There was an ever so slight breeze in the air as the four raider's stood and watched their sole challenger, their minds slowly processing what was before them. This Judgement officer was not in the usual get-up, wearing casual clothes instead of something more police-like or a school uniform, but the confidence that was pouring off of her unnerved even the strongest head of the group.
"Oh God, uh, is that..?" Shakily said one of the women on the left, her blue eyes widening as a foreboding fear washed over her. One of the men in the centre eyed the Judgement officer carefully, but felt the same kind of fear bubbling up in the back of his mind.
"I… shit, I think it is." He said, brushing a hand through his red hair. The other two, an older man with dark hair and a woman with an equally dark but longer hairstyle, stayed silent, dropping into their own stances. Their throats tightened as they realised their odds of success were quickly declining.
"We, I, they didn't say we'd go up against her!" Her hands began to shake ever more violently as she grasped harder and harder onto the pistol she held.
"Just, ah, stay calm, Jess'" The less nervous but still fretting man asked her blue-haired and eyed friend, attempting to form his own stance while placing his hand onto the holster of his pistol.
Kuroko eyed the four carefully, quickly deducing her priority targets. At that moment, she realised she had forgotten to pick up any spikes or darts from the office.
'Damn, guess I have to go for knock-out blows.' She concluded internally before setting her mind to the task of calculations, be it immediate or pre-emptive. The teleporter had to dig deep and eat into the talent she harboured in her mind, knowing that every single second and teleportation would be critical with pistols and unknown Esper powers in play.
She had one 'free' teleportation to get things started, even if her blinking out of sight could still be seen for the briefest of moments. Kuroko shifted a little, picking her first target without hinting at it openly, but the terrified blue-haired woman immediately fired a badly aimed bullet.
It shook everyone but Kuroko.
As the bang of the pistol firing burst into everyone's ears, Kuroko clinched that moment and began her reign of terror. While the man in the centre and the two more composed Espers on the right instinctively reached for their weapons or drew from their powers, Kuroko dissolved and flickered before their eyes.
Then the man in the middle of the group found that a powerful and debilitating right-hook slammed into his stomach.
"Kaede!" Screamed the panicking woman to the left of the duo, clearly out of her depth in this particular firefight. It did not stop her from frantically firing off another poorly aimed bullet in the direction of Kuroko, who pushed to the ground the crippled man before her. With the air in his lungs forcibly expelled from his body, he passed out before he hit the ground.
"Damn it, calm down, you'll hit us too!" Demanded the nameless man as he contorted the air around his hands, forming low-pressure voids to throw or slam into the offending Judgement officer. Said officer continued her sprint, arching herself around towards the poor blue-eyed woman that pulled pointlessly on the trigger of the now empty gun.
The sheer terror in her abnormally wide eyes almost made Kuroko feel sympathy, and as she ran past the fainting women, she performed some aerial acrobatics to avoid the incapacitated body. Curling herself around in the freedom that the air provided, she teleported herself again.
The two remaining opponents did not miss that the teleporter was preparing a roundhouse kick, so braced each side of their heads with their hands and arms, forcing the man to dispel his air pressure voids to prevent himself from knocking himself out.
But the force of the kick from Kuroko would still be enough to nearly send him to the other side of the city.
He staggered on his feet as a wave of sickly pain and disorientating dizziness hit him like a falling piano, falling onto his hands and knees as Kuroko landed perfectly on her feet.
The only other person standing on their feet took a long jump back and proceeded to scream at the attacking teleporter, firing off a pulse of sonic energy from her throat. Kuroko flung herself to the right to avoid the sonic punch that threatened to blast her onto the opposite side of the road, almost hopping on her feet before beginning a fresh dash.
Kuroko was renowned for her ability to maintain her momentum and exploit it into her teleportation, a feat and fact that terrified and in equal measures awed anyone who was fortunate - or unfortunate - enough to see her in action. The sonic-ability Esper knew this, and knew to a degree how her teleportations worked. The only relatively effective counter was to be as quick on her feet as the teleporter, and to weaken her positioning following her teleportations.
Moving herself, bringing herself to a sprint as fast as she possibly could, the nameless woman failed to account for the fact that Kuroko recognised that flaw. It was simplistic to think that she would appear directly next to her opponent as if her opponent had not moved. No, Kuroko knew how to predict another person's future position, like arching a bow in order to curve the falling arrow into the far away target. Kuroko jumped into the air and then teleported, and the sonic Esper charged up her next blast.
Phasing back into existence, just ahead of her target, she flung out her legs. Like clockwork, she perfectly struck the side of the woman's head as she unintentionally aligned with Kuroko's unwinding legs. The sickening thud of rubber shoes upon flesh and bone sounded out as the opposing Esper was thrown to the floor by the force of the hit.
However, the criminal managed to muster enough willpower to let out her sonic wave. Kuroko, still within her vulnerable state between teleportations, crossed her arms and absorbed the full brunt of the sonic blast. It was not as painful as she feared, though she knew that would come after she had finished flying through the air.
As that happened, the air pressure manipulator stood up from his craned position on the concrete, forcing himself through the agony in his skull to rush forward towards the out-of-control teleporter. Fumbling forward, barely able to stop himself from falling forward, he sprinted towards Kuroko.
Kuroko tumbled onto the ground, doing a few barrel rolls before using her hands and rubber shoes to grind herself to a halt. The rubber adhesive screeched as she came to a halt, before then hearing some kind of boom from ahead of her. The man had seemingly used his air pressure voids to launch himself off of the ground, and now he was hurtling down from above. Quickly concluding his plan, noting how one leg was retracted and the other was aiming for her, she used her acrobatic skills to fling herself backwards. Using the force of her legs she began a backflip and just about missed the furious male that winced as his weakest foot hit the solid ground.
Now on her feet herself, Kuroko found herself dodging and deflecting sucker punches and hooks, being pushed further and further backwards. Knowing the bind she was in and the need to get to the two raiders inside the building, she knew she needed to sort this guy out as soon as possible. Noticing in her peripheral vision the broken warning sign and it's base, she quickly devised a plan.
Tactically, she allowed another powerful hit to throw her onto the ground. She blocked it with a cross of her arms to give a false impression of disadvantage, and made sure to manoeuvre her descent onto her back in a manner which did not lead to the back of her head taking a whack. As expected, she saw the man grin in menacing triumph, and he brought up his stronger leg.
Now Kuroko positioned her leg to touch the man's foot that was still on the ground, balancing him for his strike. She made lightning quick eleven-dimensional calculations in her brilliant mind and, just before the boot came crashing atop her face, the man was teleported next to the broken, now spiked base of the once proudly standing 'Stop!' sign.
An agonised scream filled the airwaves as his boot and foot sliced through the spikey, jagged edges of the sign's base, drowning out the disgusting sounds of flesh, tendons and bones being sliced and snapped.
All that pain, the dizziness, and the weird sensation of being teleported from one place to another, knocked the man off of his feet for a final time, collapsing onto his back.
It was a gruesome tactic that a younger Kuroko would have been far less keen on employing, only using it as a last resort. However, in her older age, it was something she was far more willing to commit to if it meant disabling an opponent quicker and bringing more safety to her surroundings.
Though Misaki would argue that it was something else that fuelled such a change.
Pulling herself up, she looked across to see the sonic Esper struggling to her feet. She wobbled and tripped over herself, falling harshly onto her knees and scraping them. The nameless woman breathed hard and fast as the pain and discombobulation threatened to send her to sleep. Walking up to her, Kuroko rubbed her wrist which took the brunt of the impact from the man's final hit. She made circular rotations with her left hand to make sure that nothing was too bruised.
Kuroko walked past the knocked out body of the first man she incapacitated, picking up the gun and inspecting it. She was still keeping an eye on the still struggling woman ahead of her, but she was able to thoroughly check out the pistol. Making sure that nothing was jammed and that enough bullets were still left in the magazine, she slipped it into the back of her jeans. It was there more as a backup than anything else, and she planned to promptly discard it when all was done.
"Fu..uck." Said the nameless woman as she fell onto the floor again, landing on her shoulder. Kuroko shook her head.
"I would suggest staying still until my support arrives." She said, now standing over the criminal. "Should be less than a minute now." With that, she began to hear the sirens of a nearby Judgement or Anti-Skill unit approaching, them becoming closer and closer.
"...or what?" She dared to ask, prompting Kuroko to raise an incredulous eyebrow. It was quite a bold idea to challenge a Level 4 that had just beaten you up.
When that certain message sunk in, the criminal resigned herself to waiting for the Esper inhibitor and metal cuffs, rolling onto her back and looking at the bright blue sky. She could feel her eyes roll upwards, and she could no longer keep her body's desire to sleep at bay.
At least ' Judgement's Angel ' had mercy.
A few more moments passed before a black police car rolled up to an abrupt stop ahead of the facility, carrying a mixture of rapid-response Anti-Skill units and Judgement members. Five people in total exited the vehicle. Although a relatively small amount of law enforcement, the sound of more sirens in the distance were ringing out, implying the arrival of more support.
"Ah, so Judgement's Angel has gone ahead and done all the hard work for us." Commented an Anti-Skill agent missing some of his gear. It seemed this incident was quite a sudden occurrence for such a haphazard armour job.
"Please don't call me that, not even my own girlfriend calls me that." Kuroko rolled her eyes, not impressed at whatever the agent was meaning with his comment, be it a term of endearment or dismissive sarcasm. It was a moniker of Kuroko's that had been gaining more and more traction over the past year or so, inside or outside of the law. No-one was quite so sure where it came from, be it the media or the criminal underworld, but it had stuck regardless.
"We also still have two raiders inside the facility which need taking care of." Kuroko returned to the more immediate topic at hand. She tapped on her communicator. "Uiharu-san?"
"What do you need?" She replied promptly.
"Send me over the schematics of the building again please, and I will need to see their CCTV to chart a teleportation course." Kuroko said, waiting for her request to start arriving on her phone screen.
"Understood."
"And any ID on the two inside?" She remembered to add to her list of questions, expecting Kazari to inform her about what kind of Espers she was up against, their criminal connections - if any - and so forth. But a weary moan from down her headset signalled the opposite.
"Sorry Shirai-san, I can't find them anywhere on the databases." Kazari apologised, shaking her head on instinct despite Kuroko being nowhere near her. "Face to ID matching isn't working either, they seem to be scrubbed from the network." She finished with some frustration and bewilderment in her voice.
"Damn, how..?" Kuroko sounded equally as confused, but that did not overwhelm the concern that also emerged. The teleporter was used to going in blind for spur-of-the-moment incidents in alleyways and the like, but this? It was strange, and she could not think of the last time she was left so lacking in information on an operation like this.
"No clue, leave that to Saten-san, she'll make the calls." Kazari said, forced to deflect the responsibility of finding the cause to her other best friend. "It'll perk up her conspiracy theory mindset at least."
"Uhuh."
"You should be receiving the information now, I'll have your phone open two separate tabs for your convenience." Kazari stated, digitally presenting the information that Kuroko presented. The Level 4 hummed in appreciation, already beginning to flicker through the blueprints of the facility.
"Thank you."
Kuroko theorised that the two assailants were likely heading to the fusion core within the building, so focused on finding the quickest route through the building to intercept them. Switching over to the CCTV imagery, featuring the two criminals walking through the facility in a series of stills, she began to connect the imagery of the schematics with what was being shown in real life. She saw no discrepancies, and her mind began the busy work of pre-calculating her jumps.
"You don't have to do this alone, ma'am." Said a Judgement member who had just walked up to her, the man peering at the wrist brace that held the teleporter's phone. Kuroko would have jumped if she was not already on such a high level of alert, her adrenaline still lingering in her veins from the first fight just a few minutes ago.
"One of the two intruders has got to be a Level 4." She commented, not looking at the person beside them. "You don't invade a facility like this with a Level 3 or lower heading the group." She did not intend to sound mean or dismissive, her attention almost fully on the images before her and the calculations within her. The Judgement officer knew this however, nodding his head at the Angel's assessment.
"Higher the level, higher the chance of success I suppose?" He guessed correctly.
"Indeed, it's best to leave this to me for the moment." She offered confidently, finally turning to face the person talking to her. She noted his confident green eyes and short, spikey jet black hair, almost feeling a sense of deja vu.
"Ah, more reinforcements…" Kuroko commented, looking over his shoulder. He took a look too, though snapped his neck back to face the teleporter when she spoke up again. "Secure the entrance and the surroundings of the facility, and make sure these four are secure too." She commanded, turning around and looking at the battlefield she just participated in. She noticed the man with the pierced foot losing blood. "Medical treatment too." Kuroko said over her shoulder. The young man nodded.
"Yeah, you did a number on them, good job." He complimented before motioning with his hands to the injured raider, denoting a priority status on him. Officers and an arriving medic began to rush past the two.
"Thank you." Kuroko said with a small smile. She began to walk off before coming to a halt, once again looking over her shoulder. "You don't happen to have any spikes on you?"
"I'm afraid not, Shirai-san." He said sympathetically. Kuroko hummed, a little annoyed but never really expecting the answer she wanted.
"Hm, alright, I'm heading in." She started walking towards the facility. "I trust your capable hands will work on securing the perimeter?" Kuroko shouted into the air, keeping her eyes directly on the building ahead of her.
"Of course Shirai-san, good luck!" As the man wished him luck, she began her series of teleportation.
She landed at the entrance of the building, peering into the desolate reception desk and seats before vanishing once more. She landed in a side room, looking at her phone for more information. The very latest screenshot of the two invaders showed them waiting for an elevator in a hallway. She tabbed back into the schematics, and quickly deduced which elevator it was that they were taking.
Jumping, she landed in the hallway as the elevator nearly finished closing. She saw just enough for her mind to register the inside of the narrow, rectangular tube, and immediately began her calculations to teleport again.
Within the elevator, the second-in-command made a comment to his superior. He swore he heard a noise and saw a different person appearing just as the door finished closing. The woman, busy looking at the buttons, did not notice. Picking up on this, he went to speak.
"Did you just hear-
Then that sound again, that weird distorted shrill and whoosh from just a second ago, coming from behind him. He turned to look at the source, only to find an outstretched palm heading towards the side of his face.
The sound of a cheekbone breaking and fracturing echoed around the elevator, and the beat of a dull thud added the bass to the symphony of violence within the confined space. The two ringleaders uncontrollably rushed towards the closed doors of the lift, their heads whacking into it at different angles. The man who was taking the brunt of the pain was nearly knocked out already, and now he and the women found themselves being pulled backwards before suddenly phasing out of existence.
As suddenly as that happened, they returned to the dimension they had every so briefly departed. The woman, still maintaining her bearings despite the agony that rounded around her head, noticed that she was now in a different, emptier place. This was even as she twisted herself around to stop herself from falling flat onto the hard floor below her, such was the speed of her recognition of being in a new environment. Her colleague was not so fortunate however, and he slammed into the cold, flat floor.
He was knocked out instantly upon impact, and the Ringleader of the raiders now realised that she was completely alone in this fight.
She had just landed awkwardly on her hands and feet, her sides aching at the sudden twisting and turning, before she saw a foot swing towards her chin. Using all of her willpower and strength, she pushed herself backwards with her hands and arms. She allowed the momentum to move herself away from the threat, just barely missing the swinging shoe that threatened to decapitate her with brute force.
She stumbled and wobbled as she regained her bearings, her scarlet eyes attempting to focus through her blurry vision to ascertain who the hell was attacking her. Her short black hair grazed her cheeks as the air whooshed around her, and the sound of screeching scratched at her ear drums as herself and the attacker moved across the smooth and polished surface.
The attacker, whom the Ringleader now noticed was wearing a Judgement armband, was relentless. She continued her aggressive warpath and was rushing towards her again. With her vision now clearing it was far easier for her to fight back, and she parried a left hook that was encroaching towards her cheek. Her brain began to process the picture before her, and she noted the one sided, off centre pigtail and the determined, tea coloured eyes that stared into her soul.
Then it clicked who exactly she was up against.
Her eyes widening, she saw the tell-tale signs of a fresh teleportation occurring. The flickering of the body before her was quick, but her eyes and brain worked well in reading that visual data. She took a bold risk and dived into a forward roll, trying to find some distance from Judgement's Angel .
Fortunately for her it worked, and she had just dodged another attempted kick. Kuroko twisted in the air, spinning around like a whirlpool, before landing gracefully on the slippery floor. Taking advantage of the moment, the Ringleader activated her powers, and a spherical, magenta bubble enveloped her.
Both women dropped into a proper fighting stance, taking the moment to regroup. Looking around, the Ringleader noticed that they were now in a large hall, with folded chairs resting on the side of the wall. She figured that the place was some kind of auditorium, with one large door on one side and two door-less archways on the other.
It made sense as to why a teleportation Esper such as Kuroko would choose such a place.
"This is Judgement! You are under arrest." Kuroko said confidently, though a little breathlessly. The other woman was lacking far more air though, and she greedily inhaled fresh oxygen into her lungs during the brief lull in combat. She grinned through it however.
"Ah, so you're here." She said vaguely, prompting a furrow of the brow from Kuroko. It was weirdly worded, ominous even.
"In a place where you shouldn't be, yes." Kuroko brushed it off though, soaking up the layout of the room with her peripheral vision. It was wide enough for an array of teleportation manoeuvres, and there were plenty of weapons to use if needed. Sure, the latter part could be exploited by her opponent too, but it was a risk worth taking.
They were both likely armed with a pistol regardless. A gun tended to beat a chair.
Kuroko began to walk slowly, menacingly forward. It was her way of giving her opponent a chance to stand down. However, the criminal before her raised her arm, her hand making the sign to halt and to not step any further. Kuroko obliged the universal sign, her brow remaining furrowed and her legs and knees dropping into a combat stance once again.
"I wouldn't step any further." Said the Ringleader as this happened, speaking again when Kuroko had finished her approach. "Do you not know what this is?" She questioned the teleporter, the smirk on her face growing just a little wider. Kuroko shrugged.
"Some sort of field…" She began. "...a forcefield?"
"Indeed. You can't get to me, not even your teleportation would work." The forcefield Esper argued, her hand reaching towards her unopened holster. Kuroko instinctively reached for the nine-round magazine pistol nestled between her back and jeans, pulling it out. The Ringleader did not even flinch.
"That'll be no use, you'll need far more than a wimpy pistol to break this." She unclipped the holster, moving the leather and placing her hand on the butt of the gun. Kuroko still went to point the gun towards the shoulder of her opponent.
"Mhm, but it is still breakable."
"Of course, anything is." The criminal said, drawing her gun slowly, aiming towards the chest of the teleporter. "But you won't have the chance to break mine!"
Kuroko knew exactly what was about to happen, and instantly plotted her first jump of the renewed fight. As the bullet shot rang out, she teleported behind her opponent at any angle, firing her own shot while beginning a series of calculations to keep herself moving.
'She can fire through it, so definitely a Level 4.' She concluded in her mind as the energy of the bullet she unleashed was absorbed by the magenta forcefield. A wave rippled from the impact point like a bass speaker reverberating. Forcefield Espers such as these were dangerous, and Kuroko had never been up against one. Only a handful of them were Level 4, thus any data from Level 3's and lower would be dubious in application to the level higher.
It was up to Kuroko to finally decipher the secrets that they kept hidden.
She teleported again as another shot was fired by her opponent, the woman firing slightly blind as she tucked the pistol under her arm to fire in the general direction of Kuroko. She landed in a position further behind her starting point, landing by a chair. She picked one up, pulling it and herself back with a jump before jumping once more, placing herself just above the Ringleader.
Her first test was that of the durability of the Forcefield. She did so by slamming the mostly metal foldable chair onto the top of the forcefield. The criminal was caught slightly off-guard by the brazen boldness of the move, flinching as the chair flatly rammed onto the top of the bubble. This time the effect was that of cracking and creaking, with pinkish lines splintering out from the impact point. Kuroko's muscles rippled from the force of the hit, absorbing the blow as it traversed through her hands and up her arms in a strong tingling sensation.
The forcefield Esper pointed her gun upwards, holding the handle with both hands and firing two successive shots. The first shot hit something of Kuroko, but it was the metal that partially covered the leather-covered foam of the chair's back. The second shot would hit the roof, as Kuroko teleported away again. Her vision cleared of the chair and the brave teleporter, she noted that the cracks in her field had healed.
Kuroko had noticed that too.
'Brute force won't cut it, I risk my stamina or getting shot.' She argued to herself, her heart racing from hearing the shrill clang of metal deflecting metal. She tossed the battered chair aside. 'Only one hope now.' She said internally, devising a plan to see if her final option was viable. Otherwise she would have to make a temporary retreat and call for backup, but that risked the criminal either escaping and returning to whatever her target was.
'Is she lying about my teleportation?' Kuroko pondered the essence of this plan. As the Ringleader lined another shot, she played chicken with the women. Her calculations were complete and, despite the pain of doing so, she held off on pulling its trigger. It was a trick she had learned through the years, but it was something she kept in reserve due to the pain and disorientation of her body visually and physically reverberating. The forcefield Esper grinned as she watched the teleporter pull off some kind of trick unknown to her, taking joy in the grimace on Kuroko's face.
Finally the woman took her shot as Kuroko faked a stumble forward, and the semi-phasing teleporter finally jumped to her new destination. She landed behind one of the three entrances into the makeshift auditorium, hiding in order to begin her first of three experiments.
But a blinding headache put a pause to that.
It was one of the sharpest pains she had ever felt in her life, worse than the time she had been shot and stabbed by another teleporting Level 4 several years ago. She fell onto the wall with a thud and a hand rushed to the part of her skull that screamed out in agony. The Ringleader heard the thump and aimed her gun towards the entrance she thought she had heard it come from. As Kuroko slumped down, clutching her head with her free hand, she heard a gunshot and then the sound of a bullet piercing a wall.
Thankfully, it was the wrong side of the entrance that the criminal shot at, and Kuroko noted that she must have been using FMJ rounds for the bullet to have pierced a brick wall like that. It made her realise just how lucky she was with bullet that hit the chair, meaning it must have been deflected due to hitting it at an awkward angle. With time on her side she forced through a new teleportation, landing at the entrance on the opposite end of the hallway she was in. She landed on her belly, fortunately emitting less sound than the prior jump, and restarted her plans despite the lasting presence of pain in her temple.
Placing her gun temporarily onto the floor, she detached her phone from the wrist brace and the brace from her wrist, leaving her device on the floor. She then moved her free hand over her communicator. Kazari had been silent, giving Kuroko the room she needed to finalise the operation, so it was not a disaster to dispose of it as she did. She could hear the enemy Esper walking towards the wall she had just shot, the woman firing another shot on the other side of it for insurance. Using the distraction to her advantage, she looked around the corner of the door-less archway. She then detached the communicator from her ear and briskly teleported it at a halfway point between the field.
When the communicator phased back into the third dimensional plane, it did so within the forcefield, with half within it and half outside of it. It snapped clean in two.
'As expected' . Kuroko thought before the pieces of the destroyed device clattered on the floor, alerting the Ringleader. With a face of anger, tinged with the terror of the teleporting learning her secrets, she turned towards the other archway, firing off a flurry of shots towards her.
Predictably, the shots were aimed as if Kuroko was standing or crouching, so they all flew over her - be it through the empty space of the archway or into and out of the brick wall that was sandwiched by plaster. Grabbing her gun she teleported again. Kuroko aimed to bring herself as close to the roof of the room as possible, giving her time to fall through the air while preparing to conduct stage two of the experiment.
Now in the air, she readied three sets of teleportation to fire simultaneously. She would see the results regardless of her own jumping, and she planned to use the momentum to escalate into stage three. The forcefield Esper heard the shrill of the teleporter phasing in and out of the primary dimension and twisted around, nearly stumbling as she fired off the last bullet in her magazine. Despite the poor aim, the bullet did technically hit her target, grazing Kuroko's right shoulder.
Gritting her teeth, she sent the gun and wrist brace to their destinations, with the gun nestling mostly outside of the forcefield with the barrel being inside of it, and the wrist brace the opposite - mostly inside the barrier with a portion of it on the outside. While doing so she teleported herself to be in front of her opponent. Returning to the third dimensional plane, she saw the pistol fall onto the ground, missing part of it's barrel, while the wrist brace was unharmed.
'Got you.'
Meanwhile the criminal was in the process of reloading her pistol. She fumbled with the magazine, nearly slipping from her uncomfortably sweaty hands, as she looked at Kuroko's new position. Then the teleporter began to run towards her.
'Is she crazy?! ' Thought the nameless Ringleader, her scarlet eyes impossibly wide as her chest thudded with the pulse of her heart. For Kuroko, she had gained all the information she needed. Enacting the final stage of her plan, she ran rapidly towards the static and still forcefield Esper, screaming a war cry throughout it. Perturbed and panicking, the Ringleader just barely slipped the fresh magazine into her pistol. She pulled on the chamber, straightened her arm, and readied the shot.
But as she fired, Kuroko vanished once again.
Then landed directly behind her.
Within her forcefield.
Hooking her right arm underneath her opponent's and forcing it upwards, while wrapping the criminal's free left arm with her own, she placed the woman into an awkward but still effective chokehold. Using all of her might and force, she wrapped her strongest arm around the throat of the woman, leaving no room for her pistol arm to move, and connected her right hand with her left wrist. She pulled down hard onto the woman, nearly lifting her off of her feet, covering herself with the Ringleader's back to protect her from any wild and desperate hand movements and biting through the searing sting on her shoulder.
In an even greater panic, barely able to move her arms to reach the teleporter, she began to rapidly fire shots into the roof above. The angle of her right arm, and the force being pushed onto it, meant she could not angle her hand into a position to hit the teleporter strangling her from behind. She was too well covered behind her back, and the up and down motions of herself being lifted off and put back onto her feet confused and worried her further.
A series of grunts and screams rang out from the two women as they fought their desperate tug of war. This was Kuroko's only shot at taking her down, and the awkward angle of the chokehold meant she had to use every trick in the book to keep her opponent on the backfoot. It was only a matter of time until she would pass out, surely.
The Ringleader began to thrash about on her feet, and Kuroko's shoes were dragged along the floor as the criminal's torso twisted back and forth.
Riskily, she loosened her awkward grip on the Ringleader. The criminal's right arm shot downwards with the resistance now gone, but she found her gun kicked out of her hand as she hurtled towards the floor.
Kuroko, having dragged the Ringleader onto the cool and glossy floor, hooked her arms around the woman's chest once more. The grip was far less awkward now and had a far better chance of achieving what it was intended to do.
The Ringleader desperately scratched at the powerful arms suffocating her. Both of the women's teeth were bare and gritted as they used all of their strength to win this critical stage of the battle. The criminal with scarlet eyes kicked and kicked, trying to use the momentum of her leg muscles to push herself away from the teleporter behind her, but it was not working.
Her face began to pale, and a shade of blue was encroaching onto the fierce red flush that had accented her features through the struggle.
The vision in her scarlet eyes began to wane, darkening yet flashing with white light, her black hair damp from sweat and partially adding to her increasingly poor eyesight. She gasped for air, but with her airways restricted so much it was simply not enough to replenish her lungs.
Slowly, she moved less and less. The thrashing and scratching began to lose it's power and bite.
Then she ceased all together, and when Kuroko was sure she was knocked out, she let go of the forcefield Esper limply laying atop of her. She pushed the body aside after half a minute, and let out a breath that she did not know she was holding.
Her arms and hands fell onto her sides, and she closed her eyes.
Kuroko's left hand then grazed something made out of plastic.
'My phone..?' She thought, incredulous. 'I thought I…' Then she shook her head. She must have put it in her pocket when she detached it from her wrist brace, and it simply fell out during the tussle.
Had she kept her eyes open and looked, she would have seen the phone visually reverberating and shifting out of the third dimensional plane.
