The girl's grin widened even further.

"Hee hee hee. Congratulations. Someone here actually knows what they're talking about. However, surely that bastard would find one to use as a puppet."

"Who exactly are you talking about? I've been trying to figure it out, but I've come up a bit short." Tsuchimikado asked.

The girl paused at that, as if surprised by the question. She must have assumed whoever this 'bastard' was, sent them directly. Tsuchimikado didn't want to dismiss the possibility that he had sent them on this mission through Accelerator, perhaps he was the one who sent the alert to Accelerator.

"Hmph. Damn him. I wanted to send him one of his lackeys' corpses, but if you don't work for him, then what's the damned point?" the girl muttered under her breath, getting angrier with each passing second and a scowl forming on her face. "If you're not with him, then who the hell are you people?"

"Espers from Academy City. We came to investigate this place. I assume you're the reason everyone here is dead?" replied Tsuchimikado.

The girl found her grin again.

"So, you're from that shithole? Good, I can at least send him some of his precious students in pieces. If you were with them, then I might have actually had a challenge."

"Them?"

"Don't worry about it. If we're wary of them, you lot don't stand a chance, not with your current leadership."

"Is that a challenge?" asked Mugino, a grin now forming on her face as she relished the challenge put in front of her.

"Ok, then, how about you? Who the hell are you?" asked Tsuchimikado, ignoring Mugino.

"About time you asked. The name's bonnie." she announced, curtsying dramatically. "Now, if you don't mind, I need to kill you lot before my acquaintances get back to take me home. They'll get angry if I take too long."

Mugino immediately started firing her meltdowner beam again, clearly fed up with all the talking, that was enough information for now, they could get more when they interrogate her. Bonnie jumped away, easily avoiding Mugino's attacks.

Kinuhata, who had lost her pistol somewhere in the fight, had elected to completely ignore everything that had just been said and, instead, went inside, grabbed some desks and now that Mugino was attacking, threw the desks with incredible force. The desks missed their target and hit one of the few walls still standing, shattering into pieces upon impact.

Hamazura brought his rifle up and started firing at the girl, Bonnie, who, using her speed as a saint, was easily able to evade the bullets, circling round in order to try get behind him. Oddly, she didn't seem to be moving at the speed of sound. Hamazura was sure saints were able to do that. She then started chanting while holding out her hand, splayed at Hamazura.

" W" she chanted using the shorthand version to fire her attack as quickly as possible.

As she finished chanting, an arrow made of fire shot out from her hand and sped towards Hamazura, who jumped to the left in order to dodge the spell. However, the attack didn't stop with one arrow. As more and more fiery arrows flew towards him, Hamazura had to stay on his toes, jumping left and right in order to not be skewered by the flaming arrows.

Mugino made use of her concentrated attack on Hamazura to take out three silicon cards. She threw them in the air and fired a meltdowner beam at each one. As each beam hit their respective cards, they split into multiple beams, all aimed at Bonnie's rough location, however, Bonnie was once again able to use her speed as a saint to escape Mugino's attack. That speed was becoming a real problem now. Mugino turned to Tsuchimikado, about to ask for any solutions to her speed, but he wasn't anywhere in sight.

"Tch. That piece of shit. What's he up to now?" she muttered under her breath. She returned her focus to the battle but realised something wasn't quite right. Hamazura and Kinuhata had been firing at Bonnie, who had been pretty much running circles around all of them, looking as if she was trying to hit their backs. Then Mugino spotted her stop briefly, it was only for a fraction of a second, but she had definitely stopped and put her hand, palm down on the ground. Mugino kept an eye on her and watched as she did it a second and a third time, all whilst shooting fire arrows at Hamazura and Kinuhata.

Mugino didn't know what she was doing, but she knew it couldn't be good. And just as the thought crossed her mind, it happened. Eight massive pillars of fire exploded out of the ground around them, trapping them in a circle. Just outside of the circle, on top of the large building, stood Bonnie, looking down at the members of ITEM and grinning, staff in hand.

"Sorry, folks, but this is goodnight."

The eight pillars of fire that were stretching dozens of meters in the air started dipping towards the espers, most likely about to explode and engulf the circle they created in a fiery hell that there would be no escape from.

The pillars dipped at an alarming speed, but just as they were about to start pointing towards the group, one of the pillars exploded and with the circle broken, the rest dissipated harmlessly. Mugino dug her feet into the snow and covered her face with her arms as the force of the explosion hit the group. She managed to remain standing, a feat not accomplished by Hamazura, and immediately looked for Bonnie who was still on top of the large building, staring at the base of the pillar that exploded.

"Huh? What happened?!"

She then spotted something next to the base of where the pillar was, a small piece of blue paper was lying there. The blonde, spiky-haired boy, who was still missing from the group, must have realised she was placing down magical markers and interfered with one of them when she was focussed on the rest of the group. With one of the pillars down, the magic circle was broken, and the spell couldn't hold itself, resulting in the rest of the spell failing.

"Damn him." muttered Bonnie. "Fine. I'll just have to use a more direct method."

She then disappeared, before reappearing on the ground behind them half a minute later, without her staff. She wasted no time and immediately started firing fire arrows at each of ITEM's members. None of the arrows hit their targets though as Hamazura, Mugino and Kinuhata all dived behind various pieces of rubble. Getting back out of cover to attack again, Hamazura was greeted with the sight of Bonnie now about half a meter away from him, fist pulled back, ready to unleash a punch that would at the very least put him in a hospital.

Hamazura was well aware of how strong a saint's punch could be after witnessing Kaori Kanzaki threaten Tsuchimikado multiple times by punching a hole in the walls next to him. He could not afford to take a direct hit from one. He dived to the side, but with Bonnie's speed and with how close she was, there was no chance of him getting away in time, he just had to avoid a fatal hit.

The punch hit him on the right shoulder with incredible force, shattering it and sending Hamazura back until he hit the wall of the large building.

"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" he screamed. He was a level 0, so he had no power to rely on and he wasn't in a powered suit or any sort of armour. A mistake he regretted at this very moment as he felt the full force of the impact. The pain was insane. It felt like someone had run a train into his shoulder. And it would get worse each time it hit the ground whilst he rolled. He wasn't free from the pain after he finished rolling as it was still excruciating when he sat up. He was useless now and he knew it. All he could do was make sure he was out of the way so he wouldn't add to the body count. The door was about two meters to his left and he started crawling inside. The building had somehow managed to survive nearly unscathed so far, Hamazura hoped it would continue that way.

Back outside, the battle continued to rage as Mugino used her meltdowner beams to block off Bonnie's escape routes whilst firing another down the middle in an attempt to take Bonnie down. However, Bonnie was too quick for the initial beams that were meant to trap her and easily escaped Mugino's clutches by jumping up into the air.

Seeing her up in the air, Kinuhata took her chance to attack, taking pieces of rubble this time and throwing them at her with more force than should have been possible from someone with arms as thin as hers.

However, the attacks were still ineffective as Bonnie was able to easily bat them away as if they were nothing. Landing back on the ground, Bonnie thrust her hand up in the air and started chanting.

" H"

As she chanted, a large ball of fire started to grow in her splayed hand, starting off about half a meter in diameter and growing until it reached about thirty meters in diameter. Mugino didn't wait for her to throw it and started firing meltdowner beams at the spell. Bonnie still managed to throw the ball of fire; however, it only managed half the required distance before Mugino's attacks finally caused it to explode in mid-air.

Bonnie tried to use the explosion as a distraction and jumped through it aiming for the spot Mugino was. However, when she got through the remains of her spell, she was greeted with a green beam half a meter from her face. She wasn't able to dodge in time and the green beam hit her between the eyes. The force of the attack sent her body tumbling backwards through the air, landing on the ground about five meters outside of the fence surrounding the outpost. Her powers as a saint and the defensive spells she had set up before the fight providing her with enough protection to not have a hole through her head.

She was back on her feet in seconds, jumping back into the fray. She landed in the centre of the outpost, once again facing the level 5. She splayed her hands towards her and started running around in a wide arc around Mugino and started chanting.

" W-"

However, before she could complete her chant, an explosion went off at her feet, sending her flying about twenty meters back. At the same time, her body was pelted with small bits of metal, wearing down her defences even further. A hand grenade. But where had it come from? When she looked back at her opponents from the ground, she received her answer. Kinuhata was standing a few meters away from where the grenade had gone off and now had another grenade in her hand. She had picked a few of them up from the sled when she had gone inside for the desks and had managed to place one in front of Bonnie who, focussed on Mugino, had failed to notice. Kinuhata, who hadn't been very far from the explosion, was unharmed due to her nitrogen armour.

Bonnie dropped her head on the snow and looked up to the sky.

"Oh boy. You guys are a lot stronger than I thought you'd be. They're gonna be pissed with me, aren't they?" she groaned.

She jumped to her feet and disappeared from sight faster than they could blink. Mugino and Kinuhata stayed on high alert, waiting for Bonnie to make her next move.

She appeared on top of the building that Hamazura was currently hiding in with the golden staff once again in her hands. She raised it up overhead. The red flame-shaped gem in the middle started to glow, making it look more like a real flame. Red cracks split the ground beneath Mugino and Kinuhata and geysers of fire started to explode from the ground.

"Lord Satan, I give this Holy land to the pits of Hell. Take it and transform it into-"

Before she could finish her spell though, she doubled over, and the staff started to shake in her hand.

"Urgh. What the hell?" Her eyes widened as she realised what had happened. The blonde boy had managed to send her magic power out of control somehow and it wasn't just her magic power, either. The magic she had put through the staff was unstable as well. "That bastard. Damn, I need to get out of here." she muttered through gritted teeth. After losing control of her magic power, she couldn't construct any spells without risking them explode in her face, so she had to retreat.

Meanwhile, Mugino and Kinuhata had no idea what had happened, but she was now vulnerable, and they weren't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. They started their attack.

A/N Hey everyone. Hope you all had a good week. As you can see I decided not to have an A/N at the start of the story. That's because I just have no idea what to say there, really. So, instead I decided to just keep the A/Ns down here from now on. Every now and then I may put an A/N at the top if there is something important I need to say before the chapter, such as a small warning or something, but more often than not, I'll just be putting the A/Ns at the bottom.

Anyway, for this chapter, I've laid a massive hint as to who the antagonists are. These guys will be one of the 'Big Bads' of the story, if you will, and I have a lot planned for them. I'll explain more about them next chapter, though. I always get really nervous when introducing new things. I just worry that people will think it's stupid or something. Won't stop me writing it, but it's always in the back of my mind.

Now, for the comments.

Stryper88: There are a few Caveats with this Saint that will be explained later, I don't want to go into too much detail yet, because there is still a few arcs before I start really delving into it.

GG Vegito: Yeah, sorry about that. I hope you'll still enjoy these villains though.

And there we have it. Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter. Next week will be the final chapter of the arc, so I hope you'll look forward to that. For the next arc, I've finished the first draft, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish the second draft in time. However, this gives me the opportunity to try to put in a small, one-shot arc next. It will be a lot more chill and just be a few characters having fun. I feel like it's important to have chapters like that sometimes, so I hope you guys will like it. In the meantime, have a good week and I'll be back for the next chapter next week.