Toaru Majutsu no Index:MvM Chapter2
Chapter 2: A Fundamental Question[edit]
Part 1[edit]
So what exactly was happening?
If this was not a virtual reality created in an electronic device, something had to be done before Academy City was destroyed. Mikoto herself needed to end her deification(?) immediately to avoid disaster. Couldn’t this form only last a few minutes before triggering a powerful explosion that could easily obliterate all of Academy City? The problem was she had no way of ending it on her own.
Most likely, the same risk applied to Shokuhou Misaki who had turned herself into a goddess of lewd to compete.
Also, that other girl’s eyes were shining as she roared and charged in!?
“Wait, hey, Shokuhou, time out!! This is bad! This isn’t just virtual reality! It might be the real Academy City, so you need to calm down so we can actually talk and exchange infor-”
“Shut up! Today is the day I finally go all out and murder you! hkrhhkrybmrif, ghslbndhmspvmehygbikigdbmdekgmdufkrmdhgldmvkrngldhdenhfiesnhr. mgjsnvgmpshfksnf!!!”
After absorbing an angel to turn herself into a flower and beauty goddess, Shokuhou’s language had glitched out and she couldn’t even talk right.
And while Mikoto held her empty hands out to ask for a truce, the idiot Queen mercilessly attacked with the giant glowing flower petals powerful enough to slice right through a building.
What if this really was the real world?
There were no resets or continues. Did that idiot not understand that letting even one ordinary person die would cross a line that couldn’t be uncrossed!?
An unpleasant snapping sound came from Lightning Goddess Mikoto’s temple.
“Cool your head, you gold titty monster!!!”
As brutally powerful as the attack was, Mikoto managed to dodge it (maybe because Shokuhou’s basic athleticism was so poor) before she circled behind Shokuhou, wrapped her arms firmly around Shokuhou’s hips, and bent backwards in a bridge, dropping the top of Shokuhou’s head into the asphalt. The belly-to-back suplex was like a lightning strike. Especially because it was accompanied by a billion volt blast of electricity.
Thick branches of electricity jolted out and the great heat turned a nearby park’s sandbox into a smooth substance. Mineral fulgurites like that were created by lightning. However, this one was made of simple silicon, so it wasn’t any more valuable than a hunk of glass.
Shokuhou had been flipped upside down with her legs sticking up into the sky, but she wasn’t out of the fight yet.
A bursting sound erupted within her. Mikoto had her arms firmly around her hips, but the glowing flower petals growing form her back slipped into the gaps and forced Mikoto’s arms open from within.
(Uh, oh.)
“hriwhnbigtbs!!!”
Mikoto had no clue what Shokuhou was saying, but Shokuhou’s bloodshot eyes were directed straight at her while the flower petals on her back grew even larger. A deadly slash was coming!?
Mikoto clenched her teeth.
“!!!? …Huh?”
The unathletic goddess tripped over her own feet.
As Shokuhou fell, her sharp petals flailed wildly and sliced diagonally through a nearby skyscraper. If Mikoto hadn’t used her massive magnetic power to hold the building back, they would both have been buried in a concrete landslide.
Leave it to a mental and psychological expert to be unpredictable.
“Shokuhou Misaki. How did you manage to master the mysterious Drunken Boxing without drinking a single drop of alcohol!?”
“I do not look drunk!!”
Tokiwadai’s Queen raised just her head to shout back while blushing.
The embarrassment had brought back her language skills.
“Anyway, if we stay in goddess form much longer, we’ll explode from within! We need to find a way to return to normal!!”
“A self-Mental Out should do the trick☆”
“Dammit, Shokuhou! That’s not fairrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!”
Mikoto shouted in resentment while Shokuhou held her TV remote against her temple and immediately returned to her normal human form.
Shokuhou’s boost was caused by Mental Outing herself → using Exterior → brainwashing a few thousand mental espers → brainwashing tens of thousands of ordinary people →gaining control of a million people through mass psychology. That let her gather enough AIM diffusion fields to summon and fuse with golden angel Kazakiri. So by manually severing her link to Exterior, she could immediately return everyone to their senses and switch off her goddess state.
(Hm. I always thought mine were plenty big, but they seem somewhat lacking now that they’ve shrunk back down.)
The mammary privileged girl held a hand to her still quite large chest and thought something that would have gotten her instantly fried to a crisp if the flat girl had heard her.
Meanwhile, the blissfully ignorant girl was shouting in desperation.
“O-oh, no! Wait, I know! You can control my mind with Mental Out and forcibly switch this off.”
“Misaka-san, did you forget that you’re immune to Mental Out? I can’t do anything for you there. You’ll have to find a way to turn it off on your own.”
“I wouldn’t be asking you for help if I had literally any other option!!”
“You know, when you’re the only one Mental Out doesn’t work on, it makes me think maybe you’re actually an inhuman animal. And as long as you don’t cause anyone else any trouble, it’s no problem to me if some monster blows herself up. So what is this? Did you give yourself a power up without thinking it through and now you’re going to self-destruct and you can’t stop it? Pff, ah ha ha ha!! You’re doing my job for me. This is exactly the kind of unintelligent fate I would expect from you. Now, we don’t want you blowing up in the middle of the city, so it would be perfect if you flew on up like a firework and then blew up all on your lonesome like the loner you are!! Hee hee, oh, I can’t stand it. Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa ha!!!”
“(That settles it. I’m going to blow her up while I’m still in control. With one of those powerful lightning strikes that splits a giant tree in two in Australia.)”
“Why are you like this, Misaka-san?”
To escape the girl whose thoughts turned toward mutual destruction when cornered, the Queen took off running before tripping and falling in a way that miraculous dodged the high voltage storm that shot by just above her head (while also providing a glimpse of her quite grown-up see-through underwear). Open spaces seemed like a bad idea against a lightning monster, so she scrambled from the main road to hide in a dark and narrow alley.
“This is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Hold on, where did Hokaze-san get off to?”
Just then, the lightning goddess saw something.
A floating helium Gekota balloon was caught on the branch of a roadside tree.
Lightning Goddess Mikoto regained her cool and returned to being an ordinary girl.
In mere seconds.
Shokuhou reflexively snapped.
“What!? You have no problem trying to kill me, but now you’re trying to make a cute show of your feminine ability, Misaka-saaan!?”
Part 2[edit]
The countdown to Academy City’s doom had finally stopped.
Mikoto breathed a sigh of relief and held a hand to her chest. A chest that had regained its girly softness.
But this wasn’t over yet.
She hadn’t solved the fundamental problem. If this was not an electronic virtual reality, then what was it?
(But what other possibilities are there? Other than this simply being the real world, I mean.)
This wasn’t an electronic virtual reality. That much was certain.
But she doubted that meant she and Shokuhou had been rampaging through the real world.
Their summer uniforms were enough to know where on the timeline this was happening. That meant she shouldn’t have known anything that would happen after the switch to winter uniforms, so why didn’t that hold true?
(Is this the work of an illusion esper, or did Shokuhou figure out how to get Mental Out into my head after all? Come to think of it, dream-controlling machines like Indian Poker do work on me like normal.)
Everything was mixed up if Shokuhou had Exterior while Mikoto remembered the end of the Indian Poker incident. Same for Kazakiri’s golden glowing angel form. She had first appeared that way in the blizzards of Russia during World War Three, which didn’t mesh with Tokiwadai summer uniforms at all.
How could Mikoto explain the jumbled timeline?
(But if I can’t be certain, I need to be more careful. People only have the one life, so there are no redoes. I should watch what my actions to make sure I don’t let any ordinary people die.)
That might sound benevolent, but it was just like her to not include Shokuhou (because she didn’t qualify as “ordinary”).
With a roar, two avalanches arched through the air and collided overhead.
One was a group of espers leaping from rooftop to rooftop. The other was self-driving cars and construction equipment also jumping from the rooftops. The threat of Academy City’s espers could be seen in the fact that the humans made of protein and calcium were pushing back the other side.
To be blunt, Mikoto was controlling the machines, so she was being forced back.
Academy City was terrifying!!
“Oh, no!”
(How does someone so unathletic have the macho mentality of a barbarian? I honestly don’t have time to deal with this. I want some answers before we fight.)
Mikoto wanted to know what was happening, the identity of the Academy City she saw before her, and the truth of this world. Was it simply reality, was it an illusion created by an esper, or was it a dream created by a machine like Indian Poker? Her options would change drastically depending on the answer.
So…
(If I want to know this city’s secret, I should be looking outside instead of to the center.)
If she was being shown some form of illusion, everything within a certain area would be perfectly recreated. There would be no flaws. But recreating it in such detail would require a massive amount of power. Would they really have enough leftover to do the same for places that weren’t directly related to the battle between Mikoto and Shokuhou? That raised the question of what was and wasn’t “related” to their battle. Strictly speaking, the word “world” didn’t necessarily refer just to the planet Earth.
Which gave Mikoto a quick way to check.
“Outer space.”
Mikoto entered a nearby multi-tenant building and grabbed a telescope from a random interior decoration shop. She just about walked out with it before realizing she hadn’t paid, so she quickly took care of that. If there was any possibility at all that this was ordinary reality, she couldn’t get too accustomed to behaving like a bandit.
An open space would be best, so she made her way to the nearest park.
She couldn’t actually see the stars in the sky since it was daytime, but she could still view the moon. It was visible from here, but it was obviously unrelated to her battle with Shokuhou. If she noticed something wrong with the celestial body, it would tell her that, while this wasn’t a virtual reality, it wasn’t the real world either.
“Let’s see.”
Mikoto peered through the telescope while making sure she it wasn’t pointed at the sun.
She didn’t see the moon.
She saw a giant Academy City satellite.
“?”
Part 3[edit]
There was no time for confused frowning.
Amano Kaguya launched an S5 orbital bomb that used lots of ultra-compressed water.
Part 4[edit]
She was fortunate it hadn’t been a laser bombing.
“Bwah!! With one of those, I’d’ve been killed before I even had a chance to dodge! Argh, curse Academy City and its love of using bizarre tech on you without any kind of warning!!”
Mikoto had just barely avoided harm by magnetically flinging herself to the side and attaching herself to a distant building, but her uniform and bangs were both soaked from steam. That must have been a weaker version of the attack, but even so, the park was just gone.
Mikoto didn’t know if Shokuhou had brainwashed the satellite controller into attacking or if whoever remained on the Academy City side was fighting back. Either way, Mikoto would have a hard time leisurely making astronomical observations with that targeting her. She had to assume staying still for five seconds would get her bombed from orbit.
(And I didn’t manage to get a good look at anything in space before I was attacked.)
She was on the run, so she would have a hard time stopping and making observations even if she did get her hands on another telescope. She couldn’t rely on the livestreamed satellite images that space development industry sites released. She needed to see it for herself, since she knew that was one source that couldn’t be modified.
Her plan would still work as long as it was a location outside of Academy City.
So instead of focusing so much on space up above, she could cut across Academy City and check things beyond the wall.
“What I want most right now is to avoid that satellite, so I guess I’ll head underground!!”
She flicked a coin from her thumb and launched a Railgun at the ground.
The hole she blasted in the asphalt revealed a massive underground shopping area that was likely part of the nearby train station. If you searched on your phone for “walking routes that stay out of the rain”, most any answer would have you go through there.
Mikoto didn’t hesitate to jump down through the hole.
“Oh, and they have a limited time Gekota shop in the event space! I need to make a mental note of that and stop by when peace has returned to the world.”
Of course, that shop might not exist in the real world if this was an illusion or a virtual reality.
Boom!!
The concrete wall to the side was suddenly smashed through and a mass of steel continuous tracks and hydraulic cylinders emerged.
The machine had a giant pinecone-like drill on the front and work arms attached all around it, so it was probably an Anti-Skill tunnel excavation machine. That thing on tank-like tracks was used to create underground spaces like this one.
“Another inefficient and overly-romanticized vehicle!?”
“Hee hee, ha ha, Misaka-saaan☆ Academy City’s science ability is on another levellllllllllllllllll!!”
A strange shout came from the hole overhead.
Shokuhou must have been unexpectedly bad at adlibbing because she was gradually getting weirder.
That said, the heavy machine was powerful but slow. Mikoto ran through the vast underground train station to put distance between it and her.
She of course used her power to neutralize all of the security cameras as she went.
(And while I’m down here, whoever’s watching me from space should lose sight of me!)
An underground space this large would have more than 10 or even 20 stairway exits. She would eventually be located from orbit again, but she would take any head start she could get. If she could leave through an exit the attacker (whoever they were) didn’t expect, she would have some brief freedom.
Shokuhou was chasing after Mikoto, meaning she had forced herself to jump into the hole and managed not to sprain her ankle despite her lack of athleticism.
Mikoto worked her brain as she ran up the stairs to the surface.
When it came down to it…
(This will probably end up being a fight over a single Level 5 more than over ten thousand Level 0s. But which Level 5 would join me if I explained the threat Shokuhou poses? They’re all so weird I have a hard time imagining any of them doing it.)
That was when she spotted someone.
It was truly a coincidence.
He was as far as you could get from Academy City’s seven Level 5s.
He was the kind of perfectly ordinary high schooler you could find anywhere.
He was a pointy-haired boy.
“Hey, do you know what’s going on in the city?”
It wasn’t a logical conclusion.
But Mikoto knew whoever got him on her side would win this. She was certain of it.
“H-hey, are you two alright? There’s been trouble cropping up all over the city.”
He couldn’t have imagined the two girls standing in front of him were the cause of all that trouble.
He was truly worried for them.
He was the kind of person who could manage that in a crisis.
“Anyway, we should stick together. Splitting up just increases the risk of one of us getting lost. Don’t worry. If we all work together, I just know we can get through this!”
Mikoto and Shokuhou had someone who would worry for them.
For his sake, they knew they had to stop this fighting.
Then it hit.
A mysterious water bomb dropped straight down from the giant satellite in orbit.
With a deafening boom, Kamijou Touma was vaporized.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?”
Misaka Mikoto and Shokuhou Misaki both screamed.
And they forever lost the final thing that could have stopped them.
Part 5[edit]
Only one option remained for Mikoto and Shokuhou now: fight until the bitter end. Any other option had been stolen away before their eyes.
The concrete and asphalt city was shaken by a great cry straight out of a movie’s battle scene.
Someone was being lifted like a palanquin at the center of the commotion.
“Hee hee hee, heh heh heh heh. Hope just went extinct, so how about we settle this once and for all, Misaka-san? Let’s fight fair and square☆”
“(That’s her, officer. That sexually-frustrated titty monster is the one you want.)”
“Take this seriously!!” shouted the Queen, who was generally a schemer yet was extremely easy to rile up (and actually had about as short a fuse as Mikoto), while on the verge of tears.
And at the same time…
“Mii! Circle around on that side to cut off their escape!!”
“For someone who never bothers showing up, you really take your Judgment work seriously when you do show up.”
The neighborhood upperclassmen Judgment members named Konori Mii and Yanagisako Aomi rushed toward Shokuhou (probably to crack down on this unauthorized public gathering).
Shokuhou could apparently only control a few thousand within a few kilometers of herself.
That meant the #5 had constructed her own territory over a radius of a few kilometers and she was moving like a typhoon to attack Mikoto. Whenever someone left that area, she released them from the brainwashing so she had enough open slots to brainwash more.
But to Mikoto while she fled on foot, it felt like the entire city was attacking her as a giant avalanche.
The difference between the appearance and the reality was crucial.
Yes, Shokuhou could not brainwashed all 2.3 million people at once. She only made it look like she had.
(Internet server maintenance workers, traffic controllers, high-ranking Anti-Skill, and maybe the 12 board members – there must be some people Shokuhou wants to keep under her control. She won’t release them even if they leave her area. And the more people she has to hold onto, the fewer open slots she has to brainwash new people!)
If that was all, then the situation would only get worse for Mikoto with time. After all, if people with political power or control over the infrastructure fell under Shokuhou’s control, she could take over the security cameras, the unmanned weapons, and the rest of Academy City’s functions and use them against Mikoto.
But…
(What if I direct Shokuhou toward annoying enemies who she’s forced to brainwash? People who don’t do her much good as pawns, but who she can’t release because they’d get mad and attack her. If I send a bunch of those nuisances her way, it will fill up her brainwashing slots. There are 2.3 million people in this city. She’s only trying to minimize the threat, but she’ll end up filling up her few thousand slots like blocks in a puzzle game!!)
Righteous Anti-Skill officers who were trained to arrest criminals, including rogue espers, made the perfect sacrificial pawns.
Shokuhou had Mental Out.
Sending Anti-Skill her way would only get those adults brainwashed sooner or later, so Mikoto just had to set things up so it would be “later”. Because she only needed to buy enough time to get away from Shokuhou. With the exception of some truly special espers, once a group of people passed a certain size, it just became a general “crowd”.
That was Mikoto’s plan, but something unexpected happened.
Unathletic Queen Shokuhou Misaki extended her hand forward.
She pointed her palm toward the approaching Anti-Skill officers.
“Hahhh!!”
They flew.
Her shout sent the heavily-equipped Anti-Skill officers flying more than 5m straight back.
Even Mikoto stopped running and stared wide-eyed at this.
“Eh? What!? Are you a sage now!? When did this idiot get such a cool move!?”
“I have the strongest mental power, Misaka-saaan. Of course I can command them to launch themselves backwards. …And did you just point at me and call me an idiot?”
By brainwashing them, having them knock themselves out, and then releasing the brainwashing, Shokuhou wouldn’t fill up her slots.
The #5 snapped her fingers and the crowd rushed toward Mikoto again. It was like a wave of human bodies. If it contacted her, she would be engulfed.
But just as the #3 feared that would happen, something else entirely happened.
Something emerged.
The special powered suit was shaped like a mantis. But in place of the folded front legs, it was equipped with a Gatling railgun.
Five Over.
Modelcase Railgun.
(Really, when in the timeline is this!!?)
All sound vanished.
Even Mikoto immediately hid behind the corner of a building just before the thick concrete wall was torn through like tofu. The Five Over powered suit was designed to mimic the #3’s abilities. But making each and every orange-trailing shot a railgun was completely absurd.
She did not want to be hit by that when she still wasn’t certain if this was a dream, the real world, or virtual reality.
Since unathletic Shokuhou ran behind cover in a panic, this was probably being controlled by the “official” Academy City side and wasn’t part of her brainwashed army. Although knowing how much of a screwup she could be despite her high specs, there was a distinct possibility she had brainwashed the pilot and then confidently given a suicidally bad command.
Mikoto thought she heard the buzzing of giant insect wings and noticed something like a mechanical scorpion wasp flying in the sky. Was that a Five Over too? But Mikoto didn’t recognize it. She could guess it was from the same series as her mantis, but which Level 5 was it supposed to be!?
“Oh, that’s my Five Over,” said Shokuhou.
“Is everything bad in this world your fault, you busty god of pestilence?”
“That octopus-like one over there is mine too.”
Mikoto was pissed now, so she electrically controlled that Five Over OS to send it toward Tokiwadai’s Queen. Quite strongly.
“Dbh? Hey, why is this lonely machine wrapping its sticky tentacles around me!? I know you’re the Outsider, but you’re still from the #5 Five Over series, so take my side!!”
“You’re the one with the big boobs, so the slimy tentacle monsters are your domain.”
“What did you say!?”
Mikoto didn’t bother answering and got to running away.
But now they were seeing superweapons capable of killing a Level 5 with direct force.
She didn’t have a moment to lose.
(They weren’t using such powerful weapons before. Has something changed on the Academy City side!?)
Part 6[edit]
Yomikawa Aiho of Anti-Skill’s plan was a simple one.
They couldn’t join the fight without the appropriate authority or authorization. But if all the electronic signatures were going to come back with errors, they just had to avoid using the network. She only had to write out a paper document and deliver it on foot.
“I don’t know how to handle handwritten paperwork! I’ll have to go find the manual for that…”
“Put this on for me.”
“?”
“It’s a monitoring vest with sensors for measuring brainwaves, ECG, and eye movements, all hooked up to a battery and communication equipment. It’s handmade, though. …Hm, not much of a reaction. Hey, Tessou, we’ve got another brainwashed one. Get him out of here!!”
Whether or not someone was brainwashed could change from moment to moment, but if Anti-Skill had their vitals monitored at all times, they could pick up on the subtle changes. And if they could distinguish between the brainwashed and unbrainwashed and physically remove the dangerous ones, they could function as an organization once more.
“I’m Hanaki, filling in for him. Request received and approved. All registered Anti-Skill members are immediately authorized to carry and use armor, electronics, communication devices, and firearms!!”
“Understood. This must be the flash memory used to activate the unmanned weapons. And is this the key to a mysterious hangar? I don’t know what’s causing all this trouble in the city, but once we’re all geared up, it’s time to head out!! Gather all manned and unmanned weapons so we can bring the fight to those kaiju and figure out what they are!!!”
Part 7[edit]
The Queen was fairly worried about the thick thing wrapped around her slender wrist, but she still managed to use her remote to give a command to the nearby espers. Once the lonely Five Over OS’s slimy octopus tentacles were torn away from her torso and cheek, Shokuhou hid all alone behind cover and breathed a heavy sigh of annoyance.
Then she spotted some strange vests covered in electronic cords.
Were they some kind of medical device?
“Eh? Why are Anti-Skill back in the fight? And they’re using some kind of machine ability to regain their teamwork? …They’re just giving Misaka-san more toys to play with.”
The machines letting Anti-Skill distinguish between the brainwashed and unbrainwashed were a serious blow to Shokuhou’s side and Mikoto could alter what the machines told them. If Mikoto decided someone was obstructing her goal of deescalating the situation, she could make it look like they were brainwashed even if Shokuhou hadn’t touched their minds.
(That’s like starting a political witch hunt using my name.)
Shokuhou could only hope that meathead didn’t have enough in the brains department to come up with such a nasty plan.
Part 8[edit]
“Tch!!”
Anti-Skill was operating next-gen weapons, including the Five Overs, and Shokuhou had her brainwashed group. Mikoto didn’t like the idea of being caught by either one.
She clicked her tongue and used her magnetism.
She set foot on a nearby building wall at around the 10th floor.
Then she leaped toward another building.
The brainwashed army on the ground couldn’t reach her when she was magnetically jumping from building to building. It wasn’t a 100% guarantee thanks to esper powers and next-gen weapons, but the barrier of height could sometimes trump a difference in numbers.
Someone on the ground formed a megaphone with her hands and shouted up at Mikoto.
“You’re such a show off, Misaka-san!! You’re just so…so…!!”
“I’m so what?”
“So tactless. You’re the kind of person who just wants to be popular so bad. I bet you’d set up your phone and start dancing in a convenience store or a conveyer belt sushi place!!”
“Look, I already know you’re trying to pick a fight with me.”
“But if you keep jumping around wayyyy up there, you might just run out of stamina ability! Heh heh. I don’t need anything special for this☆ I just have to wait until all your unnecessary acrobatics catch up to you and you fall to your- hey, are you listening!?”
“Uh, oh!!”
After a few more jumps, the tempered glass window Mikoto was planning to land on was suddenly shattered by someone slamming a chair at it from the inside. The blank-faced girl looked to be Kuriba Ryouko.
(Wait, does Mental Out work like normal on a cyborg who’s replaced some of her organs with machines? What kind of cruel god gives such a convenient power to someone like her!?)
The barrier of height wasn’t working. Shokuhou could brainwash anyone just by aiming her TV remote at them, so she could apparently go for ordinary people by the windows on the higher floors.
Mikoto realized anew how useful Mental Out was and how much it should have been given to anyone other than Shokuhou.
(At this rate, she might brainwash some people out ahead of me. I could be in trouble if she captures me in a pincer attack. …Hm?)
Mikoto looked down at the road in confusion and saw the Queen struggling to catch her breath.
Shokuhou had said she was waiting for Mikoto to run out of stamina, but hadn’t she been using Mental Out an awful lot too?
“P-pant. Gasp, wheeze. Urp, what is happening to me?”
“You don’t see this every day. The schemer really is drowning in her schemes.”
But they couldn’t have this end with the #3 and the #5 both overusing their powers, running out of stamina, collapsing on the ground, and trembling while fighting like caterpillars. Or rather, Mikoto had no interest in joining the unathletic idiot down there.
(But this is still a problem.)
The people brainwashed by Shokuhou weren’t the only threat to Mikoto.
The organized counterattack by the freshly recovered Anti-Skill was becoming a real nuisance.
And Shokuhou changed tack with a smile.
She didn’t hesitate for a second.
“Hee hee. If I brainwash the investigative agency in charge of the rules, can’t I set up a dictatorship to force the foolish masses to follow my laws, my morals, and my violence ability?”
“You really are a sadistic dominatrix who would dress up in bondage gear, aren’t you!?”
“My, my. A free tip, Misaka-san. If you’re trying to insult someone, you should try to avoid paying them an obvious compliment.”
“I should’ve known a pervert would love being called a pervert.”
And.
There was no bright light or loud noise.
It happened suddenly but it had been inevitable.
When Tokiwadai students crossed the line, it was only a matter of time before she made an appearance.
She was walking on hard asphalt with pumps, yet she moved in total silence. Which made it all the more terrifying. She was not a ghost or a phantom. How could a human with real mass move like that?
She was here.
The ultimate trump card had been played.
Her glasses glinted in the light.
The dorm manager of Tokiwadai Middle School’s off-campus dorm had finally made her move.
Mikoto’s mind blanked out.
There was a span of a few seconds where she found only a gap in her memories.
She may have shouted something in that missing time.
And she had turned tail and run. For some reason, she had jumped down from the building wall and took off running full tilt. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember what had happened before that. Academy City’s #3’s teeth chattered and she had tears in her eyes.
Color finally returned to the world, the distorted sound returned to normal, and reality caught back up to her.
She continued running with all her might.
“Y-yikes!!?” “Y-yikes!!?”
Her voice was in perfect sync with Shokuhou’s next to her. The terror must have removed the unathletic #5’s mental limiters. She looked like her Achilles tendon could snap and her knees could shatter at any moment, causing her to topple forward, but she was keeping up with Mikoto’s speed for once. At times, fear was a greater motivator than anger.
A distorted presence approached from behind.
It was like being pursued by a thick invisible wall.
This had nothing to do with their specs. Shokuhou could brainwash anyone and control them, but she had decided to flee instead of aiming her remote. Because her instincts told her even the slightest unnecessary action would allow their pursuer to silently catch up and get her in a wristlock.
While they ran at max speed, the two girls exchanged friendly banter.
“Gasp, pant. M-Misaka-san, you’re the physical fighter, so take responsibility and go fight that dorm manager from hell!!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Even the Mariyo Bros. who stomp and burn their way across their enemy’s kingdom will die instantly if they fall into a pit! Are you asking me to fight the human equivalent of one of those insta-death pits!?”
Stopping out of exhaustion was simply not an option.
They were up against the dorm manager from hell. If she so much as laid a hand on their shoulder, they were dead.
They had to run away at all costs.
“What are we going to do – gasp – Misaka-saaan!?”
“This.”
Like most big cities, Academy City had plenty of bicycles and scooters illegally parked on the sidewalk alongside major streets. Mikoto looked through those, spotted one that looked especially fast, and destroyed the thick antitheft chain with an iron sand sword.
She had chosen an electric unicycle with a very thick tire and T-shaped handlebars.
The #5 honey girl panicked when she realized what was happening.
“Excuse me!?”
“Are these really street legal? Academy City traffic rules are so lax.”
Shokuhou didn’t want to hear that from a girl actively breaking the law by stealing the vehicle, but Mikoto easily started it up with a motor sound much lighter than with a gasoline engine. She took off down the street at more than 60km/h. And it went without saying that a unicycle only had one seat.
Yes.
Climbing a vertical building wall was not the only way to escape a mindless group. If the dorm manager from hell secretly used an elevator to reach a window on the same floor as Mikoto, it was all over. So the simpler and more effective way to stay safe was to gain speed and put horizontal distance between them.
Shokuhou was stuck on foot.
She could try using a car or motorcycle, but with her brainwashed support group spread out across the road, her own allies would get in the way of any vehicle she tried to use. Funnily enough, the strongest dorm manager was swallowed up by that crowd. Unfortunately for her, she was caught in an avalanche of small children like Fremea, Azumi, and Kanou Shinka. It was a good thing she only ever attacked misbehaving Tokiwadai students.
(That stupid queen bee sacrificed efficiency for a more intimidating visual.)
“Misaka-san, hey, don’t leave me☆ Please, cough, gasp.”
Mikoto thought she heard someone quite seriously approaching tears behind her, but she wasn’t going to turn back for that. Ahh, the wind feels so nice.
(Anyway, where am I?)
She had been running aimlessly away thanks to Shokuhou’s force, Anti-Skill, and then the dorm manager from hell chasing after her. She wanted to see outside the city’s wall to find out what this world was, so she wanted to avoid running around in circles. If she continued traveling in one direction, she would eventually find what she wanted.
She spotted a blue sign on the side of a pedestrian bridge overhead.
“District 18?”
(Then the shortest route would be to the District 11 gate leading to Shinjuku! I finally have a route to the goal!!)
But this was a problem at the same time.
District 18 was home to a lot of elite schools, including Kirigaoka Girls Academy and Nagatenjouki Academy. Those schools’ uniqueness could be seen in the fact that they openly referred to the School Garden as their rival. While the School Garden was an old-fashioned space of classy girls, District 18 had the colder and harder feel of inhumanly efficient technology.
And with so many research secrets to guard at those elite schools, the defenses would be strict.
The asphalt to Mikoto’s right suddenly melted into black goo.
An intruder had been detected and a shot had been fired with no warning.
Or maybe the troublemaking intruder wearing a Tokiwadai summer uniform had rubbed them the wrong way.
Because Mikoto was the #3 Railgun, the peak of the electrical espers, she instantly identified the invisible attack.
It had come from a giant metal tower far away at the center of District 18.
“A deadly microwave focusing weapon… Why is Academy City using something like that!?”
Of course, Mikoto had never seen this before, so this observation wasn’t enough to say anything about the identity of this world.
She tried emitting lots of EM waves from her body to confuse the EM weapon tower’s targeting, but then her head wobbled heavily.
(Oh…no. My…stamina…)
She didn’t even have time to scream.
An invisible wall of EM slammed into Misaka Mikoto.
Part 9[edit]
“Wehhhhhhhhhh!?”
That strange shout came from Shokuhou as she watched from a distance (because she was left behind by the electric unicycle).
Her stamina was also close to its limit thanks to using Mental Out so much, but the unpleasant sleepiness instantly vanished from her mind.
She always ate natural ingredients and avoided artificial additives, so being vaporized along with the melted asphalt was one of the last ways she wanted to die.
(Ehh? It’s over?? I knew she wasn’t very smart, but wow. Misaka-san, how did you let that kill you? If you’re going to stupidly gather all the hate ability onto yourself, you’re supposed to be killed in a creative way that ensures lots of suffering. Did she really not understand that?)
Stopping to think was a mistake on Shokuhou’s part.
She shouldn’t have given even the smallest prayer for her rival’s survival.
Boom!!
A Railgun was fired from somewhere in District 18. The shorthaired meathead was abuzz with energy. She stood tall with her stamina fully restored.
“Ohhhhh!! Microwaves are wireless power and wireless power means a power source. I’m all charged up and ready to gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!”
“Geh!? Stop pretending to be a contactless charger or one of those power satellites all the ecological people dream of, Misaka-saaan!!”
Shokuhou was still worn out.
She was in a very bad position now that the Railgun’s battery was fully charged, her skin smooth and glossy.
“What kind of monster eats the microwaves inside a microwave oven instead of the food? Don’t you have any weaknesses? I hope you overcharge so much your stomach grows and grows until you explode!!”
Part 10[edit]
“Hah!!”
The EM weapon tower’s powerful blast of microwaves had fully recharged Mikoto, but it had also destroyed the electric unicycle she had been riding.
(But now I know I can use deadly microwaves to recharge after my stamina drops, so I can keep using my power to jump around.)
And.
She ran into something strange.
A group was gathered in a circle by the roadside like a volleyball team planning their next move. They were the elite schoolgirls of Kirigaoka Girls Academy. What were they doing here? The proud intellectual girls’ actions were so strange they stood out from their surroundings and gave them an intimidating air.
A cheap frog doll sat in the center of their circle.
It was Gekota.
“Please grant us the strength of the Great God Misaka.”
“Oh, god, please save us.”
“We ask for the Great Getoka’s protection. Even that god of destruction will hesitate to attack as long as he is with us.”
“Ehhh!?” shouted Mikoto. “Wh-when did I get my own cult!?”
They believed she wouldn’t attack as long as they had Gekota with them.
For that to have become a part of her “mythology”, the way she deactivated her lightning goddess form must have been seen and spread like a game of telephone.
That aside, would a cult really crop up this quickly in a city of science?
Mikoto couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
(Shokuhou!! She cut off the network lines, isolating everyone from accurate information. I’d heard that’s a common tactic used by scammers to pressure their victims, but I didn’t realize how weak people’s minds were when they lost all objective information. Still, this seems like a big change for just three hours.)
Groundless misinformation and rumors did spread rapidly during times of great disaster. Seeing your usual world collapsing around you and having your basic assumptions about life shaken prevented you from trusting in your experience and your decisions, so you started to believe anything could happen.
As seen with ghost sightings, people had a bad habit of not questioning what they saw when their existing knowledge was insufficient to comprehend it. When people who can only believe what they see with their own eyes misinterpret something as a ghost, they can end up relying on bogus exorcists and related products.
“Please protect us, darkness of the Great God Shokuhou.”
“Oh, she’s got a cult too.”
“The world is fueled by the conflict between good and evil. May that eternal battle destroy the existing world and guide humanity to the light!!”
“And it’s an apocalyptic cult!? Don’t just accept that, you spoiled brats!!”
Regardless, would it help at all if Mikoto ran over and demanded they stop? What if they started believing Legendary God Mikoto would visit them if they worshiped Gekota enough?
She decided to leave them be for now.
Really, she just didn’t want to see any more of that.
And…
“Wha-!?”
Mikoto noticed something that made her forget all of that and suddenly jump back.
A change in the air seemed to slice through her skin like a sword.
“?”
Unathletic Shokuhou frowned as she worked to catch up (while gasping for breath).
All of a sudden, a thick beam of light broke through the wall right next to Mikoto and sliced through the air.
“Hey there.”
Something lurked beyond the tunnel of orange-burned reinforced concrete. That was not a false mirage. It emitted a tingling presence. It was a girl with wavy chestnut hair. Light compressed to the size of a baseball hovered in her palm.
She was Academy City’s #4 Level 5 – Meltdowner.
Mugino Shizuri.
“Couldn’t help but notice you were having some fun over here. If you’re gonna duke it out to see who’s strongest, you need to invite me!!”
By the time she shouted that, she had already launched her attack.
Mikoto magnetically launched herself more than 10m to the side, sending her clear across the major street. Shokuhou crawled on the ground like a frog to somehow avoid the multiple beams of light slicing through the air.
The #5’s mind turned toward her remote, but…
“…”
(I might be able to silence her by brainwashing her, but…might? Can I really risk my own life ability on an unsourced claim like that? If I screw it up and fail to brainwash her, she’ll burn away one of my measurements – B, W, or H!!)
“Hey, don’t leave me here, Misaka-san!! You’ve fought this kind of back alley monster before, haven’t you? Then this is your job ability!”
“I’d rather not die because I did what an unathletic chicken told me to do!!”
Mikoto abandoned Shokuhou by turning a corner and using the row of buildings as a shield.
A chill ran up her spine.
If she had taken the time to think, she would have been killed instantly.
“Tch!!?”
Shining divine punishment dropped from the heavens above.
Or that’s how the ancient people would have described it.
In truth, a Meltdowner beam shot into the sky had unnaturally bent above a skyscraper to make a U-turn back down toward Mikoto.
It caught her fully by surprise, so she didn’t have time to dodge. She could only raise her hands overhead.
(I still don’t know if this is a dream, the real world, or virtual reality, but I don’t want that to hit me in any of them!)
She used a massive amount of magnetism to forcibly bend the beam, saving her life.
However.
Blocking that one attack had considerably worn down her stamina.
She could tell she couldn’t do that many more times.
(The beam bent? But how!?)
“Oh, I get it. It was that experimental magnetic bridge for linear motor trains. She used the magnetic pollution to bend the electron beam!!”
“Hey!! Quit running! You do know I don’t like being ignored, don’t you!? You’re so dead!!!”
An angry shout reached her, sounding muffled after it reflected around the building.
The #4 didn’t bother with bending the beam this time.
The scene before Mikoto’s eyes collapsed like an old paper photograph being burned from behind by a lighter. The skyscraper melted into orange goo as large holes formed and Meltdowner beams shot out. They were as powerful as could be, but they were very poorly aimed. The #4 was a huge nuisance of an enemy!!
Another beam shot out.
“Whoa, hey!!” shouted Mikoto, but it was too late.
The thick beam struck a random passerby.
No, wait. A random passerby couldn’t deflect a Meltdowner beam with his forehead.
Some idiot had broken through the #4’s attack with a headbutt!?
“Wah hah hah!! What are you gutless Level 5s doing brawling in the streets? Fine, then. I, Sogiita Gunha, will guide you back to the straight and gutsy!!”
Mikoto held a hand to her forehead.
An even bigger pain had showed up.
She was pretty sure that #7 had directly clashed with her lightning goddess form without any kind of transformation on his part and lived to tell the tale.
Then she heard some strange voices from a different direction.
While three or four Level 5 kaiju had gathered in one place to fight, another group showed no sign of fear and didn’t try running away.
“G-Great God Misaka!!”
“Chaos is what can best guide the world, not good or evil. May the two gods continue fighting, producing the energy fueling the world and ensuring us all a brighter future!!”
Meanwhile…
Is that the cult she mentioned? thought Shokuhou, staring into the distance.
It would be one thing if they believed they would be saved by completing some kind of special training, but finding meaning in assured destruction felt more like one of those self-destructive cults that demanded its followers give up all their possessions or engage in mass suicide.
“We offer you this Gekota! May the shape beloved by god ensure our salvation!!”
“Oh, so there is a loophole ability to save yourself.”
(I could brainwash the leaders to take control of the entire cult and make use of them. But should I? They seem a bit too obsessed.)
Then Shokuhou aimed her TV remote at Sogiita from behind and to the left of him.
Unlike with the #4, she felt an almost unnatural lack of hesitation with the #7.
The Queen stuck out her tongue a bit.
“I’ve brainwashed this idiot before☆”
“Dammit!!!”
Brainwashing complete.
The guts freak’s shoulders twitched and then he charged toward Mikoto.
She had clashed with Sogiita in the past, but she hadn’t been able to understand what he was doing then. Which was a really bad sign when it came to Academy City esper battles. Understanding the enemy’s ability was the first step toward victory, but she didn’t understand anything about that idiot who wouldn’t shut up about guts.
Meanwhile, Shokuhou kept nervously looking over her shoulder at the extra-large beams that were still blasting through nearby buildings.
“That just leaves her as a problem. Honestly, the #7 will eventually break through his brainwashing with brute force ability, so I need him to defeat Misaka-san sooner rather than later.”
“If there’s a time limit, then send him after the #4!! You have free control over him right now, don’t you!?”
“You can be even crueler than me at times.”
Shokuhou winked, kissed the tip of her remote, and aimed it elsewhere.
Mugino emerged around the corner at just that moment.
“Gahhhhhhh! Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuts!!?”
“Oh, now this is getting interesting! You’re a Level 5 too!? Then it’s a fight to the death!!!”
A Meltdowner beam shot from Mugino’s palm, but Sogiita simply waved his right hand to the side to produce a rainbow explosion that eliminated the beam in a burst of sparkles.
The very next moment, both of them ran forward and butted heads.
A deafening roar exploded out and red blood splattered across the pavement.
Why were they more violent barehanded than when using brutal beams that could burn through laboratory walls!?
Just then, someone emerged from a sideroad.
“Eh? Eh? Wait, what? I thought the emergency shelter was this way. Kyah!?”
It was Saten Ruiko.
Mikoto knew better than to question her sudden appearance.
That Level 0 had a miraculous knack for this kind of thing.
(Is she the reigning champion of stumbling into trouble!?)
Mikoto’s eyes widened and she immediately harnessed magnetism to gather up a large motorcycle, a light car, a cyborg (Kuroyoru Umidori), and other metal objects to form a shield, but would that actually protect her friend from the brutal beams and the guts boy?
But before she received an answer…
“Stooooop!!”
Someone shouted.
But it was in a soprano voice.
The elementary school boy was Saten’s little brother, who had only ever been mentioned in a very short flashback.
“A-a first appearance? And is he alright? What is he even doing in Academy City? Again, when on the timeline is this!?”
He wasn’t even a Level 0.
He was from outside the city, so he wasn’t an esper at all.
And the small boy, who just so happened to be in the city, was clenching his powerless fists. He squeezed his eyes shut, but he still held his ground, clenched his teeth, and even stepped toward the threat before his eyes.
To protect his sister.
“I will protect my sister. I don’t know who you are, but keep your hands off my one and only sisterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!”
And.
Sogiita felt a powerful wind rushing toward him.
He was an unusual person who judged everything based on guts. Even while brainwashed by Shokuhou, he still acted based on guts.
The #7 sensed something here.
(A small child who isn’t even an esper risking his life to protect his family? Directly challenging Academy City’s #7 Level 5 for nothing more than that? W-without any kind of weapon or trick to back it up?)
“I…”
Dazed, the Level 5 came to a complete stop.
“I’m no match for guts like that…”
A tremendous sound of impact exploded out.
Sogiita was launched diagonally upwards, broke through several skyscrapers, and vanished into the blue sky.
“…Huh?”
Saten’s brother couldn’t believe what his punch had accomplished.
It did look a lot like the #7 had launched himself backwards with his own super strength, but that didn’t matter right now.
With the one idiot gone, the other idiot was free to attack.
“Ohhhhhhh!! Where’s the next enemy!? Who out there is strong enough to satisfy Academy City’s #4!!?”
Mikoto wasn’t about to give Mugino what she wanted.
She was looking for a powerful enemy, so she would likely walk right past Saten and her brother.
“So I need to get out of here!! I know I’m faster than that unathletic Level 5, so she’ll get caught and keep the #4 busy for me! Because she’s a complete klutz!!!”
“I’m sick of arguing with you every time, so can you just stop saying things like that!?”
Just as Mikoto was going to leave tearful Shokuhou behind, Mugino reacted.
“The #3 and the #5, huh? Why are you trying to sneak away when you’re so powerfullllllllllllllllll!?”
Buildings toppled, glass shattered, and vending machines rattled.
Through it all, Mikoto saw a waist-high Gekota mascot in front of a shop just as it was knocked over by the shockwave.
Then an explosion distorted its silhouette.
And it vanished inside the light.
It was forever lost.
In that instant, all emotion vanished from Misaka Mikoto’s face and she took action.
“Agragaghgahgh＃＄％＆‘～｜‘｛＋＊｝＜＞？＿＠「；：」・￥☆´仝￡〓!!!”
She shed tears of blood while launching lightning, iron sand, and coins.
Her love proved too powerful for the #4, who vanished along with the scenery behind her.
Mikoto wasn’t known as the #3 for no reason.
“You know you’re only proving that cult right, don’t you?”
“Gasp!? Wh-what was I just doing?”
Mikoto regained her senses and refocused on the goal she had lost sight of.
Discovering the truth of this world and settling things with Shokuhou still appeared to be the fastest way to end all this conflict.
She ran along the asphalt by herself, passing by a few people (who had not yet been corrupted by the cult).
“Why was I wasting so much time on that titty monster!?”
“I keep telling you not to call me these things!”
Since an angry Shokuhou was chasing after her, those passersby would eventually be brainwashed.
But Mikoto could use that to her advantage when she had a goal in mind. It would change a lot if she could detect the powerful espers who Shokuhou would prioritize going after.
Part 11[edit]
If outsiders, especially rivals form the School Garden, brought trouble to District 18, they would be blasted without warning by a microwave weapon that could melt the asphalt.
But Shokuhou wasn’t afraid.
The elite schools of Nagatenjouki and Kirigaoka were as much treasure troves of high-level espers as Tokiwadai. And Mental Out worked best when using every resource available.
The odds of pulling an ultra rare had gone up.
The Queen smiled while guarded by several elite espers.
“Ah ha ha. Academy City is a city of espers☆ An EM weapon tower? A microwave weapon? Did you think toys like that could slow me down!? …Hm?”
Then the #5 noticed something.
One of the esper girls she had brainwashed into serving her had something taped to her back like a prank note.
It was a giant sticklike lithium ion battery used in laptops.
And it of course exploded.
“Dwahhhhh!!?”
With a bizarre scream, Shokuhou was knocked onto her back.
As her brainwashed shields, those students all had their backs to her.
The batteries had been on thin metal panels attached to their backs, so the brainwashed espers hadn’t taken much damage, but Shokuhou wasn’t so fortunate. For how common lithium ion batteries were, they could cause quite an explosion when misused.
Yes.
If Mikoto knew those espers would be brainwashed, she could lay a trap. Ideally using something that could be remotely triggered with electricity or EM waves. That way she didn’t have to worry about accidentally harming any strangers if Shokuhou didn’t brainwash them.
Mikoto didn’t actually think this was enough to defeat the #5.
But if she left Shokuhou unsure who might be a trap waiting to be triggered, it would prevent Shokuhou from bolstering her numbers.
“Heh. That meathead has some nerve challenging me to landmine-based mind games!!”
This limited Shokuhou’s options.
Meaning…
(I’ll just have to protect myself with the usual clique members who I know Misaka-san hasn’t touched. After I brainwash them to ensure they won’t betray me or question my orders, of course!!)
Part 12[edit]
Mikoto felt a twinge of reluctance when her journey jumping from building to building took her to the edge of District 18.
(Yeah, I’ll have to preserve my strength after I leave here. I won’t be able to recharge with the EM weapon tower.)
She was moving from District 18 to District 11.
That special district could be seen as the front door for the land route and shipping. Which meant it directly bordered the outside wall.
“Not far now!!”
What were things like outside?
If she saw Shinjuku like normal, then this was the real world.
She had already rejected the idea that this was a virtual reality running on electronic equipment, but if the city and view outside of Academy City didn’t look right, it would mean this world was an artificial field created by an illusion esper or a fake city made for filming a movie.
It would mean a lot to know for sure if she could safely destroy this city.
That would tell her on what scale she could battle Shokuhou.
“Tch!”
Several figures approached her.
These were not just the crowd pursuing her on the ground. They were up as high as she was. She could see several girls jumping from rooftop to rooftop.
That was the Shokuhou Clique.
Apparently Shokuhou was strongest when she stuck to the basics.
(Come to think of it, didn’t her clique easily catch up to a running train during the Daihaseisai!? If they’re this close, it won’t be long until they have me surrounded!!)
And the Shokuhou Clique had more than just physical fighters.
Mikoto suddenly heard someone else’s voice speaking directly in her mind.
<Hee hee. Hello again, Misaka-sama.>
“Ugh. This telepathy…Kobayashi-senpai!?”
<I am glad you remember me. It is strange that you can deflect the Queen’s Mental Out, but I can easily establish a link with my lower-level telepathy.>
That was enough of a threat.
Once Kobayashi Satori established a one-way link, she could spy on your thoughts and predict your actions.
And she could also use the link to track your general location. The biggest threat in war was reliable intelligence. If Mikoto didn’t do anything about Kobayashi, she would be allowing the other clique members to rush right to her.
So…
(I need to crush that intelligence agent first!!)
<My, how violent. And did you really think I only played a harmless support role?>
(Hm? Can she use her telepathy to attack? Like fill your mind with incomprehensibly broken text and words to make the speech center of the brain glitch out?)
Bracing herself wouldn’t help.
Covering her ears could not shut out the telepath’s “voice”.
And the fearsome attack arrived.
<Crotch.>
“…?”
<Vagina, vulva, genitalia, privates. Oh? You can call it the groin too. Language is such a fascinating thing.>
It took three seconds for Mikoto to realize what this was.
Her face turned beet red.
No.
This couldn’t be happening!!
(W-w-w-w-w-w-wait, she couldn’t be. I mean, how could a bashful Tokiwadai girl stoop to such shameless depths?)
<Yes, using colored pens to underline all the lewd words in your dictionary is quite a shameful hobby. Maybe I shouldn't have outed myself like that☆>
“Ahhhhhhh!?”
Crash!!!
A billion volts radiated from Mikoto.
The psychological attack had won.
Part 13[edit]
Electrical explosions erupted all over.
Orange sparks flew from the giant gantry cranes meant to lift the metal shipping containers stacked up in pyramids and from the flat AGVs moving in and out of the containers, starting some small fires.
Shokuhou tearfully held her hands to the top of her head.
“Eek!? Wait, Kobayashi-saaan!! What did you say to her!?”
<Hee hee. If I told you, I believe you would explode in a similar way.>
“I am the clique’s leader, in case you have forgotten.”
But if Mikoto was spewing electricity aimlessly, this was Shokuhou’s chance.
Overusing her power would sap her stamina.
Once Mikoto’s intensity started to flag, Shokuhou would send her clique’s elites in to surround and defeat her.
(It’s time to finish this.)
“Everyone!! Surround her and take her out!!!”
Part 14[edit]
It wasn’t enough.
Mikoto was only a kilometer – a mere 1000 meters – away from the wall, but she couldn’t cover that distance. The Shokuhou Clique would close in on her first. She couldn’t slip past them. Even though the view past that wall would tell her what this world was!
She accepted that fact as she clenched her teeth.
And she changed tack.
“In that case!!”
She poured all her remaining strength into her legs and jumped.
Fortunately, District 11’s tallest building was nearby. She magnetically drew herself to it.
“Heh hee hee!! Climbing that building will only leave you with nowhere to run!!”
“Forget that sadistic moron.”
“Can you please take this as seriously as me!?”
She couldn’t reach the goal by approaching the wall horizontally.
So she would climb.
By raising her eye level, the distance to the horizon would naturally grow. If she could climb high enough, she would be able to see the world outside the wall without actually crossing it herself.
“Ohhhhhh!!”
She set foot on the skyscraper wall and ran up the full 500m.
She arrived on the roof.
And finally, Misaka Mikoto could see outside.
Part 15[edit]
Mikot saw blue as far as the eye could see.
That roiling color was the sea.
There was no sign of Shinjuku or Tokyo.
Only the vast expanse of the ocean lay beyond Academy City.
But not because of flooding caused by climate change.
She did see some land.
In the sky.
Like broken pieces of eggshell, this entire world was comprised of several chunks of land slowly moving at various heights while surrounded by a blue spherical ocean.
The pieces of land moved like clouds in the wind, but they never collided with each other, suggesting there were some kind of rules governing it.
She hadn’t noticed it until now, but altogether the layers of floating land may have covered half – no, two-thirds – of the blue planet. Academy City had only just so happened to have a cloudless blue sky until now.
“What…in the world?”
She saw building-like silhouettes on the other flying lands.
But those buildings were not gray.
She saw castle walls and sharp pointed bell towers made of smooth white marble.
She was seeing part of a picture book castle.
“What is this?”
She heard some kind of animal cry.
The deep, rumbling cry was quite intimidating and she looked up to see it belonged to a dragon with a wingspan of well over 120m, making it larger than a jumbo jet.
A dragon?
Were things like that normal in this world?
If so…
That would mean…
Part 16[edit]
“Is this a swords and sorcery fantasy world?”
Part 17[edit]
A memory came back to Mikoto.
Like it had broken through the mental block she had placed over it.
(That’s right.)
She remembered.
She remembered what had really happened back then.
(Back when all this started, when we began fighting over that pudding in the courtyard, my high-voltage current hit the café’s big propane tank and it exploded.)
“That’s right! We both died!!”
Between the Lines 1: A Turning Point, and the Starting Point[edit]
Yes.
It had all begun with this conversation.
“Welcome to the Reincarnation Sanctuary! I’m Reincarnation Goddess Salinagaritina. Railgun and Mental Out, both of you died after achieving something special, so what kind of alternate world would you like to enjoy for your second shot at life?”
Misaka Mikoto couldn’t keep up with that springlike energy.
Her shoulders slumped.
“What is going on?”
“Oh. Well, normally, the goddess here – that’s me – would be handing out maxed-out parameters and all-powerful skills as casually as a part-timer giving out free energy drink samples on the street corner, but ruining the divine balance you have going on would only work against you, so I thought it would be best to leave you in the default state.”
“That still doesn’t explain anything.”
For one, who was this girl smiling in front of her? She called herself Reincarnation Goddess Salinagaritina, but that wasn’t enough. Who was she really?
She looked a lot like a small girl of about 13.
…Of course, Mikoto was 14 herself, but a year’s difference meant a lot to middle schoolers. So Mikoto only saw her as a small child.
The girl’s long silver hair was done up in a flat braid that resembled a fried shrimp. She had light skin, but her short stature was at odds with her unnaturally large boobs. In fact, large didn’t do them justice. Enormous worked better. She wore a sheer white dancer’s outfit. But the thin chains, clasps, and whatnot were all silver. However, the hagoromo-style ribbons were bright reds, blues, and greens.
Her appearance had a lot of buts and howevers to it.
Her overall coloration was very holy, but the revealing outfit made it look more profane. Was that imbalance a calculated thing? If so, what was the point of that extremely unbalanced arrangement?
…And was the combination of short and busty another part of that?
“Whatever the case, that outfit is more of a Shokuhou thing. Because it’s lewd.”
“Do you have to bring our fight over into the afterlife, Misaka-saaan?” said Shokuhou, burning with a dark flame next to Mikoto.
Yes. That was a good point.
Hadn’t they both died?
“So what is this place?”
“Does this mean we died in that propane tank explosion during lunch?”
Assuming Shokuhou’s Mental Out hadn’t broken the established rules and reached Mikoto’s brain, that memory should be accurate. In fact, it would have been more surprising to have escaped such a major accident unharmed.
But Mikoto and Shokuhou didn’t have any obvious injuries here and they didn’t recognize this sanctuary place that was larger than a domed stadium.
Yes.
They were standing inside in a massive ancient structure made of heavy stone.
But its coloration made no sense. The faint yellow sparkles floating atop the white surface gave it a color similar to sparkling wine. The stone didn’t seem to be calcite, strawberry quartz, or imperial topaz. It was a mysterious smooth mineral. Did it even exist in the real world? To be blunt, the structure was shaped like a grand temple, but it was colored like a luxury smartphone.
(More unbalanced mismatches.)
Neither Mikoto nor Shokuhou recognized the construction style either (and they knew more than the average person on that subject thanks to their school). At the very least, it wasn’t ancient Greek or Roman. The large open space was surrounded by boxy spiral staircases and pure water fell down tiered paths from above. That may have been a type of cascade, but they weren’t sure what kind of mythological meaning the decoration had.
If whoever was behind this had gone to all the trouble of creating this place, what were they going to do with Mikoto and Shokuhou?
And at the same time, Reincarnation Goddess Salinagaritina’s eyes widened in realization.
It was the look of an actor who saw her costar just standing there out of costume after the curtain rose.
“Wait, wait. Oh, that’s not good. There’s still a tiny thread leftover. Argh, how many times do I have to tell them to sever every last connection and sliver of regret regarding their past life before bringing them here?”
It was unclear who she was complaining about there, but that wasn’t what Mikoto was interested in.
She had picked up on something else.
“Hm? So was there some kind of trouble? Like that we didn’t actually die in that accident? If we’re still just barely having an out-of-body experience here, then send us back!”
“Sorry, but that isn’t an option.”
The goddess rejected the idea of survival as casually as a clerk explaining that the limited-time coffee jelly couldn’t be included in the bargain hamburger meal.
“And before you get any ideas, you couldn’t go back even if you began a nightmare-difficulty impossible boss battle and somehow managed to defeat me. Lately, there’s been a rash of these dangerous people who try to break things during the initial tutorial. Anyway, the system is a one-way road. I send you from front to back. If you want to go from back to front, you need to go ask a different goddess.”
“Please don’t mention one-way roads when talking about an expert in death…”
“?”
The goddess clearly didn’t understand, but Mikoto didn’t feel like explaining.
Shokuhou put a hand on her hip and spoke.
“If you we do what you say, are we going to have to cross some strange river? I’d really rather not. What happens if we just stay in this really pleasant tutorial space forever?”
“Any soul other mine will probably be worn away into nothingness if it stays here too long. And I mean it truly disappears. If that happens, you can’t enjoy your overpowered reincarnation. Because your soul will be gone forever.”
“…” “…”
It sounded like disobeying her wouldn’t end well.
Reincarnation Goddess Salinagaritina seemed like a next-gen goddess who had updated her countermeasures for outrageous people who tried to pull a fast one on her during the tutorial. But that aside, Mikoto was ready to move on and learn what this tutorial and goddess were about.
“So you’re free to take detours if you like, but if you want to take a different route back to your Earth where you can regain consciousness and leave the hospital, don’t try to go back the way you came. I recommend visiting some other random world first☆ Think of it like making a reallllly big U-turn!”
“So what kind of other world are we talking about?”
“I generally think of myself as a sommelier. If I hand the customer a menu, you’ll end up choosing something like having the strongest appraisal skill, being reborn as an inanimate object, being kicked out of a holy party, regaining your lost youth, cultivating and farming some land deep in the forest, resisting until the age of 30 to become a wizard, or discovering Earth home cooking is highly valued, etc. And with the format and direction of the world so well-defined, you’ll actually find it’s really restrictive. So I think it’s best to ask the customer what they think and what they want so I can come up with something for them myself!”
“Ehh? So like you ask a bunch of yes-or-no questions and then give us a recommended world? Can’t we get a hint ability of where to start? Being told you can do anything makes it really hard to do anything at all.”
“This is all for your own good, so stop complaining about the tutorial! Besides, some people are better suited for some worlds than others. Like if I threw you extreme combat kaiju into a world where a plate of nikujaga is worth its weight in gold, nothing would happen, would it? Nothing at all.”
“I-I can cook if I have to! An apron over a school uniform is the perfect middle school girl look!!” “I-I can cook if I have to! An apron over a school uniform is the perfect middle school girl look!!”
Whether it was for appearances or they were serious, they both shouted back at the same time. While blushing.
But were they customers here?
If so, what were they paying with?
Mikoto and Shokuhou did still have questions, but their arms intersected as they pointed at each other’s face.
And they shouted in unison.
They knew exactly what they wanted most.
“Any world is fine as long as she’s not in it!!!” “Any world is fine as long as she’s not in it!!!”
“You got it☆”
Their request was accepted.
It was…accepted?
“But I, Reincarnation Goddess Salinagaritina, am only in charge of the beginning of life, not the end of it. So all I can do is show you to a world where that is most likely to occur.”
“Good enough.” “Good enough.”
“Hee hee. You two are actually really good friends, aren’t you?”
Shokuhou brainwashed the goddess with her TV remote and Mikoto blasted her away with a Railgun.
Yes, they had forgotten.
This was how their reincarnation journey had begun.
