Disclaimer : I don't own Naruto or Toaru Kagaku no Railgun/Toaru Majutsu no Index
The Trinity of Tokiwadai
Chapter Sixty One: Arabian Nightmare - Necromantic Ordeal
Beta:
Kuroko figuratively stumbled out of the upper dimensions lugging along Onee-sama and Alice-san, materializing a short distance away from the sealed entrance to the Colony in District 23. The place didn't look like the site of a major HAZMAT breach. Instead, it looked like a simple construction site with plastic netting and cheap metal sheet walls surrounding the place with the occasional piece of construction material scattered all around it.
"Sorry about the bad targeting, Onee-sama." Kuroko apologized breathlessly as the three of them walked the remaining distance to the Colony entrance. "But we were pushing close to my mass limit."
"Are you saying I'm overweight!?" The blonde murderer said, shooting her a scandalized glare.
"No she wasn't." Onee-sama jumped in to defend Kuroko, which made the Teleporter smile. "Her upper limit for total weight when teleporting is 130.7 kilograms which is pretty close to our combined weight. It's alright for a single teleport but repeated ones like we did to get here? It takes a toll on Kuroko, that's all."
The murderer frowned but nodded. Not that Kuroko cared what she thought about her.
She was about to tell her that when a throaty moan caught their attention and they turned around to see a mob of zombified paramilitaries shambling towards them.
"T-Those are the security personnel guarding the place!" The blonde said, gasping out in horror.
Kuroko paled.
"W-Why would anyone do this to someone?" She said in a horrified whisper.
Onee-sama, the blessedly amazing girl she was, however wasn't crippled by fear like the rest of them were and instead promptly blasted a half dozen of the zombies to ash with an overpowered static bolt.
"Set your feelings aside!" Onee-sama urged. "We have a genocidal necromancer to defeat!"
Kuroko could only look at Onee-sama in shocked awe. How could she manage to work through the terror fighting a zombie horde inspired so easily!?
"Don't look at me like that!" Onee-sama said with a frown. "I just saw worse than this down in the Colony."
Kuroko winced at the remainder that this wasn't the first time that Onee-sama had faced an undead apocalypse.
"If it helps," Onee-sama continued as she cremated another group of the zombies. "Don't think of them as people or former people, I guess. Just think of these things as puppets. Trust me, it helps."
Despite her own feelings for the other girl, Kuroko couldn't resist shooting Alice-san a disbelieving look at Onee-sama's advice. The other girl frowned but nodded hesitantly and not willing to be shown up by a murderer, she too nodded though just a little more hesitantly.
Which was why the Black Knight recovered faster. Drawing her pistol, she shot one of the zombies in the head. It unfortunately did not do much, just causing it to stagger and failing to put it down.
"Headshots don't work," Alice shouted as she instead kneecapped the zombie instead, causing it to fall to the ground reducing it to a slow crawl.
"What made you think it would, Murderer?" Kuroko shot back with a little of her standard bravado, as she teleported explosive nails into the joints of a half dozen zombies, blowing them to pieces.
"Kuroko!" Onee-sama shouted chidingly as she fried another dozen zombies with her electricity. "What did I tell you about not fighting among ourselves?"
"Hmph! Forgive me. It was a slip of the tongue."
Bullshit! Come on, try to at least be professional about this. Kuroko chided herself. It was easier said than done though. What Alice-san had done weighed heavily on her conscience in more ways than one.
Namikaze-san and Saten-san have done worse too. But they are some of my best friends, and they have reasons for being so murderous- Wait! Now isn't the time for this! Just focus on the mission, Kuroko!
The blonde Level 4 just rolled her eyes and instead used her gravity manipulating Esper ability to start hurtling random debris at the zombie horde. Some were crushed by heavy pieces of equipment, others were impaled and yet others' movements were impaired by the injuries the debris inflicted.
That's actually a good idea. Kuroko thought as she teleported next to a pile of metal pipes - Why they were there was beyond Kuroko. Were the authorities that determined to disguise the place as a construction site? But she ignored the enigma for now. - and started teleporting them into the zombies, impaling them.
"Onee-sama, shock them all!" Kurko shouted and the Level 5 shot her a thumbs up before calling down a powerful bolt of lightning which arced between the metal pipes that were impaling the zombies, scorching them back into death.
"I count sixty of them." That murderous foreign girl said as she did a survey of the battlefield. "You guys?"
She expected us to keep count of how many zombies we put down? Kuroko thought, shooting the girl a disbelieving look.
"I might have missed one or two, but yeah I think that's about right." Onee-sama said, causing Kuroko to shoot her a shocked look. "That's all of the place's security detail?"
"Yeah." The murderer said with a nod. "Why the hell would the Magician throw them all away like this in a single wave? Why not stagger them or something."
"He's a Magician," Onee-sama said with a shrug as she began walking inside the cordoned off area of the former Colony entrance. "They aren't usually smart enough for such strategic thinking."
"You'd know best," the blonde said with a shrug as she followed after Onee-sama.
"Yes Onee-sama would." Kuroko said, shooting the older girl a glare as she teleported to their side to rejoin them.
"Once more unto the breach," Kuroko heard Onee-sama say and she shot the [Railgun] a worried look.
"Onee-sama? Are you okay-"
"I'm fine!" Onee-sama insisted. "Let's just do this."
"Yeah, we can freak out or break down or whatever after we save the City." The blonde said, nodding approvingly.
Kuroko frowned, especially because she agreed with the murderer, but nodded. "Alright. Let's go defeat the Magician."
Both of the other girls nodded.
As they walked into the faux construction site, which was full of various construction material and equipment, Mikoto and the others found a dome made out of white plastic at the very centre.
"Is that-"
"That's a standard issue HAZMAT containment dome," Alice-san cutting Kuroko off as they advanced cautiously towards the dome's entrance. "That's gotta be the entrance to the Colony. The Magician is probably inside."
"Weren't you here last time?" Mikoto asked the blonde curiously. "You're not sure that's the Colony's entrance?"
She did. It's not like the entrance had moved.
"Yes, but unlike your EM sense which allows you to orientate yourself using the magnetic poles, I'm a normal person and have to rely on landmarks and those basically all got removed when they set up this containment zone."
"No sign of the Magician." Kuroko said suddenly. "Or his Jinn. That is odd. Very odd."
"Prepare for a trap? Mikoto asked.
"Definitely," Alice-san agreed.
"H-Help me!" A feminine voice called out as a beautiful woman with tanned skin and dressed in a skirt suit ran out of the dome towards them. "He's going to kill us al-"
She never finished the sentence before Alice-san got a shot off.
Kuroko gasped but Mikoto followed up the gunshot with a lightning bolt of her own.
The woman evaded both attacks though, leaping out of the way in a display of acrobatics worthy of an Olympics gymnast.
"How did you know?" The woman asked as she stood from the crouch her evasions had left her in.
"We counted the number of zombies we took out." Alice-san said, as she tossed some debris at the woman who just leapt between them like something straight out of an anime, dodging Mikoto's electric bolts too for good measure. "There weren't any survivors."
"And this is a restricted site." Mikoto added. "Visitors were logged. We checked before we even arrived. There weren't any."
"Which means you couldn't have been anything but either the Magician or his Jinn." Alice-san added, as she fired a supercharged bullet that just barely missed the creature who ducked away at the last second. "And since he's confirmed to be male-"
"You're the Jinn." Kuroko concluded with her eyes wide in realization as she teleported right behind the woman and sent her flying with a kick.
"Argh!" The creature said as she tumbled along the ground from the blow.
Mikoto and Alice-san both tried to hit it with their respective abilities but the damned agile thing leapt to its feet faster than they could bring their firepower to bear and continued its acrobatic evasions.
"You girls are too smart for your own good." The Jinn said as she dodged a punch from Kuroko and ignored the damage the nails the Teleporter managed to teleport into her body caused. "But let's see how smart you are when you're not thinking straight! Cause Fear!"
In response to what must've been the Jinn's spell, Mikoto sensed a chemical imbalance in her nervous system as a host of hormones and other chemicals associated with a fear response suddenly flooded her system. It was very similar to how [Mental Out]'s hydrokinetic based telepathy worked and just like with how she dealt with her fellow Level 5's power, Mikoto just used her Electromastery to circumvent the electrical signals that her altered brain chemistry would have induced thus negating their effect.
Sadly Kuroko had no counter to this and she immediately crumpled into a fetal position and began shivering fearfully. In contrast, and to Mikoto's surprise, she heard a pneumatic hiss from the collar of Alice-san's stylish combat uniform and where seconds earlier she'd been on her way to emulating Kuroko, she now suddenly looked fine.
"Stimulant autoinjector," she explained as she shook her head. "Standard issue part of our Black Knights combat uniforms."
Mikoto could only nod in shock. Was Zero prepared for everything!? What a paranoid pretty boy...
Of course, the Jinn wasn't idle while they had been fighting off the effects of her spell but neither had Mikoto and she'd called down a couple lightning bolts to keep the blasted thing distracted which had succeeded to keep it off them.
Though her distracted attack did give the thing enough of a breathing room to cast a spell on itself, Inflict Wounds if Mikoto heard correctly, that healed its injuries from Kuroko's nails. The things literally popping out of her flesh with discomforting squishy sounds.
"Can you help the Teleporter?" Alice-san asked as she picked up where she'd left off and hurled a storm of random debris at the Jinn.
"No," Mikoto said with a shake of her head. "The spell is like [Mental Out]. I can counter that when it's used on me, but not when it's used on others."
"Then we're gonna have to think of a new way to get up close and personal with that Jinn. 'Cos ranged attacks are doing squat all."
"You have any of those 'charges' of yours left? You could use superspeed to get close?"
"I'm out. Besides, even with one I'm nowhere fast enough to catch that." Alice-san said as she gestured irritably at the Jinn which had evaded yet another of Mikoto's lightning bolts.
"Yeah," Mikoto allowed. Evading lightning was no joke. Even if their path was telegraphed by the building charge ahead of time, moving out of the way before it struck required insane speed and agility even if you noticed the tell which was in itself very, very difficult.
"Why isn't it attacking though."
"It's just buying time," Alice-san said with a frown. "If it can keep us distracted without risking itself by going on the attack then why not?"
"Right, let's fix that." Mikoto said darkly as electric arcs danced around her as her Electromastery picked up the iron sand all around the construction site and brought them together into one huge mass.
Behind her, the iron sand collected into a single rapidly spinning tower. One that grew ever taller as more and more material was fed into it even as Mikoto stared right into the Jinn's eyes.
The Jinn just looked a bit shellshocked at the sight.
"Die." Mikoto commanded as she brought her hand down.
At her gesture, the tower of iron sand shot over the heads of Alice-san and herself and transformed into a tsunami that rushed with deadly force and accuracy at the shapeshifting magical creature.
The attractive Jinn tried to run, but it was a hopeless endeavor. It might have been fast and insanely agile, but her iron sand smothered everything in its path, including anywhere it could hide, so its agility was useless. And the wave was fast. Just a smidge faster than the monster but that was more than enough to catch it in its deadly embrace.
"W-What is this!?" The monster howled as the cocoon of ferrous particles around it began to vibrate, sawing at its body as if it was in a blender. It shredded its skin, leaving it a screeching bleeding mess.
"Your demise." Mikoto said grimly.
"Impure Shockwave Shield!" The Jinn shouted, unleashing a reddish-black wave of force that spread forth from its body and blasted the cocoon of iron sand apart.
"What in the name of Science is that?" Kuroko said, seemingly now free of the Jinn's spell which was a relief.
"Is that a hyena's head?" Alice-san said incredulously.
"Yeah," Mikoto nodded warily as the supernatural creature panted from exertion, its previous spell seemingly having been pretty draining, and staggered back to its feet. "That and a rotting corpse."
"I think I know why it has shapeshifting now." Kuroko said with a frown as she pulled a few nails out of her thigh holster and prepared to continue the fight. "Should we press the attack?"
Mikoto shook her head warily. "Let's see it's next move first. I dunno about you but I don't want to risk this turning out like a RPG and we get caught off guard now that the enemy has entered a new phase."
"This isn't a game, you know that right?" Alice-san said with a frown even as she followed Mikoto's lead and held back.
"Those tropes came from somewhere," Mikoto informed her. "And if what I've gathered about Magicians from Naru and Ruiko are right, a lot of tropes about magic in games have a basis in real magic."
"You're kidding me, right?"
"She's coming!" Kuroko shouted in lieu of an answer seconds before teleporting the blonde out of the way of a sickly green bolt of energy that the Jinn shot at them.
For her part, Mikoto just used her Electromastery to pull herself out of the way of the spell.
"So you three dodged my Death Coil, huh?" The beastial undead creature said, sounding annoyed even as it ignored both the nails and the bullet that Mikoto's allies put into her. "Well, let's how you evade something without a projectile component."
"Interrupt its casting!" Mikoto shouted as she sent a bolt of lightning at the thing, only for it to hiss out Wall of Skeleton and conjure a wall of fused human skeletons that blocked and grounded it.
Mikoto felt a spike of rage as she watched the writhing skeletons moan and reach out from the wall, as if still alive or remembering what life was.
"Bli-" The Jinn began before one of Kuroko's nails embedded itself in its throat and promptly exploded, ripping it open and nicely cutting off its chant.
"Nice shot!" Mikoto praised, even as Alice-san followed that up by shooting a supercharged bullet through the Jinn's left knee, blasting the limb apart.
The Jinn let out a tortured howl of what Mikoto hoped was agony as it collapsed to the ground.
"I hope you're ready to go back to your maker, monster." Mikoto peeled her lips into a snarl. "Let's end this."
Mikoto might have counted her chickens before they hatched a little though as her grandstanding gave the Jinn a chance to cast a spell. Apparently not all its spellcasting had to be vocalised. It caused spikes of sharpened bones, that looked disturbingly like oversized human ribs, to shoot out of the ground all over the faux construction site.
Once more forced into an electromagnetically assisted evasion, this time to avoid getting impaled, Mikoto cursed not going in for the kill when she had the chance.
"Death Coil! Inflict Wounds!" The undead creature shouted - apparently having repaired the damage done to its throat already - as it hit itself with its spells, further healing its injuries.
"Damn it's got regeneration." Kuroko said as she teleported to Mikoto's position with Alice-san. "I hate fighting regenerators."
"Preaching to the choir," Alice-san said with a wince. "They're rare, but dealing with them is always a pain."
Mikoto just nodded. Naru was really the only true regenerator she knew and the girl was an utter monster in a fight with that alone.
"Ray of enfeeblement!" The Jinn shouted, cupping its hands and shooting a beam out of it in a pose Mikoto was sure it'd ripped off from the Kamehameha.
"Dodge it!" Mikoto ordered as she leapt above the beam that the creature swept over the whole battlefield.
"What does the spell even do?!" Kuroko yelped as she teleported around the beam.
"I don't think we want to find out!" Mikoto chided her. "Just keep dodging!"
"Guess it's a Dragon Ball fan." Alice-san noted wryly as she dove behind a parked crane for cover and lying prone.
"Yeah," Mikoto said, frowning in disgust. Did this thing have no shame? Sullying the classic like this was unforgivable!
"Stop being a copycat already!" Kuroko shouted even as she teleported a pair of her explosive nails into the Jinn's wrists and blew them up.
"Fools! The Ray was a mere distraction." The Jinn shot back tauntingly. "Thousand Bone Lance!"
At her invocation what might have genuinely been a thousand lances of bone shot out of the ground at the three girls at high speed.
"Kuroko, help Alice-san!" Mikoto ordered even as she summoned a barrier of iron sand to shield herself whilst evading the macabre projectiles with more Electromaster assisted acrobatics.
"This has gone on long enough," Mikoto said with a growl as she called down a powerful lightning bolt from on high.
Seemingly caught by surprise that she could summon lightning and not just generate it, the Jinn made no move to evade the bolt as it arced down from the clouds. Mikoto was thus treated to a quite pleasing scene of the undead abomination spasming uncontrollably as thousands of volts of electricity coursed through its body.
It sadly was not enough to take it down though. Even if it left it falling to its knees and its skin charred and smoking. Not that it was immobilized for long before it somersaulted back to its feet, dodging a bullet from Alice-san in the process and turned tail to run back into the dome.
"Come on, that bastard is getting away!" Mikoto said, shaking bone fragments out of her hair as she started running after the Jinn.
"Onee-sama, I hate our Tuesdays." Kuroko sighed as she teleported next to her and started to run with her.
"Your Tuesdays are very weird." Alice-san commented as she jogged over to join them in following the Jinn.
"We know." The Tokiwadai girls replied dryly.
Reaching the dome, they looked upon the sealed tomb of those that had died due to Parasol's madness and standing over what looked like a massive concrete slab that had been placed over the entrance to the Colony was the Magician.
Unlike his two compatriots, this man made no effort to even pretend to look normal. While somewhat outlandish, the previous Magician's traditional Arabic garb and even the Princess' over the top harem outfit might've passed for cosplay but this guy's outfit wouldn't. Not to a trained eye at least. Why? Because the Magician was dressed in traditional medieval Arabian armor, which her electromagnetic sense told her was made of authentic metal, and armed with a staff that was covered in randomly moving symbols that glowed a sickly green.
"And so we meet, kafirs!" The magician declared in a rich baritone voice. "Prepare-!"
"Yeah, yeah, science is bad, we're all going to 'hell'. We get it, you necrophiliac." Mikoto scoffed. "Just grit your teeth, bastard. It's going to hurt."
"I told you Master," the Jinn, now annoyingly once more healed up, said with a shrug. "They have no respect for the norms. Vampiric Touch."
"So it would appear." The Magician agreed with a frown even as his familiar charged at the three girls its hands glowing with a disturbing purple aura. "Greater Lethal."
"Argh!" Kuroko cried out as the Magician finished his spell and collapsed to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
"Kuroko!" Mikoto cried out as sparks danced around her body in rage. "You… Yeah, no more holding back."
"Focus!" Alice-san said as she just barely managed to shoot out the Jinn's kneecaps before it could touch her with its enchanted hands. Considering the name of the spell it'd cast on them, Mikoto was sure such contact wouldn't be pretty.
"You should listen to your blonde friend, Level 5." The Magician said as he leveled his staff at her. "Ghost Lightning."
A bolt of sickly green not-lightning leapt from the tip of its staff and arced through the air towards Mikoto.
"Oh, I will. Now go down!" Mikoto roared as electricity coiled around her arm as she flung it forward, sending a massive bolt that overwhelmed the Magician's spell.
"How the hell do we put this thing down!?" Alice-san shouted as she danced away from the questing hands of the Jinn, shooting its knees out again. "No matter what I do to it, it just keeps getting back up."
"Your petty bullets will not be able to defeat a Ghulah like Aanisa, little girl." The Magician taunted even as it fired another green bolt of magical lightning at Mikoto that she countered with a bolt of her own.
"Alice-san! Switch!" Mikoto said, as she launched a bolt at the Jinn frying it. "Watch out for his lightning."
"Got that covered," the blonde said as her pistol barked and the man cursed, his right shoulder exploding and his staff dropping from his hands. "Just cremate that hyena woman for me."
"Working on it." Mikoto informed her as she hit the Jinn with another lightning bolt.
"You think this is enough to stop me?" The Magician declared cockily as she stamped his foot and a dozen lances of bone shot out from the ground underneath Alice-san, which she narrowly avoided by jumping back. "Naive."
"What is with you Magicians and bragging?" Mikoto growled as she fried the Jinn and simultaneously sent a bolt at the Magician. Splitting her attention was a mistake though as it slowed her technique down, it wasn't by more than a second at most, but it was enough for both of them to manage to conjure walls of fused skeletons to protect themselves.
"What part of 'switch' did you not get!?" Alice-san shouted back irritably as she ran at the Magician, firing her gun as she did. "Focus on the Jinn."
"I was trying to help!" Mikoto countered as she jumped out of the reach of the Jinn's still glowing hands. "And you! Die already!"
"You will be the one to die here Esper. You and all your abominable kind."
"You're the undead monster and you're calling us abominable?" Mikoto shot back as she used a tendril of iron sand to cut off the damned thing's hands, finally ending the spell that had enchanted them.
"You know this isn't enough to-" The Jinn began only for Mikoto to shut it up by literally flooding its mouth with iron sand, even as she used more of the same to wrap it in a cocoon that she made sure to cut constantly into its body to break its concentration and hopefully disrupt any nonverbal spellcasting it might attempt.
"There," Mikoto said with a sigh of relief. "Now to call that asshat Tsuchimikado to figure out how to dispel you. But first-"
"Misaka-san! I think we're in trouble!"
Mikoto spun in Alice-san's direction and her eyes widened as a green spectre tossed her away from the Magician who judging by his shattered kneecaps - What was with this girl and her obsession with targeting knees? - she'd almost had at her mercy.
"What? No, no!" Mikoto cried out as she witnessed more of the ghosts, each a sickly green, pouring out the seal of the Colony and gathering around the Magician even as she used an Electromastery enhanced leap to grab the blonde out of the air.
The Magician laughed like a Saturday morning cartoon villain as the ghosts circled around him like a spectral wall. Some of them split off and fearing the worst, Mikoto ran, Alice-san still in her arms, back to where Kuroko lay unconscious. Thankfully, she wasn't the ghosts' target. Instead, they'd gone after and freed the man's Jinn which they surrounded like they had its master.
"I-I think we better get out of here." Alice-san said warily as she pushed herself out of Mikoto's grip and hastily picked up Kuroko.
"But-"
"That thing is growing Misaka-san! It's liable to bring down the dome any minute." Alice-san said, pointing at the growing mass of green spirits that was coalescing around the Magician and his Jinn. "I don't want to be crushed."
"I can still stop this!" Mikoto declared defiantly, sending a powerful bolt of electricity at the ghostly mass. To her frustration, it didn't seem to do anything.
"Come on already!" Alice-san shouted from the entrance to the dome, which incidentally was indeed starting to collapse as the sickly green mass started to strain against its ceiling.
Mikoto and Alice-san had barely made it out of the dome when it collapsed behind them, a misshapen mass of conjoined sickly green spirits bursting out of its roof like some monster hatching from an egg. Which probably wasn't too far off from the truth, all things considered.
"Damnit!" Mikoto cursed.
In front of her eyes, the previously amorphous green mass began to finally take on a more defined shape as it transformed into a likeness of the Jinn's true form. A twenty foot tall, sickly green version of said abomination that is.
"Now WhAT wIlL yUo dO?!" He, no, it declared with a twisted and haunting voice that somehow echoed all around them.
"...Fuck you up, what else?" Mikoto boldly declared.
"FooL, dIE!" The giant said as it scratched at the air with its claws, sending bolts made of howling, tortured spirits flying at Mikoto.
"Whoa!" Mikoto leapt out of the way, using her magnetism to tether herself to a steel beam to dodge the attack.
"This is insane!" Alice-san said as she ran. "I'm taking the Teleporter to somewhere safe. You handle this Misaka-san!"
Too distracted with the fight, Mikoto just nodded. She doubted the blonde even saw it, but then again it was unlikely she needed to. She was fairly sure the older girl didn't expect a reply in the first place.
Which was good 'cos she really couldn't afford to be distracted at the moment. Not when the thing she was fighting had just opened its mouth to breathe out a stream of white flames at her. Oh, and there were the faces of tortured souls screaming out in agony amidst the flames too just to make the whole thing more disturbing.
"sTay StiLl!" It shuddered out with a raspy scream as it raised a hand in her direction. "RaY Of neGaTiVE eneRGy!"
The beam of caustic green and black energy blasted the stack of steel beams that Mikoto had been crouched atop, erasing everything organic that it touched. Thankfully, that did not include Mikoto who had jumped away just in time.
Fortunately, there weren't people in the area either. That would have just ended...anything living.
"StOP mOVinG! ObSIDiAn sWOrd!" It roared as a blade made of black light and as large and twice as tall as Mikoto's height materialized in its hands.
As it swung it down at her, Mikoto twisted to the side, using electricity to enhance her reaction speed and saw her reflection in the ominous blade as it streaked past her face at the last second.
Lashing out, the [Railgun] flipped a Dark Matter coin quickly and fired it. The railgun blasted a sizable chunk of its torso apart and gave her the chance to move back from the twisted freak a few meters whilst it summoned more spirits from the Colony to repair the damage.
"BLasTeD kAfiR!" It bellowed as a green light filled its maw and it breathed out a beam of what Mikoto guessed was raw necromantic power.
Mikoto was still dodging the breath attack when her phone suddenly rang.
Reaching out with her Electromastery mid leap, she checked the Caller ID and smiled as she promptly answered the call from Tsuchimikado.
Yo, Zappy-chan, betcha you need a way to dispel the Ghula right now, right? The bleached blonde asked in an incongruously cheerful tone, his voice playing in her mind thanks to her conversion via her ability of the electronic input from her phone directly to her brain's audio perception centres.
Let me guess, you're spying on me and know the situation. Mikoto shot back as she used magnetism to throw the heavy equipment littered all over the faux construction site at the magical giant, only for it to bat them out of the air like they were toys.
Bingo! Oyafune-sama managed to get me a live feed from one of the City's observation satellites. The high schooler replied, sounding smug. And you look like you're in a pinch but don't worry, I've got the answer for you.
What do you have in mind? Mikoto asked as she dodged a chunk of earth the size of a truck that the crime against nature had ripped out of the ground and tossed her way.
Seal away the Ghula of course. Without it the Magician won't have access to the magic it's using anymore. Tsuchimikado told her with what she knew to be a smirk on his face. Now, just follow my instructions and-
Mikoto listened to his instructions and couldn't help smirking herself. That was all it took to defeat this abomination? Really!?
Magic is powerful and versatile and an absolute pain to fight. Mikoto mused. But if it's got loopholes and weaknesses this big to exploit…
"WHaT aRe YoU sMirKiNg At?" The magical aberration asked, its eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Nothing. Just that you're about to go down." Mikoto taunted, already reaching out with her Electromastery to carry out the plan Tsuchimikado had outlined for her. Though to cover that, she simultaneously fired off a bolt of electricity at the giant.
"YOu thiNk ThAT WilL beAT mE? fOoL!" The unsuspecting giant said with a laugh as it let the electricity wash over its body harmlessly.
"Never said that's what would do you in," Mikoto said with a mocking shake of her head as she had iron sand rush underneath the giant's feet, causing it to lose its footing and fall to the ground.
A move she followed up by having the same batch of iron sand form into a lance and stab through the giant's chest.
"ThaT ALl!?" The giant said with a laugh as it ripped the stake out of its body before tossing it aside carelessly.
"Not yet," Mikoto said, as she put the final touches to the true plan.
As she formed the iron sand around the construction site into the runic circle just like Tsuchimikado had instructed, and helpfully sent an image of via email, Mikoto expected something to happen but nothing did.
Shit! Did I make a mistake? Mikoto thought, as she re-examined her work. Or did that ass trick me with a dud?
"Hey, Arab." The voice of Tsuchimikado unexpectedly called out from the entrance to the construction site and Mikoto, and the giant, spun to face him. "Say goodbye to your Jinn. Oh, and I know your cabal doesn't follow the tradition but Fallere825: The backstabbing blade."
With that he snapped his fingers and the runic circle that Mikoto had just created suddenly snapped to life, glowing with a brillant blue light.
The magical giant roared at this and began to fall apart. "W-WhAt iS HaPPenIng!?"
"I got Zappy-chan over there to help me make a ritual circle so that I could cast a spell to seal away your Jinn that's what." The Magician-Esper hybrid revealed as he sauntered over to the now revealed Islamic Magician and his rapidly fading Ghulah as the ghosts which made up the giant faded from this plane.
I hope they find peace.
"You tricked me!" Mikoto growled, glaring at the blonde.
"And saved you from killing yourself working magic." He shot back distractedly as he watched the Arab and his familiar struggle towards each other, both still sporting the rather debilitating injuries they had sustained earlier in the fight. "Unlike me, you don't have the ability to heal. Hell, I only get away with it as a gimmick."
At this he gestured to his face, where blood was pouring out of his nose, eyes, ears and even trickled out of his mouth. "Casting the littlest shit basically almost kills me. This? It'll probably land me in the hospital for days. So count yourself lucky Zappy-chan that I've bitten the bullet for this."
Mikoto just nodded, dumbstruck by the price he was paying to use his magic.
"As for you Arab," Tsuchimikado said sternly, glaring at the man who ignored him to instead grab onto the last vestiges of his Jinn and muttering something in a language that Mikoto didn't recognise. "You dead, boyo!"
At this, the blonde shakily drew a pistol from underneath the Haiwaiian shirt he was wearing and leveled it at his fellow Magician's head.
With a loud bang, the Arab's head blew apart and Mikoto gasped.
"That wasn-"
"It was me." Alice-san said, stalking towards them and slowly holstering her gun.
"You loli bitch! You stole my kill!"
"You were just too slow."
"What is with you twintail blonde lolis hating on me? As if Naru-pyon wasn't enough!" He wailed and coughed up a glob of blood.
"You have a reputation." Alice-san said with a shrug. "Now just lay down already. I heard what you told Misaka-san about using your magic, so I've called an ambulance to Heaven Canceler's Hospital for you already."
"You have a heart after all, Fennette-chan. The rumors about you being an Ice Queen are a lie!" The hybrid said as he obligingly laid down, or more accurately collapsed. "You're really just a tsundere aren't you?"
"Silence you fool!" The blonde girl fumed with a cute glare on her face. "Or I'll step on your face!"
"Yes please!"
"Alice-san, Kuroko?" Mikoto cut in before Tsuchimikado could continue digging his own grave.
"The ambulance was for her actually." The Level 4 confessed. "I just told them to expect this idiot too."
"So I'm just the extra? That's hurtful~"
"It's your own fault for showing up only at the end." Mikoto told him irritably, fighting the urge to kick him in the side.
The faux blond teen just flashed her a bloody toothed grin.
"Shirai-san, do you know why Misaka-san asked us to meet at Maniple's HQ?" Kazari asked as she and her Judgement partner walked from the nearest light rail station to the refurbished warehouse in District 11 that served as the aforementioned paramilitary group's base.
"No idea. Sorry." Shirai-san said distractedly.
She's been like that a lot lately. Kazari realized. I wonder what's got into her. Is she still feeling unwell from the injuries she got in the fight with the Magician? Heaven Canceler gave her a clean bill of health, didn't he?
"Is something the matter?" Kazari finally plucked up the courage to ask.
"I'm just a little confused about something is all." Shirai-san confessed, puckering her lips in thought. Ah, she was really troubled then.
"About what?" Kazari asked, looking at her partner curiously.
"You know that Alice girl killed two of the Magicians in cold blood during the recent Incident, right?"
Kazari nodded.
"Well, I got upset with her about the murders… The one that I saw her commit anyways. But… Haven't Saten-san and Namikaze-san done things like that too?"
"They have," Kazari agreed. "But their circumstances were different. They had no cho-"
"Did Alice-san?" Shirai-san asked with a tired sigh. "She's a Dark Sider. Being murderous is a must if she wants to survive on that side of the City."
"That's true," Kazari said sadly. "It's why I'll stick by Saten-san's side no matter what. She needs someone to be her moral compass at times. Otherwise, she'll just slip back into that scary wannabe villain she was trying to be during the Level Upper Incident."
Shirai-san shuddered at the reminder, which Kazari understood. Saten-san had done a number on her during their fight at the end of that Incident.
"I've even looked into some of Namikaze-san's records thanks to Saten-san too, you know. And they were… even more brutal than Saten-san's."
That was an understatement. At her worst Saten-san was a clinically efficient killing machine, but Namikaze-san at her most ruthless tended to be bloodthirsty, practically relishing in the act of ending her enemies' lives.
"I admit, both of them can be scary, they've done bad things, but… they were raised in such hellish conditions. Namikaze-san was raised to be like this. Shirai-san, while they have done bad things, I think since we all became friends, they've been getting better, right?"
"They have," Shirai-san said after a long moment of pondering. "We all have."
"So I think we just have to continue to be there for them. While Misaka-san can scold them and get them to listen, we have to join her too if they go too far. It's our duty as Judgement officers, right?" Kazari said, offering Shirai-san a soft, encouraging smile.
"You're right," Shirai-san said with a nod. "I guess I was just overthinking things."
"Not at all," Kazari said with a shake of her head. "Nothing that's got you so worked up is overthought."
"I guess," Shirai-san said as they reached Maniple's base and one of the troopers disguised as a regular security guard came over with a tablet for them to authenticate themselves using its biometric sensors.
"We just need to keep being good influences on them." Kazari told her partner as she went first and put her hand on the tablet's screen and looked into its camera to let it scan her handprint and eye. "That's what friends do."
"Indeed," Shirai-san said, with her usual enthusiasm. A change in attitude that brought a smile to Kazari's face.
The recent Incident had been a tough one, Mikoto could admit that, but this? Hanging out with her friends at Maniple's HQ was certainly new and fun.
At least that's what she thought as she watched Kurozuma-san and a few of the Maniple troopers bringing in the presents out of storage. It may have been a pain to get them, but she was certain that Uiharu-san would appreciate it!
"Ho? Oi, Sempai, where did you get the cash for this type of stuff?" Naru asked as she looked over the storage boxes, blue eyes rapidly reading the warning labels.
"I don't know how I feel about this." Ruiko confessed with a tilted head. "I mean, I usually handle logistics stuff for the Trinity. So you didn't need to do this Sempai. Especially when it comes to weapons."
Of course the two Dark Side operatives could tell what Mikoto was doing. After all, why show off her gifts in Maniple HQ if they weren't weapons?
"I called in a favor with the Black Knights for helping them out at the nuclear research facility. And since you two got Uiharu-san combat drones already, I thought, 'Hey! Might as well chip in too to expand her arsenal.'"
"Eh? Eh! This is for me?! Misaka-san, thank you!" Uiharu-san cheered with shining eyes.
"Onee-sama, is this because you wished we were better equipped to fight threats like against those Jinn?" Kuroko asked as she looked over the crates containing Uiharu-san's new weapons.
"Well, sorta, yeah." Mikoto replied while rubbing the back of her neck. "But it wasn't the main reason. I've honestly been thinking about doing this for a while and the Black Knights owed me a favor. So cashing it in now was for the best to get what I think we needed for Uiharu-san."
"Misaka-san, you didn't need to do that." The flower crown wearing girl told her in a soft tone, but Mikoto could only answer with a shrug.
"I wanted to, honest. I didn't want to be the only member of the Trinity to not be trying to improve our arsenal."
Any further conversation was cut short as Kurozuma-san spoke up. "That was the last crate of them, Sparky-jouchan. We're ready for the big reveal."
"Thanks, Kurozuma-san." Mikoto said, only sparking lightly at the silly nickname. "Open them up."
The troopers obliged by opening the crates to reveal a set of mines.
"They're shock and knockout gas mines." Mikoto informed them, sweeping her arms over the opened crates.
"That's not strictly true," Ruiko said with a frown pointing at the crate on the extreme left. "By the markings on them and the warning labels, those are frag mines."
Mikoto's eyebrows twitched in irritation and she turned to Kurozuma-san for an explanation.
"You asked us to bring over the mines the Black Knights sent over, so we did." He said putting up his hands in the universal sign of surrender in a bid to placate her. "It's not our fault they decided to slip in some of the more lethal stuff."
"Argh," Mikoto groaned. "And I specifically requested non-lethal munitions only."
"There, there, Misaka-san." Uiharu-san said comfortingly as she leaned down to examine her new toys. "I'm sure I'll figure out how to use them regardless."
"Maybe even non-lethally," Naru said with a snarky giggle that earned the blonde a slap to the arm from Ruiko.
"She better," Kuroko said with a sigh. "I wouldn't want to arrest you for manslaughter, Uiharu."
"I'm sure it won't come to that." Uiharu-san reassured them all. "I'll be careful."
"Ya know, I would've thought giving Uiharu-chan some exotic cakes would've made a better bribe." Naru said, airily as she eyed the mines critically. "Not that these aren't a great one mind you, but cakes would've been better."
"Namikaze-san knows me so well! Can we go out to Pasticceria Manicagni soon?" Uiharu-san asked, stars in her eyes.
"Fufu, of course Uiharu-chan. I hear they've just rolled out this nice fruit tart. There's only a limited number of them for purchase every day, but I know a few girls that can help us out with that."
Uiharu-san just made a happy squee noise. Literally.
"Yeah, sure, Uiharu-san." Mikoto said, shaking her head at the computer wiz's addiction to cake. "We can go after this."
Uiharu-san cheered and Mikoto rolled her eyes, turning to Naru.
"But question for you Naru, why the hell did you think this was a bribe?"
"It looks like one?" Ruiko said, looking up from where she was tinkering with one of the knockout gas mines. She'd removed the gas canister with a level of proficiency that would've raised alarm bells if Mikoto didn't know the girl was a walking encyclopedia of random knowledge and skills.
"Well, it isn't!" Mikoto insisted.
"I believe you, Misaka-san!" Uiharu-san reassured her. "But I'll still owe you a favor for this."
Mikoto deflated slightly at this. It seemed despite her words, even Uiharu-san thought this was a bribe.
"There, there Onee-sama, I believe you." Kuroko said comfortingly, patting Mikoto's back.
"Just remember, you can always say no when Sempai wants you to get photos of her not so secret crush, Uiharu-chan."
"You damned Usagi!" Mikoto raged and reached out to grab the blonde in a painful headlock, but the blasted rabbit evaded her like a ballerina!
"Get back here and take your punishment for your teasing like a woman!" Mikoto demanded as she chased after the blonde, even as their friends burst into laughter behind them.
"Maybe after you run off a few more calories~!"
"Die! You bloody Usagi!" Mikoto shouted as she shot a lightning bolt at the fleeing blonde.
Why do things always end up like this when we get together!? Mikoto griped even as she felt a happy smile spread across her face.
Done and done! Thanks to Nameless as always!
And there we go, the Princess Drama Incident or Jinn Incident, comes to a close! And man, can we just take the time to appreciate the necromancy, my fav school of DnD magic? Because it was a blast to use these spells. Though, we ended up supplementing it with a few spells from the spell list of Overlord's Ainz Ooal Gown.
Nameless: And at least one skill from Shalltear too. Their fight at the end of Season 1 was just chock full of necromantic spells and skills that we couldn't pass up.
And of course Uiharu gets some toys, special toys, for her budding robo army! All hail the robo queen!
Nameless: Now she'll just need some kinda dedicated minelayer robots to plant those new toys of her, huh? Wonder when they'll show up? *wink*
It was also fun to go into Kuroko's thoughts on her bloody handed friends in her group and the morality of it. It was fun to dig into it since she's so Lawful Good while everyone is more neutral.
Nameless: And yes, Kuroko's alignment when compared to everyone else in their group makes her a pain sometimes for them to deal with. Thankfully, she's too much of a pushover, even if it doesn't seem like it, and just goes along with the group's flow. And this is her canon personality too. Just see how in canon despite scolding Mikoto for constantly getting involved in Incidents, she never really does more than that, even helping her out repeatedly.
You know what to do! Smash that review button and tell us what you love! No flames and peace off my peeps!