Over the next few days Touma and Kuroko ran into each other a few times. Sometimes it was by accident, sometimes… it wasn't. Whatever the case, whenever they talked with each other, they ended up with smiles on their faces. One Saturday afternoon, Kuroko and Misaka were taking showers in the dorm rooms after their physical education class.

"I know the Daihasei festival is coming up, but I still don't get why we have to do gym classes all the time!" Misaka grumbled.

"What else can they do? Last year we got second place, they will do anything just to make sure that we win this year." Kuroko responded, "By the way, Misaka, do you have any plans for tonight?"

"Hmm, why?"

"Oh, I was just going to go shopping, and I was wondering if you wanted to come with me. We haven't had much time to spend together between me having Judgement work and…" She paused

"Touma?" Misaka said with a teasing grin to which Kuroko's face turned red.

"No! ...W-Well maybe sometimes…"

"Ahh, a maiden in love." Thought Misaka with a smile on her face.

"Sure, Kuroko, we can go shopping. I didn't have any plans."

The two were walking around the shopping district later that day.

"They sure are launching a lot up to space, huh?" Kuroko said, when she noticed that her roommate was looking up at the news blimp that had the headline 'U.S. Successfully Launches Space Shuttle', "If I recall correctly Russia, France, and Spain recently launched also."

She then turned to her roommate who was still focused on the blimp, "Hmm, Misaka, Is something wrong? You seem upset."

Misaka's eyes widened and she turned to Kuroko, "Oh, it's nothing. Come on, let's finish the shopping."

Kuroko eyed her suspiciously, but continued walking.

Soon the girls passed a lingerie store, and Misaka had an idea. She grabbed Kuroko's hand and ran into the store.

"Wha- Misaka?! What are you doing?!"

Misaka came behind Kuroko and held lingerie in front of her school uniform.

"You think Touma would like this?" Misaka asked, grinning, to which Kuroko's face turned completely red with embarrassment.

"What?! No! Touma, isn't into that kind of thing… I think…" Kuroko looked down, while blushing.

Misaka smirked, she was about to tease Kuroko more, when Kuroko's phone started buzzing.

Kuroko took out her phone and answered it.

"Hmm, Uiharu? What is it? ...A robbery? Let Anti-Skill deal with it. School District 23? The one dealing with aerospace development?"

Misaka perked up at this.

"I'm so sorry that we had to cut this short, Misaka, but duty calls." Said Kuroko, the two were at an intersection saying their goodbyes before they split up. The robbery was something that Kuroko couldn't hold off on for shopping.

"Oh, no worries. I had a great time. But make sure to get home early, I heard the weather could take a turn for the worse tonight."

This response made Kuroko raise an eyebrow, but she ultimately said nothing.

After a few moments of teleporting, Kuroko made it to the Judgement office.

"Oh. Is it just you Uiharu?" Kuroko said as she entered the office.

"Yeah, everyone else went out. Would you like some tea?"

"No thank you, do you have the footage of the robbery up?"

"Yes, it's right here." Uiharu said, pointing towards her computer.

Kuroko came over and inspected the footage. It showed a black car getting cut off from both the front and the back by two other black cars. The people in the two black cars got out and beat up the people in the first black car.

"Hmm, the victims seem fairly suspect…"

"There is also this." Said Uiharu, as she enhanced the image on a suitcase that was taken from the surrounding car.

"That's School District 23's emblem…"

"I isolated the case number and found out that that case was specifically made to be especially airtight, perhaps to keep cosmic radiation in."

"So they were planning to send it up to space?"

"Or they were returning something back."

Kuroko stood up, "Well the only way to find out is to catch them. Where are they now?"

"They ditched the car and had to run on foot, due to a traffic jam caused by an accident."

Kuroko's eyes widened, "That actually works in our favor! Come on, let's go catch some robbers!"

Kuroko was quickly able to find where the robbers were running and she teleported to their location. She saw them run into an alleyway and she quickly teleported in front of the guy with the stolen luggage.

"I beg your pardon." She said, as she teleported behind him, touched the luggage, then teleported further into the alley with it.

"A teleporter?!" Yelled one of the robbers.

"Judgement! Do I really need to explain why I am here?"

Three of the robbers drew their handguns and got ready to fire. With a sigh, Kuroko teleported about them and imobiled them with her spikes. The remaining two robbers quickly ran away, out of the alley.

"Uiharu should take care of them." Kuroko thought, as her attention shifted towards the luggage that they had stolen. Before she could inspect it her phone started buzzing, she assumed that Uiharu was calling to inform her about the other robbers capture.

"Hello?"

"Kuroko, could you do me a favor?"

"Misaka?"

"Oh! are you still at work? Sorry to bother you, I can ask someone else."

"No, it's fine, what do you need?"

"I heard from an underclassman that we have a surprise dorm inspection, and I was wondering if you could hide some of my personal things?"

"You are still out, too?"

"It's ok, I can ask someone else. You should get back, word is that it is going to start raining tonight."

"Wait, Misaka! You didn't answer-"

Misaka had already hung up. This confirmed Kuroko's suspicions that something was going on, she just didn't know what. She sat down on the luggage to think.

"Could it have something to do with the clones-"

Her thoughts were interrupted as she suddenly fell back, the luggage completely disappearing from under her.

"Huh?" She landed hard on the ground, on her back. She barely had time to think before she felt a sharp pain on her right shoulder. She winced in pain and looked to see that a corkscrew had penetrated her shoulder.

She stood up to see a red haired girl, sitting on the luggage at the end of the alleyway.

"Who are you? A teleporter?"

The girl at the end of the alleyway just chuckled, "Leave it to an esper of the same type to figure that one out."

The girl leaned forward, "However, I'm a bit better than you. You see, I don't have to put my hand on something, in order to teleport it. Impressed?"

Kuroko quickly reached for her needles and fired them at the girl, however she was blocked when the girl teleported the bodies of the men that Kuroko had beat up earlier, in the way of her shot.

Kuroko started running towards her attacker when she noticed a smile on the girl's face.

"Big mistake…"

Kuroko was confused by those words, but she continued charging anyway. Just as she was about to reach the girl, she felt a sharp pain penetrate the side of her body, she gasped in pain. She slowly looked down and saw that it was one of her own spikes that was lodged in her body. She fell to her knees, gasping for air.

"I already told you, I don't need to touch something in order to teleport it." Said the girl with a grin on her face, " You know, I didn't think that Misaka Mikoto would be the one to leave her business to her underclassmen."

Kuroko's eyes widened, "W-What?!"

Kuroko was dragging herself back to her dorm room, she didn't want to be seen by anyone so she kept to the alleyways. She was in rough condition, two of her needles and a corkscrew had been teleported in her and she feared to pull them out in case she would bleed to death.

However, her mind wasn't on the pain, it was on some of the things that the girl had said.

"What I have here are the remmients of the tree diagram, with them, the experiments could start up again."

Kuroko knew what experiments the girl was talking about, and she had tried to attack her one more time, but the girl quickly had teleported another one of her own spikes into her.

"I… have to warn… Misaka…" Kuroko mumbled to herself, as she was starting to lose consciousness.

She started to fall down from blood loss. Just before she fully lost consciousness, she heard a familiar voice yell her name, then she blacked out.

Kuroko slowly opened her eyes, she was still a bit nauseous, and she had no idea where she was. As she became more aware of her surroundings, she heard two voices yelling at each other somewhere else in the room that she was in.

"...I can't believe that you brought a beat-up, bloody girl into our house!"

"First off, it's my house, you just live here! Second, she is my friend, and clearly she needed help…"

"How did she even get that beat up?!"

"...I don't know…"

The second voice was familiar to Kuroko and it eased her worries that she had been kidnapped. She slowly sat up and almost fainted, as all the blood rushed to head.

"Be careful, Kuroko!" She felt a pair of hands on her shoulders as she had started to fall off the bed she was on. She looked up to see the worried face of Kamijou Touma. He carefully put her back down in the bed, "Don't try to get up, you are really injured."

"T-Touma, I have to leave… I have to go back to the dorms!"

"You can't do that in the condition you are in!" As he said that, Kuroko was reminded of her injuries. She touched the side of her chest and winced, but her eyes widened when she realized that the spikes and corkscrew were gone.

She looked at Touma, "What happened?!"

"You were walking around with multiple stab wounds and you collapsed when I was running at you, so I brought you back here to treat you-" He was interrupted by a beeping noise from another room, "Ah, I'll be right back, that's your uniform!"

Kuroko calmed down a bit, but then her eyes quickly widened at the implications of what he was saying.

"W-Wait… If he treated me… a-and my clothes are in his laundry… t-then…"

"Yes, he disrobed you." Said a voice next to her. Kuroko turned to see a nun looking girl staring angrily at her. Before she could ask who the girl was, what she had said registered with Kuroko.

"T-Touma… saw me naked?!" She yelled.

"No really, he just took off your school uniform, he kept your bra and paties on. I know this, because I was watching." Said the nun girl, still looking at Kuroko angrily.

Kuroko was very embarrassed at what she had just learned, she knew that Touma wasn't the perverted type, but it didn't make it any less embarrassing. She looked down at what she was wearing, it was a plain skirt and a white t-shirt.

"W-Whose clothes are these?"

"They are mine. Touma got them for me, but I prefer to stay in the Walking Church."

"The Walking Church? What's that-"

"Here you are Kuroko, I've got your uniform for you." Said Touma as he reentered the room. He was immediately greeted by a shoe to the face by Kuroko.

"T-Touma you cannot just undress girls!" She said, her face red.

"I'm sorry! You were just hurt really badly, and I didn't want to see you in pain…" He looked down, "That's my bad, next time I will just take you to the Heaven Chancellor…"

Kuroko's face was turning red, but this time it wasn't from embarrassment…

"I-It's ok… just think about things before you do them…" She silently took her clothes from Touma and limped to the bathroom to get changed.

Once she took off the white shirt, she saw that the stab wounds were masterfully wrapped in bandage tape. She touched the wound but it wasn't hurting as much as earlier. She saw on the bathroom counter that there was a tube of ointment from the Heaven Chancellor (the best doctor in Academy city), she assumed this was what Touma had used on her wounds.

"He cares so much…"

She thought this with a smile on her face. She picked up her buttoned school shirt and slid it on, her eyes widened when she noticed one small detail. She looked at the spots where the spikes had penetrated, but there was no hole. There were only sew marks, showing that it had been repaired by someone. She quickly picked up her vest and it was the same story ,the holes had been repaired.

She felt her face growing hot, and a smile grew on it. It would be hard to describe her thoughts because her head was in the clouds. But one word could be used that she would never admit to thinking.

Love

She quickly finished changing, and exited the bathroom. Where she was greeted by the nun from earlier.

"What is your relationship with Touma?!" She yelled. Touma came to the rescue and grabbed the nun away from a blushing Kuroko.

"I already told you Index! We are friends, her answer will match my answer, so stop bothering her!"

Touma returned, this time without the nun.

"So, can I walk you home? You can tell me what happened to you on the way there."

Kuroko hesitated, she didn't want to involve Touma with this. But then again, he had helped her, and it might be awhile until she could share some alone time with him again.

"S-Sure, Touma, I would like that…"

Author's Note:

Kept you waiting,huh? I'm sorry for that, remember how I said that I love reading reviews? Well, I always try to synchronize the releases of chapters for my Fanfics, so that way I can wake up in the morning to a bunch of reviews and criticisms. I actually finished this chapter about a week ago, but I haven't had time to work on my other fanfics (school), so that delayed the release of this. Once again, sorry, I'll try to release more often. Thank you for reading, let me know how I did!

See you next chapter-Gabriel