Kuroko groaned slightly as the sun peeked over the horizon, light shining in through the large windows of the couples bedroom wall, shivering. She didn't yet dare open her eyes, just blindly reaching around under the comforter for the remote that turned the heater inside of the blanket on. The heated blanket was the best purchase they'd ever invested in. As she found it and very carefully turned it up, she felt light shifting beneath her, and her morning fogginess began to fade from her mind.
Her eyes cracked open and she looked on the still sleeping face of Mikoto, her hair scattered about on the pillow under her head, undone from the braid she normally wore it in these days. Kuroko was on top of her, her head softly resting against Mikoto's rather well-endowed chest, a recent physical maturation Kuroko knew Mikoto was secretly quite proud and happy about, having drifted off after an exhausting evening.
An exhausting… fulfilling… wonderful… fun...
Oh, so very, awkward evening. If there was anything she was not prepared for in all of her dreams and fantasies, anything at all, was just how unbelievably awkward last night was. Neither of them had any idea what they were doing. Once they'd managed to get past that, however, it had been…
"Kuroko?" Kuroko snapped out of her daydreaming, wiping a slight line of drool that had started to trail down from her mouth as Mikoto stirred from her own sleep, her voice groggy and tired.
"M-morning!" She said, flushing slightly, leaning forward and nuzzling against her beloved's neck. "S-so… um… Do you… have any…?"
She felt Mikoto wrap her arms around her tightly, pulling her to her chest in a firm hug, little bits of static and electric jolts running up and down her spine. It comforted her that Kuroko cared to ask, but really, at this point, regrets?
"Not one." Mikoto said honestly, even if she did mirror Kuroko's thoughts on just how unbelievably awkward last night was. She had been hoping that Kuroko would have known more about what to do, but pervert or not, was it really all that surprising that Kuroko's actual REAL experience was non-existent?
The hug- completely naked hug Mikoto could not help but note silently with a blush- carried on under the heated blanket for the better part of a very comfortable silent hour, the pair simply soaking in the warmth of each others loving embrace and company, before Mikoto spoke up first, to Kuroko's instant reply.
"Last night was so awkward."
"Right!?"
6 Days Later
January 1st
16 Months Post-Treefall Disaster
The tension in the air was so unbelievably thick that it was making even Frenda tense. Saten sat across from Misaki at the table, keeping a straight back and formal posture, her expression neutral and unyielding as she stared the Level 5 down.
She had expected Saten to make some kind kind of argument with Misaki to convince her. That was how she thought this was going to go down, and Frenda had prepped herself to back that play as best she could. But no, no, Saten decided to do this in a way that had outright caused Frenda to borderline have a heart attack. Her tactic?
"I reviewed the old documents we found a while back, did some snooping. I'm going after Indigo's stuff, with or without your blessing. Your help would probably make it easier, so I'd like to work with you, but it's cool if you'd rather not."
That had been fucking ten silent minutes ago. Frenda was doing her absolutely best to remain cool, calm, collected, and honestly uncaring in appearance. However, the truth was, was that she was fucking terrified. This monster she was sitting across from could turn her and Ruiko into her fucking brain-wiped toy dolls if she wanted, and it was taking a lot of control to not flip the table into Misaki's face. Maybe Frenda could knock her out in one hit?
"And why, exactly, should I entertain the notion of putting you in danger?" Misaki finally asked, breaking the tense silence that had permeated the living room, Frenda jumping slightly.
"I'm not asking you to, I'm doing that myself, that's not your choice, that's mine." Ruiko answered immediately, with a very stern and stubborn tone of voice as she maintained her eye contact with Misaki. As Frenda watched Misaki's eyes harden, she once again contemplated whether or not she could knock out Misaki in one table flip to the face.
Misaki has poise, Frenda could give her that, but the look in her eyes belied the intense anger Frenda could feel radiating off of her. She maintained her calm composure, but Frenda could tell that Misaki was not used to someone so blatantly challenging her like this. Mikoto did it all the time, but never in a fashion that was anything but in a manner that Misaki didn't feel like she was the one in control.
At least, that's how Frenda saw it.
Eventually, Ruiko sighed, shrugging a little, before standing up, which surprised both Frenda and Misaki.
"Well, you have my number. I've said what I wanted. Comin'?" She looked at Frenda, who stood up quickly, more than happy to get the fuck out of this situation. As the pair turned and moved to stride out of the room, a loud sigh escaped from Misaki's lips behind them.
"You are… unbelievable." Misaki muttered, rubbing her temple with a delicately gloved hand. An electronic beep caught both Ruiko and Frenda's attention, both spinning around quickly in response to the tell-tale sign of her powers being activated. Neither had much time to really react however.
Both expected to get some form of mind control, or memory alteration, or something to alter their own desires to match Misaki's, but that is not remotely what they got. Instead both put hands to their heads as a surge of information was suddenly dumped into their brains instantaneously, which felt kind of like someone suddenly shoved way too much food into their overstuffed mouths.
"Wha- I- buh-" was the sound that came out of both their mouths as they started to process everything, Misaki leaning her chin into one hand, the other holding a remote, her expression having returned back to the calm, composed, in-control demeanor that she so often wore.
"Really now, you two. Must you make my life more difficult? There, now you know everything about my next little project I was looking to get done. I was about to get some of my agents together to get it done, but now, you two can try and get it done. This method saves me the breath of having to explain it all." She said, smiling with a degree of playfulness.
After the pair managed to ease their migraines, Ruiko was the first to speak up, smiling a playful grin to Misaki as she rubbed the side of her head. She felt like she'd won a small victory.
"T-thanks for actually helping." Ruiko smiled to Misaki with a growing grin, Misaki shrugging nonchalantly. "We'll go check that place out and-"
"Why."
Frenda cut into the conversation, her voice dark and most unhappy. Ruiko looked to Frenda, who looked extremely… displeased. With a hint of fear in her eyes. Misaki looked at her, tilting her head.
"Why would you send me back there?" Ruiko stared at that frightened look in Frenda's eyes, and part of her was unsure of what to say, or what to ask.
Misaki's response was as innocent as it was unconvincing.
"I've no idea what you mean."
16 Months and this place was still a husk of wreck. Frenda and Ruiko had made their way across the city, Ruiko mercifully not pestering Frenda with any questions, which Frenda was infinitely thankful for. She just was not in the mindset to answer any right now. She had wanted to scream when she looked in the mirror and realized that her outfit was practically the exact same one she was wearing that night, purely by accident.
Frenda glanced at Ruiko, who'd dressed as practically as she could without asking Frenda for help. Cargo pants, sneakers, a compression shirt underneath a hoodie and scarf. She looked cute, Frenda had to admit, but it was hard to focus on that when her mind wandered back to what they were standing in front of.
S-Processor Pathology Analysis Research Laboratory. What was left of it, at least. Why was this place fucking relevant? Why was Frenda freaking out?
BECAUSE THIS WAS WHERE SHE ALMOST KILLED RAILGUN.
And where Railgun fucking exploded and blew out the building. It was a goddamn miracle of Academy City engineering that the entire thing hadn't collapsed. There was still that damn crater at ground-level where she almost vaporized Mugino, and DID vaporize, like, fifteen floors of the building. The whole thing somehow was still standing from truly impressive support beams that had survived her onslaught.
Fuck you, Misaki. Fuck you.
"Sooo… Misaki said that there was a bunch of sub-levels to this place that were supposedly still intact that she wants us to get into, right?" Ruiko asked, pulling Frenda from her freaked-out thoughts.
"Right." Frenda said shortly, looking around quickly. The sun was almost down. This place had been abandoned when the company had gone belly up during Treefall, and everyone part of the company had gotten scapegoated by the Board. Now it was just another artifact of the project.
"Well!" Ruiko hefted up her big duffel bag. "Let's do this!" And with that and not an ounce of fear she ran off into the wreckage, Frenda watching her go for a moment, her jaw hanging open slightly, before chasing after her.
"Oh my god, what am I, your fucking chaperone? Watch your step! This place is a fucking deathtrap!"
After pulling on Ruiko's hood and getting her to slow down, the pair slowly began to investigate the wreck of the building. It didn't take long before they were doing so in the dark, relying on flashlights to look around, carefully trying to avoid getting spotted by wandering Anti-Skill eyes.
Ruiko watched as Frenda near-silently searched, her expression severe. She wanted to know what was bothering her, but didn't want to strike up a conversation out in the open like this. Another thing that caught her attention though as she searched… was the massive burn marks that covered the building. Initially, she thought that maybe the building had been damaged by Treefall, she didn't always keep up to date on current events before, but this did not look like something that happened by debris falling from space.
It looked like a giant bomb had blasted open the building right near where the lobby was. Not quite at the lobby, but pretty close. And the burn marks… the burn marks were scalded all over the metal wreckage.
"Hey, Ruiko!" Frenda called out to her, pulling her away from a burnt girder she was looking at. As she moved over to Frenda, Frenda had pulled up a piece of metal plating that had fallen over, revealing a hole in looked to be a ceiling of a hallway. Pointing their flashlights downward showed that it looked like exactly what they wanted.
"Down we go?" Ruiko asked, smiling to Frenda, who returned the smile, though it seemed like it was a struggle to push onto her face.
"Right." Frenda agreed quietly.
Sliding down a nylon rope that Ruiko had prepared in that duffel bag of hers, the pair plopped down into that dark hallway, flashlights illuminating it.
"Spooky." Ruiko muttered before she began walking in a direction. "OK, so, Misaki's brain blast of migraine inducing information dump said that there should be a computer system intact somewhere down here. We just need to get power to it somehow, or get it out of the building without damaging it. Right?" She looked to Frenda for confirmation, who had begun walking next to her, the blonde nodding.
"Right." She said simply. Curt and to the point. Oh for fucks sake.
"Frenda, what's wrong? You've been acting… really off. And I'm not gonna lie, the one word 'Right' replies, are getting really old."
Frenda didn't reply immediately as they walked, sighing loudly, pausing as they got to an intersection, flashlights illuminating down the two different paths before them.
"Look, I just… I've been here before, I was here when this place blew the fuck up. It wasn't a fun time, and I…" Frenda trailed off, her brow furrowing for a moment as her mind returned to that night. "I… just don't really like reflecting on…" she trailed off as her mind wandered once again.
That night… when she was fighting Railgun. She had bluffed out the girl, but what had stopped it all? What had fucked it all up? The security cameras… The cameras had suddenly turned on.
Someone had been watching them.
"Frenda?" Ruiko poked her shoulder lightly. Frenda had spaced out again, and it was starting to concern her more and more.
"Ruiko, I… Let's just get this done, OK? This isn't the place to talk about this." Frenda asked, looking up at her, her tone containing a slight hint of begging. Ruiko frowned down at her, concern evident in her face before she nodded slightly.
"Alright…"
And without another word, the two continued down another corridor.
As the pair moved through the halls, which rather quickly became far more difficult, requiring more of that training Frenda had put Ruiko through, it was clear that this place was indeed a bit of a disaster.
It was also clear why Misaki thought it might contain some sort of clue. If Indigo had been storing anything here, it wasn't inconceivable that he hadn't come back to this place to double check.
"Do you think that freak was involved with this plac-" Ruiko began to ask as she ducked under a piece of fallen ceiling, Frenda responding a bit too quickly.
"Yes." It was instant, and Frenda winced as she realized that her rapid reply was suspicious. Frenda took Ruiko's hand as she helped her up from under the metal wreckage. "I think I might have had a run-in with Indigo before, indirectly… I'm not super confident tho-" She trailed off, and a sad look spread into her face. Funny how a single word like "super", as childish as that word was, could make you feel so sad.
Saiai… ITEM… Memories of their missions haunted her every day now. Every new mission was another day of increasing brutality. Saiai talked to her less and less. Rikou was forced to rest more and more as her health took an increasing downturn.
"I'm just not sure." Frenda said, shrugging in an attempt to be uncaring. Ruiko continued to give her a doubtful look, though Frenda did not see it, having already resumed walking. Ruiko paused as her flashlight turned and lingered for a moment on a small vent hidden just a ways off from where she was standing in the rather expansive, if cluttered by debris, hallway.
"Hey Frenda…" Ruiko called out to her, approaching the vent, placing the large flashlight down on the ground through the vent as she got down onto her belly, crawling into the tunnel entrance. If Misaki's brain blast of ouch was correct, then somewhere around where they were right now, should probably be…
Ruiko poked her head through the vent, looking around, the flashlight illuminating the room a bit.
"What the hell are you doing?" Frenda's voice called out to her from the hallway, muffled a bit.
"Uh… I think I found a server room. Gimme a push, I think I can fit!" Ruiko could swear she could hear unkind grumbling somewhere around her rear before she felt a rough push forcing her through the vent entrance, shoving her through with a loud grunt as she landed roughly into the room. Ruiko groaned as she rubbed her butt, Frenda sighing as she crawled in after her, having a far easier time of it than Ruiko did.
"Huh… it really is a server room. Only required six hours of crawling through a dilapidated husk of a building to find it." Frenda grumbled as she stood up, dusting herself off.
Grabbing their flashlights, they resumed their search, both feeling the same thing- spookiness. Dust covered everything, and not a bit of power seemed to run through the place.
"So now what?" Frenda asked, frowning a bit, looking to Ruiko.
"Got my bag?" She responded with a big grin. Frenda raised up the duffel bag that she'd dragged through with her in response. Ruiko clapped her hands together, Frenda taking the call and tossing it to her. Ruiko pulled the bag open and removed a boxy looking battery device with a big grin.
"Do you even know how to use that?" Frenda asked, raising an eyebrow, a hint of a smile on her lips. Ruiko didn't answer, just grinned more as she pulled out some more cords and wires, starting to hook them up to a fusebox in a wall not far from where they were standing. Frenda didn't interrupt. Was Frenda a bombmaker with a near-genius understanding of chemistry, electronics, and an assortment of other fields? She certainly thought so.
Did she want to see if Ruiko electrocuted herself? Kinda.
"You Indian Pokered this, didn't you?" Frenda asked, realizing the secret behind Ruiko's random confidence. Ruiko paused and let out a slightly nervous laugh.
"Uhhh, I have no idea what you're talking about…" Ruiko said oh-so-innocently, before sparks and cracks of electricity sparked from the fusebox, powers starting to run from the high-tech battery she'd brought with them and through the power lines. A computer terminal turned on, along with a server tower.
"Gods bless Academy City's tech." Frenda said to herself, Ruiko standing up, pausing and giving Frenda a bit of an odd look for a moment before seeming to just shrug and going over to the computer.
"So, Misaki said we just need to plug this thing into the computer, and it'll download everything. Uiharu Special." Ruiko lifted up a hard-drive shaped device with a cable attached to it, capped with a plug.
"Well, plug it in." Frenda gestured, Ruiko doing just that, placing the hard-drive down and plugging the thing right in. Within seconds, the computer screen lit up, blowing past any security measures still in place and hitting a desktop, windows opening as files began to get uploaded onto the device.
The pair stared at the computer for a moment before their curiosity got the better of them, leaning forward.
"I wonder… what is on here…" Ruiko muttered, Frenda nodding in agreement.
"Couldn't hurt to look, right?" Frenda said, giving an honest grin, finally. She opened up a random file, her curiosity getting the better of her. Instant regret hit her as a video screen opened and the man on screen began to speak.
"Journal 34. Entry 76. Dr. Indigo."
Ruiko and Frenda stared at the screen as the journal entry began to unfold, the first several minutes featuring a man whose face expression could be likened to a snake rattled off various scientific experimental results that they didn't understand in a somewhat monotone voice. The man in dress clothes and vest threw his tablet down onto his desk in the video before looking to the camera again. The girls both glanced at the timestamp. It was dated over two years ago.
"Level 6 Shift Project is proceeding as planned. Experiments will be beginning relatively soon. We'll approach Accelerator to join the Project in 8 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, 3 hours." The man on the screen checked his watch as he rattled off the time with seeming unerring precision and confidence. "He will accept. Accelerator is likely the easier part of this equation, I put in a profound amount of effort in ensuring that nothing would stop him from joining the project."
The man's tone was almost rambling and bored as he spoke, speaking more for posterity than anything, even as he spoke of one of the most horrific human experiments that was to happen. Frenda and Ruiko stared in horror, unable to tear their eyes away. Neither had met this man in person, and something was chilling about putting a face to the bogeyman that they'd heard about. Ruiko had only mentioned this Indigo person to Frenda a few times, passing along what she'd learned from Misaki, and Misaki's brain-information-dump had certainly filled in a lot of blanks Ruiko had left.
"The neurotoxin has proven annoying, but I think that copper might be the solution. I'll have to take the time to run some mental cycles on it." He hummed in thought, tapping his head idly.
"If all goes to plan, I should have some excellent data in a couple years time, as well as the One and Three dead. If I'm even luckier, Gensei will have a heart attack and he'll stop annoying the piss out of me." Indigo grew a remorseless smirk across his face, picking up a knife off his desk, toying with it.
"And the sky will burn…" He chuckled, before reaching over and tapping a key off screen, ending the journal.
The two girls stared at the screen silently for a few minutes before turning to look at each other, their eyes wide. Ruiko opened her mouth to say something, but a noise interrupted her thoughts. A noise that chilled her to her bones.
Metal scraping against metal.
Frenda was the first to slide out of the vent, her head on a swivel as she looked around the hall, pulling the duffel bag out as Ruiko slid it out before her, then grabbing at the taller girl and pulling hard to get her out.
"Something is coming this way, I can hear it. We must have tripped something with that computer." Frenda hissed, pulling Ruiko up. "Let's go."
The pair began to run down the hall, Ruiko throwing the duffel bag over her shoulder, the hard-drive tucked firmly into the bag as they decided that leaving was rather wise.
Even as they ran however, they heard the same sound. Metal against metal. They moved as quickly as they could through ruined corridors, looking for a way out, but it was quickly growing more difficult, and they were growing more paranoid about using their flashlights to give away their position.
Frenda skirted to a stop suddenly, Ruiko nearly crashing into her.
"W-whoa!" Ruiko peeked around her to see why she had stopped, and saw it was because of a sheer drop deep into a far lower level into the facility. Likely a very fatal drop. The only way across looked to be some piping, the walkway having collapsed already.
"Great, now wha-" Frenda did not get to finish that thought before Ruiko simply picked her up off her feet bridal style, leaping up and landing on the piping, walking across with a level of balance that made Frenda nearly screaming in pure terror. Hey, that Indian Poker card for balance she'd used for the Holidays was paying off.
Alas, she only made it about half-way before the mysterious sound finally revealed its origins. Metal wreckage that they had crawled under to get to where they were burst forth, sending shrapnel flying into the void they were so earnestly trying to not fall into, revealing the metal monster that had been sent down to find the intruders.
Frenda peeked over Ruiko's shoulder at the six-legged massive machine, and as her eyes fell on the dual-barreled rotary turret on its back, her eyes went as wide as saucers.
"FASTER. NOW."
Ruiko heard the terror in Frenda's voice, and did not wait, bursting into a run on the pipes, doing her best to avoid slipping, stumbling a couple times and quite nearly falling to their deaths, and as she saw their exit- another hallway where the walkway that had collapsed originally led to, she found out why Frenda was terrified.
In the form of a grenade flying past her head and into some piping a ways off from her, blasting it apart.
"WHAT THE FUCKING SHIT!?" And with that Ruiko leaped from where she was into the exit, crashing onto the ground and scrambling onto her feet, pulling Frenda up with her, who was also scrambling, as more grenades were fired by the giant metal six-legged machine, blasting apart the hallway they were in and narrowly avoiding blowing them to bits.
The pair sprinted for dear life until the monster machine was a fading noise of mechanical growling.
Quickly scaling a rope, taking said rope with them, bolting out of the property and getting onto a late night train and collapsing into seats, both of them were so jittery that they kept having to stand up, the adrenaline pumping.
"What… was that thing?" Ruiko asked, laughing, her nerves so out of whack, it was all she could do. "Wait… No, no… this is familiar… I think Kuroko was attacked by a robot just like that one way back before Treefall." Ruiko muttered as she paced up and down the nearly-empty train cart. Thankfully, just the two of them.
"She got attacked by an automated six-legged walker drone armed with a twin-barrel rotary grenade launcher? What the fuck kind of money does this Indigo dickhead have? Those things cost millions upon millions of cash!" Frenda threw out, standing up herself, just as jittery as Ruiko. "That asshole just had one of those things sitting there in case someone bothered to go in there to recover material." Frenda said incredulously, shaking her head.
The pair paced the train in contemplation, far too wired to sit still. After quite some time in silence, Frenda finally broke out.
"So… your first excursion into poking at the underside of Academy City and all its depraved bullshit." Frenda said, turning to look at Ruiko, who looked back at her.
"Yup." Ruiko nodded slightly a few times, sighing, a tiny grin of exasperation on her face.
"And?" Frenda asked, raising an eyebrow. Frenda was genuinely curious if this was the end. Girl nearly had her head blown off by a grenade.
"And I think we should get this hard-drive to Misaki, get some sleep, and think about our next move." Ruiko replied, leaning against a support railing tiredly, smiling weakly at Frenda, who blinked in surprise. "What? You thought I was done?"
Frenda opened and closed her mouth a few times before finally replying. "Well… kind of." Frenda admitted, shrugging, glancing away. In a flash, Ruiko had crossed the distance between them and hugged her tightly.
"Not by a long shot. I've still got you after all." She said, pressing her cheek into the top of Frenda's head, towering over the shorter girl by over half a foot at this point. Frenda tensed for a moment before leaning into the hug.
"...Well, I guess I'll have to be there to bail you out, huh?" Frenda teased, hugging her back.
"I guess so." Ruiko agreed, grinning.
They held each other in the train car for the rest of the ride back, letting the tension of their little foray slowly bleed away, even as Frenda let dark thoughts circulate in her mind. Every moment like this tainted by the dark cloud of doubt and self-loathing that followed her everywhere she went.
She couldn't help but hold Ruiko just a little bit tighter, even if she felt like she didn't deserve to hold her at all.