.
.
.
Warning: Spoilers, mostly from the Railgun manga and NT.
II.
Stuck in a limbo.
If there was one thing that could be fucking impossible, this would be it. And the only reason Accelerator was only sort of believing this was actually real and happening, was because of the human weight pushing down on his abdomen then.
"Get the fuck off me, Third-rate."
He said through his abused lungs, lying flat on the ground and hands planting firmly downwards. The Railgun's thighs were pressing dangerously close to his sides, and Accelerator was many things, but a perverted creep would certainly never make it into the list.
Surprisingly, the girl complied. Loosening the death grip she had on his collar and sliding off to the side, she stared as he sucked in the little nonexistent air he was missing and slowly got up from the ground. Everything was still so dark and still around them, and he had to squint to take a good look at her.
"What the hell are you?"
"Excuse me?" Misaka blinked at him, like she should be the one to be surprised. "I should be asking you that! I just woke up and I was here. And nobody else was here. I shouted and screamed and ran around but nothing!"
No shit, Accelerator mused to himself, and dragged a careful look at the girl. She was wearing her usual Tokiwadai uniform, with her hair short and loose, bouncing on her shoulders. Her skin was perfectly normal, a little tanned and no scarring wounds whatsoever, as if Kamijou never carried her broken and battered body to the ER and he didn't spend hours staring at a pale, lifeless doll in the whitewashed hospital bed.
"What do you remember?" he finally asked, and pushed himself upright to properly look at the girl.
"What does that even mean?" Mikoto murmured, and scrunched up her face in a frown. So real and alive. Accelerator tried not to stare. "I just told you. I woke up and I was here, and I was alone. Well, until I saw you from afar."
"No, but before this? Nothing?"
She stared at him flatly, and Accelerator felt himself deflate.
"What? I missed something? And where are we? And where is everyone?"
Mikoto muttered, and quickly followed as the boy next to her picked himself up to stand.
"There's no one else here, kid, and never will be besides me," he said, and looked down to face her.
"You're in my head now."
If Accelerator was expecting shock or anger, he was met with none. The girl just stared at him blankly, before huffing.
"Stop being ridiculous. I know you did something. Where is this place?"
"I didn't do shit you ignorant blockhead," he shook his head, and pushed at the girl by the shoulder. His hand was met with flesh and warmth as he shoved her around to take a look, and he tried not to curl his fingers back in recoil. "Pull your head out of your ass and look around you. This is nowhere. It's not a real place."
You're not the real you.
Mikoto frowned, shrugging off the hand on her shoulder and passing the guy a harsh glare before turning around. The place looked the same as she knew when she woke up, empty and flat and silent as it always was. Her lungs were dry and defunct, and as if a clash just hit Mikoto felt herself coming undone.
"You…you're not real." She murmured, and curled her hands back to her sides in tight contempt. The notion did not pass the older boy's eyes.
"I'm a state of mind here."
"I can't feel my lungs." My heart.
"Neither do I."
A painful sound escaped the girl, and Accelerator watched silently as her shoulders shook and shuddered in tiny quakes. The brunette neither dropped to her knees nor turned around to face him, and he was grateful for that last bit of discomfort being avoided for them. Dimly, he considered waking up, but barely fixated back to the sight in front of him when she swiftly wiped around, eyes wet and face hard.
"What happened?" Mikoto breathed, and stepped forward to stare hard into his face. Accelerator glared back.
"You tell me. Just this afternoon you were beat up and unconscious in a hospital bed with Kamijou sulking like a pesty little bitch, and now I found you in my head as soon as I closed my fucking eyes."
"Touma?"
Mikoto repeated, and frowned to herself. She didn't remember the Imagine Breaker ever appearing. She remembered how she would start her usual day – waking up, fending off an erratic Kuroko who would always be trying to grope her, putting on her gym t-shirt and shorts because Tokiwadai was participating the annual Daihasei Festival and she was joining as a competitor –
Oh god oh god, she thought in despair, finally realizing the black claws and painful cries erupting from her body. Everything was going so well, but she finally cracked under the pressure, and let herself turn dead and numb as the blue ruin engulfed her whole. Touma was trying to save her, and this was what she was left with when she pushed him aside in her blinding rage.
She was dead.
From the side, Accelerator watched the girl unfold herself in great scrutiny. It still felt unreal the longer he was in it. This had to be some kind of illusion, and probably would just disappear as soon as he woke himself up. The girl would be gone, and lied silent and unmoving in Academy City's PVS special ward.
But like many thing else he's strayed away from, Accelerator knew, deep down, he couldn't. The annoying, unfortunate wench was a part of the Sisters as much as they were a part of him, and he would be dammed if any more of them disappeared. The anguish and torment had eaten at his whole, and to have another life lie upon them would send him to his end, just like how it always had before.
So it should only be understandable, that when the Railgun's eyes finally turned wide open at the realization of the current state she was in, and as she looked to him with the desperate kind of plea he'd never seen of the girl before, Accelerator let her, and felt his absolutes tightening in.
"Then what am I?"
x
x
x
Hospitals were alien, creepy little places, even for his standards.
It was at least one in the morning, and everything felt flat and void around. Accelerator easily made way through the closed gate with the security guard softly dozing off in his booth, and moved quietly behind the cameras' blind spots hung around the corners. It had only been half an hour since he dragged himself out of bed, yet it felt he had just been pushed out of his head and into a new one – a place where there was another presence in his mind, and a familiar voice nagging through his brain.
"For fuck's sake, stop fuzzing," he finally said, snapping harshly under his breath.
"I'm not even saying anything!" the voice retorted right away, and Accelerator thought murder.
"No, but you're fretting, and it's getting on my nerves. Literally. Quit it if you still wanna see what happened."
"It's not like you can even stop me either way. Jerk."
Bitch, Accelerator thought to himself, but the girl probably heard it anyways, judging from the indignant huff he received as a reply. If hell ever existed, this had to be it. A presence that never stopped talking, and couldn't even be put away. Distinctly, he felt like a cheap copy of Pinnochio. At least Last Order and the other SISTERS were tolerable and didn't stay in his head all the fucking time.
He already got a few theories jotted down of what happened to the girl as he trailed through hallways after hallways. The most possible outcome was probably stemmed from the MISAKA Network, but the only problem was how and why. Last Order and the rest of the SISTERS were still mourning over the loss of their Original and still on the process of nursing their abused heads back to normal, so he doubted he could ask for much help from any of them. He, and the Railgun's alien subconscious, were temporarily on their own for now, and the thought was an unsettling weight in his stomach.
"Hey hey stop. We're here."
Accelerator blinked, and turned to his left to see the whitewashed door with a name plate hung on it.
How she even saw that, he had no clue. But for once since they left his house, the girl was truly, finally silent. There was an upsetting jolt tugging at his mind, courtesy of her troubling emotions. Accelerator contemplated asking if she still even wanted to do this, but thought better of himself, and pushed the door open before stepping in.
The room was dark and quiet, minus the slow, steady beeping sound from a nearby heart detector. Accelerator let the door automatically shut close with a shuffle, and squinted his eyes through the obscure darkness to find the bed at the middle of the room, and the small figure lying in it. Kamijou Touma was nowhere to be found anymore, and he quickly crutched himself closer, distinctly wondering if the girl was seeing the same thing as he was. Her body was there just like how he left it, and the cold, quiet chill in the room was an unpleasant prickle on his skin.
It was silent for a while before she finally spoke up.
"So I'm dead?"
"The correct medical term would be 'comatose'," he said dryly, staring at the arms lying above the white blanket, still bruised and thickly carved. Even his own skin coiled at the sight of them.
"Well it sure looks like I might as well just be dead though."
Mikoto mumbled, and sighed, looking in grim acceptance at the pale, lifeless body lying in bed. This must have been what it felt like when she saw 10032 was put in the hospital. She wondered if the guy felt anything tugging at himself. She wondered if she did.
The whiffs of their emotions were impossible to detect which one was whose. Everything inside them was just a complete, disjointed mess of feelings all squished up together. The only similarity she could find then was the resignation they were both giving in, and the realization was a shock to her mind.
"Think you can get back into it?"
Accelerator dimly thought to the girl. It was a stupid notion, but worth a shot either way. Although the only reply he got back was a snort.
"Please, if I knew I could you wouldn't even be hearing me anymore right now."
"So you are you," he mused darkly. "Mentally so, but not physically." He quickly added, when he noticed he wasn't making sense. Hell, none of this made any sense.
But why the fuck would you be in my head and not anyone else, like the Sisters'?
"Gee asshole, if only I knew," Mikoto snapped, and even in his head it sounded loud and obnoxious. "I just woke up and I was here, remember?"
Unfortunately, he thought to himself, or maybe it was her thinking that. This clash of minds was going to take a very long while to get used to, and judging from where they were at in finding any possible solution, Accelerator was seriously beginning to fear for his future, which was already as wretched as it could ever be without the Railgun's unrequited 'help', thank you very much.
But either way, it had been a long day. He was physically dying in the morning and now he was dying in the head. His body was quickly fraying away in utter exhaustion. And by this time Accelerator found himself just not giving a dammed fuck anymore. The Railgun could stay there and scream in his head for the rest of the night for all she wanted, now, he was going to drag his tired ass back home, get himself back to bed, and shut the world away.
The girl must have heard his train of thoughts, however, because when he turned around and stepped back through the door, she did not make any objections. Her presence was still as unsettling and disturbing as ever at the back of his mind, but Accelerator plowed on, fusing his vector control to break into a run back home and disappeared under the city lights.
x
x
x
Accelerator woke up at seven in the morning the next day, mostly only because Yoshikawa's alarm was blasting through the whole apartment. His mind started its usual routine of picking back up the pieces for everything to make sense first, but he didn't open his eyes right away. Instead, Accelerator tried to look back into the void, and found the girl sitting in the darkness, arms and legs curling around herself in a fetal position. She looked up when she noticed his presence, and the look in her eyes when she stared at him was a strange punch to his guts.
"I guess we're stuck with each other for now, First."
Accelerator just looked at her in contemplation. He's had at least about ten thousand minds in his head before, he doubted there was a better chance that this one could actually be worse.
But judging from his luck at life, it probably would be.
(TBC)
Note: Just realized my two latest stories both have "In which" in their summaries, so much for originality ಠ_ಠ.
Thanks for all the following, favorites and reviews. Appreciate them and love to hear more!