This is the Pilot for a Toaru Story I've been working on for a while now.
It's OC heavy, but please give the Pilot a try anyway.
I should mention - despite the title, I am not adding an OC level 5.
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Context: The Railgun Anime begins on the 16th of July.
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April, Saturday the 22.
Have you heard? About the eighth level five?
It was dark, shadows stretched across the streets that snaked between the large concrete blocks. No lights shone in this part of town at night.
Down below, where rain and wind funnelled into streams and storms, a boy ran, head ducked low and shoulders hunched, school bag slung across his shoulder and shopping in his hand. It was not an uncommon sight in this part of town, as the place known as the Beehive rather neatly separated the Dorms of a Certain High School from the closest bargain mall.
For the inhabitants of said dorm, it made shopping a bit of a nightmare, and most often than not, they cursed the man who placed their dorm in such an inconvenient spot for those level ones and zeros that could not afford the prices at the mall two blocks away. Perhaps the Architect thought this would become a rich-person school, perhaps once a bus was planned that would run through the Beehive, they didn't know. All they cared about was that it was very inconvenient.
I wonder what they would have thought had they known the truth.
Said boy, the one running full speed through the rain, was largely insignificant in the way of things. He was known for his great charm, and his heroic ways in certain circles, but for this little story another fact is of much greater importance.
See, despite said boys many deficiencies; his greatest was and would always be his complete and utter lack of luck.
Yes, you heard right. Kamijou Touma was the kind of boy that never got any number right in the lottery, that would always get the only apple with a worm, who's shoes would come untied at random inconvenient moments and who's every day contained at least two completely accidental life-threatening situations.
That is why, had Kamijou bothered to recall his day, he would have remembered that today had only contained one such incident, and as such running pell-mell through the dark was a fine way of getting himself into one of those situations he would rather have avoided all together.
So of course, when our Kamijou raced around the corner he crashed head first into what he first thought was a wall, but a glance upwards revealed to actually be a man. Not just any man, either. A boy with Kamijou's luck made it a point of updating his 'don't meet these people ever' list every second day, which on a side note he was proud to say he had met only 60% of, and as such he was perfectly aware who the hulk of a man, identifiable through the glowing skull tattoo on his cheek was.
'The Drum', an enforcer in one of the larger Skill-Out gangs and notorious for slaughtering an entire Anti-Skill team on accident once, was despite his size not a serial killer but a petty thief. Just one with quite a body count racked up. As the man peered down at the worm that had bumped into him, Kamijou Touma was very certain that unless he did something drastic, he would join that count which, now that he peered around, seemed to have just gone up a few regardless.
It was far from the first time he had seen an injured or unconscious person, it was not even the first time he had seen a corpse. He was glad he had never been the willing creator of such a corpse, although his luck often resulted in others passing with no influence on his part.
In case it needed to be said, he hated, hated his blasted luck.
Now, there were ways to handle yourself when facing such an opponent. Sadly most of them were something along the lines of 'run', or 'shoot', the latter of which was impossible and considering the look it the Drum's eye, the former did not seem promising.
So Kamijou Touma did something that please no one repeat in such a situation. He bowed his head, and said.
"I apologize for running into you, good sir, would you please let me through?" The hand said 'good sir' clamped down around Kamijou Touma's head gave said boy a rather good impression of how bad an idea that was, especially when the giant proceeded to lift him up by it, and prepared his other fist to break open his ribcage with a punch. However luckily or unluckily at said very moment a shockwave shook the walls surrounding them, drowning out the rain and leaving the two of them momentarily deaf.
For the good of Kamijou's ribs, the Drum had been living in the Beehive for a few days now and instead of keeping his attention on the boy he was holding up by his head, instead turned his eyes upwards.
All across the Beehive, activity seized when the shockwave rattled the walls. As one, they turned their heads to the only place such a thing could come from in a building such as this, hoping beyond hope that it would remain at just one.
The grinding of a rusty steel door being forced open had everyone tense up, and then a nervous laugh echoed down the maze of concrete corridors.
"Sorry about that, our latest fuse-block model kind of blew up. Um, but don't worry, we've got it under control, nothing's gonna hap-"
"Eiden! Close the door!" A shout came from the inside of the apartment, and shortly after that another wave of sound crashed into the surrounding buildings. This time, however, it was unmuffled, and soon screams of pain echoed down the corridors. Kamijou Touma had all of a millisecond to be relieved that he had been dropped, before everything went black.
The man, more of a boy really, standing in the doorway blinked at where the opposite wall used to be.
"Uh, Sorry about that…" A woman marched up behind the man, whacking him over the head when she reached him.
"What the hell Eiden? Security! Security! How could you forget to follow the security protocols we set up to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening!" The teen scratched his head.
"Sorry Dr. Amami." He said, wincing at the woman's frown.
"Um, should we call Anti-Skill? Or and ambulance?" The woman sighed.
"Alright, the apartment's trashed anyway. That's going to take months the replace." Eiden winced again, just knowing he'd be spending more than one holiday doing just that. "At least we know we have a success." She turning back around to where the masses of monitoring equipment had stood previously, and now only scrap metal was left. In the middle of the mess, a brunette girl in a Tokiwodai uniform slept, seemingly undisturbed.
"Help me get the little miss into a carrier bag first, though, we don't want the cavalry catching onto us this fast." Eiden nodded at the doctors words. "Omai tells me Nagisa's already on her way to pick us up." The doctor picked the girl up in a princess hold, and gently lowered her into the sports bag Eiden was holding open. Then she fished a flashlight out of one of her lab coat pockets, turned it on and placed it next to the girl.
"Let's go."
Eiden zipped the bag up, and heaved it onto his shoulder. He followed his superior – although only unofficially – out of the cement apartment block and down the road, wincing at the thugs laid out there, blood pooling out of their ears.
"They'll be fine, Eiden, maybe a little disorientated but nothing worse." Eiden hid a smile at Dr. Amami's words, and let himself relax. They'd figure this out somehow, he was sure. A whistle pulled his attention away from his thoughts, and to where a teen wearing a Judgement armband and uniform waved at them. His face split into a smile.
"Nagisa-chan!" he said, only just remembering not to run with his burden. Said girl beamed right back.
"Yotsuba-kun!" For a moment they just stared at each other, before Dr. Amami clearing her throat distracted the both of them.
"Nagisa, if you would?" Nagisa nodded and closed her eyes to concentrate, ticking off the seconds as she went. 150, 149, 148…
Meanwhile, Eiden and his companion found themselves more and more distracted by completely inane things like the cracks in the wall, or a fungus that somehow thrived across a window on the third floor. As Nagisa ticked down to 60, the two began wondering what the holdup was. Nagisa should have been here already, shouldn't she? Hadn't she been? Eiden winced as that thought made his head hurt. Then Nagisa grabbed both of their arms and suddenly they were aware of her again.
Eiden shuddered. "Every time you do that is a little scary. Are you sure you are a level one?" Dr. Amami and Nagisa shared a sardonic look.
"Very sure, Eiden. Trust me, very sure." Eiden shrugged even as Nagisa tugged the other two along.
"This will only last for the next twenty minutes, come on, we need to hurry up!"
Nainama Nagisa was a student at Ninoude High, just like he used to be, and a level one Mindbender. He'd met her on a sunny spring afternoon during assembly, and had fallen hard for her fragile looks, crude humour and fiery personality. He'd worked hard to gain her attention, and was almost devastated when he was transferred to Nagatenjouki instead. Then, of course, after two absolutely miserable months, Amami Kuroi had approached him about joining her unofficial research group. He'd never been gladder to have agreed to something.
"Doc, should we get Little Lady to a hospital first?" Nagisa asked, interrupting Eiden's little internal monologue. Amami winced.
"I'd love to, but we can't really risk it at the moment. With the amount of injured in the Beehive, Anti-Skill will be swarming at the hospital. She isn't exactly inconspicuous, you know?"
By now they had left the grey blocks that made up the beehive, and instead entered a more civilized neighbourhood. Eiden's shoulder was throbbing. 'Little Lady' as they had named the unconscious girl was not exactly a child anymore.
"I'll do my best to check for injuries once we're home, but the hospital will have to wait until tomorrow." Doc turned to Eiden and lifted the bag off his and onto her arm with a little difficulty.
"Go on, you two, I'll be fine the rest of the way and you have homework to do."
The two nodded and walked away together, leaving the older women alone on the street.
Amami Kuroi sighed and drew a hand through her hair. She still wasn't certain getting Eiden involved in this had been a good idea. True, he was a prodigious mechanic and programmer, and going to Nagatenjouki he wasn't going to evade the nastier side of Academy City forever, but compared to her and Nagisa he was so naïve sometimes that she couldn't help but feel guilty.
Still, he'd come willingly, if slightly under informed, and had so far shown no signs of regretting it.
Amami shook her head. She needed a break apparently.
…
In a certain office, somewhere in the seventh district, the beeping of a general notice broke the lounging and working Anti-Skill out of their conversations.
"Ding Ding."
"Attention please, as of 0730 today your jurisdiction over Case 100756 has been removed. I repeat, as of 0730 today, Anti-Skill's jurisdiction over case 100756 has been removed. Thank you for your attention."
"Ding Ding."
All around her conversation started up again, this time about the message. Yomikawa herself frowned. Pulled off the Null Hunter cases? That was hardly the sort of thing they would let Judgement handle on their own. There had been at least one death of a victim already.
Still, orders were orders, so she turned back to her computer and reluctantly archived her notes on the case. In doing so, a small red flag in the bottom right hand corner of the screen caught her attention. Clicking on it, she read the report with ever widening eyes. Finally she grabbed the microphone situated next to her desk and turned it on.
"Attention, Yomikawa speaking. We have a grand scale emergency in District 7, Area L. All available forces convene at points 1034, 1043 and 1033. I repeat, ALL forces convene! Something knocked out everyone in the Beehive."
Behind her, the rest of her team was already moving. Pulling her vest out from under her table and shrugging it on over the rest of the uniform, Yomikawa barked to the small group waiting for her.
"Let's go."
…
The Shinasame Dorms weren't far from the Beehive, thankfully, and soon Amami found herself back on familiar ground. Unlike most Level 0 ESPers, Amami Kuroi received a stipend from various research facilities interested in either her, or her sister's abilities. As such, she could afford to keep a few luxury items, such as the reinforced door and keypad lock. This door swung open on well oiled hinges as a young girl of maybe twelve stuck her head through the door.
"Nee-san!" The door banged against the adjacent wall as she flung it open and pulled her older sister into a hug.
Amami laughed and ruffled the girl's black hair.
"Hey there Omai, how's my favourite little sister been doing?" Said sister narrowed her eyes. "I joined Tokiwodai." The words were guarded, and Amami had to hide a sad smile at the frown on the face of the kid she'd been caring for since she was four.
"I know you did, the uniforms in the closet are kinda hard to hide."
Omai was still looking at her guardedly, so Kuroi dropped down on one knee and hugged her.
"Look, you're almost grown up now. You need to make your own decisions sometime. Tokiwodai is a huge opportunity, and any other time I would have been immensely proud of you. You know why I'm nervous about you going, especially since you intend to get involved more than you already are, but you've made your decision to risk it. I'll be there for you every step of the way, alright?"
"Besides", she added, "every person needs to have a few wild years, and I dare say I have you beat there." Omai made a face.
"Ugh, don't tell me that. I don't want to think about it." Her eyes fell on the sports bag still hanging from her sister's shoulders.
"Come on, let's get you unpacked." Kuroi followed Omai into the apartment, and into the room the university had actually designated as personal lab space. It didn't look much like one however, as Nagisa and Omai had painted the walls calming shades of green and brown. There was a fluffy carpet on the floor, a bookshelf, and a closet full of clothes. The only things hinting at the room's former use were the sinks built into the wall, and the mass of machinery in the shelf next to the bed.
The bed itself had also been modified into a makeshift incubator of sorts, made of bullet proof glass. Kuroi carefully bundled the little lady into it, after changing her into soft flannel pyjamas.
"Here, so she has something to hold at night." Omai said, pressing her beloved teddy plush into the little lady's hands. Kuroi fastened the Vita-meter around the girl's arm, checking to make certain all the values were in the green. Then she covered her with a blanket, attached an IV line to the inbuilt port, and pulled down the glass lid before locking the entire contraption.
"I wish she would wake up!" Her little sister sighed. "Me too, Omai."
…
"Uiharu!" A voice called across the café to the girl that had just entered. "Over here!" Said girl brightened visibly at the sight of her best friend, and wasted no time scampering up to her.
"That's my girl, late as usual." Saten teased, waggling her eyebrows as she did. Uiharu blushed, and growled at her friend, although it truly looked more like a pout.
"Sorry, I had Judgement work to finish." Saten laughed.
"I know, I know. Hey, have you heard the new rumour lately? Apparently someone knocked out an entire district area! There's been tons of speculation going on, although most say it was either something to do with sound, or a bomb."
Uiharu perked up again, and nodded. "Yes, Anti-Skill had to clear out the entire place and send everyone to the hospital."
Ruiko nodded, and slowly tapped her fingers against the wooden table.
"Say, Uiharu, what do you think it was?" Uiharu frowned, deep in thought.
"Well according to the wounds I'd say-"She stopped, colouring red as she realized what she was about to do.
"No, I can't tell you that!" Ruiko sighed.
"Aww. I personally think the sound is more likely. Some strong ESPer, you know? Maybe a level five? Like, the 'Airwave' or something."
Uiharu smiled at her friend's antics.
"That sounds like a toothpaste company, or some kind of chewing gum."
"Then what about 'Airbomb', or 'Hertz killer'"
Uiharu sighed.
"No one actually died, you know." Saten ignored her, caught in the middle of a revelation.
"Ohh, I've got it. Ready?" Despite herself, Uiharu leaned in towards her friend.
"The Sonic Rush." Saten turned to her friend. Only to blink when she saw her slumped on the table.
"Uiharu? What's up? Uiharu!"
Slowly chuckling reached her ears.
"Sonic Rush… ha-ha Sonic ha Rush hahaha"
Saten Ruiko crossed her arms.
"Come on, it wasn't that bad, was it?"
Soft chuckling was her only answer.
…
…
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Credit to In Memoriam for inspiration, as well as A Certain Defective Sister (I think? The one with the clone that befriends Saten?)
Anyway, what do you think? Any Suggestions for betterment?
Do the OC POVs read well?
Any typos I missed?
I'm looking forward to the feedback.