Man, I came dangerously close to not being able to get this out today. THE SCHEDULE LIVES FOR ANOTHER WEEK! This is by far the longest chapter in this fic. Chapter following this unfortunately will most likely not be this long. Hope you enjoy!

Well, when Mikoto offered her help to Touma she certainly hadn't expected him to ask for it the very same day! Just how ridiculous was this guy's life anyway? Attempted assassination and now a kidnapping within hours of each other, and Touma said he didn't even know if they were both by the same group of people. If it turned out that both crimes were committed by two separate groups operating independently of one another, she was seriously going to consider breaking that idiot's spine; at least he would be out of trouble in the hospital. Actually, no, scratch that. Even being in a wheelchair he was sure to find some way of aggravating someone or other.

She had been walking back to her dorm when he had called. Curfew had been extended on account of all the parents of students that had travelled in to watch the tournament, so the streets weren't as empty as they would usually be this late at night, but they certainly weren't crowded either. Anyhow, it was mild out and she had decided to walk.

After she ended the call however she hailed down a cab and gave him an address a few blocks away from the address the note left at Touma's apartment had stated. No need to get an innocent cabbie caught up in a hostage situation.

She winced at her choice of words, not because the idea of a hostage made her uncomfortable, she had seen plenty of hostages. It just sounded very official, and official made her think of Judgement, and that made her think of Kuroko, and how very guilty she felt that she was going to rescue a hostage without telling her anything, when she knew that was the first thing she should have done. But Touma had called for her help, more importantly; she had offered her help to him, she couldn't turn around and go running for Judgement the first time he took her up on the offer.

No, that was bullshit. The reason she didn't call Kuroko was because she wanted to be the hero, or more accurately she wanted to be his hero. She wanted him to rely on her to do something, and to show that that trust would not be misplaced. She couldn't do that if she called Kuroko.

Childish? Maybe. Selfish? Probably. But as they say; all's fair in love and war. And so here she was. In front of another abandoned warehouse. Mikoto rolled her eyes; couldn't the bad guys find a more creative place to hide their hostages? To be fair, she thought it might say in the villains hand guide that reusing plots and being cliché in general was strongly encouraged.

She had gotten there before Touma, which surprised her until she remembered about his bad ankle and the fact that he almost certainly didn't have enough money to pay for a cab ride.

As she realized this she started to grin. 'This,' she thought to herself 'is going to be fun.'

In the warehouse

Two dozen hired goons stood, sat, and leaned in various places in the warehouse, which was completely barren except for a single metal fold0out chair in the middle of the room that Index was tied to. Some of the thugs were in groups while some of them lurked in the corners. They were mostly loners, all hired separately with none of them knowing who their employer was. And none of them were magical, though they were all aware of that part of the world, given that most had dealt with it at one time or another. These weren't just amateurs after all; they were experienced gunmen, getting paid ridiculously good money to kidnap on kid and to shoot whoever came after her dead.

Two dozen trained men with guns, a force nearly insurmountable for Touma.

But they weren't prepared for her.

The front of the warehouse exploded, knocking a handful of the mercenaries out cold who had been standing too close to the door. The rest of the hired help scrambled back and for their guns, no enemy was in sight, but how could that be?

From one side Mikoto, who had used the dust that had resulted from the explosion to sneak in, stepped out of the shadows. Electricity crackled around her as she grinned evilly.

"Hello boys, wanna play?"

The thug closest leveled his handgun at her "kid, I don't know who you think you are but you're in the wrong place at the wrong time." He punctuated this by thumbing back the hammer of his piece.

Mikoto's grin didn't falter despite the gun in her face. She didn't bother with a reply, she simply touched her forefinger to the tip of the weapon, sending an electric current crackling through it. The unfortunate mercenary went flying back into a wall.

"You idiot's took the wrong job," she said evilly. Some of the smarter thugs were realizing that she was more dangerous than she looked. A couple even recognized her from the tournament advertisements. The ones that did either backed off or actually slipped away into the shadows, not wanting to deal with a level 5. Who said that there weren't any smart thugs?

Most of the thugs however did not recognize her, and they didn't appreciate some girl barging in on their job. Nearly twenty firearms came up and pointed at Mikoto. Still she didn't falter. She stood looking bored with one hand on her hip.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." Mikoto warned them, which of course enraged them further and as one they began to unload on Mikoto.

The situation, while admittedly dangerous, gave Mikoto that opportunity to test out something Mikoto had been experimenting with for a few months now. Electromagnetism. She had experimented with it before, using it to walk on walls and makes shields and that sort of thing, but lately she had realized that she was severely underusing the potential of the science. The idea had probably germinated when she had seen how the Accelerator fought, reversing the direction vector of anything so nothing could hit him. While she might not be able to deflect anything like he could, she could certainly stop a lot of it. After all, who didn't have something metal on them these days?

On top of that she had realized with everything that had happened to her, especially with her fights with Touma, that fighting smart was just as important, if not more so, than the power of her ability. She was getting stronger, that was true, but it was slow and frustrating, and she knew that one day she would hit her ceiling. But she still had plenty of room to improve in using her abilities creatively. Not that she was unimaginative, it's just that there was a lot of ground to explore that she hadn't yet.

That being said, perhaps it wasn't the best idea to begin her experiments with electromagnetism with live ammunition. Oh well.

In the time it took for the thugs to begin to fire and the bullets coming within fifteen feet of her, she had fed enormous amounts of electricity into the concrete ground and the metal pipes that ran under it. Next she manipulated the current to turn the floor within fifteen feet of her into a giant electromagnet. The result was that when the ammunition entered the electrically charged area it immediately rocketed to the ground. None of the bullets came even close to touching her.

Secretly Mikoto let out a sigh of relief; she had been eighty percent certain that it would work, but that twenty percent was a whole lot scarier when faced with bullets coming at you.

The goons fired until they ran empty, at which point Mikoto, rather sadistically, turned the warehouse into her little electromagnet playground. When they tried to reload she would make the bullets attach to something metal, belt buckles, watches, various body piercings, whatever, she wanted to test the limits of what she could do. Her favourite was attaching two goon`s belt buckles together so they were attached by the hip (and they were unconscious since they had originally been standing a solid ten feet apart when she did it and they had cracked their heads together pretty good.) It went on like that for a while. Some of them ran, the rest were beaten in the most creative ways she could think of using electromagnetism. So a lot of guys stuck to the walls and ceiling. Mikoto wondered if she should be having as much fun as she was considering this was supposed to be a rescue mission. She may have gotten a little carried away; a few times she had barely missed Index, who Mikoto had realized was unconscious, slumped in the chair she was tied to.

Feeling a little guilty, she quickly finished off her last few test subj….er….enemies and went over to untie Index. She had a head wound that would have looked bad to someone who didn't know anything about such things, but Mikoto could tell it was quite shallow, despite the blood. Mikoto assumed that was how they had subdued her until she saw a rather messy puncture wound on her neck. Mikoto felt rage boil up, someone had stabbed her with a needle, and they hadn't been gentle. But why bother with a drug? The blow to the head would have been enough to knock such a small girl unconscious, so what was the needle for?

She would have to check her anger for now though, she had to get Index loose from her ropes first. They were simple knots; it wouldn't take her long for her to free the small girl.

As soon as Mikoto touched the rope it went up in flames, burning her hand. She cried out in alarm, not from pain, but from concern for Index, she would be burnt alive! However, to her shock and relief after she recoiled from the flames it seemingly put itself out, with both the rope and Index intact. But now the ropes were glowing with strange blue symbols she didn't understand.

"Do you think we're stupid enough to restrain a girl as powerful as that one with just ordinary rope?"

Mikoto's head whipped around to see a woman with bright green hair dressed in a business suit complete with painfully high heels standing in the doorway she had blown up.

Mikoto stood, electricity crackling around her. She pointed one of her much feared coins at the strange woman.

"Let Index go." She snarled out, baring her teeth

"No ordinary person can set her free, not without knowing the proper steps. Completely useless against that boy of course, but then again the restraints are more for her then they are for him."

Mikoto didn't know what she was talking about. 'The boy' was obviously Touma; she was saying that the rope would useless against his arm. Had the rope somehow been augmented with an esper's power? How could that be possible? What confused her more was that the part about the ropes being more for Index. Was this girl strong? Mikoto never would have guessed it by looking at her.

None of that mattered right now though "did I stutter? I said release Index!"

The woman smiled a professional smile that infuriated Mikoto "dear child, or you'll do what?"

Mikoto's reply came in the form of her patented railgun attack (no really, her fan club patented to move in her name. She has no idea how they managed it) her coin shot towards the woman, propelled by her electricity.

The woman held out her hand with her palm facing Mikoto and the oncoming projectile but made no other movement. Mikoto was fine with this strange woman underestimating her abilities, it wouldn't be the first or last time an adult did so.

Then to Mikoto's astonishment the coin struck the woman's open palm and….sunk into it. The electricity dissipated when the coin vanished into her hand, almost like it had been grounded. The woman's body suddenly seemed many shades darker than before and, as if the situation couldn't get any stranger, her arm started to drip! The woman smiled that infuriating smile again and almost before Mikoto cold react her arm turned into…mud? And shot out at Mikoto, which she barely dodged.

What the hell? "How did you do that?" Mikoto asked, completely at a loss. There was no esper ability in the world that could do that. It had to be some sort of illusion.

The woman must have guessed Mikoto's thoughts because she laughed in response to her question "that's what I love about you people, anything that you can't explain is a trick, it makes it so easy for people like me to do whatever we want."

'People like me'? There were others with abilities like her? How could she never have heard of this, an ability to actually change the physical properties of a human body? Could she change her entire body into mud? No, she couldn't, what would happen to her organs? Mikoto threw a blast of electricity at her opponent, a quicker attack than her railgun, so she wouldn't be able to block it with her weird mud-arm thing.

Mikoto had calculated correctly, the ball of energy hit the woman directly in the chest. She took a single step back…and the electricity was grounded again.

Mikoto gaped, how was that possible? In order for her electricity to be dissipated in such a way, her body would need to be completely mud, (or dirt, or rock. But neither of those drip) how did her heart keep pumping while she was in the state? What about the blood in her veins, her digestive track, all of her vitals? It wasn't possible, yet she was seeing it right in front of her.

The woman smiled "can't figure it out eh? Well I don't blame you; if you're not in the know you won't be able to figure it out by yourself."

Mikoto gritted her teeth, she could figure this out later, and she didn't need to know how it worked for her to win.

Besides, she didn't have any more time to think it through. The mud woman was on the attack. She lunged at Mikoto with speed that surprised Mikoto, especially considering how she seemed to be made out of mud and all.

The mud woman swiped, her arm (a well as the arm of the business suit she was wearing) turned into mud, and swiped at Mikoto, the appendage extending as she did so.

Mikoto, not having time to dodge, grabbed the arm as it hit her and held on for dear life.

'Great.' Mikoto thought to herself 'now my clothes are ruined. Wait. If she can turn to mud, does that mean that my clothes are soaked in her body?' Mikoto nearly retched at the though. She would need a long shower after this was over.

The mud woman began to retract her arm, but before she could return it to her normal size Mikoto, who was still holding it, fed as much electricity into the arm, and therefore the rest of the mud woman, as she could.

'Her being mud might make her resistant to my electricity, but it doesn't mean she's completely immune. With my strength I should be able to make something stick to her.'

This was Mikoto's general line of thought, which was proven wrong when she saw her electricity running up the arm, causing it to shake a spasm violently. The mud woman's face contorted in pain, but before any damage could be done the electricity was grounded out.

The mud woman smiled as she finished retracting her arm and raised it, leaving Mikoto hanging in the air before her like a naughty child.

The mud woman brought her close so that their faces were almost touching "nice try dearie, but you're going to have to do better than that."

With that the mud woman slammed her other hand into Mikoto's gut, knocking the wind out of her, and making her eyes go wide in pain, the mud woman was unnaturally strong for someone her build.

The mud woman caught her again as Mikoto let go of her arm in pain and flung her across the warehouse.

Mikoto, despite being a little worse for wear, scrambled up immediately behind one of the building supporting pillars, trying desperately to catch her breath. She could her clip-clop of the woman's high heeled shoes as she paced, seemingly content to allow Mikoto to hide for the moment.

"Are you really the Railgun of Academy City? I expected so much more from someone so famous. Oh well, I suppose at the end of the day magic is just plain superior to your pitiful religion you call 'science'."

'Magic?' Mikoto thought to herself 'this woman is insane!' Mikoto moved to another pillar as she heard the mud woman getting too close to her cover.

"You believe in magic?" Mikoto called out scornfully "what are you, five?"

The woman laughed "Oh dear, I thought it was likely, but you really are clueless, aren't you? Well, I suppose you'll die clueless, I don't care enough to explain everything to you, this isn't a movie you know."

'Of course she 'won't' explain. More like can't explain' Mikoto though scornfully. But at the same time she felt uneasiness worm its way into her stomach. Try as she might, she couldn't imagine what could allow this woman to do what she did if it wasn't an illusion, which the bruises on her side could attest that it was not.

How to defeat a person who could ground out her electricity…it seemed like being able to turn her body into mud would also make her largely immune to any physical attacks as well….although….that might not be entirely true. She had a plan.

She gathered electricity in her hand and leapt out of cover. The mud woman turned to face her but was met with an electrical blast to the face; stunning her for a moment and making her take a step back.

"Do you really think you can beat me that way?" She said scornfully.

Mikoto smirked; the attack had only been a distraction. She stood over the carpet of spent bullet that the goons had shot at her, and using her electromagnetic powers, bound the together to make a sword like she had when she had fought Touma several months ago. She was now holding a sword mate of bullets, which would be intimidating for most, but the mud woman was not impressed.

"A sword? I truly am disappointed with you, Railgun. Do you think that hitting me with such a barbaric weapon will do anything to me?

Mikoto grinned "Quit your yapping and let's fight!"

The mud woman attack, her arm rocketing out towards Mikoto. Instead of dodging Mikoto leaned slightly to the side, holding up her newly created sword on an angle. She had made the width of the blade longer than she normally would specifically so she could deflect this sort of attack and in worked almost perfectly. The mud woman's arm glanced off the side of her sword and kept going, causing her to lose her balance and lurch forward.

This gave Mikoto some essential information. One: It told her that while she could indeed turn to mud to more or less prevent her from taking damage, the viscosity of said mud wasn't so high that it would simply flow around her sword or any solid object for that matter. If that was the case then her plan would have been impossible.

The second piece of information this gave her was that while her ability to turn into mud allowed her to surpass the limits of what a normal human body could do, e.g. extending her arm to attack, she did have limits, the fact that her attack being deflected made her lose her balance proved that. If her arm was capable of extending forever blocking that attack wouldn't have made her stumble.

Next test: The mud woman was off balance with her arm extended, it was time to see how impervious she really was. Taking her sword in both hands she chopped the mud woman's arm off. The brown snake-like appendage fell to the floor writhing violently and slowly turned back into a normal arm.

"AHHH!" The mud woman screamed, clutching the stump where her arm used to be.

Mikoto panted, holding her sword up in front of her protectively. She had answered the question of how impervious to physical damage she was, but watching the mud woman scream in pain she felt sick to the stomach. At least the wound didn't seem to be bleeding, a small comfort for her.

The mud woman's face contorted rom pain to rage. Her entire body turned into mud and she shot at Mikoto in a violent jet of mud, which she barely dodged out of the way from.

The mud woman sailed past her and landed on her severed arm, completely covering it. Slowly she reformed into a human shape and when she did she had reattached her arm. Mikoto was caught between disappointment and relief. Despite her being an enemy injuring her in such a way had made her feel sick. The idea that she would have to inflict a much bigger injury on her in order to make her plan work almost made her literally ill, but the fact that she would be able to probably heal from it later made her feel better.

Now that the mud woman was reformed she looked furious "You're going to pay for that you little brat!" She hissed out. She was looking nowhere near as professional as she had at the beginning of the fight. Her hair had come out of its tight bun and was falling over her eyes, making her look like a maniac. Her suit was torn in many places and the suit arm had failed to rematerialize with the arm that Mikoto had chopped off. Her high heels had broken so she had kicked them off and was now bare foot aside from her stockings. All in all she looked like a maniac.

The mud woman charged at her now, murder on her face. Mikoto braced herself, if she was honest with herself, close quarters combat was far from one of her strong points, she rarely encountered an opponent that she couldn`t take out from a distance. She smiled as she thought of Touma, who was one of those few that made close quarters fighting a necessity.

Mikoto blocked the first swipe the mud woman made at her and ducked under the second one. The mud woman had over extended herself in her anger and Mikoto made a low swipe, but she was faster than Mikoto had accounted for and her sword barely grazed the mud woman's shins.

Now Mikoto was at the disadvantage since she needed to compensate for her missed blow and for the fact that she was so low to the ground. With a scream of triumph and rage the mud woman clasped her hands together and created a sledgehammer with her two fists which she swung down at Mikoto, aiming to crush her head to pulp.

Mikoto threw herself to the side as the mud woman barely missed her target; the blow crushed the concrete where Mikoto's head had been moments before.

Mikoto came out of the roll and pivoted quickly around, using the momentum from her roll and from her spin to launch a devastating heavy attack at the mud woman. It missed, but the mud woman had to lean back in order to dodge it, and now she couldn't counter or dodge easily, which is what Mikoto had been aiming for.

But again Mikoto had miscalculated the abilities of the mud woman's strange powers. Despite her center of balance being off the mud woman still manage to kick one of her feet up in the air, which caused her to fall completely, but at the same time the kick caught Mikoto in the face, breaking her nose. Mikoto stumbled back and the mud woman got up so quickly that they were recovered at about the same time.

Mikoto wiped her bloody nose with on hand, almost covering her entire forearm in blood. Both were breathing heavily.

Mikoto went back in for the attack, slashing at her opponent with quick little swipes, she now realized that she needed to be able to launch one heavy attack very quickly in a very specific place in order for her plan to work.

The mud woman dodged most of the attacks, and Mikoto thought how unfair it was that someone made out of mud could be so quick. The mud woman batted away her sword and slammed her fist in Mikoto's gut for the second time in the fight, once again knocking the breath out of her.

But Mikoto gritted her teeth and refused to go down. Instead, she brought her sword back and with a single swipe, once again sliced off one of the mud woman's arms, this time at the elbow.

The mud woman stumbled back, her face a mask of pain, completely defenceless. Mikoto once again felt queasy, but knew she wouldn't never get a better opportunity to attempt what she thought might be the solution to the problem the mud woman presented.

As the mud woman grasped her stump Mikoto came in with another low cut, the same thing she had tried at the beginning of the fight. But now the mud woman could not dodge or block the bow and Mikoto cut her legs off at the knees.

As she felt her blade pass through the second leg she let go of the sword, allowing it to go flying across the room and scatter into the individual bullets it had been made of. Mikoto then through herself at the mud woman, grabbed her around the waist and held her in the air. She then discharged as much electricity as she could into the mud woman's body, more and more and more; she continued to electrocute her, using enough electricity to short out most neighbour hoods in Academy City.

The mud woman hadn't been immune to electricity, or even so resistant the she could cancel out Mikoto's electricity by herself. What she could do with her mud body was resist the effects of it long enough to feed it into the concrete, there by canceling it out. For Mikoto's power to work she needed to be not touching the ground. If Mikoto had just picked her up the mud woman could have simply extended her legs to touch the ground, therefore Mikoto needed to make it so she was unable to do that. And the only thing she could think of was to cut off her legs. A brutal necessity, Mikoto was certain that she would have nightmares about that moment for many months after this.

The mud woman, at last, fell to the ground, completely unconscious. Mikoto was left standing in the middle of the ware house with a bunch of unconscious people, one of whom she had come here to save, and most of whom she had defeated.

Mikoto looked at the body of the mud woman and was again grateful that her powers made it so that she could not bleed.

She suddenly felt bile rise up in her throat, and not having time to go behind a pillar, was sick in the middle of the room. She panted; tasting the remnants in her mouth, then after a moment of being doubled over and staring at her defeated enemy, sighed tiredly and went to go wait for Touma outside so he could get the ropes of Index. Then she was going to bed to shower and sleep. It had been a long day.

Well, that was thing. You may have noticed already, but I have the tendency to either skip or summarize fight scenes since I don`t think I`m very good at them and they`re hard to write. This chapter was me trying to train myself to write fight scenes and more than any other chapter I would appreciate feedback on how I did. Hopefully another update next Friday. I will certainly try my best to make it happen. Until then :)