"Hrrgh!"
Ruiko extricated her arm from around the man's neck and let him fall carelessly to the ground, grinding her smarting fist into his kidney one last time for good measure.
"Thanks for the info." Ruiko snarked at the unconscious heap as she turned away and dashed down the hall, twisting and turning toward the room Frenda was held- directions graciously given by the guard she'd just had a friendly conversation with.
She could still hear the sounds of battle in the distance- worrisome, but it told her that Shiage was still alive and kicking. She just had to trust he could take care of himself and not get shot too much, just as he had trusted her to complete their mission and get the girl.
She skidded to a stop at "the door with the fuck off huge maglock, you can't miss it, oh god I promise". Of course, the regular goon (and thus, Ruiko) didn't have the card key to open it.
"Time to do something spectacularly stupid!" she declared.
Ruiko gripped at the bar that kept it sealed, pulling it to the side with all her might. "Come. On. You. Metal. BASTARD!" She roared her determination as the lock gave way with a resounding crunch and a lot of grinding from broken mechanisms.
"OoooOoh, haaa, yeah," she panted, "that... haaaa, that smarts." She knew she was being reckless to use it after the dire warnings. Her muscles screamed from the strain, cramping momentarily as her trump card calmed down. "Gotta do, haaa, what I gotta do." Squaring up, she set her stance and kicked the door open.
"Frenda!" She cried out as she ran inside ready for- "Oh shit."
She really hadn't expected to find a large shirtless man with a butcher's hook rammed through the back of his head face-down in a cooling pool of his own blood. It was the guy with the pliers. More importantly, there was no Frenda in the room and a large grate had been ripped off the side of the wall.
Ruiko dashed up to the hole, looked inside and confirmed her sinking fear: there was no way she could fit down the tunnel it had blocked. It was probably a tight squeeze even for Frenda.
"No… no, no!"
Ruiko spun on her heel and dashed out of the room, fighting the panic as she looked at the time on her phone- time she was quickly running out of.
"Fuck, shit, fuck, fuck!"
Frenda half clutched-at, half swam-in the huge shirt she had stolen from her warden, a man stupid enough to think he could let his guard down around an esper with a spatial power for even a moment.
She couldn't help but allow herself the weakest of smiles as she thought of it- the satisfaction of revenge after so many endless hours of torture and humiliation. She'd relished the chance to "donate" that hook they'd hung her from directly into his empty depraved skull. It was practically free real estate!
Frenda's escape was not speedy. For every step she ran, three were spent in a stumbling shuffle, panting from pushing her battered body and burning muscles. Sometimes, she had to stop entirely and spit out blood that seeped from her barely-treated tooth extraction. Another grim reminder of her treatment.
"I have… to keep moving. I have… to tell her," Frenda gasped out as she leaned up against the wall and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, keeping her thoughts on the one person she wanted to see above all else. Taking strength from how far she'd gotten already in her escape, using every horrific thing that happened to her these last several days to motivate her.
"I can do this," she whispered to herself as she pushed off from the wall and kept running down the steam tunnels.
She just had to keep moving, find an access hatch, and crawl her half-dead ass out of there. She was so close. She would escape, she would live! And she would tell her. Tell Ruiko… what she really felt.
Frenda panted as she groped her way along the concrete of the tunnel wall, resisting the urge to stop and warm her cold, bruised body next to the hot pipes. Her knees violently shook as she took every aching step, but none of that mattered. She was so close! She knew she was just so close to escaping- and then… and then… she-
Tap tap tap tap
Frenda went stock still, trying futilely to penetrate the darkness as the clacking of boots rang through the air. The momentary panic slowly transitioned to shaking in dread because she recognized that gait; knew the owner of them.
"It's not fair… it's just not fair…" Frenda whimpered in near silence, the terror and agony wracking her body as fresh tears tracked down her face at the realization that so quickly dashed her hopes of salvation.
A green star lit up the darkness, casting sickly shadows across the face of a crazed predator with a sadistic purr.
"Hello, Frenda."
Shizuri Mugino had found her.
Mikoto would be lying if she said that the expression of shock on Indigo's face wasn't intensely satisfying.
Fueled by her rage and hate for this man, and unconstrained by noncombatants to protect, it was almost a relief to cut loose and unleash hell on him. Standing on one of the many floating scraps of metal she had ripped from the steel jungle surrounding the spire, Mikoto admired her handiwork. It was a good shot. She smirked down at Indigo as he struggled to use his own powers to twist the terrain into a stable configuration. It didn't matter. If he wanted the ground, he could have it. She owned the sky!
"You fucking bitch!" Indigo cursed as he raised his hand, shooting a series of Meltdowner beams at her. She smirked, winking at his gobsmacked expression as she "caught" them all in her hand.
"Fake Meltdowner again? You know I've seen this trick before, right? Honestly..." She held the mass of charged photons up and blew the whole thing out like a birthday candle. "...You're not strong."
"GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!"
"You mad, bro?" she jeered, getting a panicked scream of frustration in response. The tower of twisted concrete he'd shaped from the ground swayed back, awkwardly putting some distance between them. "Yeah, I thought so. Something I've noticed," she continued conversationally, "you're not just weak, you kinda suck too. If you don't get to set things up ahead of time you go to pieces."
And it was true, too. By Level 5 standards, Indigo was a remarkably poor fighter: reckless, impatient, and uncreative. He was like a street thug who only won by virtue of outmassing everyone else by 50 kilos. He was strong in absolute terms - Level 5 wasn't just for show - but...
Indigo's body flickered once more, signalling to her that he had once again displaced himself.
"Seriously, I just warned you about tricks I've seen," Mikoto sneered at him before pulling a collection of small metal scraps in front of her, arcs of lightning emanating from her body and around the metal debris.
"Hiding your presence doesn't work when I can CARPET BOMB YOU." Mikoto raised one arm over the opposing shoulder before swinging it across her chest, sending arcs of lightning along her projectiles to accompany the electromagnetic force.
The makeshift giant hypersonic scrap blunderbuss saturated his postal code with shrapnel. Her vision swam as the shockwaves buffeted her, and she had to wonder how long Heaven Canceller might berate for nearly blowing out her eardrums again. Surveying her handiwork, she resolved to tell him "you should see the other guy"- It might save her some scolding.
The massive serpent of concrete, asphalt, and sidewalk slabs that Indigo rode like a weird urban snake charmer was riddled with craters and shot through with large messy holes, rebar and conduit showing in many places.
Mikoto closed her eyes, not bothering to wait for the smoke to clear. It didn't matter. He was slow. Predictable. Underpowered. And he couldn't hide forever. She "stared" unerringly at where his guttering bioelectric signal revealed him to be. "I. See. You!"
His half-defeated "Fuck." was music to her ears.
Kuroko released her held breath as she fell soaring backwards through a teleport over the battlefield, her eyes closed as she sailed through the air, relishing the freefall. Mikoto was pelting Indigo with a barrage of railgun fire that seemed to be keeping him on his toes, which left Kuroko to her current task…
Her very first action had been to relocate a random piece of heavy machinery, of which there was plenty around the massive skyscraper-sized device, in an attempt to slice the entire thing in half. Naturally, life was rarely so simple and a building roughly 451 yards to the East now had a well-loved cement mixer on its third floor. Even now, as she had time to "look", she could... "feel" (for lack of better words) the spatial field around it, protecting it. If her guess was correct, a combination of Indigo's power siphoning from his clone Accelerator to protect it from Mikoto or herself.
She didn't have time to dwell however; just as Mikoto was occupied with Indigo, she had her own dance partner. She rolled over in midair and opened her eyes to confirm what she knew: the clone was coming at her like a rocket after having located her once again. Kuroko may have been able to teleport much faster and more freely than ever before, but she simply wasn't used to the forethought required to properly plot a multi-leap trajectory and calculations using the new reference frame weren't second nature yet.
Violent impacts rained down from Mikoto firing in anger. Kuroko took the opportunity to conceal herself behind the cloud of dust and debris- Mikoto told her that Accelerator had no special sensory ability, presumably that applied to his clone. It gave her another moment to breathe and... experience the space around her. Despite being in active combat with someone trying to twist her into a fractal pretzel, she couldn't help relishing the sensation of topology... and the heady delight of knowing how to make it bend to her will in myriad ways.
So experience the space she did, her sixth (seventh?) sense falling on a confused clone dutifully seeking her out despite the relative futility of trying to catch a teleporter who doesn't want to be caught. Kuroko clenched her fist, feeling within her... Inner World... finding the mass of free electrons Mikoto had given her. There was that nagging doubt in the back of her mind again- whether Mikoto could put aside her entirely justifiable hate for Accelerator. The problem was… she didn't have time to dwell on it.
Kuroko inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. They were a hindrance. An obstruction to understanding. She needed to focus on the space around her, how it moved under her control, how it molded to her will.
And as she felt the turbulent wake of spatial distortion trailing the clone coming at her once again, she exhaled.
A hand outstretched, coming within a hair's breadth of reaching. Kuroko shifted, suddenly existing just off the clone's left elbow. The arm adjusted, the body following in a graceless spin. She vanished again. Accelerator's clone was already swinging wildly behind herself at the telltale displaced air which had been vacated once again, practically swapping their places.
And like a hypnotic spider, Kuroko lured her into her web.
Misaki quickly spun her arm up, pointing her remote at the looming Kakine Teitoku. She was a moment too slow, his top two wings raising up and focusing a searing beam of light at her, drawn and magnified from the bright city streets.
"Gyaaaah!" Misaki jerked her burnt arm away, but the damage was done and she flung the melted remote away. "You-"
Teitoku was suddenly there, slamming the back of his fist against her head and driving her to the ground followed by his boot driving into her stomach. Through the ringing in her ears and bile in her mouth she was forced to admit he was much faster and more brutal than she was prepared for.
Blearily, she stared up at his sadistic smug face. He turned his attention to where Kazari was cowering with Last Order and reflexively, fruitlessly grabbed at his ankle. He shook it off with contemptuous ease and made it a point to look her in the eye when he ground his heel into her hand, eliciting a strangled gasp followed by a sickly crack. She must have blacked out from the new world of pain because the next thing she knew, Kazari was interposed between him and his quarry, facing him down.
"I won't ask twice," Teitoku said, towering over a terrified Kazari. Her eyes briefly flicked to her lover on the ground, their eyes meeting for a moment. She understood with dread clarity. Neither of them were so easily bullied, even if at this moment they were running low on options.
"Give her to me, now-" his demand was interrupted and even he flinched as Uiharu spat in his face, her expression venomous. Even though she had expected defiance from her deceptively fierce flower, that was... Teitoku's face twisted into a snarl and he struck like a viper, grabbing her by her head. Kazari's skull met the brick wall with agonizing force, eliciting a garbled sound of shock.
"YOU FUCKING DARE?!" he growled, his inhuman strength tightening on her head, lifting her off the ground like a doll and spinning to throw her on the ground toward the street of terrified onlookers.
"Dare... what? You look... better that way," she weakly rasped out. Dark Matter's eyes widened from the sheer audacity of the taunting girl before smoothing out to a flinty glare.
"Pawns should know their places," he remarked smoothly, sauntering over to Kazari. Misaki could only watch in horror as he raised his foot over her head, the girl managing a weak smirk up at him.
"Id..iot. Pawns can... become anything..."
Teitoku slammed his foot downward with a roar, a weak desperate cry for mercy all Misaki could manage from the ground as she once again lost-
Misaki stared in wonder. In one moment he was mere inches from turning Uiharu's head into a smashed watermelon on the pavement, and in the next, the second ranked Level 5 was flying through the air and down the street courtesy of a figure appearing seemingly from nowhere, planting a hand against the lunatic's face and launch him like a missile.
Misaki and Uiharu both stared blankly up at the lanky silver haired young man stalked toward the downed Dark Matter with an air of feral anticipation.
"Protect the squirt," he ordered as he moved, "I'm gonna gank the PKer."
Misaki couldn't even formulate a response. Kazari managed a whimper as she attempted to push herself upright.
Both watched in astonishment as Accelerator advanced with unflappable confidence toward Teitoku, radiating an oppressive and sadistic malice.
"Sup, loser?"
Ruiko's dead run down the corridor was harshly interrupted as the ceiling exploded apart, a loud impact echoing in her ears as a familiar figure dropped down in front of her for Round 2- the giant white-bone beetle sentry thing she'd escaped before.
She only briefly managed to spot the time on her phone before she dropped it. Seconds. She had seconds.
"I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOU!" she roared in a battle cry summoned from deep within her, not breaking her stride as she leaped up at the creature, swinging with everything she could muster, tired of holding back, tired of playing it safe... tired of all of it!
One of its giant hands closed on her face, but not fast enough to stop her from getting in close to hook fingers into two plates of armor on its torso and face. She pulled with all her might, ignoring the white liquid splashing her face and body that accompanied a brutal tearing sound as she found her rage and adrenaline consuming her.
"GET OUT OF MY FUCKING WAY!"
Frenda stumbled backward from the oncoming nightmare in front of her, leaning on the wall for support as her legs violently shook.
"M-Mu-"
"Do you think you have the privilege to say my name?" Mugino asked coldly, a smile on her lips that did not meet her eyes. It chilled Frenda to her core. This couldn't be right, this couldn't be Mugino, this couldn't be the person she worked with for so long!
"P-please... You were my boss for years, we worked together, we lived together! We shared holidays and made memories that can never be taken from us!" Frenda just barely shouted as she found herself pressed against a wall by Mugino closing the distance another few feet.
"Don't you remember those times? That night we stayed up late making stupid dinners because we all got so drunk? Even Saiai was wasted enough to laugh with us!" A weak, wistful smile pulled up the corners of her mouth unconsciously as she recalled the memories.
"We watched each other's backs, we fought for our lives against others, we- we celebrated after every mission, we-" Frenda slid down the wall, legs finally giving out as Mugino got closer, her stony expression unchanged as Frenda babbled on.
"Even when I fucked up, you'd laugh and give me a fun punishment game that amused everyone!" Frenda exalted weakly, the twitching smile on her face even as she failed to notice something running down her face.
Frenda hit the ground, gripping her cell in her hand. She didn't even mean to pull it out of her pocket.
"Mu-Mugino, we're friends! We're friends! We've been through so much, and I… I…" She wanted to say it, but couldn't. Wanted to speak the truth. The truth that burned in her breast and consumed her thoughts.
Mugino stopped and stared dispassionately down at the cowering Frenda whose gaze dropped down to the cracked tunnel floor.
The truth. The truth was…
Frenda blinked at the tears running down her face as she imagined Ruiko's face. The truth that she had someone she wanted to live for.
Frenda raised her head up to look at the cold, soulless gaze of her former employer, the words sobbing out of her mouth as she ran out of things to say.
"P-please… don't… kill… me…" she whimpered out each word between broken sobs, unable to do anything more than weakly beg for the mercy that she so prayed was still within Mugino somewhere, anywhere-!
Mugino stared for only a moment more before raising her hand and pointing at Frenda, the tip of her finger glowing a malevolent emerald.
"Goodbye, Frenda."
And with a crack of killing energy, Meltdowner saw the final tie to her humanity forever severed.