Welcome back and god damn am I glad my muse has returned once more! Seriously, I'm freakin' glad to finally be able to write things down in a for me acceptable pace(and yes, I'm a self-critical person.)!

You will find that this chapter is a little out of the story line that it had followed before and I hope that you will enjoy it nevertheless.

The 'Author answers or says something probably important'-section:

Sargent Crash: First of all, glad you liked it and you know what they say about when fist hits the fan... okay I admit that one was bad. The plans over plans-thing is seriously messed up to be true here as well as a pain in the *** to plot, but whatever: At least with that I get the chance to say that it is almost a planception! Now, after this stupid little pun, let's continue with this idea you have for the blonde man: Let's just say: you're right and at the same time wrong about him(cryptic answers for the win! *MUHAHAHAHA*). Additionally to that, awesome that you ship it! And now finally, a last thing I have to say: Glad I could inject you with some guts to bring your motivation to the next level!

RPGFanatic: It makes me happy that you enjoy this fanfic and are still following it after all this time that past between the 13th chapter and 12th chapter. secondly, thanks for your understanding for the delay, even though I'm still beating myself up for that(figuratively of course...).

And now, without further ado, enjoy!

Disclaimer: 'I do not own To Aru Majutsu no Index', only my OCs's!

Kureno was walking through the streets of district 15 without a real care in the world. He was really content and at peace with anything right now. Though it was a little regrettable that his sister had been away in London for the last week, it was somewhat refreshing: His sister was very nice, caring and forthcoming, but sometimes her often in mother hen-like evolving behavior that showed that she cared was a little bothering at times.

Besides that, living with Percy was probably the most notable, interesting and fun temporary change for the past week. Playing video-games as much as he likes, eating as much fast-food as he likes, and, most importantly, not getting controlled at least ten times the day.

His sister really should learn to stop being such a worrywart. And control freak. And Mother hen. And...

All the sudden his phone began to ring which broke him out of his chain of thoughts. Thankfully, he silently added. Somehow his sister always knew when he had such thoughts about her which ultimately ended for him ending in a guilt trip.

Taking said phone out and looking at the display, Kureno immediately identified the number on the screen. His good mood raised again by a big margin. Accepting the call he moved the phone to his ear and spoke up in English without stopping his stroll.

"Hi, Eko. How is it?"

"Actually, pretty good. And are you again using a phone call to train your English skills?", a young female voice answered in a cheery manner, also in English.

Murasaki Eko was an old friend of his. She was 13, Lv4, half a year older than him and the first person Kureno met and befriended after he was hit by the amnesia. Like her surname, she simply loved the color purple and had various things in or with this color, the most important one being her trusty wireless headphones Eko had on her all the time, be it loosely hanging around her neck or actually using it.

"My sister will behead me if I did nothing of that kind in her absence, so yeah, I do. I'm not suicidal, thank you."

About her personality... that was something Kureno didn't like to get to much into. She was fun to be around, yes, didn't push her beliefs onto you, yes, was a good listener, yes, but there was one slight problem...

"Oh, don't worry. I know plenty about the way your sister is. You talk to me about her many times, remember? Or is your brain slowly becoming forgetting?"

she had a terrible sense of humor.

"Hahaha, really funny. I'm laughing myself to death.", came his flat response before he couldn't keep up his facade and grinned slightly. If one had a friend like that, you grinned simply for the sake of grinning when a bad pun came. Even if it was a rather dark one and/or at your costs.

"Now, I feel honored that you called me in your oh so precious 'alone time', but what is the true reason? Surely not a simple talk or you would have send a mail for a meeting instead. Considering you prefer to talk with others in person if you simply want to kill time with them, or in this case, me."

Kureno could imagine the slightly flustered look on her face quite easily; Even though she was predictable, if only for those who knew her, Eko still didn't like nor wanted to accept that fact. But whatever retort she had was obviously held back, a sigh on the other end being the sign for it. Instead she answered in a more than little serious voice.

"Something came up; Meeting up around 3pm at Joseph's?"

The tone alone told him this was something important. Looking at a nearby clock and seeing that it was 2pm, a whole hour till the proposed meeting time, he had enough time to finish what he had planned as well as making it in time to Joseph's.

"Roger that. Till then, I believe? I mean, if you had nothing else you wanted to talk about..."

"Yeah, need to prepare some things before that, sooooo... bye, tehe~.", and with that she hung up.

'Tehe my a- NO, DON'T THINK IT!'

His sister had some kind of sensor for whatever and whenever he was swearing as well, which would later hunted him in form of repercussions. A lot of repercussions. Something he was under no means keen to receive and reasoning with his sister about it was in vain.

But whatever, he shouldn't think of such things right now. Because Kureno was in this very moment a man with a mission. And so, holding himself in the appropriate, befitting manner -back straight, chest out and taking long strides-, he walked down the street towards his destination.

The time frame: 45 minutes. The area of operation: the game store. The target: The brand-new, today released and super awesome videogame. Yes, he was talking about the brand new *******!

... Or so was his plan if not for the car flying straight at his head the very moment he crossed the next crosswalk. As if in slow-motion he watched it coming nearer and nearer without stopping his walk. The next thing everyone else saw after they thought this boy is dead due to car in the face was, that said car was seemingly levitating in the air, completely stopped in its tracks. The front looked as if it crashed into an immovable wall.

Without a care in the world he simply continued on his way but got stopped by an girl smaller than him whose hair was in pigtails. The girl, showing him her arm band signalizing her as an Judgment member, gave off the one sentence that seems to be such a trend in Judgment.

"Stop! I'm from Judgment!"

Seriously, one may think they only apply there so that they were able to say this one single insignificant sentence. Basically the one and only reason Kureno disliked having to deal with an Judgment member on duty. But even if he didn't like it, he still upheld what his sister was so keen to uphold: Be polite until they openly offend you.

That of course didn't mean Kureno couldn't make it a little more amusing for himself. So he did the next thing he could do to achieve such: Letting the wreck of the car drop with a loud crash. The twitch of the girl and following strained smile were enough to make the whole hassle a little more pleasant for him.

"I have some questions for you. After all, you are a witness.", one could hear her tone becoming more and more stressed by the minute.

"Then shoot, miss officer.", Kureno tried, additionally to the unconsciously added slight sarcasm in his tone, to give his best disarming smile he could possible flash at someone, in which he didn't succeed: The smile that came out was rather crooked. Which also didn't serve him in scoring points with her. That was reflected even more than before through the girls even harder strained smile.

"First, I would like to have your name, please."

"Kurokami Kureno."

The girl did a double-take before gaffing slightly at him. Oh, did someone knew his sister? But if that was the truth, Kureno had a problem: He seriously shouldn't tease a friend of his sister too much. That was, of course, depending on the if this girl truly was a friend of hers.

'Didn't Kumiko-nee get a job as teacher at Tokiwadai? And isn't that the school uniform of the school in question?'

"I take it you know my sister, miss...?"

"Yeah... she is a teacher at my school, actually. And my name is Shirai Kuroko."

He was right. And the friendliness in the last part was as fake as her current demeanor.

"Okay then, Shirai-san... if that was all...", Kureno seriously needed to get going, no matter how much fun this whole thing could potentially provide; His future as video gamer was at stake here! But fate seemed to hate him; He couldn't explain it otherwise.

"Oh, Kureno-san, Kuroko; Fancy meeting you here.", a wild Misaka Mikoto appeared out of nowhere the very moment Kuroko opened her mouth to most likely deny him his way out. The chances that he could worm himself out became slimmer and slimmer by the minute. But interesting was it nevertheless: Misaka appeared to be more nervous than anything.

Damn, his curiosity has been awoken.

"Misaka-san, it's a pleasure. Forgive me for asking, but you appear slightly... off put."

A flinch was all Kureno needed to know that yes, there was something. Inwardly doing a victory dance and having totally forgotten about the video game he carefully planned his next steps.

"Oh, you think so?", Kuroko began to look over Misaka closely this time. And with closely, one meant of course in a closer than necessary proximity. Which Misaka did not really like, by the looks of it. The smaller girl even began to poke and prod with her hands in ways one would most probably not do so for finding out the state of health the other person was in; Probably the reason why suddenly one could smell ozone.

"Kuroko..."

"You are right, Kuokami-san; She does not seem like herself today.", but the little girl did either not notice or care about the literal brewing storm approaching. Instead of answering he took a big step back to watch the show unfold. Safety above else, was it not?

"Kuroko... you damn PERVERT!"

*ZAP*

Even though it was quite amusing to watch, he couldn't help but cringe at the spectacle: Some people were not really self preserving, were they? Besides, it was quite the light show.

Having dealt with the immediate 'threat' to her being, Misaka once again focused on the one inch smaller boy. Despite having literally fried another human being, she was actually quite nonchalant about it. All the while Kuroko laid twitching and a little charcoaled on the ground. The two still standing tried not to give her any attention.

"Could you tell me where your sister currently is? We were only told that she was on a temporary leave and got this weird substitute teacher...", Misaka shuddered physically. What kind of person would make such an impression? Or more importantly, pull such an reaction out of an Level 5?!

"She went to London. From what I know, she will be back in the next two or three days."

"Anything else?", Misaka asked him, seemingly trying to advert the attention away from London; News about the attack were after all in nearly all newsletters and on TV. Kureno, though he appreciated the thought, wasn't actually concerned about his sister; There was nothing a PMC, no matter how good equipped, could do to her. But nevertheless he took her try at diverting.

"Nope. She has shut herself away completely. I couldn't contact here even if I wanted to."

"For her, this is a little out of character, isn't it?", by now Kureno had already began walking towards his intended destination and, by the looks of it, the elder girl decided to tag along.

"Not really; She has a sixth or seventh sense or something; If a situation is to arise, she is sure to know. Besides: if, and that's a big if, something would happen she could be here in like what, 9 minutes? "

"True, true. Again, something that was proven multiple times, her ability is too convenient. It's just that... everyone in my class wants their teacher back and this weirdo out."

WHO WAS THE REPLACEMENT FOR HIS SISTER AS TEACHER THAT MANAGES TO GET SUCH A SENTENCE OUT OF MISAKA FREAKING MIKOTO?!

'I'm not sure if I want to know who exactly this teacher is, but at the same time I really want to...'

He stopped right there. Somehow he felt as if it was dangerous terrain he was about to enter with that line of thought. Choosing it was not worth the risk, Kureno decided to change the course this conversation had taken.

"Hey, I look on the positive site: My sister is popular as a teacher. That is a plus in my book."

"Considering the competition, no wonder she is."

Damn, it didn't work!

A small silence fell between them. It was actually a little pleasant: Not the kind of awkward silence, but the one you had when bathing in a good day. And it was a nice sunny day. But all things must come to an end and so Kureno broke it.

"And what is it, besides sending a car flying towards me, that makes you so fidgety today?"

"Ehm...", it seemed he had hit bull's-eye with at least one of them. And he seriously doubted she was the one sending the car flying, at least this time: a Lv5 should still be able to control the situation in a way that no one would come to harm. Not that he still wouldn't say that, if only for the reaction. Note that this also meant that it was something different, something that he needed to solve for his own curiosity. Like a puzzle...

And she began to blush! If that was no big sign that something was indeed bothering her on a personal level, Kureno didn't know what could be. Maybe this situation could provide more entertainment than he at first anticipated. So he decided to say the first plausible thing that came to mind.

"Does it happen to have something to do with Kamijou-san?"

The number 3 blushed a little more and averted her gaze, all the time muttering things like "No!" and "Why should I... a-about this idiot...". Inwardly he grinned; 'So even Misaka Mikoto has a uncertain site like that; Good to know.'

"Well, not that it really concerns me. But tell me, why are you tagging along in the first place?"

"I have read about another contest in one of the gaming halls. Sounded interesting."

'Your mask of nonchalance is as transparent as it gets. It takes no idiot to see that you are inwardly humming in anticipation.', Kureno sweat dropped, holding his thoughts for himself. Wasn't she interested in Gekota or something like that? Maybe some price of the contest was one of these Gekota merchandises?

"Would you be after a certain frog?"

"Y-Yeah!"

'Misaka is really flustered about this guilty pleasure of hers, isn't she?'

"Don't worry, it is completely fine. Everyone has things he or she likes that are supposedly not 'for one's age'."

He truly meant it; He, too, had things he didn't want others to know about. Though most likely out of different reasons than the Railgun.

They continued their walk like that, exchanging some trivial info and had a rather good time. At one point they walked past a park where many children were playing together. A little girl noticed him when she was sitting on a swing, smiling a thousand watt smile when she did.

"Magician-san!"

Both stopped and watched as almost every child stopped in their individual games and ran towards them. The few who didn't joined after around 5 seconds with wonder displayed on their face. It was Misaka's turn to look at the younger boy, who had a sheepish smile on his face, with a raised eyebrow.

"Magician?"

"Well, normally I have a lot of free time when others my age are at school. Because of that I often walk to this or other parks in the near vicinity and give the younger children there something fun to watch and/or to look forward to."

"I am somewhat envious that you don't need to go to school.", Misaka muttered while watching the younger Kurokami struggle to withstand the onslaught of exclamations coming from the little children.

"Hey, Hey, can you make a rose?", the same girl that shouted the exclamation earlier tucked at his pants, causing him to chuckle slightly. Patting here on the head and pushing her back lightly at the same time.

Making a pose Kureno began to make flourish hand motions. He continued to do so for 6 additional seconds before making an extravagant twist with his wrist and voilà, a rose was suddenly in his hand, causing the children to clap.

"Make a dinosaur next!"

"A sports car!"

"Could you please make a card trick?"

"Sorry, don't have cards on me.", he laid the rose onto the girls open palm before turning towards the boy who wanted the card trick with an apologizing expression on his face. Same boy began to pout at the answer.

"Or have I?", Kureno pressed his palms together before moving them away from each other. And in between them cards that weren't there before fanned out, making their way from his left hand towards his right where they made a orderly stack and brought a smile on the boy's face.

"Pick a card.", he fanned them out after mixing them, holding them in reach of the younger boy who promptly picked a card.

"Now remember which one it was and put it back into the stack."

After the boy did as he was told to Kureno shifted them and shifted them, at least ten times before he stopped and seemingly pulled a random card out of the stack of cards. he showed the boy the card.

"Is this your card?"

"Yes! Again!", glee was pouring down from said boy at this point and he even kinda vibrated where he stood in anticipation. Sadly this would need to wait; Kureno already had wasted too much time and in the moment the new game was of greater importance.

"I'm really sorry, but no can do. I still have some important things I need to do. But next time definitely, I promise.", Kureno apologized with an somewhat heavy heart. Anyone would have one when saying 'no' to little children.

A lot of them started protesting and pouting, but he needed to stay strong: Only 25 minutes remained; 25 minutes to go to the game store and buy the object of his greatest desire. There was no way, if you took the children's personas into consideration, that he had time for more tricks. So he decided to create a distraction.

Out of nowhere a pterosaur appeared and flew over the head of the kids, drawing in all the eyes in the current vicinity and causing cheers; The perfect chance for him to escape.

And he took it: No one noticed that he was away until he was around the next corner and the big reptile dissolved into orange particle. Though they began searching for him, they were unsuccessful; not a trace was left of Kurokami Kureno to be seen.

Or so he hoped.

All was quite in the game store besides the quite chattering in the background. But that was about to change: in the distance one could hear a faint rumbling: A rumbling that came nearer and nearer by the seconds until it was like a horde of Left for dead zombies running towards the store.

And the horde part was correct: During the children's search, many others who were playing in the other parks got wind from the return of the 'magician' as well as his escape. And so it ended with a literal army of little children searching for this person.

Thanks to their huge numbers they found him after a rather short search, somehow coordinating it. Like that, the chase has begun with more and more children joining the mob which was hunting the esper down.

It was truly a sight to behold: A boy, around 13, surfing on a levitating orange board with a frightened look on his face and behind him a wave of children up to the age of elementary school graders, running and gunning all the while laughing and screaming in joy.

'WHY DO THEY KEEP MULTIPLYING?!', Kureno screamed in his head, needing to concentrate on getting towards his destination as well as not getting caught. And boy, did he need to work hard for that. Running away from a group of elementary grade kids who were also espers is not something easy by any means. The only thing that made Kureno believe he still had even a little bit of luck was that Misaka wasn't there too to hunt him down too or else this whole thing would have been over so much more quickly.

'The girl from earlier is an Lv3! An Lv3! At the age of what? eight?'

An esper who can influence the friction coefficient, by the looks of it. An unfair ability in a chase. Definitely unfair! The girl in question was happily gliding over the ground in front of the crowd and seemed to have the time of her life by the looks of it, often failing to touch him only by a hairbreadth.

'You will pay. Oh, you will pay!'

All the while Kureno was doing the ridiculous action of plotting revenge against an eight year old elementary schooler, the store came nearer and nearer. Only a few meters left and he was free!

50 meters: The clerk watched the 'thing' coming closer and closer to his store. It caused him to become more and more concerned about his wellbeing, most of all because it was heading towards him like a flock of bulls.

35 meters: He moved, first slowly walking than sprinting, towards the shop entrance. Kureno got a bad feeling about this.

15 meters: the clerk had reached the entrance and looked at the mob, a hand already on the button that would lock the door. Kureno began to shake his head wildly to signal the clerk he should not do that.

5 meters: The clerk was still hesitating, which was something Kureno was grateful for. But then the clerks face just seemed to change: A face of determination. The decision has been made.

And he pressed it! He locked the door in the last possible moment, forcing Kureno to pull up if only to avoid crashing into the closed store entrance. Rushing up the building wall on his flying board, Kureno had a fit.

'What is wrong with him?!'

Right now he didn't care for the completely logical reason of the clerk to save his store from an onslaught of little kids. Oh no. Now was the happy go lucky mood and time of empathy over.

he had no more time left; The time window for the operation was closed. He has failed to get this damn videogame. Suddenly he didn't feel like doing anything for the whole day anymore.

Luckily for him, the little children were not able to follow him to the top of the building. Why he didn't think of that before, Kureno didn't know.

But he had already agreed to the meeting. So he took all of his will, a husk of what it has been previously, and maneuvered towards Joseph's with his head hanging low. The day couldn't get any worse at this point.

When he arrived at joseph's, Eko was already waiting, her shoulder long ice-blue hair stuck up to a bun: She had this weird hobby to change her hair style every day in the week. On Mondays, it was hanging down loosely, on Tuesdays she had it into a high ponytail, Wednesdays she would change it into a low pony tail, Thursdays were for her the time for a bun, Friday would be the day of short twin tails, on Saturday and Sunday braided into one or two short braids respectively.

Why she did it, he didn't know. Kureno also wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer: Eko was after all a person where the wrong question could turn out to be a bottomless pit filled with ridicule and smart-ass remarks.

Eko sat in an lazy manner in her chair, lots and lots of cleared glasses of what has most likely been filled with ice cream in front of her. Yeah, she had a complete and utter sweet tooth. He had once witnessed Eko eating around a pound of java chip chocolate cookies without a problem. She didn't even gain weight in the wrong places, causing a multitude of other girls to bombard her with envious, downright jealous stares; Not that she cared.

"You know, you look fantastic!", Eko's sarcastic greeting didn't wait and was slapped right into Kureno's face. But even though she already unloaded her first round, she didn't end there.

"And it's rude to let a lady wait, you know?!"

"You say lady but all I see is a bottomless glutton."

*PLOP*

Promptly a spoon was send into his face, hitting hard enough to leave a red mark on it. But Kureno didn't react; In the moment, he just didn't care. A fact Eko was becoming aware of.

Trying to be a good friend, she poked him into telling her why exactly he was in such a mood. Literally. Repeatedly. With a different spoon, her personal one; Yes, ladies and gentleman, Eko was a master of the completely useless 'eating two sundaes at the same time'-technique. And just for that, she always had a spoon on her person because here in this restaurant you wouldn't get two of them. Or 'for cases of emergency' as she would word it: What this cases of emergencies were where you would require a spoon of all things, Kureno didn't know.

So, giving in to the constant physical prodding and stabbing, he sat down in front of her and began to tell the tale of how exactly he ended up like that.

*Flashback*

Kureno was walking down the street, having finished half of the way, when he got spotted the first time by the little esper girl who literally emerged from an alley ten feet in front of him. Both froze where they stood and for a short while simply stared at each other. After what appeared to be an eternity, the girl's mouth opened and what could only be a shout of the same magnitude from an sirens emerged.

"I'VE FOUND THE MAGICIAN!"

That was the beginning of the chase. A long and bloody chase through half of Academy City, or at least it felt like that; How far exactly the hunt went, Kureno had no clue. He had lost track of time and distance.

The girl ran after him, he who vanished on top of an flying, orange glowing board in a trail of whirled up dust. Since she could not compete physically, she did the only thing for her possible: Decreasing the friction coefficient of the soles of her shoes when she was running after him downhill, she began gliding towards her target at an faster and faster becoming pace since she wasn't losing any momentum but was building it up instead.

All the while, Kureno tried his best to evade her since she was moving at a faster pace now. She would continue to close in and try to grab him, he would continue to dodge or roll out of the way if she did and the whole process would repeat itself.

But it didn't end here: When he looked back again after 2 minutes of running he saw 5 instead of the 1 previous pursuer. From this point on it became worse and worse: Each time he turned around more and more children were hunting him. First 5, then 10, followed by 20, hunted by 50, pursued by 80!

'SERIOUSLY, WHAT'S UP WITH THESE KIDS! IT'S A HORDE! IT'S A GODDAMN HORDE! IF I STOP NOW, I DIE! I WILL SERIOUSLY DIE!'

It got harder and harder from this point on; Seeing their ally using her ability actively to try to catch him, they decided to take that as an example and followed suit swiftly. It was not fun for Kureno, since stopping would lead inevitably, as mentioned above, to getting stomped over and he needed to dodge all kind of different things whilst somehow navigating towards his destination. Being thrown at him were for example lighter-sized fireballs, blobs of water, pebbles and even a rubbish bin was thrown at him at some point.

The whole scene was like out of a manga or anime.

*Flashback end*

Eko was laughing her ass off, slamming her hand repeatedly on the table. The glasses even lifted off for a short amount of time due to the impacts. It reached its climax when she fell from her chair and laid on the ground rolling and laughing.

Each second of hearing the laughter was like a stab right into his soul.

'Why does she need to gain so much entertainment from the suffering of others?', with this thought Kureno became an official hypocrite; He, too, had laughed his ass off on multiple occasions where someone suffered from misfortune, even when it happened to Eko. Sometimes fate is an asshole.

The laughter continued for another minute in which she found it considerably harder and harder to breathe.

"Are you done?", Kureno's face was at this point pressed against the table, his arms hanging limply down. Eko, trying to get her breath back and to stop her laughter, which she was failing in spectacular for another minute or so, fought herself upright and onto her chair. Her lilac eyes literally sparkled from the glee showed in them.

"Y-Ye-Yeah, now I'm done.", she wiped tears out of her eyes and looked with the biggest amount of mirth a human could possibly get at him. The teasing hasn't come to an end, oh no; It was just the beginning.

"You're really suffering from misfortune today aren't you? Your little event could even compete with Touma-kun's 'normalcy', wouldn't you agree?"

Touma, who was currently somewhere in Baggage City, felt... something. It remembered him of hope, but he didn't know why exactly he felt like that or even if it was hope at all; He wasn't in contact with it often enough to discern the feeling called hope completely. Just one thing Kamijou Touma knew for sure: It felt good.

Kureno simply had one response and one response only:

"Such Misfortune..."

"Stop it; You're stealing a trend mark of another person through saying that. That's not nice."

What was up with him Today? The felling was sharing it's place with another one now: This one felt as if a part of him, a part of Kaijou Touma was ripped out and left only emptiness to remain.

Was he slowly losing what made him special? Was he slowly losing what made him Kamijou Touma? What made him unique?

"And stop sulking already.", Eko said. Seeing that it had no effect she sighed before continuing with operation 'cheering Kureno up'.

"Seriously, stop. You are not so bad, something like that can happen to everyone; The place for 'unluckiest person of the world' is still reserved for Kamijou Touma."

All the hope Touma previously thought welling up inside of him got crushed; Like a heavy, gloomy thing that fell down on top of him, weighing and pushing him completely down, both mentally as well as physically, as well as destroying the hope with a loud crash and boom.

The only thing left for him was to shout into the sky.

"Such misfortune!"

"Let's just stop talking about it, okay?"

"As you wish, my master.", Eko did a mock bow whilst sitting, smirking right in his face.

This girl was, despite her nice appearance, a devious little bugger. Which fitted perfectly since she was so short: only being 148cm tall, she often made the impression of an 'innocent' girl. A grave mistake: Eko had besides her obvious troll-genes a vicious and sadistic streak, falling short of only the #1 or #2. Barely.

"If only; I could order you to stop running your mouth."

"Believe me; If that would be the case, I could and would find other ways to tease you.", she retorted, twirling her spoon around her fingers. It became so fast the spoon became a blur. And indeed, he believed her that; She was creative as well as quick-witted in the worst possible way.

"Yeah, yeah; I get it; Forever I will be the one losing the arguments between us.", Kureno admitted defeat, having at least cheered up by that whole trash talking. Being in a depression was not really on the top or even close to his 'top ten most favorite'-list. Not that he believed it was on anyone's 'top ten most favorite'-list either.

"Amen to that."

" But to important matters: What did you call me for?", Kureno asked the one question that haunted him since the call. There were a handful of scenarios he could think of, most of them not really rosy ones. This question made Eko sober up.

"We have a new situation; A new client, to be specific."

"Give me the specifics of the job."

"Bodyguard duty for an important esper, female; Ability is the usage of dark energy dubbed as 'dark channel' and an very important object to research. The esper's rating is Lv4, above average.", Eko read out loud from her PDA. I was one of those new and extremely costly ones you: basically a flick knife-sized pad that had an flexible, transparent display in it; To use it, you needed to pull both hard case-parts apart to roll out the display which would have then the size of an medium tablet display.

"That sounds... surprisingly normal: Why did you make such a fuss about it?", Kureno asked her, having raised an eye brow which showed his surprise as well as his disbelieve. That was a fairly normal job for them. So why did she sound overly serious about this job? Normally, it was him who was overly serious and she was the joking one.

"Because of the client: The one who wants to hire us is the Kihara family."

Silence; That was what surrounded them by the mentioning of their name; Kureno made it an principle never to take a job from a Kihara. They were, as his sister worded it so wonderfully, the 'scum of Academy City'.

They already turned down many, many job offers send by them, ranging from guarding an unethical facility to destroying a with the Kihara family competing lab. Of course, this group of mad scientists tried to hire them through different channels and under different names, but thanks to their notorious background checks of their clients, Kureno and co knew who exactly their client was; Never once they accepted these kinds of jobs.

"...Did you already ask the others?", Kureno finally broke the silence, a repressed but potent emotion beginning to show in his eyes; The orange of his eyes seemed to shine slightly in a threatening way.

"Jep. They wanted to let you decide, being the leader of our little group of misfits and all that.", Eko answered, all the while ordering an lemon ice tea. Even though she looked rather comfortable and relaxed, Kureno knew: She was anything but. Her right hand clenching the spoon showed that.

But there was one thing that stopped Kureno from downright declining: What will happen with this esper if she stayed with the Kihara family? Dissection, human experimentation, drugs, anything one could possible think of and more that could be linked to a mad scientist.

Sighing, he made the decision; They would take on this job, but with their own terms in it. If the family of mad scientists would accept these terms or not, it didn't matter; When push would came to shove, a change of the type of operation could and would take place.

Kureno stood up, pressing his hands against the tabletop. Eko watched him with a serious as well as curious face at first, but when she saw the slight smirk forming on the boy's face Eko couldn't help but grin back.

"Eko, call the others; Tell them that CASTLE has a new job."

And this was a revelation most of you did not see coming, right? Right? I thought so!

With that we also start into the next arc, this time following the little brother. Now, for the "why" question some of you have, let's just say: You will see...

Now, to somehow make things more interesting for, well, mostly me, I have a little quiz for you: What exactly is Kurokami Kureno's ability? The person who can answer me this question correctly will get an imaginary cookie with an astonishing caloric value of zero! Looking forward to your guesses.

And it's kind of sad that I don't have anything else to say at this point besides hope for reviews and/or whatever else you want to write/publish/send or whatever the correct term would be.

With that, I'm out! Bye!