The woman at the front of the group looked to be in her mid-twenties. She had long, curly ginger hair and pale skin with freckles dotted around her face. She looked a bit worse for wear as if she had just been in a fight. The fact that she was standing in front of ten Kiharas told Touma why. She had just broken them out of the specially designed prison that should have been known only to the board members of Academy City and the Misaka sisters.
The woman spoke up and made her thick Glaswegian accent heard.
"Fuckin' hell, Arata. You really are a failure."
'Arata' didn't respond. He just stared at her with the same emotionless face he had worn throughout the fight with Touma and Anti-skill.
Before she could say anything else, the Anti-skill officers were up, in formation and aiming their guns at the new arrivals.
"Where the hell did she come from?" one of them asked.
"I don't know. We can ask her when we interrogate her." another responded.
"Wow. You're a cocky little shit, aren't you? Let's see how cocky you are after this?"
The woman ended her question by throwing about ten small metal balls into the air, towards the men and women opposing her.
"Get down!" screamed Yomikawa, but she was too late. The balls exploded in mid-air with enough force to throw the adults at the front of the formation, backwards, into their comrades.
The officer on top of Arata was thrown off him and Arata got to his feet, taking Touma who was duct taped onto him with him. Once Arata was on his feet, he started kicking Touma to get him off, eventually managing to rip the duct tape off whilst giving Touma a number of new bruises on both his chest and his face.
As Touma fell to the ground in pain, he could do nothing as Arata used his ability to create a spear of wind and destroy the handcuffs restraining him. He then walked over to the dazed Touma and raised his boot, ready to bring it down and deprive Touma of his consciousness, but before he could, a large, black, curved blade with a strange symbol on it that looked like a magic circle cut through the space between them.
Looking over to where the blade came from, Touma found a girl his age with long, flowing, bright red hair.
Luna.
Behind her were nine blades, identical to the one that stopped Touma from receiving another boot to the face, floating behind her in a large circle. The look on her face actually scared Touma a little. There was rage in those eyes, but strangely enough, it didn't seem to be pointed directly at the man named Arata. It was as if there was something else that made her so angry and Arata reminded her of it.
"Step away from him." Her voice was low, but still loud enough to be heard. Arata didn't seem to notice, or he didn't care. He just stared at the girl with that emotionless face.
"Huh. She looks really pissed. What did you do to her, Arata? Oh, hang on a minute. That red hair. Are you one of Kahaku's kids?" asked the woman with the ginger hair.
"I am, which gives me even more reason to kick your asses."
"Bahahahahahahaha!" The woman seemed to find that funny, but Touma couldn't tell why. "Oh, that's brilliant. He's going to fail another one."
Luna snapped at that. She shot herself towards the woman, swinging her blades round in a wide arc.
"Don't you dare! You have no right to even mention him!"
She didn't reach her target though, as the woman threw another of her metal balls at the fast-approaching esper. The ball exploded in front of Luna and sent her tumbling backwards.
"That would've been lethal. You actually tried to kill me. I'm impressed. I heard your family was weak." the woman taunted.
"That's just those bastards looking down on us as usual." Luna said as she slowly got back to her feet. The woman smiled and turned to the men and women behind her, handing them a small piece of paper she took from her pocket.
"Here's the rendezvous point. Go. I'll catch up later. You should go as well, Arata. I want to take this brat alone." she ordered.
The Kiharas started making their way past the group. The few Anti-skill officers who were still standing tried to put up a fight, but they didn't stand a chance. The Kiharas didn't have weapons on them, but they were still able to incapacitate the Anti-skill officers quickly. They took a few of the weapons but were stopped by the voice of the woman.
"Don't bother, they'll be obsolete soon enough. Besides, we don't want to give him a clue to where we are. Not yet anyway."
"Oh? So, you are scared of him." said Luna.
"Being cautious and being scared are two different things, brat."
The Kiharas heeded the woman's warning, put down the weapons and left. Touma was thankful they had as he didn't like the odds of twelve against two, especially when ten of them were Kiharas.
He didn't have much time to be grateful, though, as Arata brought his boot up again and was stopped again by Luna's blade which returned to her.
"I may not be able to stop those Kiharas from getting away, but I can take you two down."
Luna didn't wait for an answer or a comeback. She pointed her blades at both of her opponents and fired them. The woman was easily able to dodge them, whilst Arata let one stab into his shoulder. Seeing that, Luna's lips curled in disgust.
"What did they do to you?" she asked quietly, not expecting an answer.
"Why do you look so disgusted? They improved him. Now he's slightly less of a failure." the woman gloated with her hands in the air as if she were celebrating that fact.
"Who the hell are you anyway?" asked Luna.
"Me? The name's Skye. I'm assuming you're the youngest of the little brats. Luna, was it?"
Luna didn't respond with words. Instead, she swung her blades around herself using her ability and began her attack, making sure to draw in both of the invaders.
At that point, Touma completely lost track of what was happening. He could see that Luna was using her blades to attack and defend whilst almost dancing around the area, it was almost elegant. She seemed to be reaching them with her blades, but each of the wounds she was inflicting were only shallow. She might have been able to wear Skye down like that, but Touma doubted it would work with Arata. If she wanted to defeat him, she'd need to produce much stronger attacks.
She also wasn't the only one inflicting damage. Both of her opponents were trying their best to keep their distance and using longer ranged attacks in order to wear her down with Arata, his eyes back to normal, returning to his wind spears and Skye using plastic darts that she had taken from her pocket. It looked like this would be a battle of attrition.
This continued for about five minutes, with both sides slowly wearing the other down, but eventually, the numbers advantage started to show. Luna's movements started to grow dull, and more mistakes started to creep in, which allowed a spear or a dart to make their way through her defences and the damage they caused was building up.
Finally, with a dart making its way through her defences and stabbing into her arm, Luna's defence finally crumbled. She fell to the ground, covered in blood and panting loudly, trying to catch her breath. Skye walked over to the fallen girl slowly with a grin that could only look at home on a person lost to madness.
"Ha, maybe they were right."
She crouched down and looked Luna straight in the eye.
"I think they'll like you. We had to abandon our attempts to get him, but maybe he'll come to us on his own when we have one of his precious children. Of course, until we're ready, I'm sure they can find some use for you."
"Go to hell, bitch." Luna spat in Skye's face.
Skye wiped it off before grinning and raising her fist, but before she could bring it down again,
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
Touma, who had been watching the fight and slowly recovering his strength, had made his way next to her, clenched his fist and fired a right hook into her jaw accompanied with his war cry. Skye, taken by surprise and with not enough time to react couldn't even brace herself for the impact and crashed to the ground bouncing off it before coming to rest, looking up at the blue sky.
"Ooowwww." she said, lazily drawing out the word.
She grabbed her jaw with her hand and started moving it about.
"Not a bad hit. I'll give you that one."
Touma stood in front of Luna, protecting her, but the damage he had taken earlier was still showing in his movements and actions. He was sluggish and breathing heavily, his legs were shaking, and he was barely holding himself up.
"Get up." he told the girl lying behind him. "I can't beat these guys alone. I need your help, so please, get up."
The boy turned to the only ally that was still conscious. Mikoto would probably get angry at him later for getting an innocent person involved, but he didn't have much of a choice.
Luna grinned.
"Well… Since you asked so nicely…" she gritted her teeth as she pulled her weary body up and summoned her blades to her with her ability.
"You're really not going to tell me your ability, are you?"
"Nope. I like having a few secrets."
The two high school students looked at each other, wordlessly telling the other that they were ready. They sprinted towards the enemy in front of them and the two sides clashed.
Luna's blades once again spun around her, each of them capable of cutting their opponents open like a thin sheet of paper, and yet they showed no fear. Skye even grinned, seemingly excited to once again clash with those blades. Arata's face hadn't changed from the start and there was no reason for it to change now. Spears of wind formed around him and shot towards Luna who cut through them with her blades or jumped away to avoid them.
Touma, meanwhile circled around whilst Arata was focused on Luna, but was stopped by a plastic dart that missed his face by what felt like a millimetre. Skye had watched him all the way and thrown it to intercept him.
"I don't know who you are, but stay out of this, you little shit. Your friend here is the one that looks fun." she said, with a hint of anger in her voice. However, Touma was confused by what she had said.
"Wait, you don't know who I am? Really? You've never heard of Touma Kamijou? Or Imagine Breaker?"
"Nope. And I don't really care, either. Though, you are an esper, so we might as well take you in as well."
She threw another dart at Touma, but Touma dodged it. He then sprinted towards her, right fist clenched and ready to throw another of his infamous right hooks.
However, this woman was able to fight toe to toe with Luna, a girl who had been trained to fight from a young age. She knew how to fight properly, which is more than could be said for Touma who, despite fighting countless battles within the last two years, was still very much an amateur.
As soon as he reached her, he threw his punch, but the woman simply stepped inside, raised her arm to parry the attack that had even taken down the first ranked esper and unleashed her own right fist into his gut. Touma doubled over and received another blow, this time taking a knee to the face. His head rocked backwards and he fell to the ground.
He tried to look around for his attacker, but he couldn't focus. He could hear footsteps, but he couldn't tell where they were coming from or where they were going. He could do nothing as the footsteps stopped and he felt a large impact on his head causing everything to go black.
A/N Yikes, it has been one very busy week for me. Only just managed to get this chapter proof read yesterday. Usually, I'm able to get it done on the Sunday, but wasn't able to this time. However, still managed to get it done in time.
As for the chapter itself, we can see Luna has used her swords for the first time. I want to try something with these and I'm not 100 percent sure it'll work, but this something won't be revealed for a few arcs, so I hope you can stick with me.
I can't really talk about anything else in this chapter with spoiling stuff, so for now, I'll go to the comments,
GG Vegito: Always happy to see people enjoying the chapters, hope you enjoyed this one as well.
Stryper88: Honestly, that could be a pretty hilarious fic. Maybe it could fit into the idol manga. I don't think I could pull off a fic like that, though.
Guest: Yeah, I may have to change that a little. It's a bit of a shame because I quite like those, but if it's confusing then I'll just have to change it a bit. I'll still use Yen's translation for the majority of my writing because that's what I'm used to and I think people still understand most of it, but for stuff like Gemstones, I'll have to switch it.
And that's everything for this week, I hope you all enjoyed the chapter. Next week will be the final chapter of the arc, then I don't know how long it will take for the next arc. With everything that's been going on in my personal life, I'm still early in the first draft for that.
Have a good week everyone.