everything that kills me
makes me feel alive


When Mikoto looks back, she remembers her time in Helsinki like a gradient, an upward-trending arch of colors and feelings. It starts in the greys, worry and fear and Thor's video-clip, gray-white airplane in gray-rain sky, shading into reds of anger and rage and displacing the weaker emotions when she is on the ground and able to investigate and do things. It drives her as she checks in on her Sisters, a red ember glowing in the back of her mind even as she laughs and smiles with them once she discovers they are safe. (But having noticed their tails, and having prudently withdrawn into the relative safety of the Academy City facilities. Mikoto rages for the curtailment of their freedom as she would have - more than she would have - for her own, because freedom for her Sisters was a precious gift that they were only just now learning.)

And then the reds cool into the blues of purpose and thought, as Mikoto puts her formidable mind to work. She begins with her Sisters and their scientist-caretakers, talking and observing, taking what she learns from them and using it as catalysts for further investigation. She casts through the computer networks, flitting through them with the careless native ease of a fish in this electronic sea, sifting through the data for the bright little kernels of information that she needs.

Brighter blues, then, for the memories as she takes to the streets, the night lit up by her lightning as she searches and destroys. The purpose and anger subsumed into the white-hot glory of triumph, as she finds her enemies' stronghold, and assaults it, and takes everything they throw at her, and realizes that whatever they throw at her is not enough.

By the end, she's standing in the cratered remains of a building. Iron girders and slabs of concrete litter the landscape, as well as the remnants of several battle-mechs. So-called electrical shielding had only held so far. There are no humans there - they'd long-since fled. The last ones, the ones she really blames for her Sisters' danger, are in the hospital now, magnet-floated in on stretchers made of salvaged metal.

She's alone here - well, alone except for a certain cold-lightning boy who she can feel tickling at the edge of her electromaster senses.

She's high on adrenaline, high on battle-rush. She's grinning and grinning. Her Sisters are safe. The threat is gone. The message is sent.

And Thor had stood back and let it happen. She could feel him, at the periphery of her range, all throughout the final battle. He had stood back and watched - he had trusted her to handle what was coming.

He had let her have all the fun.

But he had waited, in case she needed him.

Mikoto likes him more in that moment than she ever had before.

So she looks in his direction. She smiles. The area around her is a lightning-blasted wasteland. Even if she went all out it couldn't get any more destroyed than it already was. Her minor injuries are nothing, and she can move as easy as ever. Energy is rampaging through her veins, filling her up, sparking into empty air as overflow.

So, of course, the first thing she says to him in person, after all their phone-chatting, is: "Hey Thor. Wanna fight?"


Thor beats her, of course. Thor is faster and stronger. His lightning-arcs can cut her, if with less effect than with other non-electrically-aligned people, while her electrical attacks have no effect on him. The very world warps around him, changing in ways that facilitate his victory.

It's euphoric.

He's a war-god on earth, a foe as relentless as tides and as terrible as thunder. She dances with death when she fights with him. A little less speed, a little less power in her shielding, and she could die. She could really die. Thor's hitting hard enough to kill. She evades crippling/fatal strikes by hair's-breadth gaps. Her mind is kicked into redline overdrive, seeing clearer, reacting faster, all just to stay in the game.

The adrenaline is incredible.

She dances with death. And in this dancing with death she exults in life, in her own bright, young strength, her own pure purpose, in the things she sees and hears and tastes. There is nothing but the battle, calling down thunderbolts and calling up black iron, expressing her defiance of death in movement and lightning.

She doesn't have to hold herself back with this foe. She can't hold back with this foe. She can throw everything she has at him and he won't die. But he doesn't really want her to die, either. He's hitting hard enough to kill, but he's happy when she dodges, when she hits back. All he wants, all she wants, is a good fight. He's enjoying himself. And so is she.

He's safe, and he's dangerous. He's dead-serious, and he's enjoying this. He's the best of both worlds, and Misaka is having so much fun.


"Th-that was fun..."

"Yeah...yeah, it was."

"...I think I'm gonna pass out. Can you drop me off at my Sisters' place?"


Extra: A Certain Conversation

"So that's why the Railgun has no known organizational ties."

"Judgement..."

"Judgement was a blind, it was obvious even before this. Maybe they were in on it, maybe they weren't. But she's clearly a solo operator - probably for the General Superintendent himself. I wonder if she's actually the Third, or if they bumped her status down to keep attention off her?"

"I've seen the files on the Accelerator and Dark Matter, they are more combat-capable..."

"I wonder. Look at what she's done - better yet, look at what she hasn't done."

"What?"

"First, she got to Helsinki in the first place. And she was in Russia, and in Liberty City in the States. England, too, recently, I hear. The Board not only trusts her outside Academy City, they actually send her out."

"That's a good point."

"Secondly, what's the one thing she hasn't done in Helsinki?"

"...had some salmiakki?"

"No. She hasn't called Academy City - or anyone - for further orders, or to report in. She has command authority. She had the power to call the shots on this mission, and she did so. She also has the power to back up all those decisions and complete the mission on her own."

"You're right..."

"The Railgun is the General Superintendent's personal operative, and that's why she takes such pains to appear like a normal middle-schooler who only wants to play in arcades and buy Gekota merchandise. Who is honestly that obssessed about cartoon frogs at that age? She's playing a part, and they're lapping it up! And obviously it's because she's so useful that they've been trying to clone her! Why not clone the First or Second? Because they're BATSHIT INSANE. But the Railgun is, at fourteen years old, a skilled operative trusted on solo international-scope missions AND able to maintain a cover identity as a normal middle-schooler despite being known as a Level 5!"

"It all makes sense now!"

"I know!"

They give each other high-fives.


AN: Thanks for the reviews, guys! I really love listening to your ideas and suggestions of where I can take this next, so please feel free to chime in when you can. :D

My view of Misaka is someone who loves to test her limits and is always striving to be stronger, but buries it deep underneath a veneer of socially-acceptable behavior. Her desire to be seen as 'normal' clashes with the fact of her power as a Level 5. That's why she roams around the city and takes joy in beating up on gangs who try to assault her, because now she has a justified reason to thrash them.

I think she's always subconsciously holding back. During the Level Upper arc Kiyama comments on how Misaka wasn't showing her full power until the AIM Burst made it necessary. She goes all sparky and tempermental but she doesn't do any huge damage and we know she can. And in a modern world her electrical powers can do lots of damage.

That's why she was so stoked to meet Touma, and why she kept chasing him for a fight, at the beginning - because she could go all-out against him. Even when she thought fighting him could possibly remove all her powers she had to try.

Now, having thought that, I wondered - how would she react to another boy who she could go all-out against, without worrying he was killing her Sisters or something?