Luna hadn't stood a chance. She had already been worn down by the same enemies she was facing now and the support she had gotten from Touma had not lasted long, meaning it was back to a two on one fight.
She lay flat on the ground, struggling to even keep her eyes open. She felt pain coursing throughout her entire body and blood was flowing out of the countless wounds she had received.
"Shit. This really hurts."
The woman, Skye entered her vision, but Luna didn't have the strength to even lift a finger towards her. She couldn't do anything as the woman picked her up, slung her over her shoulder and started walking away from the injured Anti-skill officers. Her consciousness faded not long after that.
Yomikawa wasn't in a much better condition. The bombs that had been thrown at the Anti-skill officers had inflicted incredible damage to the whole group. Yomikawa had managed to crawl behind a small wall and lay her back against it. But each movement shot pain through her body and all she could do was listen as the two invaders picked up two students that she was meant to protect. She didn't even have the strength to lean over the wall to watch what her failure had caused.
She heard the footsteps getting further away and tears came to her eyes as she lamented her failure.
Eventually, the footsteps left her range of hearing and Yomikawa was left feeling on her own. The other Anti-skill officers around her were all trying to get up and preparing to find the students they had lost, but Yomikawa subconsciously blocked it out. She just sat there, listening, as if she would hear those footsteps return with the students. As if they would both come back, smiling, safe and sound like nothing happened at all. That was all she could do.
"-omikawa!"
She thought she heard a voice in front of her, but she was so deep in her own world that she barely noticed it.
"iss Yomikawa! Can you hear me?!"
Then something hit her on the cheek hard enough to snap her out of her dream-like state.
"Miss Yomikawa! Are you with us?!"
In front of her was a young girl with short brown hair. She was the level 5 electro master, Mikoto Misaka.
"I'm sorry, I couldn't stop them."
Mikoto simply smiled at her, trying to reassure her.
"It's okay, just tell me where they went."
"Back into District 3." Yomikawa said, gritting her teeth through the pain. She then saw an opportunity to make up for her mistake. "Please, take me with you. I can't just sit here and let them get taken."
"Don't worry about that. I'll take care of it. You just focus on recovering. You won't be much help right now." Mikoto denied her bluntly.
Yomikawa wanted to argue, but she was well aware she was right. She needed to get to a hospital, not jump into another fight. In the end, she never got to say anything. When she looked up to say some words of encouragement to the young girl, she had already disappeared.
"Why are students in this city always so impatient."
Mikoto made her way to District 3 using her magnetism to accelerate her progress. On her way, she contacted Uiharu.
"Uiharu. They have Touma. I think they're headed through District 3 again. I need you to check all the cameras to find them." she said starting to panic. She didn't want to think about what they'd do to her boyfriend if they got him out of Academy City. The power in his right hand, Imagine Breaker, was unique and any scientist willing to kidnap espers to experiment on, would definitely grab at the opportunity to experiment on that right hand. And the experiments wouldn't be comfortable for Touma, she knew that for sure.
"They got Kamijou? How?"
"I'm not entirely sure. Apparently, two invaders showed up and they managed to take down everyone there and when another student came to help, they took her as well."
"Do we know who the other student is?"
"Not yet. But we can figure that out when we catch them."
"Alright, I'll contact you when I get something."
"Thank you, Uiharu."
Mikoto hung up and kept moving through District 3, keeping an eye out for Touma. With each second that she couldn't find him, the more panic grew within her. She was getting scared now, terrified that she would fail to protect him the one time that he needed her.
"Come on, come on. Where are you, Touma?" she muttered to herself, urgency in her voice.
Finally, she heard a beep from her earpiece and answered it.
"They're at the northern most point of the district, at the wall, but they've gone into one of the buildings. I think they're about to escape the city."
"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit."
Mikoto used her ability to shoot through the city, chasing the kidnappers. Tears were welling up in her eyes as she considered the worst possible scenario. Eventually, she reached the northern most wall and used magnetism to scale it.
She reached the top and desperately searched the entire area. She even extended electromagnetic waves as far as she could. If they came into contact with Imagine breaker, it would be negated, and she'd be able to know where they were.
But she couldn't find them.
She searched and searched, but they were outside of her range. She collapsed on top of the wall, tears flowing freely from her eyes.
"Dammit."
She had failed.
A beep sounded from her earpiece again. She didn't want to talk to anyone at that moment, but she had to tell Uiharu what happened.
"Mikoto! Did you get them?!"
"No. I failed, Uiharu. I failed him." she said, trying desperately to hold back the tears, but failing miserably.
"Oh. I'm sorry Mikoto." her friend tried to comfort her.
"What are you sorry for? You did everything right. It was me who failed him."
She cut the connection before Uiharu could respond and looked up towards the blue sky. A single thought repeated in her head, over and over again, like a broken record.
'I failed him.'
The following day, Accelerator was sitting in a brightly lit room with nothing but a black office chair and a grey desk with a computer on it. He sat on the office chair and looked towards the four people in front of the desk and then at the PDA in his hands.
The first girl was Misaka Worst. She was standing at the corner of the room staring at Accelerator's computer, wondering if there was any way to mess with it whilst she was in her. That wasn't possible, though, as Accelerator had made it as 'Worst proof' as possible as he liked to call it.
Leaning up next to the door was a girl with long, red hair, tied back into two ponytails and wearing the Kirigaoka Girl's Academy coat on her shoulders and nothing but bandages to cover up underneath. Her name was Awaki Musujime. Accelerator didn't even want to think about what kind of messed up stuff that was going through her head at that moment.
The last girl in the room was trying her best to stay as far away from Worst as possible. She had a white coat and black hair with the ends dyed yellow. She was around fourteen years old and was a cyborg that currently had cat ears attached to her head. She would reach up and touch them every now and then and each time she looked like she was about to cry when she felt them. Her name was Umidori Kuroyoru.
Finally, standing in front of the group and closest to the desk, there was a boy with dark skin and wavy black hair. His name was Etzali and was a previous member of the dark side organisation known as Group along with Accelerator, Musujime and Motoharu Tsuchimikado. He was also the only sorcerer in the room.
"I don't think it's a good idea to send you lot for this, but I don't have a choice." Accelerator finally spoke.
"The four of you are going on a rescue mission. Your targets are Touma Kamijou as well as four other students." he told them.
"Oh? Are we not looking for Big Sister? This Misaka thought we'd get to hunt her down."
"I already know where she is. I don't need anyone to 'hunt her down'. If we bring back the hero quickly enough, she'll come back on her own."
"How do you know where she is?" asked Musujime.
"Same way I know where the hero is. I have trackers on them. Well, in them, to be more precise. Same goes for all board members, even if they don't know it."
The group sweat dropped at that, apart from Worst, who had already known.
"So, where is Kamijou now?" asked Etzali.
"He's still in Japan. Here." Accelerator passed the PDA to Etzali who looked over all of the information it was showing.
"As I said, this is going to be a rescue mission. Get in there, get the hero and the students and get out. If possible, avoid fighting. These people managed to get a group of Kiharas out, they're not to be underestimated. If you have to fight, make sure you outnumber them and take them down together." he said, aiming the last word at Worst.
"Why are you looking at Misaka like that? This Misaka can play well with others. Just look at how she turned out." Worst said, pointing at Kuroyoru who was trying to hide herself behind Etzali.
Accelerator looked between the two girls and voiced his thoughts,
"Maybe I should have let the third-rate go on this mission after all."
As consciousness started to return to Touma, the first thing he noticed was the high-pitched sound being played from somewhere outside of the room. That was going to get annoying really fast. He slowly opened his eyes and was met with a dark grey ceiling.
"Ugggghhhhh." He brought his hand to his head. Damn, that woman hit hard. What was her problem?
"He's awake. Welcome back to the land of the conscious people. Anyway, you alright?"
"I don't think that's how the saying goes." Touma groaned.
"Meh, I altered it for our purposes."
Touma slowly sat up and looked around. He was in small room with two beds, a toilet, a sink and a thick, metal door in front of him. Luna was sitting next to him with bandages wrapped around parts of her body, only just keeping the blood from escaping. Touma figured they must have given her the bare minimum of treatment to stop her from dying from blood loss. She must have been the one he was talking to.
On one of the beds were two girls about two years younger than him, curled up into balls next to each other and hugging each other tightly. They looked absolutely terrified. Touma couldn't blame them, they had just been kidnapped from Academy City, a place they were meant to be safe.
One of them was clearly Japanese and had short, brown hair whilst the other looked European. She had long, straight black hair. Both of them had the summer uniforms for Ninoude High on. Touma guessed they were probably friends hanging out and were taken together.
The last person in the small room was a boy who looked to be in middle school. He looked Japanese as well and had very short, very spiky hair. Each hair looked like a needle ready to stab anything it came into contact with. Touma decided there and then that he would never touch that hair. He was wearing the Minamikawa Middle School summer uniform. Touma was pretty sure that was the school who Tokiwadai were playing when he and Tsuchimikado were looking for Oriana Thomson's Shorthand spell.
"Five of us in a cell this small, this ought to be fun." Luna commented following Touma's gaze.
"We need to get these kids out of here." Touma said.
"Agreed. The only problem is how?" Luna asked. "You know that high pitched sound? That's preventing us from doing any proper calculations. If any of us try to use an esper power, it will go out of control, so getting past that door is going to be tough enough. Then when we get out, we have no idea where we are or how to get home."
"So, we just have to sit here and do nothing?"
"Yep. Our best bet is to wait until someone comes for us."
"We should still look for a way out. It will help our rescuers if they can meet us at the front door."
"And how do we do that?"
"I don't know. I could use your help to think this through."
And so, the two students started plotting a way out of their confinement.
A/N And there's the final chapter of this arc. The next arc may take a while as I'm still early on with it and I'm struggling to find time to really kick on with it, but I'll get there. So, don't worry if it takes a while for the next chapter to come out, I have zero plans of abandoning this story.
As for the chapter itself, it was cut up quite a bit this time to show the different states people were in, from Luna's defeat to Mikoto's failure and so on. I feel like it was a good idea to lay out the board a little. I hope it worked.
Also, I've been getting suggestions and ideas from the comments, thank you for those. I look at each of them and consider all of them. I may not be able to use them all, but they can give me ideas for more stories and arcs I can write, so thank you.
Finally, at the start of the arc, I said I was going to wait until after the next arc before I start rewriting A Trip To Paris. This is because I didn't want to leave the story at a cliff-hanger whilst I'm rewriting something.
Now, for the comments,
Stryper88: As I said earlier, thank you for the idea. I obviously can't say if I'll use it because of spoilers, but they always help.
SaSaltyDog: Thank you. I plan on making this a pretty long story, so I hope you'll continue to enjoy it.
And that's everything. As I said earlier, it will take a while to get the next chapter out, but I'll work as fast as I can, and I'll get it out when it's ready. Until then, I hope you guys enjoyed the arc and I'll be back next time.
Wow, I used the word 'fail' a lot in this chapter, huh?