Terribly sorry for the wait, I hope you enjoy this roughly 6400 word chapter!
"Yeah, I definitely fried it," Mikoto lamented as she looked at her earpiece, Kuroko shaking her own as if that might get it to work.
"Uiharu built a lot of protection into these, too. I can't believe your pulse was strong enough to break them anyway." Kuroko marveled as she gave Mikoto a bit of a grin. Mikoto scratched her head, chuckling a little.
"I haven't really talked about it, but since I woke up, every test we've done to measure my power I can hold steady around 16 terawatts? I kinda burned out the lab's equipment when we tried to check my peak output and they still haven't built the new test harness, but it was edging up past 100 before the magic smoke escaped and I felt like I still had a good bit in me. Not a bit of fine control at that point, though." She chuckled again, still scratching her head. Kuroko blinked at her in shock.
"...Mikoto, that's an entire order of magnitude improvement." She was clearly disappointed she hadn't been told before.
"Y-yeah… uh, sorry, it just never came up in conversation." Mikoto shrugged with a sheepish smile. Kuroko was radiating waves of mild annoyance but it wasn't THAT big a deal, right? Sure, she should have guessed Kuroko would know the details of her powers by heart - she'd always been endlessly interested in her, after all - but she didn't expect to be kept abreast of every little... She felt the familiar prick of guilt in her chest. She'd never BOTHERED to interrogate Kuroko at length, never got so invested in independent research, simply never helped more than offer platitudes in the past. She opened her mouth to try to express any of that when a 1980s glam rock song started playing from Kuroko's pocket.
Pulling out her phone, Kuroko opened the holographic display, which showed the words "Shokuhou Misaki" under a picture of Freddie Mercury.
"Guess they figured out the earbuds are busted. Good thing I stashed this with our stuff outside or it'd be fried like the rest." Kuroko mused before answering it and putting it on speaker.
"Sorry, the radios are to-"
"Hello, girls."
Both froze as their blood ran cold at the most definitely male voice on the other end of the line, the words spoken with a deep, drawn out tone dripping with smug satisfaction. Mikoto looked askance at Kuroko, not recognizing the voice, but knowing that it shouldn't be coming from Misaki's phone number.
"Indigo." Kuroko hissed, confirming all of Mikoto's worst fears. "What have you done to them?" The cold, seething rage that dripped on every word was chilling.
"Tut, tut… such a rude way to address your betters, not even an honorific. What would your parents say? Ah, but I'm feeling generous so I'll forgive your transgression. Your little friends are alive, and in one piece. You'll even see them again when you meet us in District 19 in three hours. I will text you the address. Of course, if you don't show, I start cutting pieces off, starting with the small one. I'm sure you'd hate to find little Uiharu without her eyes. And I don't think it needs to be said, but you will come alone or you will have nightmares for the rest of your life when you see what I do to them." A click ended the call before either could properly respond, Mikoto midway through screaming "Monster!" at him.
Silence echoed between them before they met each other's eyes. Mikoto knew full well that the fear in Kuroko's eyes was mirrored in her own.
Bubbles rose past the silvery hair of the sole resident of the liquid-filled container. Floating upside down within his personally forged prison, he hummed at the cards he had drawn and turned his attention to the live video feeds that circulated around him.
The Tower had made his move, and Strength had been devastated. His eyes flicked to the other cards that hung freely in the air, narrowing his gaze.
"Curious. How dramatically overt of him… has he reached the limit of his patience or is he truly confident of his success? Even with so many other cards pulled into his scheme…" His eyes drifted to each in turn. The Hermit, The Empress, Temperance, Strength, Judgement, The Sun, The Devil, and even…
His smile raised slightly. It was pleasing to see, though as he narrowed down the possibilities, he felt a pang of disappointment. Perhaps young Shirai was not as important as he had thought… no card seemed to correspond to her. Still, it would be interesting to watch. He'd be ready in case the need for intervention arose.
So many cards, so many possibilities.
"Now, how will this game end?"
Misaki groaned as awareness flooded back to her. Her head was pounding in agony. What happened? She recalled losing contact with Mikoto and Kuroko, then...
Her eyes shot open as the situation came crashing down once more. As she remembered Indigo. She tried to move and discovered she couldn't, her arms and legs bound tightly against something. Her head was unrestrained, however, and looking down revealed that she'd been strapped tightly against a large metal podium with some manner of oversized elastic sleeve. It pressed so hard into her that it was difficult to breathe. A quick glance around the room told her that she must have been in a school, inside a classroom that had not been used in some time. Desks were stacked in the corners and flipped over in haphazard piles, likely by trespassing Skillout and other hooligans. Beer cans and burnt out cigarettes littered the ground. And it was all covered in a thick layer of dust.
Almost.
The only clean part of the room also served to highlight a much more pressing concern: a single desk set up neatly in the middle of the room. On that desk was an old-fashioned digital clock counting down, attached to what Misaki could only describe as a stereotypical Hollywood movie bomb. It would be comical were she not absolutely sure it was every bit as deadly as its special effects cousins pretended to be.
Staring at it with wide eyes, she observed the clock blandly as it beeped to inform her that she had three hours and thirty two minutes to live.
She panicked, racing heartbeat pounding in her ears as she struggled with all her might against her restraints. Rationally, she knew that would never work. She knew, but if she didn't try, she'd die. She'd die and never see Kazari again!
At that thought, she froze. She closed her eyes, focusing on breathing and getting her pulse under control and mentally boxing up the fact that she'd lost twelve minutes to her unsightly lapse in decorum.
Kazari.
Yes, she needed to find Kazari. Keeping her eyes closed, she focused inward and boxed up the rest of her distracting thoughts. Indigo may have taken her remotes, but he evidently didn't know the full extent of her powers or the nuance where currently active effects would persist even through unconsciousness. Once she had found her center, she allowed herself to fall into the most important one of those. The Memory Palace. She'd named it after the old technique, but for her it was far more literal.
She eased herself gently through the thin barrier between her mind and Kazari's, following the active connection she had created so long ago. Pushing away awareness of her surroundings, she delved more deeply, picturing herself walking into the literal psychically created palace that lay within Kazari's mind.
Misaki found herself standing in front of a lavishly-appointed mansion, an enormous garden stretching over the horizon in all directions around it. The building itself was constructed out of black and yellow diamonds, layers of granite and marble filling out that which the diamonds did not. Kazari was so humble that it had originally been a modest little bungalow - charming in its own way and not unexpected, but nowhere near good enough for how amazing her little flower was. So Misaki had taken the initiative to... redecorate a touch. Even if it was a psychic space lacking physicality.
The usual perpetual twilight of the mansion was now covered in a moonless night. This invariably meant one of two things: Kazari was asleep or unconscious. The continued existence of the mental realm meant she was still alive. They still had hope. They were going to make it out. Misaki felt relief flow through her as she strode into the palace, flourishing her hands as she covered herself in a Greco-Roman style white chiton, a deep red silk palla flowing over her left shoulder before snaking back around to hook over the same shoulder once more, gold and silver jewelry appearing on her ankles, wrists, and arms along with her trademark white gloves.
From the garden to the foyer and up the stairs through the hallways, she strode past the rows and rows of black diamond statues and armored suits that stood vigil in the halls. No mere decorations, the sentinels that represented the numerous psychic mental barriers layered over both of them remained undisturbed. Any telepath making an ill-advised bid at entry to either of their minds would quickly find themselves having an exceptionally poor day, but it hadn't happened this time.
Marching room by room, she made haste along the intimately familiar route, reaching her target with little effort. Splayed out on a pile of pillows in a luxurious bedroom was her beloved Kazari. Unmoving and quiet, one would be forgiven for thinking she was merely sleeping soundly.
Gliding up to her, Misaki crouched down and brushed some hair out of her beloved's face. Lightly touching her forehead, she pressed deeper into Kazari's mind, but quickly found it sluggish, dark, and heavy. As she had suspected, some kind of extremely strong sedative. Reaching beyond her surface thoughts, she dug into the autonomic nervous system that controlled bodily functions, concentrating on those minute processes.
"Haru-chan, my sweet, please wake up… I know it's hard, but you need to wake up." She whispered to her as she stroked the girls forehead. Kazari stirred beneath her, the drug in her system starting to get rapidly burned out by Misaki's command to accelerate her metabolism. It wasn't very healthy, but the need was dire.
"Mi...saki...sam…" The sleeping girl slurred her words out as her eyes tried to open, struggling as if enormous weights held them down.
It was all Misaki needed, however. She looked through Kazari's eyes, to see what she could see.
Mostly darkness as her heavy lids struggled to open, but in the slivers of sight Misaki could see grass and concrete… and seats, athletic benches. The most concerning part was just how far away those things were… from how high up Kazari was.
"Damn it, she must be at least three stories off the ground… what did he tie her to?" Misaki hissed, deciding to change tactics. If her math was right, and it rarely wasn't, then her contingency plans would be going into effect with her own people coming to find her. The approximate time they'd show up was about three and a half hours hence. Based on what she now understood of that monster's powers, it made perfect sense. She needed to disrupt that, take advantage of something he hadn't considered… Mistakes he'd made that she could exploit.
Unfortunately, she couldn't risk Kazari fully waking up and accidentally loosening her bindings. A fall from that height was almost certainly fatal.
"My love… I need you to focus all of your thoughts on one subject, okay?" she stroked the stirring Kazari on the head.
"Just focus…" She whispered quietly as she leaned down, "Focus."
"I just need you to focus on…"
The empty train sped along in silence at first, Kuroko and Mikoto keeping their own counsel as worry gnawed at them.
"So what's the plan, here?" Mikoto finally asked. Kuroko hummed in thought, fiddling absentmindedly with the long black gloves that ran up her arm to just a little bit past her prosthesis.
"Indigo typically relies on an increasingly unlikely series of events playing out exactly the way he wants them-"
"My god!" Mikoto gesticulated urgently out the window of their carriage and Kuroko whipped her head around, ready to fight. It would be just like him to add train robbery to his list of crimes. But when she saw what provoked the reaction she could only huff in frustration
"Yes," she ground out, "EXACTLY like that." She studied the uncontrolled inferno consuming the front of the mansion they'd lived in for the last several months thoughtfully as a swarm of fire fighters struggled to beat back the blaze. "That house had sprinklers, you know. Mechanically-actuated backups, emergency power, networked smoke detectors with autosignaling for emergency services, a canister bot with a fire extinguisher in every closet, and flame-retardant insulation. And that's all just what I remember from Misaki's spiel when she was trying to convince me that we should move in with her."
"Huh, so that's what all those extra EM sources were."
"Quite. And yet, not a single one appears to have worked. Imagine that." Mikoto tore her eyes away from the conflagration to listen more closely to Kuroko, who hummed in annoyance. "What do you suppose, my dear, are the odds our train on the direct path to his location would also happen to pass our current abode before the fire has been brought to heel? The fire that just 'coincidentally' started and spread uncontrollably after he did THAT." The train had rounded a long gentle bend that brought the west side of the house into view. Her pointed growl serving to redirect Mikoto's attention to how most of the wall had been blown out. "Goodness, what an unpleasant view this is. I daresay he's sending us a message."
"Except with you." Mikoto said at last. Kuroko turned back to study her in profile as she stared out the window.
"Beg your pardon?"
"He's taken direct action when it involves you. Whatever power he has, you somehow mess with it. Maybe his foresight has some kind of hole in it? I don't know." Mikoto shrugged helplessly. And unfortunately, Kuroko was equally at a loss for exactly what it was about her that interfered with Indigo.
"It can't be my powers, they're no longer functioning." Kuroko sniffed, scowling more. "It doesn't matter, that's not a mystery we have time to solve now. I say… this is what we should do." Kuroko leaned over and began to whisper the beginnings of a plan into Mikoto's ear.
The train rumbled onward as they prepared for their showdown.
After they arrived at the gate to the abandoned school grounds to which they'd been summoned, it didn't take long to find Indigo. In fact, it was almost painfully obvious that he'd be smack in the middle of the only place with lights still operating. Mikoto stepped onto the brightly illuminated sports field and finally saw the man who had ruined her and her friends lives so often for the first time. At least… she thought it was the first time. Seeing him filled her with a strange sense of deja vu.
Indigo had one of the smuggest most punchable faces she'd ever seen. A serpentine smirk spread across his face as she approached. It was worse than Mugino and Accelerator combined.
No, he didn't look familiar - she was sure she'd remember someone so unsettlingly distinct - but some small part of her was certain they'd met far more often than just this once. She silenced that voice. There was no time to dwell on it. Not when she was too busy nursing her SEETHING RAGE.
"You were almost late. I'd hate to have had to start cutting her up." He gestured lazily off to the side of the field. Undeterred, Mikoto's piercing gaze bored into him. She didn't need to be reminded that he'd run Uiharu up a flagpole when that's why she was having trouble holding herself back from slagging the surrounding area in the first place!
"You are a sick fucking monster." Mikoto hissed at him through clenched teeth. Feeling her balance already going off, she flicked her arm, the brand new bracer she'd designed giving a quiet click as a long metal crutch emerged from it, a handle popping out of the long pole as it fully extended and into her hand. Even if it did make her look weaker in her mind, it was necessary. Indigo's disgusting smirk widened as if appreciating her suffering.
"Oh, my dear, aren't we all?" He asked, taking a step forward. The distance between them was roughly fifteen yards, Mikoto not wanting to get too close.
"No, we really aren't. You're a unique brand of repulsive." She replied snidely, her fists clenching. She just needed to focus, keep his eyes on her. "Why did you call me out here?"
"Oh Mikoto-chan… I didn't call YOU out here. I called you BOTH out here." He said cavalierly, before pointing over his shoulder with a gloved thumb. FUCK.
Kuroko heard his words as she had been in the process of creeping up behind him and, knowing her cover was blown, she leapt at him, an outstretched hand aiming for the back of his head. She didn't even make it half-way before the ground itself warped and bent like a funhouse mirror was reflecting it, slamming into her stomach and causing her to roll onto the ground coughing and hacking.
"No!" Mikoto cried out, pulling a coin from her pocket and aiming it at Indigo. With a blur of movement, Indigo was suddenly on top of Kuroko, hand around her neck.
"Ah, ah, ah!" He scolded Mikoto, "One wrong move and I snap her like the shrill annoying twig she is." With Kuroko only a couple inches past five foot and Indigo easily pushing six foot, four inches… Mikoto didn't doubt him. She clenched her jaw as she stared him down.
"M-Mikoto, I'm s-" Kuroko began to rasp out before a whining groan echoed through the air and Kuroko's mouth opened in a silent scream. Indigo lifted her by the neck off the ground just as a truly bizarre effect began. It was like multiple images of Kuroko were all overlaying on top of her, Indigo's arm having a similar effect. Kuroko's eyes rolled into the back of her head as whatever it was he was doing took its toll.
"Stop! What are you doing!?" Mikoto began to move forward before Indigo pointed up at Uiharu once more. Unwillingly, she chanced a glance in that direction and froze. The metal-masked figure the others had described, that Misaki had showed her pictures of. She held Uiharu in one hand by her bindings, having removed her from the flagpole, balancing at the very top of it. Without any apparent effort, the mysterious woman stepped off her perch and somehow landed completely unruffled not ten feet away from Mikoto, holding Uiharu in her grasp still.
Mikoto was stuck in place, despairing as Kuroko writhed in silent agony at whatever he was doing to her.
"Now then, little Mikoto-chan, we're going to play a game." He reached into his pocket and tossed a rectangular box to her, which Mikoto deftly caught out of reflex. Looking at it, it resembled a lighter, with a hinge to open the top. Flicking it open revealed a single red button.
"What-?" She looked up at him, and flinched at the raw unhinged glee on his face.
"That is the detonator to a bomb. Press the button, and you will kill my puppet there." He glanced over at the masked figure. "Her head goes 'pop', and you save your little friend." She gaped in horror, unable to even- "Hesitating, dear? That's fine too! If you don't do it, I'll just have her torture Uiharu-chan until you do." He smirked over at Mikoto again, seemingly reveling in her horrified expression.
"What, not enough?" He made a show of pretending to think. "Ah, I know! To sweeten the deal, I'll even let Kuroko-chan go. An irresistible bargain, no?"
Mikoto stared at him, shaking in rage. "W-why would… what the fuck is WRONG with you?"
"Always so quick to judge, Mikoto-chan." He shook his head as if she was an unruly child. "I can assure you, I'm quite flawless. But don't you think we have more pressing concerns?" He emphasized his point by slightly squeezing his hand around Kuroko's neck.
"Why…?" She hissed out, her expression a mixture of rage, hate, and fear. Why was he doing this? What… How could someone be this monstrous? How was it possible to be worse than… than him.
"Wrong question. Why not? It gives you everything you want." His grin widened. "You kill one of your worst enemies, my little monster here, and save your friends. What is there to dislike?"
"How do I even know you're telling the truth?!" She reached her radar down to this detonator, but strangely found absolutely nothing, like there was a void in her hand where it should be.
"Ah, ah, ah!" Indigo waggled a finger of his free hand at her. "No cheating now. You only get to find out how honest I am when you press it." He bared his teeth in a caricature of a grin, revelling in her shock. How did he know?! "My game. My rules."
Mikoto stared at him with wide eyes, glancing down at the detonator. She felt revulsion at herself that she even for one moment considered it. That revulsion was suddenly buried under the sound of Kuroko's gagging screams of agony.
"What… Who are you?" She asked, not understanding who this monster was, why he would do all these atrocious things.
"Me? I'm Indig-" He began coyly.
"I can answer that."
The voice echoed over the speaker system of the athletic field, various loudspeakers screaming to life as they began to broadcast. Specifically, they began to broadcast the voice of Shokuhou Misaki.
"How did you…?!" Indigo looked up at the speakers, seeming visibly shocked to hear that voice. He quickly shook it off, regaining his smug composure. "So, Queen Misaki, you honestly think you kno-"
"Aihana Etsu."
Indigo froze.
"The First Esper, The Matrioshka Brain, The Oldest Student, The Graduate; Aihana Etsu, a man blessed with the rare and bizarre ability to control quantum states of matter and energy. One of the most complex powers ever recorded, one that turned its own wielder into a quantum supercomputer capable of hyper-realistic wide-range simulations so accurate that it could be called foresight... if mere foresight also allowed one to warp space itself to shift matter and energy into different states and conditions."
Mikoto listened as the speakers continued to spill this information, blinking, wondering where she had heard that name before.
"Aihana Etsu…" Misaki repeated. "The first fruit of the Power Curriculum: Academy City's Sixth Ranked Level Five." Mikoto felt her breath catch in her throat, her heart hammering more. This… was so much worse than she thought.
A pause hung in the air for what felt like an eternity, before Indigo finally reacted- by laughing.
"I can't believe someone finally figured it out without me having to tell them! I'm surrounded by inferior idiots so often I suppose I've grown used to their stupidity." He laughed more, a sound that had a truly vile ring to it.
"It's a shame someone I dared hope would be an ally turned out to be one of the most disgusting and insane creatures in existence, slave to the curse of his own power. And yet… I'm not surprised. It neatly explains why someone with such a potent ability would have even lower priority than my own. I guess your frothing psychopathic tendencies were just too much of a turn off to the scientists of Academy City." Misaki's voice continued to echo across the athletic field.
"I imagine Superintendent Crowley-" She resumed, only to be cut off by an angry looking Indigo- Or rather, Aihana Etsu.
"I couldn't care less what that ancient mummy thinks of me! He and his kind will one day fall back into the shroud of irrelevance where they belong." He scoffed, before smirking once more, ignoring the confusion that statement created in the girls.
"Now then… as cute as this distraction is, let us resume the evening's planned entertainment, shall we?" He grinned back at Mikoto, who felt her heart pounding in her chest as she was dragged back to the nightmare. She had been steadily inching toward Indigo, taking advantage of Misaki's distraction. To no avail, it seemed.
"I see you need a little motivation." He snapped his fingers. Motion drew Mikoto's eyes to the silver haired girl who began to move in response, setting Uiharu down on the ground before reaching behind her head. There was a loud click. The mask hissed, small amounts of air escaping valves across it. Splitting into four parts, the top two quarters slid along her scalp to rest just above her ears, while the bottom two quarters retreated down to her neck.
Mikoto felt like her heart stopped a few beats before resuming at a jackhammer pace, her breaths coming shallow and ragged as she tried to suppress her building panic. What she saw was an impossibility. A nightmare. Some kind of cosmic joke. But as much as she tried to deny it, there was a sort of dreadful certainty as sight of the girl's face brought her back to that night, the desperation and madness and horror she'd been suffering under so traumatically vivid in her memory as she stared into those eyes.
Those burning, crimson eyes.
"Acc… Acc…" Her voice caught on the first syllable.
"Yessss," he crooned with relish, "Accelerator." He reached over, petting the top of the girls head roughly, her expression blank, unchanged even as her head rocked side to side from his manhandling. "Surely you didn't think your little 'Sisters' were my only work?" His grin widened maliciously. "I made some slight adjustments, obviously. A female blends in much better when I'm not using her as my attack dog. Plus… girls are just more fun."
Mikoto felt bile rise in her throat at that last statement, the trembling she'd managed to curtail coming back for a different reason entirely. Her eyes fell onto that detonator once more. Some small part of her kept whispering… if she truly was a clone of Accelerator… was it really that bad to do? It might even… be a mercy.
She felt his eyes boring into her, waiting, enjoying her suffering like fine wine. All while Kuroko's strangled gasping reminded her she had a time limit, crushing her spirit even more.
"Come on… You know you want to. It's just a clone. A clone of Accelerator, even! And she's just as bad as he is, you know. Worse possibly, with how blindly obedient she is." He hissed quietly to her, tempting. "What is the harm-?"
"Don't listen to him, Mikoto!" Misaki's voice cracked over the speakers, interrupting Indigo's temptation. "He's just getting in your head, you're better than tha-"
"Enough from the peanut gallery." Indigo growled, all amusement falling off of him as he pointed a pair of fingers up at the commentators booth. Mikoto's eyes swung to where he pointed, her radar catching the unmistakably distinct interference pattern of Mental Out - Misaki -crouched down inside.
"Don't-!" Mikoto paused in shocked horror as a violet light appeared on his outstretched fingertips, followed by seven purple orbs of energy conjured forth behind him like a halo. That was impossible! How… How…
How did he have Meltdowner!?
He fired.
Misaki held no illusions that cowering in the thin-walled casting box of some run-down high school bleachers was safe. Even so, she was surprised when everything exploded around her, the cacophony of breaking glass and rending steel nearly deafening when one was right in there with it all. She wasn't too big to admit she screamed like... well, like a middle school girl getting exploded somehow. It was a confusing experience, the sort where you can state some of the things that happen, but their precise order and location are a jumble. What she could later recount for certain was the sense of flying through the air, nearly breaking her back on something that knocked the wind out of her, and laying crumpled on her side on the dirty concrete next to a bench.
Life was pain. She gasped for air, the double-whammy of the wind being knocked out of her and the smoke in the air making each attempt redefine her personal definition of agony. Splinters of glass and metal had opened lacerations all over her body that were starting to stain her clothes. Gingerly, she reached out and slowly pulled herself half up on the seat next to her so she could see. All thoughts of that being the stupidest possible move failed to percolate in her state, tense with worry that she'd broken something and the pain just hadn't registered yet. The smoke was clearing. She blinked away tears and grime and finally recognized the source of her pain.
Indigo. Indigo was pointing. Pointing at her? Yes, he was definitely looking in her direction and... now she could see it. Saw it but didn't really comprehend it. Orbiting his form lazily were the eight stars of Meltdowner. How! That wasn't his power! How…
"Goodbye, Queen Misaki." He looked like he was shouting at her, but she only just caught it. "You won't be missed." Indigo smirked and then she was blinded by the flash of violet light.
She… She was going to die. Misaki reflexively snapped her eyes shut and curled in on herself, quaking violently as she waited for the end to come. For once, she felt as young and weak as she intellectually knew a soft teenage girl would normally be. And as tears welled around her eyes, as the weight of her impending doom finally caught up with her muddled consciousness... she broke.
"NO!" Her fear finally manifested in a terrified screech. She curled up even tighter on the filthy ground crying for how much she was leaving behind.
But nothing happened.
Cautiously, she pushed through the pain in her everything to raise her head and open her eyes. Her vision swam with spots, but she couldn't help that her heart skipped a beat at the vision before her.
Standing proudly in front of her, face furious, but without a hint of effort, was Mikoto, holding up the hand that grasped the detonator, the beams of Meltdowner warping around her, creating a cage of death that surrounded both the Railgun and Mental Out. Almost contemptuously, she twitched her hand and the beams dissipated. Indigo, for the second time, was visibly surprised.
"When did you…" He muttered as he looked to where Mikoto had been standing just a moment ago.
"No."
Indigo looked back at her. "What-?"
Mikoto crushed the detonator in her hand into countless pieces, turning back to face him as she let the bits of electronic junk fall onto the concrete.
"No. I am not like you. I don't kill people just because it's convenient. Now let us go, or I might just reconsider it for YOU."
Misaki had never seen such an intense expression of rage and loathing spread across a person's face as Indigo listened to Mikoto's words. His frothing anger practically emanated from him in waves.
"FINE THEN! Your pathetic distraction has officially pissed me off! I hope you enjoy watching your friends die!" He hissed, pausing only as Misaki spoke, finally scraping together the shreds of her composure.
"I... wasn't distracting you… for Mikoto." She rasped, making a calculated gamble that his confusion would buy them the precious few seconds they needed….
"...What?" He blinked. She grinned. His eyes shot wide as he realized just a moment too late…
As Saten Ruiko broke from her stealthy approach into a dead sprint, closing the last several meters by leaping toward the arm that held Kuroko from his blind spot..
Indigo turned his head to look at her, and for a brief moment, Misaki saw him stiffen, a hint of fear in his posture.
"No, do-!" Ruiko couldn't stop if she tried and wouldn't stop if she could. Her grin was ferocious as she came down on his arm with a textbook hammer fist. Then things got weird. Ruiko's shout of triumph became a cry of pain as she was seemingly caught in the same effect Kuroko suffered from; multiple overlaid... illusions? It gave her the appearance of having phased out of this world until they all coalesced into a lone figure stumbling away. It wasn't a fruitless clash, though. Whatever the bizarre effect was, Indigo was not immune, and the feedback from what was apparently an application of his power caused him to drop to one knee.
"KILL THE QUEEN!" He shouted through his pain, and after a slight pause, the clone of Accelerator leaped from where she stood idle, abandoning Uiharu. Her mask snapped shut as she flew at Misaki with frightening speed.
Mikoto intercepted quickly, snapping off a sudden railgun shot into the ground to raise a crude smokescreen. She let out a breathy "oof" as something hard and unyielding wrapped around her waist and dragged her into the air. Apparently, Mikoto had scavenged one of the steel supports and was using it to electromagnetically lift her out of the fray even as she went to stall the puppeted clone of the Number One!
Misaki cursed. The clone was focused on killing her, so Mikoto couldn't effectively counterattack. Too busy protecting her.
She looked to where Ruiko, Kuroko, Uiharu, and Indigo were. Indigo was regaining his footing faster than the other three and his rictus of fury did not bode well for her fallen companions. He reached over hoisted Ruiko by the neck, and all Misaki could do was watch.
Move.
Move!
MOVE!
Kuroko screamed in her mind as she tried to command her body into action, but it did not obey. Instead the wracking waves of pain continued to wash over her. She could only stare up at Indigo and Ruiko from the ground where she twitched in her paralysis.
Everything had gone to hell so fast, her plan a complete failure. She had been captured so handily, it was almost nostalgic. Then, Indigo began to do whatever it was that he was doing and the unimaginable phantom pain-like sensation stole away her ability to think coherently about such quaint concepts. She had seen… things. Bits and snatches of fleeting images, memories forgotten and not, things that she'd imagined happening but didn't, things she yearned for, outcomes of all kinds that left her memory as soon as they appeared, leaving her only with the vaguest sense of a hole where something she'd never even had had been lost nevertheless. She heard part of what Misaki had said, but it didn't do any justice to the experience of him actively using quantum manipulation on her to traverse the explosion of her whole life's probability space.
All while she struggled to draw breath with his clammy hand clamped around her neck.
She didn't have time to dwell on it because things became even more chaotic with the addition of Ruiko. Her disruption had worked to a point. For a moment, there had been relief. Now her head throbbed from falling to the ground, she couldn't move her body, and now Ruiko was having the life strangled out of her.
Damn it, MOVE KUROKO!
"You make me sick." The visual fluctuations of his power pulsed with his growling. "I should have known that a rodent like you would pop up again. Didn't include you in my simulations… 'Who cares about pest control in the big picture?' I thought. I won't be making that mistake again. You'll be very easy to model once I TEAR OFF YOUR HEAD!" His voice crescendoed to a raspy roar as his grip visibly tightened, Ruiko gasping and hacking and scrabbling at his wrist as she desperately fought to breathe.
Kuroko could see in her periphery that Mikoto could not help. She was busy trying to keep both herself and Misaki alive under the jerky, unnatural assault of the silver-haired monstrosity.
Damn it, move! Move! Turn your head! SOMETHING!
Finally, she began to feel her body respond and she turned her head. Her line of sight didn't change at all. Really?! Phantom sensations at a time like this!?
"You cannot even begin to fathom how much you Level 0 rodents disgust me. And despite us tolerating your pitiful existence, you have the audacity to strike out against your betters?! I should make your death slow and painful for your hideous insolence!" She heard Indigo growl, followed by Ruiko letting out a choked cry of pain as he slammed her head into the ground with a brutal crack.
"At least this little bitch had the decency to misplace her powers." What? "A loss for science, yes, but vermin like you are intrinsically worthless." His rant was interrupted by yet another joining the fray.
"LET HER GO!" She barely noticed Frenda cry out. "LET HER GO BEFORE I SHOOT YOUR UGLY FUCKING FACE OFF!"
Misplaced? He hadn't said her name, but he could only mean Kuroko, right? Which meant Indigo was very certain she had misplaced her powers. But... if she had… misplaced them? Then... Her attempts to move became less frantic as her brain furiously fixated on the puzzle of his word choice and what it meant.
Damn it, damn it! Why was she so helpless. Why couldn't the thought leave her alone until they weren't all about to die? Misplaced… Fuck! If he was a Level 5, he was going to rip them apart yet here she was, stuck on a brain teaser. She screamed at herself to just move her head, to move something, to MOVE!
MOVE!
And then she did.