As Mikoto fought Therestina, Shirai sought out the remaining intruders with the help of Uiharu.
"There appears to be five of them altogether, all spread out and chasing students and each equipped with heavy-duty rifles. We need to get to them before any of the students get caught." Uiharu warned through the earpiece.
"Agreed. Have you contacted the sisters yet? There should be a few in District 3, right?"
"Yes. 10770, 15598 and 19938 are all in District 3 and are each making their way towards different targets. I'll send you to a fourth target so there are less people going after the students right now. We've also got 13978, 17000 and 20000 all on their way. The rest are holding position in case more of them get into the city somewhere else. Kamijou is also on his way, but he'll take a little longer. He needs to take transport to District 3."
"I don't think it's a good idea for him to get involved if they've all got rifles. He won't stand a chance."
"Do you really think that will be enough to stop him?"
Shirai sweat dropped. She had known Kamijou for a while now and was well aware of the traits he shared with Mikoto, namely he never left a dangerous situation without getting involved, trying to save someone. It was a respectable trait, something Shirai didn't want to admit he had, but it was extremely dangerous and reckless. There was a reason he had so many hospital visits to his name.
"Well, it would be typical of his luck if all the traffic was blocked going to District 3 and all the public transport was ground to a halt, wouldn't it?"
"See Kuroko? You do care."
"It's only because I don't want to see Big Sister upset." Shirai denied the accusation immediately before finding a get out of jail free card for the conversation. "I've found one of them. It's not one of the sisters' targets, is it?"
"No. The sisters are heading away from you, so their targets shouldn't be anywhere near you."
"Then I'm engaging."
Shirai ended the connection and teleported three metal spikes from around her thigh into her hands. A large man with a militaristic looking uniform ran down the street in front of her. His hair was cut to the point where if you were far enough away, you'd have thought he was bald. His skin was tanned, and his arms were as thick as tree trunks. Shirai guessed he could probably crush her skull just by squeezing it with one of his massive hands. In those hands currently was a large, fully automatic rifle, with a large barrel, not large enough for it to fire a grenade or anything like that, but definitely something that would cause a lot more damage than a normal rifle.
Nevertheless, she would still fight him in order to protect the city and its inhabitants. She teleported the three spikes in her hands into the barrel of the rifle, taking it out of the equation early on. She couldn't afford to let the man fire that at her, she would lose the advantage her power brought immediately.
The man noticed immediately and spun round to face the attacker. Looking around, he eventually spotted her in the air and threw the now useless rifle at her with so much force that when she teleported and the rifle hit the wall behind where she had been, it shattered.
Shirai teleported behind the man and was ready to teleport a pike into his arm when a bullet ripped through her right thigh, taking away the spikes she had around it.
"AAHHH!" Shirai screamed as she fell to the ground. She looked back to find a short woman with long, brown hair tied back in a ponytail. Her skin was pale and she looked western European. She had a similar militaristic looking uniform to the large man and the rifle she held was nearly identical except smaller in size and had a small trail of smoke coming from the narrower barrel.
"Knock her out, James and take her to the rendezvous point. A teleporter will be useful." she ordered in English and with a thick English accent. Shirai couldn't pick out where exactly in England it was from, but she didn't have time to figure it out. Instead, she moved her hand to her left thigh where she kept a second belt of spikes and teleported two of them into the barrel of the gun the woman was holding and a third into her arm.
"Argh, you little brat."
The woman didn't hesitate to rip out the spike, but by the time she looked back, the street was empty save for her and the large man she had called James.
"Hmph, little brat ran off. Well, no matter, we can find more espers pretty easily. This city is full of them after all." She looked at James. "How slow can you be? I know you're not the fastest guy in the world but surely you could have caught one injured little girl before she teleported away?"
"Yeah, yeah, get off my back shorty. I'll get them next time." he said with a slight American accent. "Besides, you should be the worried one. You've not got a gun anymore. Do you honestly think those scrawny arms will do any damage at all?"
"Call me 'shorty' or 'scrawny' one more time and I'll show you what kind of damage I can do with these arms." she shot back.
Meanwhile, on top of one of the buildings overlooking the street, Shirai was sealing up both the entrance wound and exit wound with her Judgement issued cream. Fortunately, the bullet went straight through her leg, so she didn't have to worry about trying to get it out. Once she had finished closing her wounds, she contacted Uiharu again.
"Kazari, it's me."
"Kuroko, thank goodness you're okay. One of the other intruders started moving in your direction, if you-" she started to explain but was cut off.
"Yeah, I know. She stepped into my fight, and I had to retreat. I managed to destroy their weapons, but I don't know how much that will slow them down." Shirai reported. "I could do with some reinforcements. You said some of the sisters were on their way, right? Where are they?"
"13978, 17000 and 20000 are on their way, but they seemed to have stopped moving for some reason. They seem to be alive, but we can't reach them."
"Do you think they ran into another one?"
"It's possible. There's no guarantee that we've seen the entire intruding force. Mikoto said there was about a dozen of them, but we don't know how many have stayed behind."
Shirai looked towards the two adults who were still standing in the middle of the street, arguing. Their guns were of no use now, but that didn't mean they weren't a threat. Shirai still had her metal spikes around her left thigh, but she had lost the ones on her right and she was injured, she only managed to squeeze the calculations she needed through the pain to escape. She doubted she'd be able to do it again if they were able to cause her more harm.
Therefore, she couldn't afford to fight them head on. But perhaps she could try something else.
"I can't believe you let that brat escape."
"You're still going on about that? It's been half an hour. And besides, you're the one who got injured, Julia. It was you're fault just as much as mine, so don't try to act all innocent." the large man called James accused.
"Hmph, I was busy trying to take that spike out my arm." she defended.
"Of course you were. Why are you always so unwilling to accept the blame? You just throw it on others as if everything you do is perfect and the only reason plans fail are because of the people around you."
Julia stayed quiet at the accusation, giving James his answer.
"We might not be able to fire our guns, but we can still use them. Or yours, at least. Mine's destroyed. Now, let's find some more of these espers, they want a bunch, don't they? Has anyone even caught one yet?" he asked.
Julia took out her mobile phone and quickly dialled a number into it.
"I need a status update." she ordered as soon as the person on the other side picked up.
There was a pause as the person on the other side of the phone answered.
"Three? Only? How about the other objectives?"
Another pause as the person relayed the information.
"Damn. Fine, keep me updated."
She hung up and turned to James.
"Only three espers have been caught. We've lost contact with Caelen, Clyde and Olivia. Arata was the one who brought in the ones we've got, but he's moving onto his next objective."
"Oh? And what objective could that be?" came a voice from behind.
The two adults looked over to the direction of the voice and found the teleporter they had fought half an hour ago, standing in the middle of the street with metal spikes in each of her hands.
"We've only seen six of you if we include Therestina, but it appears there is more of you in the city." she continued before trying to teleport the spikes into the arms and legs of the two intruders. However, having seen the ability earlier, both of them saw the attack coming and were moving before she could teleport the first spike, as such, the spikes appeared in thin air, a few millimetres behind the targets. The pair, realising that the distance gave Shirai an advantage, started moving towards her.
Shirai, for her part, attempted to increase the distance by teleporting backwards. She tried teleporting the spikes she had in her hand into the intruders again, but once again, they were able to see the attack coming and take action to avoid them.
This continued for a while, with James and Julia trying to close the distance and Shirai trying to increase it and attempting to teleport metal spikes into them. However, Shirai had a limited amount of the metal spikes and when she teleported the last one, the man acted. In a move Shirai didn't think possible, the man caught the spike after dodging the initial attack, spun round and used his momentum to launch the spike back at Shirai. Surprised by what the man had just done, Shirai was late to teleport out of the way and had one of her own spikes stab into her shoulder.
"Arghhhh. Damn it."
Shirai fell to the ground and before she could recover, felt a toe sink into her gut as the woman, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, kicked her.
"Bgh."
The kick sent her tumbling back a few meters before she landed face up. With her accumulated damage and the pain she felt with the latest attack, Shirai couldn't think clearly enough to complete her calculations, so teleporting was out of the question. The damage was also slowing down her movements drastically. The kick she had received from the woman was a lot stronger than she would have believed was possible from her. She was glad the guy hadn't kicked her; she would have had to deal with a lot of broken bones if that had happened.
The two pursuers walked over to the grounded Shirai and grinned down at her.
"The chase was fun, but it's over now. You'll be coming with us. They'll be happy about you." said Julia.
However, Shirai had a grin of her own.
"You know? I'm really glad Kamijou wasn't here. With his luck weighing us down, I probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere close to here."
Before they could say anything, bullets ripped through both adults' legs. They both fell to the ground and looked behind them to see two identical looking girls with large, rectangular goggles on their foreheads, aiming the new rifles that had been issued to Anti-skill at them.
"Please surrender and come quietly or we will have to use violence says Misaka giving a warning to the two people attacking Big Sister's friend." the one on the left said.
The two adults on the ground with bullet wounds in their legs could see no way out. They hadn't realised that Shirai wasn't teleporting back to increase the distance between them, but to lead them closer to the two sisters. It was such a basic trap and yet they still fell for it.
"I believe that's all of them reports Misaka, unaware of any reports of another intruder."
"No, they mentioned another one who's already managed to kidnap three students." Shirai said. She looked at the hairpieces the girls had and was able to identify them as 10770 and 15598. "Any news on the three sisters who went missing?"
"Affirmitive. Misaka 13978, 17000 and 20000 were all found alive, they have minor injuries, but they will recover quickly reports Misaka."
"Good. You guys take these two in and I'll go after this last guy." Shirai said struggling to get to her feet.
"This Misaka would suggest you get yourself to a hospital instead of going after the last man says Misaka looking at the bullet wound on your thigh and the spike in your shoulder."
"This Misaka agrees. Besides, Big Sister has finished her fight and has minimal injuries, she can take care of the last one says Misaka informing you of Big Sister's success."
Shirai wanted to argue but she could feel her injuries and she knew her limits. If she was too reckless, she'd just get in the way.
"Fine, But I want to be kept up to date."
Meanwhile, Luna sat on top of a rooftop on the border between District 3 and District 4 with her legs dangling from the side of the building. In her hands was an electronic PDA with camera footage and the six faces of the known intruders. Next to them was another image that she tapped on to enlarge it. It showed a man in the middle of the street and a close up of the man's face next to it. He looked to be in his mid-forties with short, curly black hair. Luna sighed when she read the name underneath it.
"So, dad was right. It is them. In that case, we're in real trouble."
The name underneath the image read 'Arata Arikimo'.
A/N Hi everyone. Hope you all had a good week. The focus was on Shirai's fight this week. I don't think this was my best chapter ever, but it's still important due to the information scattered throughout it. I set a few things up with that information, so I hope this chapter at the very least has you excited for the rest of the story, even if you didn't like this particular chapter.
I tried to make this battle a little more challenging for Shirai and in the end, she couldn't really win it on her own. I also wanted the sisters to be a little more involved with some of the security for the city, and helping out Mikoto, Touma and Accelerator in that respect.
Now, for the comments..
Stryper88: I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it. I was a bit worried with how easily Mikoto won that it would have become a bit boring.
And there we have it. I hope you all enjoyed that chapter and I'll have the next one up next week. Now that I've finished my resits, I can get back to writing the next arc, which had to be left on the backburner for a little bit. This means the gap between arcs will be larger than I wanted. Apologies about that.
Have a good week everyone.