No, I guess not." She glances over at Shirai and Misaka. Tessou-sensei has stormed off; I can almost imagine her muttering something about goddamn superpowered kids thinking they're better than everyone else. "Hey, looks like they're done over there; you want to go bother them?"

She's obviously changing the subject, but you know what? I'm cool with that.

"Man, what was her problem?" Misaka is saying as we walk over to them. "I mean, you try to help out and it's like, no no no you have to help out our way or else the poor psychotic terrorists might get hurt, and we wouldn't want that, would we? Ah, Saten-san, Uiharu-san. You two okay?"

"We're fine, yeah," I say. "What was that all about?"

"Oh, you know. Just the usual crap getting in the way of justice being done." Wow, does she sound pissed.

"Onee-sama," Shirai says, "you do realize you blew out four transformers and one entire substation in the process of doing said justice, right?"

Misaka covers her eyes with her hand, as if nursing a headache. "Oh, not you, too, Kuroko. You of all people—they killed people, all right? They're murderers. Being accused of 'excessive force' against them kinda stings a bit, okay?"

"I know. Believe me, Onee-sama, I know. Honestly, I wanted nothing more than to send a spike straight into each one of their filthy hearts. But that's not who we are. They are the thugs, the killers, the scum. We have to be better than them. We have to be protectors, not enforcers. Honestly, if I had known you were going to go that far, I'm not sure I would have let you pursue them."

"Who's 'we'? You're Judgement. I'm just trying to do the right thing, okay?"

"Hey, look," Kazari interrupts. "What matters here is that we're all okay, and most of the bad guys are caught. We can save any arguing or finger-pointing over the methodology for when we've all got a little less adrenaline in our systems, all right?"

For a second Misaka looks like she's about to start yelling at Kazari. Instead, she takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Right," she says. "We're all okay. So are the cops going to let us go any time soon? I kind of want to put this all behind me."

"I'm not sure, to tell you the truth," Kazari says. "I'm not sure ACPD has protocols for an incident on this scale; Judgement definitely doesn't. I suppose they have to get an interview or at least a quick statement from everyone at the scene of the crime, but..." She looks meaningfully around at the hundreds of people still hanging around outside the mall. "...It's gonna be a while."

"Indeed." Shirai looks around briefly. "On that note, have any of you seen that boy, what was his name, Kamijou? The one Onee-sama introduced us to? I believe the police would most certainly like to hear his story."

"Good question," Kazari says. "I kind of want to talk to him a bit, too."

"Oh?" I smirk at her. "Didn't know you were into guys like him."

"Nah," she says, grinning. You can't get Uiharu Kazari flustered. It just doesn't happen. "Not into the spikes. I just think Judgement could really use someone with his powers, and his record says he's good in a fight."

Shirai ponders this for a moment. "Hmm. Possibly. He had something of an attitude problem, but was willing enough to follow orders, even in the life-and-death situation we were in. I shall keep it in mind if I find him. And on the subject of people who could do a great deal of good working with Judgement..."

"Not happening, Kuroko," Misaka interrupts.

Shirai sighs. "Very well. It never hurts to ask."

I notice that Kazari's got a hand to her earpiece; did someone call her? "Uiharu here...Really?," I hear her ask incredulously. "Seriously? But you just—ah. Well, worst comes to worst, they're paying the bill this time. I'll have it up in a minute." She lowers her hand from her earpiece and sighs.

"Who was that?"

"Konori-senpai. She wants me to spin The Rig back up to full power and start searching for the perps. Orders from On High, apparently." She shakes her head, puts her AR glasses back on, and starts punching commands into her phone. "Maika's gonna kill me if it overheats again. Or worse."

I lean over her shoulder and watch. It's always amazing watching Kazari at work. Sure, I'm missing half of it since a good chunk of the data is going straight to her glasses, but it's like she's some master conductor, responding to possible facial matches, bringing up CCTV feeds, comparing them to images of the identified bombers, discarding or expanding them as necessary, plotting out possible routes on a map of the city. Within five minutes, she's got definite locations for three of the bombers, probable locations and routes for two more, and has fired them off to ACPD and Judgement. Shirai, for her part, disappears right then, no doubt heading off to kick even more ass.

I watch her zoom in on one of the CCTV feeds; one of the bombers has stopped running, leaning back against the wall of a dark alleyway. He looks like he's having trouble standing, actually; his hands are shaking noticeably. Slowly he slides to the ground, still shaking, and as riot-geared Anti-Skill officers close in on him, he doesn't even show any sign of resisting. Weird.

I'm interrupted by a polite "Excuse me, miss," from behind me; turns out the cops interviewing everyone have finally made their way around to us. The officer I talk to—a middle-aged guy who looks even more exhausted than I feel—just asks me to recount what I could remember of the whole incident, scribbles on a tablet a bit, snaps my picture, and tells me I'm free to go.

Kazari and Misaka are ready to go as soon as I am; Shirai's still helping with the arrests, and she'll probably be heading back to the Judgement office on her own. That's where Kazari's heading, too, to make sure The Rig doesn't explode or tear open a hole in the universe or something. For my part, I'm heading back home, and it looks like Misaka's doing likewise. So before long, it ends up being just the two of us on the bus.

Just me and the Level 5. What do you even say to someone like her?

It's her who speaks to me first, though. "Hey, Saten-san."

"Hm?"

"What's it like?"

"What's what like?"

"I'm just..." She shakes her head. "I'm just trying to figure out why someone would do something like what those...people did today. Kill. And I think it has something to do with, I don't know, being on the bottom of the ladder. But there are so many people down there that don't do horrible things like that, who are great people all around! Like you! And I just don't see what makes people willing to become monsters like that. I mean, I was Level 0 when I first came here, but it was so long ago, and I went up so fast, it's all kind of a blur."

"Well...If I had to pin it down to one thing, I'd say it's desperation. You feel like no matter what you do, what you try, nothing you ever do can ever change your whole situation, or help any of the people suffering around you."

"Huh. Desperation." Misaka frowns, thoughtfully. "But, I mean, that's never really the case, is it? There's always something you can do. It's like my mom always says; anything is possible if you put your mind to it."

I nod. "And in their case, they felt like what they could do was get hopped up on Level Plus and blow up a mall."

"Oh. It...still doesn't really make sense to me."

"Me neither, really. Some people are just kinda nuts like that."

"I guess."

The rest of the bus ride passes in silence.

* * * * * * * *​

Kazari and I have been friends since we came to Academy City all the way back in third grade. We went to the same primary school even back then; we went to the same middle school, and now, not only are we at the same high school, we're sharing an apartment. It's standard student housing: one bedroom with two beds, one bathroom, a very small living area, and a kitchen just barely big enough to not have an '-ette' tacked onto the end. It's cozy without being too small, and it's actually got central heating and air conditioning, which I've gotta say is really, really nice in the winter. (There's an old story going around that halfway through the construction of Academy City, the General Superintendent found out that most Japanese homes don't have heating or air conditioning, and immediately ordered that this grave injustice be rectified in his city. And, well, kotatsu are nice and all, but I gotta say, I support that decision one hundred percent.)

I head straight to my bed after walking inside—it's only about 16:00, but, well, it's been a day. And tonight I still have to go to yoga, and then tomorrow morning in my power-development class (which has no use for silly things like summer break) we're having an exam on IPD dynamics. Then it's off to the local family restaurant to be a waitress for the next six hours. And so the cycle begins anew. More obsessive studying, and scheduling, and struggling to make ends meet, in the hope that soon, I'll break through. That soon, I'll be able to bend spoons with my mind, or fly, or shoot lasers from my fingers, or something. Soon.

Or.

—Any of y'all make it out of this alive, y'all gotta try Level Plus. It is the shit—

It can't be that simple, right? I mean, the rumors say Level Plus is just a bit of weird music. You listen to it, and then bam, your Level goes up by one. (That alone makes it ridiculously unlikely; one of the first things you learn in IPD dynamics is that the Levels are basically arbitrary.) I mean, I didn't even think it was real before today, but everything at the mall—both the bombers and Kazari and Shirai's reactions to them basically confirmed it.

And...that's probably what Kazari was talking about, isn't it? Taking the easy way out. It's cheating, turning my back on all the work I've put into this.

But on the other hand, a tiny little voice whispers in the back of my mind, the hell does she know about it? She was Level 1 right out of the gate, and she's never even cared that much about her powers. Where does she get off telling me what the 'easy way out' is?

No. No, Kazari's my friend. She's my best friend, and she has been my best friend for almost seven years now. She's just looking out for me, that's all.

Still...

I pull out my cellphone and do a web search for "Level Plus". The result is immediate and a little bit disturbing: "In response to a request filed by the government of Japan under the Internet Safety Act of 2024, we are not returning search results for this or similar requests. You can read more about Internet censorship at https://www.effj.org.jp."

Well. Where there's smoke...I try a couple of other search engines; eventually I find an English-language one that apparently couldn't care less about censorship, and it immediately pops up whole pages of results. A lot of them are just blogs and tweets talking about it, including a couple firsthand accounts of the bombing, but there are plenty of things that look like download links. The first few refuse to connect at all; no prizes for guessing why. Eventually, on the second page, I get one that goes through. The page is full of comments (mostly in English) saying things to the effect of "FAKE — didnt make me an esper, wasted 20 mins of my life". On the other hand, the Japanese comments are much more mixed; a few say the same thing, while others explain that no, it won't make you an esper; it only works if you already are one.

Even a Level 0.

I spend a few more minutes figuring out what exactly a "bit torrent" is and how in the hell it's supposed to work, but pretty soon it's downloading. It's big for an audio file, over a hundred megabytes, and the file name is "LevelPlus.flac". What the heck is a flac? Whatever it is, my phone recognizes it as a music file, and sticks it into my music library immediately. 'Title: Level Plus. Artist: Unknown.' Wow, 25 minutes long.

I stare at it for a while. Then I toss my cellphone away and flop back down on the bed. This is stupid. Kazari wouldn't have warned me like that without a good reason, right? I mean, she made me promise her. Promise her that I wouldn't just give up.

But is this really "giving up"? How is this different from taking the best power-dev classes, medication, and supplements I can afford? Heck, how is it different from the yoga? I'm not going to magically get powers out of nowhere all of a sudden; so I'm taking every advantage I can get, everything that will make it even a tiny bit more likely that I'll break through one day. You could say this is just one more advantage, just one more way of 'putting my mind to it', like Misaka said. Except this one will actually help me break through. No more interminable struggling towards a goal that may or may not actually happen. I just have take action now, and I'll get results.

I reach over and pick up my phone again. Hit play.

A voice comes out of the phone's speaker, heavily filtered and distorted. "Thank you for using Level Plus. Before beginning the treatment, please ensure you are in a dark, quiet room, and that you will not be interrupted for the next two hours. The treatment itself lasts only twenty-five minutes, but induces a sleep state that is necessary for optimal results. It is strongly recommended that you listen using headphones or earbuds, preferably high-quality noise-cancelling models. It is important to minimize environmental interference. Also ensure that the volume on your audio device is high enough that you can—" I pause it there. Where were my earbuds again?

As I dig through my desk for them, I imagine Kazari's disappointed face when she finds out I've done this. I mean, I promised her. Assuming that this was even what I was promising her about; I mean, it was so vague. And if it is...It's not gonna be fun telling her, no question there, but there's no way I'd ever lie to her about it. Plus, she'll understand eventually. I know she will.

I hesitate before plugging the earbuds into my phone. Won't she? I don't think I've ever broken a promise to her before.

Either way...I don't think I feel like going to yoga class tonight.

 

[Shockz]

Index/Home Sweet Home

"Look, I don't get it. What's wrong?"

Kamijou Touma and I are walking back to his apartment. Well, I say 'walking', but that is not entirely accurate. 'Walking' implies a casual, relaxed pace, and ours is anything but. I am moving through the crowds as fast as I can without drawing undesirable amounts of attention, ducking through alleys and taking side-streets whenever possible. I am not entirely sure Touma even realizes we are returning to his home; I have so far refused to answer his repeated inquiries as to our destination.

I am not even sure why I'm returning to his apartment. I need to go somewhere, I suppose, and it seems as good a place as any. I'd rather not get Touma involved, but I have few options at this point, and he is responsible, however unintentionally, for the current predicament. And he just might give me an advantage: I don't know why or how his powers, supposedly capable of negating other esper abilities, destroyed my mobile church, but they did. And maybe, just maybe, that means he's capable of neutralizing magic in general. Hence, why I am maintaining a death grip on his right hand with my own as I virtually drag him through the streets of Academy City.

They've found me, you see.

It became inevitable the moment my mobile church was destroyed, of course. With no other leads, sooner or later they would have to try another location spell. I just hadn't expected it to happen so soon.

When I yelled out my challenge to the bombers' logic, I immediately regretted it, for among the crowd on the first floor of the mall who turned to watch me, I spotted two extremely familiar faces. He was obvious in the crowd: an extremely tall man with long red hair, wearing a long black duster (not a trenchcoat, a duster; he was always fond of correcting people on that) that must have been utterly sweltering in the July heat. And once I saw him, it did not take long to spot her as well—a Japanese woman in a dark grey T-shirt and blue jeans, long black hair done up in a ponytail.

After I had said my piece, and the girl with the flower headband took over...for some reason, I did not run. Where would I have run to? For a long while, I just watched, and they watched back. Her expression was neutral, serious, as it always was when she was on duty. He...it was difficult to tell from two stories up, but he looked relieved, more than anything else.

Neither of them made any move to come after me, or head to the stairs. I suppose I can understand why; they wanted to avoid attention, and attempting to kidnap a child in the middle of a hostage situation, when that child was in the immediate vicinity of an officer of the law (albeit a junior one), would be a bit detrimental to that objective. No, they needed to grab me as discreetly as possible.

I used that to my advantage as the situation evolved, staying right where I was, right where I couldn't be approached without the Judgement girl noticing. And when the bombers' spokesman was killed, and the esper girl descended to the first floor, wreathed in lightning like some mythological thunder goddess, I watched as he ran to help the girl save the injured from the wreckage, while she just kept watching me, never moving, barely blinking.

When the police started moving in, directing the evacuation from the mall, I immediately ran down to the first floor. The crowd was so dense that I have no idea how close I came to them in the process of leaving the mall; I had no idea if they had some magic prepared to ensure I came with them quietly. As soon as I was out of the mall, I stayed in the vicinity of the largest concentration of riot-geared police officers I could find until I finally spotted Touma. I ran over to him, informed him that we had to leave immediately, and then—against his protests—we were off.

Finally, after nearly twenty minutes of running, I slow down and decide to answer his question.

"There are people chasing me. They were at the mall. I'm trying to make sure they're not following us."

He raises an eyebrow. "Uh-huh. Are these people from the organization which definitely does not use anything like magic?"

I know he thinks I am completely mad. Until the events of this afternoon, I would have been quite happy with that. Now, however... "If you like, just imagine I am...I don't know, a rogue foreign esper on the run from the program that created me or something. Whatever will get you to believe that I am entirely sane, and that I really do need your help right now."

"My help? Why the hell would you need my help?"

"Your powers. I'm hoping they will block their methods of tracking me."

He sighs. "So that's why you have the death grip on my hand."

"Yes."

"I still think you're crazy. Where the hell are you taking me, anyway?"

"Back to your apartment."

"Wha—why are we going this way?"

"To throw them off our trail, obviously."

"...right. Obviously. How do you even know where my apartment is?"

"Perfect memory."

He sighs again. "Why does this shit always happen to me?"

* * * * * * * *​

It's a good hour or so before we finally return to Touma's apartment; if I haven't lost my pursuers by now, I never will.

As he shuts the door, I direct him to close the blinds, never letting go of his hand. He notices my continued grip. "So, uh, how long are you going to keep holding on to me like that?"

"I don't know. Until...Until I think of something. Something. I don't know. What should I do? Okay. Tracking magic. That's what they'll be using. Tracking. How do I block tracking spells? I could set up the church again, but that just takes too much time...I need...I need a boundary." I'm aware that I'm thinking out loud, and blatantly talking about magic in front of him, but I can't seem to find the will to care at this point. "A boundary...like...the threshold of a home! Yes. That would do nicely, just set up a Hestian protection array, I can do that..."

Wait a minute.

I can do that?

Come to think of it, I thought it was exceedingly strange that I never once felt the geis release at the mall, when I (along with many others) were very much in immediate danger of death by explosion. I assumed that by whatever strange logic the geis uses to determine the level of threat to me, the situation was under control and thus needed no assistance from my magic. But what if…?

I try to run a search for protection from tracking spells, and come up blank, just as if the geis was active. But then I just think about the protection spells I know, and a couple immediately come to mind.

I stare up at Touma. "You...you broke it."

"Broke what?"

"You broke the geis!"

"Uh...sorry?" He blinks. "What's a geis? Is it expensive?"

"No, no, this is wonderful! I can use magic now!"

"Oh, God. We're back on the magic thing again."

"No, I mean, look, watch this!" I try and think of a way to demonstrate. Something quick and flashy—ah. "Fiat lux!" A marble-size orb of light bursts into existence in the palm of my hand.

He raises an eyebrow. "So you are an esper."

"No, no, look—" What else, what else— "Oh, it doesn't matter. Look, I need—what would work—a pencil and paper. Lots of paper. And whatever wires or cables or anything like that you can find."

"What? Why?"

"What do you think? I'm going to do some magic!"

* * * * * * * *​

Not having the quick-lookup array—which was apparently tied to the geis—proves to be less of an inconvenience than I would have guessed: my memory remains as eidetic as it ever was. Within minutes I've gotten a good read on the mana flow through the apartment—it would give a feng shui master a heart attack, but it could be worse—and drawn up a few of the necessary nodes—standard Hermetic magic circles, inscribed with some ancient Greek denoting their purpose—for a Hestian protection-of-the-home spell. The spell might be hindered a bit by the fact that the apartment doesn't have a proper fireplace—Hestia was the goddess of the hearth, after all—but hopefully two equivalent nodes—one on the undersized stove, one on the air-conditioning control panel—will do the trick, if I tie them together properly. Which I do, stretching a power cord liberated from Touma's game console from one sheet of paper to the other, and taping it in place at both ends.

Touma sits on his bed, watching me piece the whole thing together with what appears to be a mixture of interest, confusion, and (mostly) horror at the way I'm practically tearing his home apart. I am not sure whether or not he has decided to believe me just yet; but he is certainly doing his best to give that impression, occasionally asking just what exactly I'm using one of his possessions for now.

Finally, the nodes are in place; I kneel down in what I have calculated to be the exact geographical center of the apartment, place my hands on a piece of paper containing the largest and most elaborate circle of all, and mutter a few sentences of ancient Greek. At the same time, I release a pulse of mana into the circle, and it glows a faint red-orange. The glow travels along the large number of cables, cords, wires, and bits of string I've taped along the floor, walls, and ceiling, lighting up the other nodes in the same way.

And just like that, I am safe again. Hopefully.

"So...what, that's it?" Touma asks.

"Yes. Now, I am going to have to request that you not move. At all."

"Why not?"

"I have no idea how your hand will affect the mana flow providing the shielding. Since it appears to be working right now, the obvious solution is to ensure the minimum amount of disruption possible. Honestly, I'd rather not have you in here at all, but—"

"What? This is my home! You can't just walk in here and—" He's starting to get up. Not good! I run over and shove him back down onto his bed.

"I said don't move! You might destroy the entire array!"

He doesn't resist; he just shakes his head mournfully. "Freaking hell. This is not how I imagined this would happen."

"How what would happen?"

"Well, first time a girl comes back home with me at night, gets a look around my home, then after a while just shoves me onto the bed..." He trails off.

Oh. Oh. I glare at him. "You had better not be getting the ideas I think you're getting." Honestly, he's not bad-looking at all, spiky hair aside, but that sort of matter is so far from my thoughts right now that I'm a bit shocked he even brought it up.

"No! No!" He waves his hands in front of his face defensively. "I'm just saying, there's some interesting parallels there, y'know? Besides, you're a little..."

"I'm a little what?"

"Well...You know. Young. What are you, twelve?"

"Why, of all the—I am fourteen years old, thank you very much. And in any case, it's not relevant right now. What is important is that you do not move."

"Fine, fine." He sighs. "How long exactly do you want me to stay here?"

"Until further notice."

"Oh, for—" Another, louder sigh. "Fine. You know, the least you could do would be to tell me just what the hell is going on."

I consider the request. Honestly, I've already done just about the worst thing I could merely by alerting him to the existence of magic in the first place. There's no harm in telling him the rest of the story, I suppose, or at least the pieces of it I know.

"All right." I take a deep breath. "First things first. Magic is real."

"I gathered that, yeah."

"You don't seem very surprised."

He shrugs. "Way I figure, IPD and esper abilities had to come from somewhere, right? Might as well call it 'magic'."

"Yes, but magic is completely different from esper abilities. Different principles, different methods of accessing it, all of that." As I say this, though, I start to wonder. Touma's hand certainly did do something to the backpack, and it seems a violation of common sense that it would have a similar effect on two entirely different forces. I file that thought away for now, however; it's not really relevant. "Espers were discovered less than thirty years ago; humanity has been practicing magic since before the dawn of civilization."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"How come I've never heard about it before, then?"

"You have. But you have been brought up in a culture that discredits all but the most trivial and ineffective of magical rituals as the product of superstition or, occasionally, faith. Because these rituals have not been replicated by mainstream science, you are led to dismiss the evidence for them as historical fabrication or distortion."

"So, what, people used to be flinging spells around like in some kind of RPG, but then science happened and magic lost all its power?"

"No. Magic now remains as powerful as it ever was, and it would be disingenuous to think of it as not being a science—the scientific method applies to it as well as it does anything else in the natural world, though as far as I can tell, that attitude is relatively recent. The reason it is discredited is that knowledge of how to perform it has been intentionally, systematically, and thoroughly erased from history."

"What? What do you mean by that?"

Well. I suppose it's time to spill the beans. "There is an organization, loosely affiliated with the largest Christian churches—the Roman Catholics are the big ones, of course, though the Church of England, the Evangelical Church of Germany, the American Baptists, and the Eastern and Russian Orthodox Churches all have a significant presence—as well as some of the major national governments, that has as one of its primary goals the virtual eradication of magic. It is this organization that is responsible for propagating the idea that magic is the work of the devil, that the well-documented miracles performed by saints throughout history were the work of pure faith rather than skilled magicians performing good works in the name of God, that one should not suffer a witch to live. Somewhat ironically, it is also the only large organization that still passes on the knowledge of magic, teaching promising recruits the basics of the art that they may better carry out its mission."

Touma narrows his eyes at me, then starts looking around his room wildly. "Is there a camera here? Is this some kind of reality show? Cause I know I didn't sign anything."

"I am quite serious. I know it's a bit unbelievable—"

"A bit unbelievable? Listen, Index, you're telling me that there's some vast, centuries-old conspiracy that has somehow managed to erase every last trace of knowledge about magic from the world. I'm pretty sure that's flat-out impossible."

"And why, precisely, is it impossible?"

"Because you can't just...I don't know, control information like that. What's to prevent someone from just, I don't know, telling everyone?"

"Well, firstly, you have to understand that before the printing press was invented, it was in fact quite hard to widely distribute knowledge in the way you're saying. And afterwards...well, books can be burned, and there are quite a few spells that can remove a memory. Some of them from many, many people at once. Today, though, with the Internet, and all the myriad ways of quickly spreading information throughout the world...I don't know if a large-scale loss of containment could be fixed today. Which may explain why the organization is so much more paranoid now."

"All right. Let's say I believe you. Why is this...organization doing all of this? Is it...some kind of power thing, so they can rule the world from the shadows or whatever?"

Hmm. "I suppose that's one way of looking at it, although it was certainly never phrased that way to me. The reasoning is that magic runs the risk of giving too much power to single individuals or small groups, which is always a serious threat to peace and stability. And that's really the primary purpose of the organization—promoting peace and stability, at any cost. That's where its name comes from: Pax Christiana. The Christian Peace."

"Pax Christiana, huh. Is that, what, Latin or something?"

"Indeed. Latin does always make things sound more dignified, after all. Like my name; 'Index of Prohibited Books' would be a silly name for a person in English, but in Latin it sounds quite proper."

"Wait, seriously? That's what your name means? Who'd give their kid a name like that?"

"Ah…It's not my birth name." I'm not even sure if I even have another name; as long as I can remember, it has always been 'Index'. "It has a lot to do with what my job in Pax was. I am, essentially, a walking library. In theory, before destroying or permanently archiving any source of magical knowledge, the organization is supposed to allow me to read through it and memorize it, so that I can pass it on if they need it again."

"Okay...why would they do that? Aren't they risking a, what, a 'containment breach' by having you around?"

"The idea is that anyone can read or copy a book if they somehow manage to access it, but I would have to willingly divulge the information in question. And as for the latter, you see, that's what the geis I was talking about was for. I am not supposed to be able to actively remember more than the basic principles of magic unless either ordered to access the information by someone with the appropriate authority, or if I need to use magic in self-defense. Except I have managed to exploit the latter condition in order to escape captivity, and you've managed to remove the restriction altogether—something that was supposed to be impossible, by the way—meaning…" I suddenly realize something that hadn't quite sunk in before. "...Meaning that the largest containment breach in almost a century is now underway."

"And I'm at ground zero. Figures. So, what's gonna happen? You said they have memory wipes; if they find us, are they just gonna make me forget this ever happened? I'd be more than happy to oblige them in that case."

"Normally, yes. However, your ability suggests you might have a resistance to such mind magic. Which means they will probably just kill you."

"Kill me, huh?" He doesn't seem particularly perturbed by this revelation; he sighs, lays back on his bed, and stares at the ceiling. "They can get in line."

Odd thing to say. "Are there a lot of threats on your life?"

"Long-term ones, no. Day-to-day?" He stretches his hand towards the ceiling lamp, as if trying to grasp the light in his hand. "I'm a Level 1 who punches way above my weight class. Literally. Everyone wants a shot. And that's on the days where the universe itself doesn't have it out for me. So yeah, people wanting me dead is nothing new. These guys do sound pretty hardcore, though."

"I'm not privy to the exact details of their operations, but I suspect that whatever you're guessing, yes, they've probably done it at least once."

"Great. I've got the Catholic Church's black ops department after me. What is this, the Da Vinci Code or something?"

"We're—they're not all Catholic. I'm Anglican—Church of England, specifically—and so are the people after me. It's my understanding that I was something of a pet project for the Anglican division; certainly, the Catholics aren't exactly diligent in making sure any recovered spellbooks go through me before being archived or destroyed."
"Huh. Gotcha. What's an Anglican?"

"...really?"

"I know there are, like, Catholics, and then there are just the regular Christians...I think they're called Protestants?"

I think I feel a headache coming on.

* * * * * * * *​

After I spend about half an hour attempting to elucidate to Touma exactly how the (admittedly vast and often confusing) variety of Christian denominations are organized, we both decide that the whole thing is rather more complicated than it ought to be, and look for a different subject to discuss.

"So...how exactly does this magic stuff work, anyway?" he asks.

"All right, then. Magic, fundamentally, is based around connections. For example, that first spell I showed you. Fiat lux!" The ball of light once again pops up into the palm of my hand. "Literally, what I just said there means 'Let there be light!'"

"So what, you just say funny words and you can order the universe around?"

"Well...Yes and no. It's not just about saying the words, it's about being the right state of mind to channel mana—"

"Mana? Seriously? This is all some kind of messed-up RPG."

"It's funny you should say that; it's only in the past few decades that 'mana' has become the accepted term for the energy that fuels magic. Before it was 'life force' or 'vital energy' in the West, and generally 'qi' in the Far East, with other names throughout the world. 'Mana' is a Polynesian word with a similar meaning, and so many fantasy books and games have used it as a shorthand for magical energy that many a new Pax recruit has just kept doing so. But no, when I cast that spell, it's not just me saying the words. First is the words themselves—they are taken from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, wherein God creates light from nothingness. The symbolic value gives that specific phrasing a great deal of power. I am also speaking it in Latin, which, as an effectively dead language used almost entirely for ritual, makes the words less like ordinary language for the purpose of communicating. Now, none of that is technically required, but it exponentially decreases the amount of mana I have to channel into the spell to make it work. Which, for me, is a great benefit, as I produce very little mana naturally."

"Okay...that...kind of makes sense...I guess. So what does that have to do with you scribbling stuff on pieces of paper and then taping it all over my apartment?"

"All right. So, essentially—how much do you know about Greek mythology?"

"Uh…"

"Well, never mind. Hestia was the Greek goddess of the hearth and home, and this is essentially a ritual which uses a number of inscribed prayers to her in order to request protection over this home. The cables are there because cables are, today, commonly used as conduits for energy and information; no good magician would be caught dead without a very large bundle of telephone cables. I've modified this specific ritual a bit to make it specifically protect against magic; it should do the trick for a while."

"Wait, I thought you said you were Christian? Or...Anglican, or however that works."
"Ah. I am. I don't believe Hestia exists any more than I believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists. What matters, however, is that a great many people once did believe she existed, which gave rituals dedicated to her power. And though that power is weaker than it once was, it certainly remains effective enough if used properly. Indeed, you could even say it's stronger than it might otherwise be; a ritual that is used too many times by too many people may well lose much of its potency. There are a great deal of Christian rituals that are considerably less effective than they once were simply because of the sheer number of Christians who incorporate them into their daily life; the sign of the cross in particular has virtually no effect, unless the one making it knows how to channel mana properly."

"So...this...channeling mana thing. Do you have to be, like, special to do it?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by special."

"Like, are there...I don't know, genes that say you can be a magician or something?"

"No. That's the thing, really: anyone can learn to do magic if taught properly, though of course some people have better aptitude for it than others. That is why Pax Christiana is so eager to suppress magical knowledge: it would be far too easy, especially in this day, for a single magician, or small group of them, to cause unimaginable amounts of damage. Look at the Black Plague, or the World Wars. All cases where a small cabal of magicians altered the course of history, causing unimaginable loss of life in the process."

"Whoa whoa whoa. You're telling me World War II was caused by a magician?"

"No, that part of history is true enough; it was caused by German imperialism and a national desire for vengeance in the West, and Japanese imperialism motivated partially by a lack of available natural resources in the East. The history books, however, do not talk about how much more horrific the war was, on all fronts, due to the actions of magicians on all sides. The Nazis in particular; their obsession with arcane power is something that Pax has allowed to survive into modern popular culture, simply because they were so evil that it was hoped it would further discourage people from looking into magic."

"How'd that work out?"

I shrug. "There hasn't been a major breach in more than 80 years; either it's helping or it's not hurting too much. Certainly, none of their frequent imitators have ever put so intense a focus on the magical arts, which is a sign that Pax has been doing something correctly. The point is, magic is something that puts a great deal of power in the hands of individuals who are by no means guaranteed to use that power for peaceful, constructive goals. So Pax keeps the world safe from it."

"You sound like you agree with them."

"For the most part, yes."

"So why'd you run?"

"Mostly? I wanted freedom. I have spent most of my life inside a high-security wing of a convent in rural England. You might say I got a bit tired of it."

Touma nods. "So, to sum up: Magic's real, and you're on the run from an organization that wants to keep everyone from knowing this at any cost. And in the process of running, you've both ended up in my apartment, and you've just told me all of the things they don't want anybody to know ever. And you don't actually have a plan besides 'put up a protection thingy and hope it works'. All because you wanted to be free. That about right?"

"Well, rest assured I'm working on the plan—" My stomach growls loudly, and I reflexively look over in the direction of the kitchen.

"...and I'm still low on food from this morning, too." He shakes his head. "The entire universe hates me. It really, actually does."

That's...hm. Up until I haven't really thought much about the kind of strain all this might be putting on Touma. And in retrospect…"You know," I say, "with the geis gone, I don't necessarily need to hang around here. If I pack up all my spell components and head somewhere else, they should just stay on my trail instead of bothering you. I shouldn't have gotten you involved in all this in the first place."

"I think I'd rather you'd realized that before you told me all the top-secret stuff. But hey." He actually smiles. "Girl trying to get her freedom, on the run from the evil shadowy conspiracy? I can get behind that. If you think your fancy protection magic stuff will keep us safe, I'm cool with you staying here for now."

"...really?"

"Yep. Just figure out a way you can arrange the...magic...paper thingies so I can get out of bed, okay? I think...I think I'm going to get some shut-eye for now." He rolls over on his bed and buries his face in his pillow.

Well. I suppose that's one problem solved.

 

[Shockz]

Ruiko/The Other Side

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

"Whu...huh?" I blink, slowly, and realize that the morning sun is peeking through the blinds. My cellphone's alarm clock is also blaring right into my ears and holy shit it's loud. I fumble for my cellphone—my earphone cord got tangled all around me while I was sleeping, and the phone itself ended up directly beneath my stomach somehow. When I finally manage to retrieve it, the flashing timer on it says 8:01. Right on time. Why do I feel so weird, then?

It's obvious after I disentangle myself from the earphones and slip out from under the covers: I'm still fully dressed, wearing the same school uniform I left the house in yesterday—now horrifically wrinkled, of course. I must have been exhausted yesterday, after—all that happened.

Wait. What did happen? I try to remember—the broad details like meeting Misaka, going to the mall, the bombings, Kazari being a total badass, I more-or-less remember, but it all seems...kinda foggy somehow. I guess I was tired; I couldn't have gotten home any later than 16, but I guess I slept right up 'till now? Jeez. I must have missed yoga too for some reason.

Whatever. I check my schedule on my phone; looks like...ah, I've got power development class at 10. Right, the IPD dynamics exam is today; I should get some last-minute studying in. After I've, y'know, changed out of this mess of a uniform and have gotten myself looking halfway decent again. There's also an e-mail from Kazari—ah, she had to pull an all-nighter at the Judgement office after the bombings, that's why she's not here. Damn, if I was that tired after that whole mess, I can't imagine how she's feeling.

* * * * * * * *​

I take a quick shower, find a clean uniform, down a quick rice-and-miso breakfast, and pop my pills. Then I hit the books.

Well, such as they are; everything's obviously digital these days. I fire up my e-reader at my desk and take a look at some of the bits I've highlighted. I've gone over most of this stuff four or five times now; most of it's pretty clear at this point, but it can't hurt to review.

IPD dynamics is actually really fascinating, even if I only got really interested because of my specific situation. Basically, IPD comes from subatomic particles emitted, somehow, as a byproduct of conscious thought. Yeah, conscious thought specifically; only humans, great apes, and a couple of species of dolphin produce IPD in detectable amounts, and humans produce, like, an order of magnitude more on the low end than the absolute highest measured value in any other species. (Chimps, if you're wondering.) The books sort of carefully dance around the fact that nobody has any idea why this happens, or what the mechanism that creates the particles is, or really how anything about IPD works on the physics side, though a few of the more cynical professors will be more than happy to admit it. Especially if they've done any serious work in the field. IPD production almost definitely violates mass/energy conservation, for starters, and it just gets weirder the farther down the rabbit hole you go. Like how IPD particles don't have a consistent electrical charge or spin; the only way they can be identified at all is by their mass, which is approximately 'way bigger than an electron but way smaller than a proton'.

The neurological side of it is a bit less headache-inducing; basically, what the Kihara Process does is cause your brain to produce more connections between the chunks of your brain that produce the most IPD and the parts that handle muscle control, basically putting IPD production—theoretically—under your conscious control.

Theoretically.

Yeah.

There's more to it all, of course, but honestly, I'm already pretty far ahead of the class on some of the physics stuff, and the stuff I want to read about isn't gonna be on the test today. To be honest, I'm still a bit confused about why these classes spend so much time on the theory of IPD, and what that has to do with actually helping the students get their powers to work better. But hey, apparently something like one out of every four Level 4s in Academy City has been through the program I'm attending (and boy does whoever sets their tuition know it), so they're clearly doing something right. I pack my e-reader up and head out to the bus stop.

The power-dev class isn't too far away, but—like Kazari's Judgement office—it's kind of right on the border between the really nice, really high-class private school district where the schools like Shidarezakura and Tokiwadai are and the, uh, less-high-class part of town I live in. Funny thing about the building it's in—since such a huge percentage of Academy City's population are students, there's actually a whole bunch of classroom buildings that don't belong to any school in particular; they're rented out room-by-room or floor-by-floor, whenever a school needs a little extra classroom space. Or when a so-called Special Educational Organization—like the huge number of private power-development schools that have sprung up—needs somewhere to go.

My class's teacher, Yoshizaki-sensei, is a fairly young guy, mid 20s, wearing big, thick glasses and a poorly-fit business suit. He's one of the oldest espers around, apparently; he's a level 3 telekinetic. He looks surprised when I arrive ten minutes early, as usual. "Ah, Saten-san," he says. "Good morning! I, er, didn't realize you were coming in today."

Huh? "Well...yeah, of course I am. Why wouldn't I be? What with the test and everything."

"Well...you know, with everything that happened yesterday...a lot of people are staying home from their jobs and summer classes, apparently. And, well, can't really blame them. Unbelievable, really, that something like that could happen here. Just goes to show that degenerates like those can pop up anywhere. But nonetheless, I'm glad you're here."

"Oh, uh, thanks. So is the test still on for today, then? I mean, with so many people skipping out?"

"Naturally. I'm preparing a makeup test for next week if anyone misses this session, but I wouldn't want to waste the time of the students who did show up."

A couple of people actually don't come in, but the vast majority of the class shows up. With the exam taking up most of the two hours of class, there's no time for the usual power-focus lab, which I gotta say is a little bit of a relief—out of the 20 or so students in the class, I'm one of the only two Level 0s, and it's a just a little vexing to stare at a spoon for an hour trying to bend it while the rest of the class is showing off. So, yeah, as soon as I'm done with the test (which I'm pretty sure I aced), I'm off. Next stop: part-time job waitressing at a little Italian family restaurant near the international airport.

* * * * * * * *​

My boss at Luigi no Pasta (whose name is actually Ryuuji, not Luigi, but shhh, don't tell anyone—he likes people to think he's actually Italian) is almost as surprised as Yoshizaki-sensei when I show up. It's kind of funny, all told—people seem to think they should be scared, or paranoid, or whatever over this, but, I mean—I was there. I saw it happen. I should be more scared than anyone, but...I'm not, not really. Maybe it's because I was there, because I saw Misaka and Shirai and Kazari—and the Anti-Skill cops, I guess—taking out the people who did it. Whatever it is, I just kind of want to get back to my ordinary life.

That's about what I'm thinking when it happens. I'm taking away a teenage couple's bowls of minestrone soup, and I'm not sure what I slip or trip on, but before I know it the ground's coming up at me, the (thankfully mostly empty) bowls are slipping away, and—thud—ow.

Nothing breaks, thankfully. Only a little bit of spilled broth and vegetables needs to be cleaned up. Except—as I pull myself to my feet, and start simultaneously apologizing profusely to everyone in my general area and trying to account for all of the stuff I just dropped—I notice something odd. The spoons didn't hit the ground with everything else.

In fact, despite the fact that I wasn't holding onto them at all, they somehow ended up in the palm of my hand.

Weird.

I start picking up the dropped tableware, and then things get really strange.

When I try to drop the spoons into one of the recovered bowls, they stick. I shake my hand over the bowl a couple times, and the spoons jiggle a bit—clearly they're not fused to my hand in some weird way, so what gives? I try and pull them off with my other hand.

They aren't stuck too hard, thankfully; they give way without too much trouble.

But when they do, for the tiniest instant, so quickly I almost miss it, there's a spark.

Holy crap. Holy—oh. Oh.

I remember what I did after I got home last night.

* * * * * * * *​

It's easy. It's easy as hell. I take a 'bathroom break' the moment I'm done cleaning up the mess, and as soon as I've gotten some privacy—

It really is as simple as every successful esper ever says it is. Just envision the result you want, and push. I hold the tips of my pointer fingers about half a centimeter apart in front of me, and within seconds there's a tiny little arc of electricity between them, snapping and crackling like a bowl of Rice Krispies.

Holy crap. I'm an esper. I really, actually am. Hell, I've even got the same powers as the Railgun! This is the greatest—oh, oh man. I've got to tell Kazari...No. No, I can't tell Kazari. She'll know. She'll know I didn't get these powers the legit way, by spending hours and hours staring at a spoon trying to bend it with my mind after taking about five thousand yen worth of nootropic pills. Oh my god I've wasted so much time, and, and money, and worried so much. And Level Plus just solved all of it in a minute. It fixed me, fixed whatever was broken, or, or fucked-up in my brain that stopped me from doing the one thing I came to Academy City to do.

But still, I've got to tell someone. Okay...okay. Mako, Akemi, and Muu. Three friends from school, not really long-time friends but they're all pretty cool. And they're all Level 0s like I am. Like I was. I pull out my cellphone and type up an e-mail to all of them: "Level Plus is real, I used it, this is it. Make sure to follow the instructions!" I attach the sound file, and...wait. Wait. What am I doing? Kazari's shown me the kind of ludicrous computer surveillance ACPD and Judgement can do. Hell, she set up some of those systems. I delete the e-mail draft, and find the web address for the download I'd found in my phone's history. Then I find one of those web-address-shortener thingies, and enter the address into that. Then—hell, why not? I enter that address into another shortener thingy, and paste the final link into a new e-mail: "Check it out!It's real. Make sure to follow the instructions!"

...Actually, that kind of looks like spam. I add "Also I'm not a spambot." to the end.

...But that's exactly what a spambot would say, isn't it? I add another bit onto the end: "...because I know which one of you wears the ones with the teddy bear." There. I send the message, grinning.

Work seems to drag on forever after that. I try and pass the time by occasionally trying out my powers. Whenever I get a chance, I test how far away I can get forks and spoons to suddenly jump into my hand, and at one point when nobody's looking, I grab a spare light bulb from the utility closet behind the kitchen and try and see how bright I can get it to light up. The answers turn out to be "only a couple centimeters" and "not very bright at all", respectively. I guess I'm probably still just a Level 1, but hey, it passes the time. And it's still really freaking cool.

Three hours later, I get a response from Muu. "holy shit it did work! we should totally meet up & show off the powers we got!" Similar replies from Mako and Akemi come in within a few minutes.

It's two hours 'till the end of my shift. Grinning, I suggest a place.

* * * * * * * *​

The summer sun has just finished setting by the time I get to the Old Park. (Officially it's Memorial Park, dedicated to the Japanese (and specifically Academian) soldiers who died in the Second Korean War, but everyone just calls it the Old Park—it's one of the few pieces of landscaping left over from before Academy City was incorporated.) I make my way through the lamp-lit park until I find the spot we agreed upon. The other three are already waiting for me—a short girl with slightly wild-looking brown hair runs over and hugs me the moment she spots me. "Holy crap thank you so much Saten-chan!"

"Uh, heh, thanks, Muu-chan."

"Hi, Saten-chan!" Another girl bounces up and down as she waves to me, setting her pigtails to swaying. I guess Mako's greeting isn't as, uh, physical, but it's almost as excited.

"Hey, Saten-chan." The last of the trio, a tall, narrow-faced girl with hair done up a lot like Misaka's, gives me a short wave. She's also grinning. I can't remember the last time I saw Akemi get this excited about, well, anything.

When the greetings are all over, I ask the obvious question: "So...it worked for all of you, too?"

"Hell yeah it did! I mean I slept through half the day, but check it out, watch this—" Muu screws up her face in concentration, but Akemi stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Easy there, Muu-chan. You remember how we decided we were all gonna do this?"

"Right, right, okay. So Saten-chan, here's what we're gonna do. Think of something you can do real quick to show off your power, all right? I mean, if it is something you can show off quickly like that."

"Oh, it is," I reply, grinning.

"Awesome! Same for you two?" Mako and Akemi both say yes. "All right, so we're all gonna stand in a circle, close our eyes, start doing whatever we can do, and on the count of three we're gonna open them. Sound good?"

"Yes! Oh, this is so exciting!" Mako's beaming.

We all get lined up like Muu said, and close our eyes. "One…" I hear her say. I put my fingers just a tiny bit apart like I did at work.

"Two…" I focus in, mentally envisioning the electrical current flowing through my arms.

"Three!" I push, and open my eyes just as the snapping and popping starts, easy as can be. The tiny little arc of current is even more brilliant in the dimly lit park. I look around: Mako's holding her hands out in front of her, fingers spread wide. Each of her fingertips is shining like a flashlight. Muu's holding up something that catches the light and sparkles beautifully even as it gives off a bit of steam; it looks like a chunk of ice. And Akemi—

Akemi's nowhere to be seen. The rest of us look around in confusion momentarily, before the air where she was standing shimmers a bit, and she suddenly reappears, laughing. "Wow," she says. "This is so cool. All of you—all of us are. We've got powers. We did it."

"And Saten-chan, you're even an electrokinetic, just like the Railgun! It's amazing how things work out like that, isn't it? I've just got these...flashlight thingies." Mako waves her hands a bit, and the lights seem to dance through the park.

"Hey, the flashlight thingies are badass!" Muu says."You know, most of the people who can focus light like that end up shooting lasers? You'll be able to shoot lasers out of your fingers! Pew pew pew! And me, I'm a whatchacallit, an ice-o-kinetic!"

"Cryokinetic," Akemi corrects her.

"Negative thermokinetic," I put in. "I don't think they really say 'cryokinetic' any more, same as you're not supposed to say 'pyrokinetic'."

"Man, that sounds weak," Muu says. "I'm fine with cryokinetic. Hey, check it out, lookit how this is steaming!" She holds out the chunk of ice in her hand. "I think this is freaking dry ice! Like, I got the air cold enough to freeze all the CO2! Damn, I'm cool." She pauses. "Get it? Cool?"

Okay, I laugh a bit at that one. We all do. "And Akemi, what did you do there?" I ask. "Did you teleport or something?" I frown. "Wait, don't tell me you time-st—"

"Nah. Just turned invisible. Pretty sweet, huh? I'm like a ninja." She vanishes again, and there's a thumping noise for a second before she reappears, crouched down on a nearby bench. "Wah-cha," she stage-whispers; we all have a good laugh at that.

That's the last time we laugh for a long while, because soon after that I hear a voice saying, "Ah, h-hello there!"

A really, really familiar voice.

We all turn to look to see where it came from, and find Kazari and Shirai walking towards us. Shirai's expression seems oddly set, great big shadows under her eyes, and Kazari...she looks like a wreck. She's got the same exhausted look as Shirai, and her eyes seem extra red. As I watch, she sniffs a bit, like she's got a cold.

...Or like she's been crying.

She gets about ten paces away, opens her mouth once like she's about to say something, then stops. Then she tries again: "I…" Stops again. Then she just runs over to me and hugs me, holding on to me like she's never going to see me again.

"Uh, h-hey, Kazari," I stammer out. "What's going on? What's wrong?"

"D-damn it…" She's trying her hardest to hold back tears, I can tell. "If I had just known, if they had just known already, I could have just ignored the damn gag order and told you. I could have told you, and then you wouldn't have..." She tries to take a deep breath, can't stop it sounding like a wheeze. "I c-can't. I can't. Oh God."

Shirai walks up to us, puts a hand on her shoulder. "It's all right, Uiharu-san. I'll say it." She turns, slowly, looking all four of us in the eye, then takes a deep breath of her own, lets it out in a long sigh. "First off. We know you four have used Level Plus. You are not under arrest; you have done nothing wrong or illegal. That said, you four require immediate medical attention, and we've been tasked with escorting you to the hospital."

"Wh-what?" Mako's question echoes my own thoughts.

Shirai continues. "Listen. The reason there has been no official acknowledgement of Level Plus's existence by the Academy City government is because its possible side effects were completely unknown, and publicly banning it without clear evidence of it causing harm could lead to a worse backlash than simply trying to keep it quiet.

"As of tomorrow morning, that will no longer be the case. One of the perpetrators of the Seventh Mist bombings yesterday showed distressing neurological symptoms soon after being detained, and was hospitalized soon after as a result. After his MRI scan was processed and examined, all known Level Plus users were also admitted, and their MRIs are showing similar results. " She closes her eyes slowly, takes another breath. "I'm sorry. There is no easy way to say this, but...every known Level Plus user that's been scanned has noticeable brain damage."

I freeze. My heart's pounding in my chest all of a sudden, even as I wonder if I heard something wrong. "What?" This time it's my turn to ask a bewildered question. "What do you mean, brain damage?"

Shirai nods slowly. "From what they're telling us, it's slow, and relatively gradual, so much so that the symptoms aren't even noticeable for weeks. 'Like several tiny silent strokes in a row', the doctor said."

"I-I've seen the MRIs, Ruiko," Kazari says, still not letting go of me. "The w-worst ones, the ones that have been using Level Plus since it first showed up...There's little s-spots on their brains, just whole chunks of their brains that just b-burnt out—" She pulls back a bit, looks me straight in the eye, and there's definitely no mistaking it, there are tears streaming down her face now. "Please, you just have to come with us now, they said they can slow it down, maybe long enough to find a cure before anything—anything p-permanent—" Her last word breaks into a sob.

"Hey. Hey, wait a minute here," Akemi says, all of a sudden. "Look, Twintails, I don't know who you are, and I only sorta know Uiharu-san there 'cause of Saten-chan, but doesn't it sound awfully convenient that the minute someone finds a way to give people esper powers that actually works, suddenly it's 'oh no, it causes massive brain damage'? And then you two show up, all 'we're Judgement, and we're here to take you away now that you've used this thing! You know, to the hospital. For your own good!'"

Okay, what the fuck. I shoot her a glare immediately, but then Muu speaks up.

"Yeah! You know what I think? I think all you Judgement people, and the people you guys take orders from, I think you're all just afraid of everyone having powers. Because a Level 0 can't do something like this!" There's a sudden chill in the air, and suddenly there's some kind of ice blade—well, a crude approximation of a blade, anyway—in Muu's hand, and she's charging forward at Shirai—

Who vanishes, appearing behind her. Then Shirai does some kind of weird judo trip-grab-throw thing, teleports away the ice blade with a touch, and has Muu on her knees in high-tech-looking handcuffs in the space of about three seconds. "That will be quite enough of that," she says. Then she sighs and jabs her elbow backwards; Akemi suddenly appears, stumbling back from her and holding her stomach. Shirai has her cuffed within a couple more seconds, too. "I could bring you two in for that," she continues, shaking her head, "but frankly, given the circumstances I would rather overlook it." She gives Mako and I a pleading look. "At least tell me that you two will trust me on this."

It does sound convenient, the way Akemi phrased it. But on the other hand, Kazari is actually crying, something I haven't seen her do in years, and hanging on to me like I'm gonna be lost forever if she lets go. Hell, even if she wasn't, I'd take Uiharu Kazari's word over tinfoil-hattery any day of the week. I nod, and after a moment, Mako says, "Y-yes. I trust you."

"It's so f-funny," Kazari manages to choke out. "All the time we thought that was the problem, that it made people v-violent or crazy or something. But it's just—just a symptom, sometimes not even that, people are just angry—and there are so many. I've seen the IP logs, the e-mails—thousands, just in Academy City. So many people who don't even realize it's k-killing them—" The sobs start again, and I try to hold her closer, feeling my own eyes start to well up.

We just stand like that for a moment, her holding me tight, leaning on me. She hasn't even brought up the promise, I realize. There's no anger or disappointment or anything, she just wants me to be okay. I look up at Shirai. "Okay," I say. "The earlier we get our heads looked at, the better, right? Let's...let's go."

 

[Shockz]

Touma/Burnout

Everything is on fire.

My bedroom's on fire. My kitchen's on fire. My entire dorm room is on fire. Most of my dorm building is on fire. I was briefly on fire before rapidly discarding my T-shirt.

That was my favorite T-shirt. It expressed my disdain for people who wear T-shirts with sarcastic jokes on them with a sarcastic joke. It's funny because it's intentionally hypocritical, you see. I think it also might be ironic; I'm never quite sure about what exactly counts as irony. But its irony or lack thereof is now irrelevant, because it's now on fire.

In fact, let me restate: Everything. Is the fuck. On fire.

Why is everything on fire?

Well, that's a good question. Unfortunately, it's also a question with a very complicated, multi-part answer. The simplest version is, naturally, "because I'm Kamijou Touma." Of course, that's not really very informative. So let me explain it in a bit more detail…

* * * * * * * *​

Whatever Index's weird magic spell thingy did, it apparently worked, as no one turned up in the middle of the night to spirit her away. I'm not sure where she ended up sleeping (or if she even slept), as when I tried to offer her the bed she immediately panicked, shoved me back down, and then immediately and vocally considered tying me to it. My brain naturally failed to prevent my mouth from saying the word "kinky" in response, which just managed to piss her off.

When morning came around, I eventually managed to convince her that I couldn't exactly stay in bed all day. So she took some 'measurements' (or at least that's what she called them; it looked to me like she tied a pair of ballpoint pens together with a piece of string and waved them around the room randomly) and decided that me getting up off my bed wasn't going to cause the whole spell to spontaneously implode or whatever.

Out of curiosity, I asked her how exactly she was staying hidden before she met me, which led us to the current conversation topic...

"So, wait. You're saying you built a church out of the junk in your backpack?" I shake my head. "How does that make sense in any way whatsoever?"

Index nods, grinning. "It was an extremely unconventional bit of magic, I have to say. The idea of a mobile church isn't exactly unheard of--one of my minders always told me about this priest he once met down in Malaysia who had the same sort of thing going--but I'd be very surprised if anyone had ever made one quite the way I did."

"Right, because the way you made one doesn't make any sense."

"Excuse me. Who in this room is the walking encyclopedia of magic? And which one of us just learned magic existed yesterday? I do believe I should be the final authority on what sorts of spells do or don't make any sense."

"But, I mean, a church needs to be a building, doesn't it? With, you know, the big rows of benches and the statue of Jesus and the big whatchacallit in the center where the priest stands?"

"The altar."

"Whatever it is."

"Well, sort of. Any building in which a Mass is held is temporarily a church even if it's not specially consecrated as such--"

"Consewhat?"

"Consecrated. Blessed, basically. Anyway, I decided that if I put together representations of some of a church's core components and celebrated a Mass with them, they could temporarily acquire the magical characteristics of a church--to an extent, anyway. It probably wasn't a very good church, but, you know, you take what you can get in a situation like that."

"And so now you want to do the whole thing all over again."

"Well, yes. Even though I can remember all my magic again, it's still tough to beat a church for magical protection. The spell I used on your room only works on, well, homes, and I can't very well stay in here forever."

No. No, she can't. I mean, I'm glad to keep her safe from whatever for a while, but, I mean, classes are gonna be starting back up in a few weeks. I've got a life to get back to, you know? "So what's the plan, then?"

"Well, we're in luck. We already got most of the pieces I needed yesterday, before the...everything happened. I mostly want to repeat what I did the last time--just find a proper church and carry out the Mass inside, in order to boost the protective power. Hm. How many Christian churches are in Academy City?"

"Uh...hang on." I dig out my cellphone and run a search. "Looks like five of them."

"Five. What denominations?"

"Uh, looks like two Catholic, one Baptist, one Anglican, and one that just says 'Community Church'."

"Hm. Anglican would be best normally, but they might be watching that one. Where are the Catholic churches?"

"One's attached to a girls' high school, St. Anne's in the Garden Street district, one's in Tourist Trap Town by the airport."

"Tourist Trap Town?" She raises an eyebrow.

"Eh, the part of town with all the hotels, the fancy architecture, the overpriced gift shops, the five-year-old Traditional Japanese Shrine...you know the type of place."

"Hm. Which one's closer to here?"

"St. Anne's. Definitely St. Anne's. It...is kind of in the Garden Street district, though."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

I wince. "Well...there's nothing but girls' schools around there. Really, really snooty upper-class private girls' schools. Like Tokiwadai and Shidarezakura. We might...stick out a bit there." Please, just let her accept that. Please.

"Well, unless it's gated off or something, I suspect there are at least a few boyfriends running around at any given time."

"...It's not gated off, no." And it's happening.

"So...I'm not sure what the issue is."

"There's...okay. There's a girl at Shidarezakura who I really, really, really do not want to run into right now."

"Oh?"

"She kind of has it out for me."

"And?"

"And she's a Level 5."

"Ah."

"So can we not go anywhere near Garden Street ever please?"

* * * * * * * *​

"Now approaching: Garden Street." The automated bus grinds to a halt, and Index--once again holding my right hand in a vise-like grip--pulls me up out of the seat and drags me out the door into no-man's land.

It turns out, Index can be very convincing when she needs to be. Before long she was comparing bus fares and estimating the statistical likelihood of her pursuers being in the tourist district as opposed to an actual school zone, and, after extracting the precise details of why I can't go to Garden Street ever, she made a very solid argument that the worst-case scenario was far from bad enough to outweigh the benefits.

Garden Street is aptly named. Well, not all of it; it stretches all the way across Academy City, and parts of it go through less...affluent areas. But the part that gives the Garden Street district its name has some of the most beautiful landscaping in the world, just acres upon acres of perfectly maintained gardens and parks and ponds interweaving through the campuses of about fourteen different schools from elementary to high school levels, all but two private and every single one of them attended by nothing but girls.

I have been led to believe that it is something of a Mecca for fans and writers of a certain genre of romantic media. The vast number of lilies visible in every direction does nothing to disabuse me of this notion.

St. Anne's is pretty close to the bus stop, at least. Closer than Shidarezakura, which means I probably won't run into her. We hurry down the pathway; we checked the schedule to make sure nothing was going on in the church for the next few hours, so things shouldn't get too complicated.

"Yo! Kami-yan!"

Aaand things just got complicated.

As we enter the final stretch before reaching the church's heavy wooden doors, a blond-haired guy my age in a really, really loud Hawaiian shirt and just about the most ostentatious sunglasses ever jumps up from the bench he was sitting on, shouts my name, and waves frantically. I sigh and pretend I didn't hear him; maybe he'll think he mistook me for someone else...nope, here he comes.

I fake a grin and wave back with my free hand. "Yo, Tsuchimikado. Uh...what brings you here?" Tsuchimikado Motoharu is one of my classmates, and in spite of...well, just about everything about his personality, he's also one of the very, very few people I call friends. I have yet to figure out what the hell's up with the 'Kami-yan' nickname; he has a habit of adding vaguely cat-like noises to the end of his sentences. He claims it's a 'regional accent', and will cheerfully dismiss any attempts to point out that his accent is otherwise more or less 'generic Tokyoite'.

"Dude, what brings anyone with a Y chromosome to the Garden District? Chicks."

"Never thought that'd be a reason for you to skulk around here." One of the only other people I can call a friend is his on-again, off-again boyfriend, a guy with blue hair and piercings whose name I can never freaking remember for some reason.

"Both ways, man, both ways. Doesn't look like that's your excuse, though. Hel-lo, my lovely," he says, turning to Index, "I don't believe…" He frowns for a moment, then continues. "...don't believe we've met! Man, how'd Kami-yan here scam you into a date?"

Before she responds, I laugh sheepishly. "Heheh...mostly, I fed her," I say, earning a glare from Index. I rack my brains for an English name and pick the first one that comes to mind. "Uh, Angelina, this is my bro Tsuchimikado Motoharu. Don't let the colors fool you; he's only mildly toxic to the touch. Tsuchimikado, this is Angelina. She's a new exchange student, from England."

"Tsuchimikado...ah!" Index's face lights up. "You're Maika's brother, aren't you?"

His eyes widen behind his sunglasses. "Wait, you know Maika? You know my little sis? Man, she really knows everyone in this town, doesn't she? Always a pleasure to meet an acquaintance of Maika's."

I'm just as surprised as my friend at that. Index had given me every impression she'd just arrived in Academy City when she fell onto my balcony. When would she have had time to meet little Maika?

"But seriously, man," Tsuchimikado continues to me, "a church seems like kind of a weird place for a date. 'Specially around here," he stage-whispers, "where she might get just a bit jealous of the competition!" Something seems to catch his eye over my shoulder. "And speaking of competition…" He lets out a loud whistle. "I think I've just found some. Catch ya later, Kami-yan!"

Index gives me a look as he runs off to chat up some unfortunate girl in a Kirigaoka uniform. "Are all of your friends that…er…"

"That what?"

"That...that-ish."

"Nah. Tsuchimikado's a special kind of weird. He's a hell of a guy once you get to know him, though. But--wait, when did you meet Maika?"

"The night before I arrived at your apartment. She, er, hacked a security robot that was pestering me, then made me dinner and gave a place to sleep for the night. She seemed...well, very different from her brother."

"Eh, they're actually pretty similar. Both total hell-raisers when they get bored."

"Hm. I could certainly see that. In any case! I should get to work. Keep watch out here, if you don't mind; let me know if it looks like anyone else is coming in."

* * * * * * * *​

Against all common sense, I go with her suggestion and hang out outside the entrance to the church. Index gave me brief descriptions of the people after her, but to be honest, they're not the ones I'm on the lookout for.

Thankfully, something goes right for once: by the time Index emerges forty-five nerve-wracking minutes later, apparently re-church-ized backpack in hand, there's been no sign of either her or Index's mysterious pursuers.

In retrospect, that inexplicable good fortune should have been the clearest sign of all that things were about to get really bad.

* * * * * * * *​

After we get back to the apartment, I start digging through the refrigerator for something for lunch. Index has just started fiddling with the magic circles all over my room when she notices me doing so, and walks over to me.

She clears her throat, and says, "Ah, Touma?" Her voice sounds kind of tentative for some reason.

"Yeah? What's up?"

"Er, I wanted to apologize for, you know, getting you involved in all this. And for barging into your home and, ah, messing it all up like this. And for forcing you to stay on your bed, too. And, you know, I'm not sure how to make it up to you, but I thought the least I could do would be to make you a nice lunch."

I almost start saying something sarcastic about her appetite, but she continues before I get the chance. "And don't worry, I know I eat...sort of a lot, so I'll make sure there's enough for the both of us."

Well, eh. If she stays around much longer I'm going to be out of food anyway. What could go wrong?

* * * * * * * *​

Holy shit.

Holy shit.

I don't even. What. Is this even cooking?

My refrigerator has been all but completely emptied, and virtually every plate and bowl I own (which admittedly adds up to a grand total of five or so) has been repurposed as an impromptu cutting board or mixing bowl. There are ingredients being mixed together that have no business being mixed together. I cannot think of any reason that pasta, turmeric, and peaches should be anywhere near each other, and the bizarre mix of smells coming from my kitchen seems like something out of Lovecraft's darkest nightmares.

At multiple points I ask Index what exactly she's making. Her response each time is an increasingly worrying "I'm not quite sure yet!"

It's almost an hour before she's finally done, and when she removes the final product from my oven, I'm...still not sure what it is. If I had to identify it, the best name I could give to it is "chicken lasagna with some sort of peach-based curry instead of marinara sauce."

She quickly washes off two of the plates and carves out some of the lasagna-like substance on each one, then hands the one with the smaller portion to me. "Eat up!"

"...What exactly is this?" I ask her one last time.

"Still not sure. Try it, though! I think you'll like it!"

I was afraid she'd say that. With no small degree of apprehension, I grab one of the plastic forks I keep around for the rare occasions I make something I can't eat with chopsticks, and dig out a bite of the lasagna-thing. The smell is still bizarre, but I manage to lift it to my mouth. I stare it down, and it seems to stare back at me. "Welp, itadakimasu," I say, and bite it off the fork.

Wait.

Wait a minute.

I look up at Index in surprise, swallowing the first bite. "This is...this is actually really, really good!"

Weird, definitely, weird as hell, and like literally nothing I've ever tasted. But good! The variety of tastes just complement each other in this weirdly perfect way, and the end result has this uniquely sweet-yet-savory flavor. I watch Index take her first bite with a thoughtful expression; she smiles, nods, and devours the rest of her portion with terrifying speed.

"Where'd you learn to make something like this?" I ask after finishing my own chunk of lasagna, just as she's about halfway through her second serving.

"Well, I got bored a lot at the convent, and they had recipe books from all over the world…Everything's still up here, of course," she says, pointing to her forehead, "so I just thought I'd mix and match some things from the ingredients you had!"

"Seriously, this is really good. This is like, world-class chef stuff. Lemme get some more--" I head into the kitchen to grab seconds before she eats the whole thing, and I've just started carving out another chunk of a lasagna when a knock comes at the door. "Ah, let me get that." Wonder who that could be?

I open the door and whoa. I find myself staring down a silver crucifix necklace over a black trenchcoat thingy, and look up, and keep looking up until I finally meet the eyes of the guy at my door. Long red hair, green eyes, early thirties, tall as hell, wearing a black trenchcoat. I sigh. Knew my luck couldn't hold out forever.

"Afternoon," he says in English. I shut the door.

I look over at Index and ask, "Was that…?" Frozen in place, wide-eyed, she nods.

The knock comes at the door again, more insistent this time. "Mate, you really, really don't want to piss me off, all right? You don't exactly have a whole lot of places to run right now, so why don't you just let me in and we can just talk this out all quiet-like?"

My English is only good enough for me to pick up about half the words there, but I get the gist of it. "I...I hear you fine through the door, okay? You want to talk, you talk through the door," I yell back in the same language.

"Fine. Fine. Is Index in there?"

"No!" I reply, too quickly.

"Okay. I'll take your word for it on that right now. But I know she was here, earlier today, and I have a feeling she's going to be back before too long. When she does come back, can you pass along a message for me?"

"What message?"

"Tell her I'm under a completion geis."

I look over at Index. The shock seems to have faded from her face; she's shaking her head. "L-let him in," she says quietly.

"Really?"

"Do it."

I open the door again, and say "C-come in." The giant of a man nods and walks inside, nearly bumping his head on the ceiling. This guy works for the super-secret Christian anti-magic black ops organization? He's pretty much the opposite of inconspicuous--he's got to be two whole meters tall, at least, and between that and the trenchcoat he'd stick out in just about any crowd you'd care to name. He looks around for a moment, and I notice how tired he looks--there are big, dark circles under his eyes, and he probably hasn't shaved in a couple of days. Then he catches sight of the girl in the kitchen.

"Index!" Before I can stop him, he runs over to her and catches her in a bear hug. She initially drops her arms awkwardly, but after a moment she slowly lifts them back up to return it. "Thank God you're safe. Are you all right? Are you hurt at all?"

"N-no. No, I'm fine. Touma's been taking good care of me," she says, nodding in my direction.

He lets out a sigh of relief. "Good. That's...that's all right, then. Touma, eh?" He faces me, and holds out his hand. "Stephen Magnus. I'm Index's...I'm her guardian. Thank you for taking care of her."

I don't shake his hand. I don't trust this guy at all just yet, no matter how much of a concerned-parent act he's putting on.

He keeps his arm held out awkwardly for a moment, then drops it, apparently getting the point. I hear him mumble something rude-sounding as he turns back to Index. "Listen. Index. That heartless bitch Kanzaki isn't listening right now, so this is my only chance to say this. I understand why you ran."

"You do?" She seems...confused by that. Damn it, don't listen to him!

He nods. "I do. And I let you nick that money from my bag the other night. I was going to let you run, and damn the consequences. You deserve your own life."

"But you're here anyway," she says.

"I had to come. I barely convinced Kanzaki to let me come alone."

"Her let you...you outrank her."

"For now. She has her suspicions, and if I did much more to piss her off, well, she's got people who would listen to her."

"So you let her put a completion geis on you?"

He shrugs, smiling. "She took a lot of convincing. And honestly, it's better this way. If I go back and say I couldn't track you down, she'll have every reason to believe me. And you'll have time to skip town."

I'm mostly following the conversation, but that phrase bugs me. "Completion geis". Index already explained to me what a geis is, but what would a 'completion geis' be?

"Touma," Index says, suddenly. "I have to go back with him." She's switched back to Japanese all of a sudden.

"Wait, what?" Why would she say that? Why would she think that? She went all this way to get her freedom, and she's going to just give it up like that?

"A completion geis means...If Stephen doesn't complete some task for the person who set it on him, he's going to die. He's going to die if I don't go back with him."

That's. Um. I'm not totally sure how to respond to that. "What?" I respond, rather stupidly.

Magnus cuts in, back in English again. "Frankly, it's your choice, Index. If you want your freedom, take it. I'll help you skip town; there are ways I can get you hidden before time runs out. If you want to come back, hell, I'm fine with that, too."

The hell kind of a choice is that?

"I understand," Index says. "I'll...I'll come back with you. You don't deserve to die because of me."

It's not a choice at all, really. He's blatantly manipulating her. Lucky for her I have just the third option. "You...don't have to die," I say.

"Eh?" He turns to look at me.

"Geis...I can break a geis. I did for Index, I can do it for you."

He gives me a look. "No, you can't. And frankly, the fact that you even know what a geis is means I should probably have Kanzaki bring you in."

Index's face lights up. "No! It's true, he can! He...nullifies magic somehow, I don't understand how it works, but look! I can use magic!" She shows off the same little light spell she showed me.

Magnus frowns. "That's...that's impossible. You of all people should know that, Index. And if you can use magic, that means…"

I start to step forward. If he doesn't believe me, I'll show him. With a punch, if necessary.

"Stop right the fuck there, mate." All of a sudden, Magnus's hand dives beneath his jacket and pulls out something that glints silver.

Holy shit he's pointing a gun at me.

Academy City has gun laws as strict as the rest of Japan; pretty much every single gun sold has to be registered and have a biometric smart-lock attached to the firing mechanism, and it's damn near impossible to get your hands on any kind of handgun unless you're a cop or SDF. ACPD doesn't carry guns for normal patrols, and by the time you need to call in Anti-Skill it's usually the kind of situation that calls for assault rifles. All in all, handguns like the nasty-looking revolver Magnus currently has aimed in my direction are a very rare sight.

"If Index can use magic right now," he says, "that means that regardless of whatever she believes, or whatever you've convinced her of somehow, she's in immediate danger."

"That's not true!" Index says. "Touma's done nothing but help me out, and he really did break the geis--"

"Index, quiet. Don't try anything, Touma, just stand right there, and Index and I are going to leave, and then in a day or two it'll be like this never happened, all right? I'd hate for this to get unpleasant." Index nods and walks over to him, and he starts backing through the door, gun still up.

I almost try something. I've done knife-versus-gun drills in Yomikawa-sensei's classes. At this range, if I move suddenly enough I might be able to run up and disarm him before he can adjust his aim. But then I see the sun glint off of something behind Magnus's back, across the street, and I get a better idea.

I let him back out. Index says "Goodbye, Touma," sadly, and then Magnus holsters his gun and closes the door.

I wait fifteen long seconds. Then I walk up to the door and open it again. Magnus and Index are almost to the stairs; he hears my door click open, and turns around to face me. "I told you, mate," he says, drawing his gun again, "don't fucking move--"

"ALERT. UNREGISTERED FIREARM DETECTED."

Yes!

The security robot all the way across the street sees the handgun, and instantly puts up an alarm. And if you've never seen an outdoor security alert in Academy City, let me tell you, it's something you can't miss. In addition to the alarm raised by the robot, there's warning lights that trigger in every building, and any minute now--yep, there's my cellphone buzzing. ACPD and/or Judgement will probably be here before too long, too. Oh, and there's the bamboo-copters.

The bamboo-copters are obviously the invention of an engineer who spent far too much time playing first-person shooters as a kid, and wanted criminals to feel his fear. They're tiny little hummingbird-sized solar-powered helicopters made mostly of aerogel, and while they don't have machine guns like their obvious inspiration, they're fast little fuckers, and they will keep their cameras trained on you 'till the ends of the Earth. Or, more likely, until the law catches up with you.

Best part is that you're never quite sure where they're stored until they actually deploy. There's probably thousands, tens of thousands of little innocuous containers full of the things throughout the city.

"Fuck!" Magnus shouts at nobody in particular as the first couple descend upon him, buzzing around him like a couple of angry hornets. To his credit, he doesn't try and shoot at them, instead aiming across the street and taking a shot at the robot that raised the alarm, thankfully well clear of civilians by now. Then another shot when that proves ineffective.

The alarm only grows in intensity, with the robot's mechanical voice now shouting "ALERT! ACTIVE SHOOTER! EVACUATE AREA IMMEDIATELY!" He swears again, and ends up emptying all six cylinders at it. A couple more bamboo-copters arrive, he swats at them futilely, swears louder, and suddenly he's shoved Index back, holstered the gun, and he's shooting fire out of his hands at them.

You know, if I didn't live in Academy City, that would probably really freak me out. As it stands...well, it looks like his 'magic' is basically just pyrokinesis.

I can deal with pyrokinesis.

While his back is turned dealing with the bamboo-copters, I run up and aim a kick at the back of his knee, forcing him to stumble, then land a solid punch to his solar plexus. Then I grab Index's hand. "We're going now!" I shout, and I don't really wait for her to respond before starting to run down the stairs.

We haven't even gotten halfway down the flight before I hear him yell something in what sounds like more Latin, and that's when I realize what makes him different from a pyrokinetic.

A pyrokinetic esper can, in general, generate a great deal of heat. Certain types of pyrokinetic can generate combustible IPD-based "pseudomatter" that allows them to create and throw fireballs, or, say, patterns of fire in the air. In general, however, both types are generally limited in that they can set things on fire only if those things are generally capable of being set on fire.

This guy can apparently set concrete on fire. Within a few seconds of his weird spell, tiny, eerie-looking flames have begun to appear in the stairwell as Index and I run down it, and while they're still only as big as a lit match, they're steadily growing larger. And the air's steadily growing hotter. And they're spreading faster than we can run.

If it keeps going like this...this whole building's going to be an inferno inside of a minute.

By the time we get to the second floor, the fire alarm is blaring, the flames are up to our ankles, and it's starting to get tough to breathe. But the last flight of stairs is in sight. We can get out of here. We're gonna be okay.

But then, as we start down the final climb, the flames on the landing flare up, and a dark shape appears in the midst of them as we skid to a halt.

The shape resolves into a human form...it's Magnus. He must have, I don't know, teleported through the flames somehow. Unlike me, he doesn't seem to be bothered at all by the rising heat and the rapidly dwindling oxygen supply. "Get away from her," he growls, face twisted into a snarl.

Shit. Shit. What can I do? Where's the other stairway? I pull Index back up the stairs, but now it's gotten to the point where I can most definitely feel the fire through my shoes; I curse with every step I make.

"What's wrong?" Index asks.

Can she not feel it? "Feet burning...can't walk much longer!"

"Oh! Er, hang on!" She yells some words in Latin, and suddenly there's a line of blue light stretching along the floor. No, not just a line; it looks like a whole bunch of slips of paper, or Post-It notes, all strung together by something. "Neutralize those!" she shouts.

The tops of the flames are starting to reach my knees. I grit my teeth. This is going to suck.

I plunge my right hand down into the fire and tap the nearest paper slip, and suddenly there's a series of pops as the whole line of them just seem to disintegrate. I barely notice, however, because ow fuck my hand! I swear again, and notice that the sleeve of my shirt's caught fire. I tear it off and toss it away. Fuck shit that hurts. Definitely gonna be second-degree burns over a good chunk of my hand.

On the bright side, it seems to have worked; the floor, at least, is no longer burning.

On the less bright side, the walls and ceiling are still burning, and I suspect there's not a lot of oxygen left. No time to waste, then; I run for the second stairway, Index following close behind, and climb down it.

And just like that, we're out onto the sidewalk. And thankfully, whatever the weird spell of Burning Things That Don't Burn was, it seems to have stopped at the boundaries of the dorm building. Come to think of it...shit, what about everyone else in the building? Did they evacuate when the fire alarm went off? I run up to one of the ground-floor apartments, bang on the door. No response. Not from the next one, either.

"Nobody there, mate. Made sure o' that before I came to you, just in case things got ugly. Good thing, too? Now it's just you and me." Oh, boy. Guess who's walking straight for us, both hands aflame and somehow looking even angrier than before?

Well, screw it. If this asshole's gonna be setting the whole town on fire until he catches us, I guess the only thing to do is stop him right here and right now.

I don't know if he's had the time to reload his revolver yet. I do know that he's probably not going to pick it up with his hands aflame like that, unless he wants to risk all the bullets suddenly cooking off. Which means that once I do what I'm about to do, he's probably just going to set me on fire, one way or another.

Now we're back in the realm of things I know how to deal with.

When he closes to about five meters away, I suddenly let out a yell and charge forward. I see him glare, snap his fingers once, twice, and then frown. Heh, I've seen that expression before. Must be a bitch to realize direct ignition doesn't work on me. He raises his still-flaming fists into a guard instead as I close in, and I see him start to throw a big, wide punch. I jab my left arm inside his guard and knock the punch off to the side--I can feel the heat from his fist on my face, but it's not quite close enough to burn--then I aim a shove with my right hand at his chin, jerking his head back. He stumbles back, his balance lost and his fists suddenly extinguished. Before he recovers, I get in one more elbow strike to his solar plexus, driving him to the ground.

I don't wait to see if he gets back up. I just turn around, grab Index one more time, and run for it.