Arc1: A blue flames of Librorum.
Code1: Into strange world
"And I was hoping to drink that coffee *Sigh*"
As he ran through the back alleys late at night, he glanced over his shoulder.
There were sixteen of them.
Normally it was easy for him to beat them all, but for unknown reason he wanted to run now.
Yes, it was July 19th, and the "fault" lay in that date.
Since summer break would start the next day, Kamijou Touma was in such high spirits that he grabbed a manga from the bookstore, entered a family restaurant to treat himself and found a middle school-aged girl surrounded by clearly drunk delinquents, and decided that some rescuing was in order.
Except that it was no longer Kamijou Touma, but Ogami Rei who did all of these. He would choose to drink his coffee but suddenly he saw a bunch of delinquents and he helped her by beat few of them.
But, he had not expected more of their comrades to come swarming out of the bathroom.
He had always thought that going to the bathroom in groups was something only girls did.
After running for more than 2 kilometers, Rei ran out from the back alley and into the moonlit street.
Even if Academy City were as large as a third of Tokyo, he could see nothing but couples no matter where he looked. The three blades of the wind turbines located here and there throughout the area glittered in the pale moonlight and the lights of the city nightscape made them look like the tears of rich bachelors.
Exactly like how he had heard from a certain teacher.
Following his current strategy, he would let them catch occasional glimpses of him as bait so that they would continue to run and wear themselves out. It was akin to letting boxers hit you to weaken them.
If he could lose them and have them give up without getting into a fistfight, he would win.
A shadow of a certain silver haired boy smirked.
As he alternated and weaved in and out through roads and back alleys while seemingly running, he saw one and then another of the delinquents drop out of the chase, leaning forward with their hands on their knees.
Perfect. Another two more kilometers from running, he would exit the urban area and come to a large river with a large metal bridge that spanned the river.
"Hey! You fucking brat! Stop, you master runner!"
'Why I should stop now….' Rei sweat dropped at the delinquents.
Finally, he arrived at the bridge.
It was about 150 meters across and no cars could be seen on it. Not lit up, the plain metal bridge was wrapped in darkness much like a midnight sea.
Rei glanced behind him as he stopped, at some point; he had escaped all of his pursuers.
He smiled triumphal.
"Really now, what are you doing? Do you think protecting those delinquents makes you a good person? Are you some overzealous teacher?"
Even in that dark bridge, Rei had noticed the girl standing about 5 meters ahead in the direction he had been running, a completely normal middle school girl wearing a gray pleated skirt, a short-sleeved blouse, and a summer sweater. The girl before him was the same one from the family restaurant.
"I don't understand. Is there a difference?" He tilted his head.
"Of course. They are bad people and people like you... should be punished together with them as well."
The zapping sound of bluish-white sparks echoed. Rather than a stun gun, as her shoulder-length brown hair swayed, sparks flew from it like an electrode.
The moment a convenience store bag in the wind passed by her head, it was blown away by bluish-white sparks reminiscent of an interception device.
There she threw a lightning beam from her palm towards Rei as he dodged it.
"There. I cannot allow anyone to be more powerful than me. That is enough of a reason.
"But you're also treating me like an idiot. I'm a Level 5. Do you really think I would go all out against a powerless Level 0? I do know how to handle the weak."
In that city, the usual standard of a back alley delinquent being the strongest in a fight did not hold up. Those delinquents who could not keep up with the psychic powers development Curriculum were the Level 0s, the powerless.
The truly strong in that city, the top-tier students, were ESPers.
Rei closed his eyes as he looked at her.
"I realized that you may be one of the strongest persons in here. But I want to tell you that if you want to live longer, you should not take others lightly."
"Shut up. If you couldn't bend a single spoon after having various crazy things done to you like have drugs injected directly into your blood vessels or have electrodes stabbed in through your ears and into the brain, what could it be but lack of talent?"
"Look what I want to say is just 'you should stop speaking to people so condescendingly'" Rei said with serious eyes.
That was indeed the kind of place Academy City was.
The other side of Academy City could be seen in how means of developing the brain had been calmly added into the Curriculum under the name of "documentation methods" or "memorization methods".
However, not all of the 2.3 million students living in Academy City had ceased to be human and became something like a manga or anime protagonist.
Just under 60% of the whole population were utterly useless Level 0s who could only bend a spoon after focusing their brain to the point of blood vessel bursts.
"If I need to bend a spoon, I can just use pliers, and if I need fire, I can just buy a cheap lighter. Also, what do I need telepathy for when I have a cell phone? Are special powers really that great?
"And everyone was blinded by the hungry of power. They're all rejoicing over the by-product we call psychic powers, but isn't our real objective something beyond that?"
In response, the girl who was one of Academy City's seven Level 5s twisted the edges of her lips.
"Hahh? …Oh, that. What was it again? Something like, 'Humans cannot calculate god, so we need to acquire a body that exceeds humanity before we can arrive at god's answer', right?" The girl gave a haughty laugh. "Hah. Don't make me laugh. What is all this about the 'brain of god'? Did you know that my DNA map was analyzed and military Sisters were created based on it? It seems to me these lucrative side effects are more important than that objective."
After saying that, the girl suddenly stopped.
In the silence, it felt as if the quality of the air was changing.
"…For God's sake, those are the words of the strong.
"The strong. The strong. The strong. Those are the fearless and cruel words of a manga protagonist who was born with his abilities and does not understand the pain of arriving there on his own."
The river below the bridge began to make an unsettling amount of noise.
A dark flame could be felt on the grit of her words that hinted at just how much of her humanity she had abandoned to arrive at the position of one of Academy City's seven Level 5s.
"Wait a minute! I wasn't said that I will fight you but rather I just want to warn you about the consequence of your power." Rei said. "I am level 0, so we should…"
Academy City's powers development heavily used things such as pharmaceutics, neuroscience, and cerebral physiology. It was a purely scientific endeavor. After undergoing the Curriculum to a certain extent, one could bend a spoon even without talent.
And yet a persons that live in him currently could do nothing.
According to Academy City's instruments, he was truly powerless.
Rei wondered if his special power classified in Academy city what level he could get? Maybe a Level 5 as well? That would be interesting... but here he exists as Kamijou Touma so perhaps just like him, the machine would not be able to detect anything, classifying him as powerless.
"Zero, you say," repeated the girl as if she was turning it over in her mouth. She stuck a hand in her skirt pocket and pulled out an arcade coin. "After so long, I just realised. Have you ever heard of the term Railgun?"
"Hmm?"
Rei silently took his glove from his left hand.
"The idea behind it is the same as a linear motor train. It is a ship-borne weapon that uses powerful electromagnets to fire a metal projectile."
The girl flicked the coin up into the air with her thumb. The coin rotated a few times before landing back onto her thumb.
"It refers to something like this."
Just as she spoke, an orange spear of light suddenly and silently shot past Rei's head. It was more like a laser than a spear. He could only tell it had originated from the girl's thumb because the afterimage of light stretched back to it.
Almost like thunder, the noise rumbled in with a slight delay and a shockwave tore through the air around his ears. Unlike Touma who partially lost his sense of balance, causing him to stagger, Rei remained stable and glanced over his shoulder.
"So that's a railgun, very impressive I must say." Rei smirked.
The instant the orange light struck the road surface on the bridge, the asphalt was blown away like an airplane making an emergency landing on the ocean. Even after travelling a 30 meter path of utter destruction and stopping, the orange afterglow was still burning the air like an afterimage.
"You know, even a coin like this can be quite powerful when it's fired at three times the speed of sound. Of course, the coin melts after 50 meters because of air friction."
That bridge made of steel and concrete swayed like an unreliable suspension bridge. Failing metal bolts could be heard occasionally.
"So... You used that to punish them?"
"Don't be stupid. I match my methods to my opponent. I don't want to accidentally become a murderer." As she spoke, sparks flew from the girl's brown hair like an electrode. "This was enough for those Level 0s."
Bluish-white sparks now flew from the girl's bangs like a horn and a spear-like line of lightning flew towards Rei.
He calmly engulfed his left hand with blue flame, allowing the lightning spear to strike it. It rampaging around Rei Ogami's body but suddenly the lightning vanished like nothing.
"So, why are you completely unhurt?"
Her words seemed lighthearted enough, but the girl was glaring at Rei.
This is because his power.
His power could burn anything in this world and his azure flame had beaten a lightning that not lose to that lightning spear. Even his flame was called as the strongest special power and the unique one.
He thought about why he didn't get the Imagine Breaker, even if the certain holder now lives in his body and he just replaced him.
He just found it was interesting to live in the world that many power users live. And he kind liked that Kamijou Touma's ideal.
"Honestly, what's with you? That power of yours isn't listed in Academy City's Bank. If I'm a one in 328,571 genius, then you're a one in 2,300,000 disaster," the girl muttered in annoyance but Rei chose to not give even a single word in response. "If I pick a fight with an exception like that, I might be able to raise my level, don't you think?"
"But you never win."
He received a response in the form of more lightning that shot from her forehead, well over mach one at that.
At the moment his azure flame came contact with the lightning the lightning simply vanished like nothing with his azure flame.
It was like a medium that transferred the lightning.
Rei Ogami had already accepted his fate that he could not back for now due to the presence of that pesky Imagine Breaker.
"I guess you could say that was either some misfortune or you're just unlucky."
That was how Kamijou Touma brought that day, July 19th, to an end. And somehow, Rei Ogami.
"You just really aren't lucky at all." He smiled.
Author's note: Well, this is just an idea that I left it to mature for a few days after it popped out of my mind during a class.
Hope you guys enjoy the story :)