Twist of Fate

Disclaimer: I do not own a certain magical index, it's characters or it's elements.

As always special thanks to my beta Sargent Crash.

Chapter 29: For The Reward

So people wanted Touma dead. Well, more than usual. And these were hired killers. Some were organizations from the dark side of the city armed with advanced technology and esper powers. Some were magicians that were wary Touma's right hand. Then there were just people with guns.

It certainly wasn't going to be a good day for Touma.

"What?" Touma yelled from his room. "Such Misfortune."

Index was by his side with Sphynx riding on her head. Index was oblivious of the danger around Touma at the moment and oddly enough the cat sensed the danger more than either of them.

"Can I continue?" The frog faced doctor asked Touma.

"But-" Touma pointed to a sheet of paper in his hands.

"Yes, I understand but me finish and you can go on cursing your fate."

Touma pouted and let the doctor continue.

In another part of the city assassins were sneaking in.

In another part of the city two girls sat at a table in an empty restaurant. Those girls were Misaki and Seria.

Misaki let out a yawn covering it with her mouth. "Did we really have to wake up this early?"

"Yes, we did." Seria told her flatly with slight irritation in her voice due to not being a morning person.

It had to be this way, they could be in public but there still wouldn't be that many people around.

Seria sipped from her warm coffee while Misaki sipped on her hot chocolate.

Without a word a young woman sat down across from them. She was the one that contacted them.

"Shinobu Nunotaba." Seria coldly stated her name.

"Shokuhou. Kumokawa." Shinobu returned the sentiment.

"Why did you want to see us?" Misaki said tiredly.

"What's wrong with Touma Kamijou?"

That silenced both girls.

"Whatever do you mean?" Misaki said slowly reaching for one of her remotes.

"I'm a prodigy in biopsychology, did you really I wouldn't notice? When I first saw him there was a look in the eyes. I ignored it for the moment but then I spoke to him a few more times."

"A look? Is that what you wanted to talk about?" Seria tried to wave her off.

"He lost his memory, didn't he? How much?"

"Wh-"

"Don't lie to me. There are simple tale tell signs, a contraction in the iris when a person remembers something. Touma eye's failed to that when he saw me. I am aware that we didn't know each other for a long time but I don't think he'd forget me. Even if he simply forgot he could have politely said he had forgotten. He seemed different about knowing me even though every subtle physical sign said otherwise. Now taking into account Kamijou's variation of a martyr complex and his own impressive misfortune when it come to getting hurt it leads me to one thing. Something happened and his brain was damaged and he doesn't want to tell anyone to spare their feelings. Am I close?"

Misaki and Seria remained silent.

Considering how many doctors spend time around Touma it was a little surprising they didn't expect someone figuring that out.

"I can tell you're both close to him and as you two have known him for years you'd notice if he lost his memories. So that means you're helping him. I want to help too."

Misaki and Seria slowly traded glances.

At the borders of Academy City, Neccecarius had already eliminated some magicians who wanted the reward for Touma's day had only just begun and they had captured 30. As good as they were some magicians managed to slip into the walls of the city. There weren't many places a magician could slip in but magicians were thought up as those who could do the there was the worry about the city's own dark side and who would crawl from it for Touma. Tsuchimikado left an anonymous tip to Anti-Skill that some terrorist were making plans.

In an apartment somewhere in the city ITEM gathered.

"Wow! That is a super lot of money!" Kinuhata pointed out looking at a sheet.

Mugino explained the situation, "It's going out to everyone in the dark side. No one is asking for anyone specifically just kill this guy and just provide proof and get paid." Mugino told them off handily. " Her finger tapped on the picture.

"Kamijou!" Hamazura shouted as he saw the picture.

"Yeah, that odd friend of yours." Mugino admitted. "What the hell did he do that has someone put this much money on him? Did he knock up someone's daughter?"

"…"Hamazura paused for a moment.

"Did he?" Frenda asked playing with a stuffed animal.

"….No?" Hamazura wasn't a hundred percent sure.

"Anyway, do you want to take it?" Mugino asked to no on in particular. "He is your friend."

"I'm not going to kill him for money!" He looked at the amount offered. "…no, not even a lot of money."

"Fine." Mugino said without a care. "We don't have to deal with him or that freaky hand of his."

Something about his hand freaked Mugino out in ways she didn't understand. Something about Touma just didn't understand, not only did his right hand somehow negated her power once but there was a presences around him, something she could only describe as terrible. It wasn't around him all the time but Mugino took notice of it showing up enough. Then there was the blood splatter and no matter how much she thought about it didn't make sense. She thought about the time they tracked him down and the blood wasn't on his arm, not like it was cleaned but like it had never gotten covered in blood despite everything else getting blood on it. The boy just didn't make sense.

Hamazura took out his phone. "I have to tell him people are trying to kill him."

Mugino swept the thought away as Hamazura failed to make contact.

As it turned out Touma had his phone with him but Index had neglected to bring his charger for this hospital stay. His phone ran out of battery so he would not be getting any calls today.

Hamazura assumed something happened, "I'm going to find him and tell him."

"Okay, don't take all day." Mugino told him.

"Be careful." Takitsubo added in her usual manner.

With that Hamazura ran out of the room as he grabbed his phone to make another phone call.

There was certainly something happening and no one was certain of anything due to the recent events in the city. All the information was spreading across by whispers and Tsuchimikado was doing his best to keep the whispers down but even so he needed them to track down people. Still he found it like trying to capture water with his hands, the more he tried the more water escaped through his fingers. So he continued onward into the darkness of the city.

Now there are many ways to kill someone and many ways to go about an assassination. Most people would find a pattern and exploit it. And when researching Touma they find he spend a great deal of time in the hospital. There were theories as why he was there. Some thought that he got into a lot of fights and needed medical aid. Some people thought he had some long lasting medical condition that needed aid.

Either way someone stepped forwards and took the chance to attack Touma when they heard he recently entered it. They even found Touma was in his own room on a floor that most patients didn't know off. Most of the time the floor was used only by medical staff to run tests and specialized patients. Touma and the Sisters were the only patients that fell to that category.

One so called assassin armed with knives and guns snuck into the floor being careful no to let anyone see him. It was morning and the floor seemed empty as everyone was busy with patients and test. The man however was not easily missed, he was towering and the huge coat filled with weapons was not easily hidden. If anyone spotted him he planned to do away of them.

But he didn't imagine that would happen.

"Oh, hello." The man found himself standing in front of a man with a face just like a frog. "Guessing by your clothes that must be looking for Kamijou's room. First a girl with a huge sword who wore a maid outfit once and now you." The doctor sighed. "His room is down the hall and towards the right. Just look for the signs." With that he just walked away without a second though.

The assassin chose to ignore that and walk down the hall. He soon found a plaque with not only a picture of Touma Kamijou but that had the words 'Patient of the Month' on top of it. As he continued to walk down he found a sign with directions to various room including one that stated Touma Kamijou's room. In the end he found the room with a gold plague that stated that it was Touma Kamijou's room.

The whole situation seemed ridiculous but there it was. He opened up the door and held out his gun ready to shot down the young man on sight but found that it was empty. He took a step inside and looked around.

"Are you looking for Kamijou?" The assassin was surprised to find a man in a white coat speaking to him.

The man looked almost empty if his eyes were any indication. He was calm and at ease.

He said to him, "He left this morning, something seemed to come up. I take it you are one of the many assassins after his life correct? I can't say I'm rooting for you but I would not have stopped you if you planned on killing someone in this hospital."

The assassin didn't understand anything about magic or esper powers so he was surprised when the windows opened by themselves. He certainly didn't understand when an invisible force tossed him out the window. And he certainly didn't understand anything when he hit the ground.

"Oh, so sorry. It looks like you're dead." The assassin looked up to find a man with a devilish smirk and a floppy top hat. "I'm your reaper."

He was once the magician known as Bersi and he closed the window. With a little magic he pushed the man out the hospital. He was sure report would be covered up but he didn't care that a killer was himself killed.

He had been doing work for the hospital when he came upon the man. Maybe it was his own death but he could somehow tell that a reaper was collecting the man's soul. He had a lot to think about. Those goggles he made were one of those things. He was listing in the battle with Satoru and Touma through the goggles. His cousin seemed bordering on madness but his last words seemed almost sane. He worried what his cousin saw and why any Kihara would sound so religious and so keen on fate. Something troubled him in ways he couldn't understand.

There were other killers who witnessed that and they made plans not to attack the hospital.

That was when Tsuchimikado caught up to them. He figured out their plan. He called Kanzaki, "Nee-chin, we have trouble. The hospital is a bust. The other assassins figured the same thing. They'll go the next place that Kamijou will be at. His home. Take everyone you can and go there. The vacation is wrapping up so I don't think many people will be there. I will go look for Kamijou and stop him from going home, I'm sure Index is with him. I'll look for them you just get there."

He hung up the phone he had already called Maika and told her to stay away from his dorm and he raced into the streets to look for Kamijou and Index. He didn't know what but he sensed something powerful entering the city.

At that moment at the city gate a member of Anti-Skill figured out just that. His head hurt and so did the rest of his body as laid on the ground. He wasn't seriously hurt but he wasn't getting up any time soon. He didn't know what happened, was it an esper? Was it the terrorist they heard might attack? He began to lose his consciousness as he noted the outline of a women slowly walking away. Around them it looked like a massive explosion had gone off and the gate had been torn apart and the road itself was little more than ruins.

Itsuwa, Kanzaki, Stiyl and the rest of the remix church raced to the apartment and hoped that Touma wasn't at his home.

Himegami knocked on Awaki's door, she hadn't seen her for a while and she and Komoe were worried so Deep Blood came to check on her. "Musujime, come on let's talk."

After a moment of silence the door opened up and the teleporter stood at the door frame. She was a mess. Her hair was wild and unkempt her and her eyes were blood shot as if she hadn't slept in days.

"Uh, let's get something to eat and we can talk." Himegami pulled the other esper out.

It wasn't all that hard as she hadn't had a good nights sleep in days and had barely eaten. She had been having panic attacks about the wings and all that power. To put it mildly she had severe issues with that power and the recent power boost was not good with her. Part of her panicked that her power would only bring pain if not to her to others. She would have tried to keep Himegami away if she had been thinking.

Harumi Kiyama was busy in the lab that the hospital files that Anti-Skill managed to collect from the man that copied her Level Upper had been given to her. It took her a long time to look through them as Kihara was either a genius or madman. Satoru had his entire files in an old dialect of Hebrew. It was taking her more time to translate than to look through.

"Project Babylon." Harumi said to herself. "Pretentious name."

She decided to take a break as she closed the file. She stared at Satoru's file with all the Level Upper data that was titled MGG. A quick translation told her that it meant from Babylon alluding to name Satoru gave the project.

Near Touma's dorm the remix church were experts in hiding in plain sight and they quickly scattered about the area looking for anyone who wanted to harm Touma. Stiyl had already set up his runes and they had already taken every precaution. The trouble with that is when Touma is involved expect everything to go wrong.

It was pretty empty until a blond haired young man walked in. "Boss! Are you here!?" He raced towards Touma's room.

The magicians panicked, would he be used as bait to draw in Touma?

"Hamazura!" The other side of the street Touma called out to his friend.

Everything went downhill from that point. The magicians had been surprised by Touma suddenly showing up right when they were distracted by Hamazura. they weren't prepared as the assassins started their attacks.

A blast of energy cut through the air striking Touma's right hand which negated the would-be fatal attack.

"What?" Touma asked.

Hell fell upon the area as gun fire, magic spells and espers power rained down on him along with a few arrows.

"Ah!" Both Touma and Hamazura started to run around like headless chickens trying to evade the attacks. Touma managed to cancel out a few of them but he wasn't going to try as some of them were bullets.

Soon the fiery form of Innocentius roared as it hovered over the level zeroes protecting them from the attacks.

"What the hell you idiots?!" Stiyl walked up to them.

Hamazura and Touma held onto one another in fear. "What?"

"Where's Index?" Kanzaki followed along with Itsuwa as the others tried to flank the assassins.

"We ran into Maika and I thought Index would get bored when I ran my errands. She ended up going off with Maika." Touma told them.

Explosion ripped through the air as the Magicians fought the various assassins. Though Innocentius was blocking the attacks they didn't know how long that would work.

"Fine, let's get you out of here before your bad luck get you shot in the head." Stiyl told him. "I planned ahead and we have someone waiting to drive you away. Itsuwa you go with him to make sure they don't die."

The saint wanted to be the only one to accompany the unfortunate boy but she knew her skills were better used defeating the immediate threat.

"First we have to do something to distract the them-"

The fighting had irrupted to the street but a blast of green light ripped through the street forcing many of the combatants to pull away from each other.

On the end of the street where Hamazura came from. Standing there were the rest of ITEM and Mugino looked ready to kill other people or possibly Hamazura.

"I think that's our cue to run." Hamazura admitted.

His phone rang.

"Hello?"

"HAMAZURA!" Mugino's voice rang out as did someone screaming in pain. "We thought you'd do something stupid and we were right!"

Hamazura didn't dare look towards the direction of the angry level five.

"What the hell have you gotten into now?"

"I'll explain it later." Hamazura cowarded. "We need some covering fire to get out of here."

"Fine! But you're going to pay for it." Mugino growled.

Soon explosions were heard. "That would be Frenda."

"I'm sorry." Touma told him, he felt he got him into trouble and it wasn't going to end well for him.

ITEM was basically attacking everyone around them and lucky for the remix church they knew how to flee and hide.

A lot of the people out for Touma's bounty started to reconsider the entire thing if these were the people who were around him.

Touma, Hamazura and Itsuwa planned to move out to where Stiyl informed them of a waiting car when they spotted something.

A young woman walked slowly towards them ignoring the fighting and explosions. She wore long black stockings, a dark blue skirt, a black top with long black and white fingerless gloves. Her hair was black and choppy and her eyes were dull blue. Her skin was sickly pale.

The woman had a presence, a powerful one that started to get the attention of some of the assassins who had started to fight amongst themselves and ITEM.

"Imagine Breaker." The woman called out to Touma. She never raised her voice but yet her voice crossed the battlefield.

Her finger tips glowed and cut the air with her and suddenly Innocentius vanished and all the runes burned up.

Every magic user there felt a lot of mana and those who had no idea of magic just felt power. The air trembled with power.

"That's magic, right?" Touma asked them. "I didn't see her use any item or hear any chant or spell."

"It can't be." Kanzaki actually seemed scared. "Ah, she's not using any relic because she doesn't need it. She's using proto-magic, it doesn't need any thing like that. It's the oldest and most basic form of magic but it's also fairly useless. It relies of simple movements, simple words,rituals and phrases but they can't capture enough mana to do much. She's infusing them with enough mana that would taken several people to gather. She's over power them to make them actually do something."

Basically she was using up a whole lot of magic mojo to super size the simple spell craft. There was also the part that to make it more complex she was focusing her mana to form shapes, that invisible to others, could give that magic a more proper spell characteristics. Overall that still took a lot more mana and sheer focus than any of the magicians could think of mustering.

Still most came up with the same impossible answer to who that woman was. Something they really wished she wasn't.

One man, one of the assassins, dressed in warrior like outfit that you'd expect to see from ancient Greek time. You could see him traveling besides Hercules, dressed in a well worn brown leathers and metal chest plate along with the furs, whips and gloves. He held out a silver spear and mustering all his courage he spoke up. "Never fear, Simon Belmont is here. Slayer of monsters and evil in every form. The Power of Christ is infused in my spear."

He held out shining silver spear its tip glowing with power and held tightly in his hand as he prepared to launch it at the woman.

The woman didn't flinch,her face showed no sign of fear or any other emotion expect her perpetual melancholy bored face. She glanced at the man out of the corner of her eyes and as he prepared to launch his pear she snapped her fingers.

A scream filled the air and Simon caught on fire, or more accordantly put started to burn from the inside. The blue flames ripped through him in instant consuming him quickly that his skin and flesh melted and soon all that was left turned to ash.

Touma for all his merit tried to run to him in the hopes of saving him but he only got three steps before the man was nothing more than ash.

Mugino, Stiyl and the assassins had all killed people and calling that a cold efficient murder would have been putting it lightly. That was like taking a walk and stepping on an ant. She didn't care about the man more than someone would care for a random insect. Like a zebra spotted by a lion everyone there felt the same instinct, to run and to run as fast as possible.

The assassins gave up on the bounty and ran hopping to leave the city and that woman behind them to never see either again.

Kanzaki jumped in front of Touma blocking from the woman. She raised her sword ready to use it.

"Kamijou, run." Kanzaki told him as she didn't bother trying to hide the fear in her voice.

The magicians that stayed all looked at the woman with fear.

"What is she?" Hamazura managed to ask.

It took a moment for Stiyls to speak, "A thing that every magicians fears, a real life vampire."

Author's Notes: What up a while since July is a busy month for me and I got caught up in the Death the Kid week with writing drabbles for each day. As always thanks to Sargent Crash for being my beta. As always please leave a review telling me what you think of this chapter, what you liked and what worked and what didn't. Don't worry Othinus will show up next chapter.

Anyway, as for more news this story has gotten a page on tv trope. You can get to it from the fan fiction recommendation page about A Certain Index or just goggle 'tv trope twist of fate fanfic certain index' since that what I did when people told me. Anyway thanks and check that out add tropes if you want and again thanks.