The next chapter! I know I said thrice a week, but I had the 'I want to write'-feeling still remaining after I finished the third chapter, so I just written the next!
Why it got uploaded now and not with the third chapter: I didn't finish it completly at this point of time.
But now the boring comments of an author end and the story continues, have fun.
'To aru majutsu no Index doesn't belong to me, only my OCs'
Chapter 4: the darkness in the light
Around the time the four girls went into a supermarket, which he obviously had no idea about, Kamijou Touma finally got out of school.
Because his homework got soaked with detergent, which, what he knew later, was highly flammable, and an spark of electricity coming from a lamp and setting said soaked homework on fire, he hadn't had the homework.
Of course he knew there were risks about buying and using cheap detergent, but the risk of burned up homework wasn't a risk one would think of when buying the detergent, was it?
So he needed to attend the detention class again. With him was another member of the Delta Force, namely Aogami. He once again didn't do his homework simply because he wanted to be scolded by tomoe-sensei, the, out of his point of view, personification of loli.
After he was finally off school grounds he walked back to his dorm, but not directly. He still needed to buy groceries to replace the sour ones in his fridge.
Luckily, which he knew would be biting him in his ass later, a grocery store in the nearby area had special offers he wanted to buy to spare some money.
In contrast to a certain middle schooler, he didn't possess a big amount of money and the salary he got as a student was not much. Add to that an freeloader with an black hole as stomach needed to be feed and you have an idea how vital these special offers are.
So he went to the grocery store. On the way, nothing 'abnormal' happened.
He helped an older lady, a rare occurrence in academy city, over the street and chased, catched and brought an balloon back to a little child who lost the balloon.
Finally, after some more situations where he just needed to help, he was in front of the grocery store's entrance.
He stood still, breathed in deeply and made himself ready for what he was about to step in.
Then he went through the door which opened automatically.
The interior of the store was a warzone.
Students and teachers alike jostled and pushed each other.
Esper used their abilities to get the groceries they needed from a distance or hinder other persons from getting what they want to.
Gales rushed through the store in order to snatch money out of hands to eliminate opponents.
Beams of energy flew through the air aiming to hold other customer's from reaching the cash desk.
The shop assistant was completely overwhelmed and not in control of the situation. Her head jerked from one side to the other, bewildered by the situation in the store.
Touma, who survived the battlefield of world war III and many other life and death situations, knew exactly, after analyzing the happenings in the store, which route through the fighting crowd he needed to take to come out alive.
Then he took off.
'First to the eggs.', Touma thought.
Whilst running, He jumped over an incoming barrage of cucumbers, rolled off to use the momentum and then negated an beam of green energy flying towards him.
He came to the eggs, grabbed an carton with his left hand, whirled around, negated an incoming fire ball and started to run again.
After he got the other things he needed while jumping over corpses and other things, dodging food and storage racks, negating incoming abilities and sidestepping thrown punches, He arrived at the cash desk, slammed the obtained goods on the desk without breaking them and shouted:"I WANT TO PAY!"
After the shop assistant pulled herself together and Touma paid, he turned around and saw the aftermaths of the battle.
Corpses, goods and shelves laid all over the place. The survivors hobbled, some leaning against each other for support, collecting the things they needed that were still in one piece.
Touma, exhausted from the situation in the store, walked out of the store and along the street on the pedestrian path to get home.
After some time, he noticed that he was alone on the street.
No pedestrian, no car, nothing.
Wouldn't he be so exhausted from the fight earlier, he would have noticed it the moment he got out of the store.
He stopped, awaiting what was bound to come in this situation. It wasn't the first time he saw something like that.
This specific situation meant only one thing: Magicians!
And they didn't wait long: Five of them came out of the alleys and towards him. He didn't know who they were, but a group of magicians normally meant trouble.
"Imagine breaker, we would like you to come with us.", the one nearest to him said.
"Why?", Touma asked, shifting slightly in a position he could easily start fighting.
"That's unimportant right now.", the magician answered him.
"If that so? in both ways, I'm not coming with you", Touma said, preparing for the unavoidable.
"Haaaaaaaaa...", sighed the magician.
The person who tracked Touma the whole day swore under his breath:"For heaven's sake! Why do they always appear when you don't want them to?"
Then he sighed:"Well, it can't be helped. Time to become active!"
And with that the person jumped off the building.
The magician ordered his companions:
"I didn't want to do this, but if I'm forced to: Get him!"
The other four who didn't do anything until know, stormed towards Touma.
They knew their magic wouldn't bring much so they relied only on physical attacks.
Touma made himself ready to defend, even if the odds were against him.
But suddenly, when the magicians were only 5 meters away, lances came flying down from the sky and drilled themselves in the ground right in front of them, letting them stop.
The lances were around 3 meters long and had a plain form, a pole with a long, sharp tip. They were orange and glowed slightly.
"Nah, nah, nah, what have we here? a group of 5 attacking a single student? That's a little unfair, don't you think? I think I need to give you five a 'a fight with an superior enemy is a unpleasing situation'-lesson so you don't pick on a single person in groups again. Don't you agree?", suddenly a cheerful voice sounded.
All looked behind Touma, who also turned around to look, and saw that there stood a person roughly 5 meters above the ground.
In the air!
The air under his foots seemed to glimmer slightly like hot air over a fire.
Said person was a boy, not older than 13. He had a petite build, showing that he was at most in the beginning of puberty. He was around 158 cm tall, small for his age, and wore a sleeveless, gray hoodie, hood covering the upper half of his face hiding it, with a red T-shirt underneath. In addition to that he also wore blue jeans and had his hands in the pockets.
"Get away, brat. I don't have an idea how you got inside the barrier, but when you interfere we need to kill you.", the magician threatened him.
At that the boy began to chuckle.
"What is so funny?"
"Well, there are two things:",the boy stated.
"The first is that you won't be able to touch me except you being a Level 5."
At that statement the 5 magicians tensed up, seeming to know what an Level 5 is capable of.
Then the cheerful voice changed into an dangerous and pissed of voice. Orange glowing particles started to spin around the boy.
"The second is that you called me a brat making me snap."
The magicians started to frantically chant spells and fired magic at the boy, prioritizing him over Touma feeling the threat he is.
But an invisible barrier, only slightly glimmering when their attack connected, held their attacks off. Suddenly the particles became more and more and assembled themselves into double-edged blades.
The boy said, almost ordered one single thing:"Run!", and then fired blades after blades at them.
The magicians didn't let it say to them twice and retreated while dodging the incoming, endlessly seeming stream of blades, knowing they couldn't win.
After the magicians retreated and the barrier was down with their departure, the boy walked down.
Through the air!
"Hello, I didn't ask you after your name until now, did I?", he asked and took the hood of, revealing short, ebony and messy hair and orange eyes that seemed to shine slightly, remembering you at cut ambers.
"But where are my manners? My name is Kurokami Kureno, nice to meet you!",He introduced himself.
"Kamijou Touma", Touma introduced himself too but then noticed something.
"MY GROCERIES!"
One of the blades went through the bag he had the groceries in and left them in a massacre.
"Sorry, tehe...", apologized Kureno and smiled sheepishly.
After seeing the downed expression on Kamijou's face and the tearing eyes, he couldn't help but feel grave guilt.
"Let me pay you back.", he said to Touma who now held the carton eggs he bought with a distant stare.
"AH, I know how! We can go to my apartment and then give you some groceries from there. My sister would be there but that won't be a problem.", Kureno offered, lifted his left hand and snipped with his fingers, letting the blades and lances falling apart into particles, which vanished shortly after that.
"Ok, then let's do this.", Touma answered and sighed.
'Now it will take more time to accomplish the feat of getting something to eat to my dorm room. And with every passing minute Index will become more furious... such misfortune...', he thought while following the other boy to his apartment.
"Kamijou-san, who were the guys earlier?", Kureno asked.
"Just a group of espers. It seems I attract people like them.", Touma answered, not wanting to reveal magic to the boy. That and he didn't want that, if he named magic by its name, the other boy would think of him as someone who fled from an asylum.
Kureno just nodded and seemed to accept the answer.
After the walk and a completely unimportant conversation about games and the circumstances they both lived in(Touma left out Index) they both stood in front of the door to Kureno's apartment.
"Well, here we are.", Kureno said and opened the door with a key.
The apartment was spacious and left an friendly impression.
It got occupied by currently two persons.
A red headed beauty which gave off the aura of a Onee-san, and...
"What are you doing here?", asked him no one less than Misaka Mikoto angrily.
She started to emit electricity.
"C-Calm down, this Kamijou Touma is completely innocent. I got attacked by a group of esper for reasons unknown. Than Kureno-san helped me out but hit by accident the bag of groceries I attained in a battlefield caused by special offers.", Touma explained and Misaka and Kumiko both thought 'Battlefield?', but let it slide.
"So to compensate for the accident he offered me to give groceries from his apartment.", he said the reason why he went with Kureno.
Kumiko smiled at the explanation, seemingly proud of her little brother to do something like that.
"I'm sorry, but I already used them to cook. Of course I can give you something in a keep-fresh package, so that you can eat it at home.", she offered him.
"That would be nice. See, Biri-Biri, that is the way a girl should behave!"
"Oh my, thank you", Kumiko said as response and smiled warmly.
Misaka on the contrary shouted an 'SHUT UP!' and tried to send electricity at him, but got stopped by Kumiko putting her hand on Misaka's shoulder.
"Mi~sa~ka~san", she said in a sweet, almost too sweet voice.
Misaka turned to her and gulped, the same reaction the two boys had.
Kumiko had her eyes closed and had a sinister, almost sadistic smile plastered on her face.
"We don't want to start a fight in this apartment, my apartment, do we?", she asked and the temperature seemed to drop.
"N-N-No, w-we don't w-want this.", Misaka replied scared while Kumiko gave of the same feeling her dorm manager gave of when seriously furious at someone.
"Good, good...", Kumiko said drawing her hand back from Misaka's shoulder and changed back to normal.
She went off to the kitchen and came back with a giant keep-fresh package.
"Here, for you. And Kureno", she said, giving the package to Touma and then turning towards Kureno.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!", she yelled and pulled him in a hug. A crushing one.
"Happy birthday!", Misaka also said but quieter.
Touma looked dumbfounded and then said:
"It's your birthday? Why didn't you say something? Happy birthday!"
Kureno tried to thank them but couldn't because he was suffocating from the hug.
"Uhm, Kumiko, you should stop. Your brother can't breathe."
"Oh", was Kumiko's reaction and let the now already fainted Kureno out.
"It seems he need to eat the food tomorrow."
"I go now, if it is ok.", said Touma and Misaka wanted to leave now, too.
"No, problem. Just get back to your dorms.", Kumiko said.
Both left.
Kumiko brought her fainted brother in his room and laid him gently on his bed.
"Good night", she whispered and covered him with his blanket. Then she left him and went into her kitchen to get herself a tea.
Suddenly her phone ringed.
She looked at the number on the display.
The moment she saw the number her mood dropped to absolute zero.
She accepted the call and asked bluntly:"What is it?"
"Why do you sound so displeased?", a indefinable voice sounded through the phone.
"Because you are the one who called me, former leading scientist of the Uranus project. Or Should I say Board Chairman and Superintendent of academy city,
Aleister Crowly?"
"Just call me like you want, Valkyrie.", Aleister answered.
"Nice to know, neutron. But you haven't answered my question yet: What do you want?"
"I have a new mission for you. There are 5 magicians in this city right know. They attacked and tried to capture Imagine breaker. Dispose of them."
At that Kumiko clicked with her tongue displeased.
"Ok. I will do so. But remember, Aleister: I don't know your plan. Nor do I know your aim or how you want to achieve it.
But I know that you need Imagine breaker for it. And he isn't dumb. He most likely know already that Imagine breaker is more than just a hand that negates the supernatural. And I know he won't move like you want him to. He is not a pawn from you like me.", She said and wanted to hang up but decided to continue.
"Ah, one more thing: The reason I do what I do is to protect my little brother, nothing less, nothing more. If the protection you offer for him someday won't be enough, I will pulverize this whole goddamn city and bury you under the debris.",she said and hung up.
Then she went through the door outside and locked it behind her.
After that was done she took off.
The five magicians rested in a area near the wall surrounding academy city, forming a new plan to get the Imagine breaker.
"What have we here, 5 little magicians sitting together and thinking. What a rare move for you".
They whirled around and saw Kumiko emerging from the shadows of an alley, smiling.
"Who are you?", one magician asked her.
"I'm called many things: Abomination. Monster. Even Shinigami is one of them. The list is rather long and I'm too lazy to list them all up now, but the most known name I have would be... 'Valkyrie'.", she said while coming nearer.
The moment she mentioned the name the magicians started to tense up and fear was in their eyes, let them shake slightly. They enlarged the distance between them and Kumiko.
" Today you are supposed to be my entertainment, so... ", she said and took the next step with a small hop in it.
Suddenly she was face to face with the one who had asked, 20 meters away from her original position.
"Entertain me!"
Out of panic he fired an fireball which harmlessly dispersed when it made contact.
She simply backhanded him like a bothersome insect which lead to him getting torn apart and his remains sticking on a wall.
The other magicians trembled in fear as Kumiko looked at them, showing an predatory grin and licked over her lips.
"Your turn."
And then screams filled the night.
Kumiko stood now alone in the area and looked, eyes filled with sadness, over the massacre surrounding her.
Bloody remains of the first still stuck to the wall.
The second was a puddle of melted flesh.
The third was scattered over the whole place.
The fourth and fifth got evaporated and were now a gas mixture in the air.
"I hate it.", Kumiko said and jumped outside of academy city.
"I hate it! I hate it! I HATE IT! IHATE IT SO GODDAMN MUCH!" she yelled and punched the ground, causing a crater and an earthquake.
Welll, that was something.
I need your feedback about the rating of this story. Now it is still 'T', but I don't know if I should change it in 'M', 'cause of the content that will appear more frequently from this chapter forward.
So, I wait for the feedback.
I'm out, bye.