February 12th, 2004. 5:35 PM.
Saten Ruiko, the level zero esper who lacked any sort of scientific power, and Hamasaki Tsubasa, the fourth strongest esper out of well over four million dwelling within the walled enclave of Academy City should've been eating dinner, perhaps with one another, merely as friends and not as two individuals who possessed any sort of romantic interest in one another, of course, or otherwise with Uiharu Kazari present.
The time was indicative of this fact, as were the occasional, bellowing grumbles produced by Ruiko's weeping stomach.
Instead of consuming a nutritious meal around a cheap, plastic table in the warmth and security of someone's dorm room, the level zero and the level five had wound up proverbially pounding the pavement, attempting to appear casual, otherwise acting natural, as both parties sized up the selection of vehicles gathered in the parking area just beyond the entrance of school district twenty-one's Nature Park.
Having generated, at the very least a bare-bones plot through which school district seven, and, subsequently, the apartment complex identified as "Family Side" would be reached, the matter of transportation had come upon them like a mugger blanketed in the evening's darkness; neither had expected it, neither had prepared for it, and neither had any real form of contingency. Saten Ruiko lacked the knowledge that an eight-year-old clone and a variation of her close friend Misaka Mikoto, the Railgun dwelled there.
"We should just take the bus; this is a very bad idea, Hamasaki-san! There are people everywhere and someone is going to see us. Do you know how much trouble we could get int…"
"Shhh, Saten. Don't worry about it; the data they gather on my ability is useful to them. Nothing's going to happen. Worst possible outcome is as follows: Anti-Skill shows up, I blow them away and the higher-ups don't do a damn thing, because I'm worth something to them. All of the level fives are effectively immune to the law."
As Saten Ruiko fell quiet, not out of offense but rather to take a moment to think and ponder the profound effect her friend's words were quickly coming to have on her higher mind, Hamasaki Tsubasa continued to gaze at the wide assortment of vehicles found within the parking space, observing each, mentally taking notes on those which could – and couldn't – prove useful to him and to his level zero friend.
It was less a matter of security, and more a matter of speed and usability. If a vehicle had poor handling, if it hadn't bee designed to account for its driver making sharp turns and sudden, unexpected pounding on the gas pedal, it was of no use to the fourth-ranked level five esper.
Unfortunately, it didn't seem that any well-to-do folks had decided to pay school district twenty-one's Nature Park a visit.
The vehicles scattered about the Nature Park's designated parking area were simplistic, casual vehicles that one might take out on a leisurely Sunday afternoon's drive through the countryside, in some figurative location that actually had countryside to speak of; Academy City lacked country, let alone countryside.
Reeling his arm back, Hamasaki Tsubasa strolled around a nearby vehicle; a bright orange four-door, with numerous scrapes and a singular, vaguely veiny, web-shaped crack in the upper right-hand corner of its windshield, it had four tires, and four rims. If it started, it would have to do.
And, so, he spoke his piece.
"Saten, we're taking this one. Don't want suspicion so we've got to make this go quick, quick like a bunny."
Before a word could even begin to try and escape from between Ruiko's lips, a mass of void energy instantaneously swarmed from nowhere, surrounding the right hand of Academy City's fourth-ranked level five.
Stepping back, and then rushing headlong, forward into his one-sided battle against the inanimate object, Hamasaki Tsubasa's fist, protected by the mass of void energy nearly crashed through the driver's side window. If he wouldn't have stopped himself mid stride, his fist's impact would have sprayed glass about like so many raindrops ejected from a darkened and particularly hateful cloud.
Ruiko jumped, as Tsubasa swiftly forced the vehicle's driver's side door open, void energies crackling around him, and threw himself downward, into the driver's side seat; shards of glass cracked and crunched beneath him. Just how he'd managed to do so was unclear to the middle schooler level zero girl.
Even as Saten Ruiko struggled to regain her composure following her silent outburst, an impulse made manifest, born out of an amalgamation of shock and instinct, the level zero, middle schooler girl's body was wracked by nervous shuddering, which only worsened as the vehicle's alarm began to scream its painfully loud tune, wailing.
Swiftly, the passenger's side door was flung open, evidently unlocked by the main participant in the act of grand theft auto.
"Seat's clear, you're good to sit, Saten," Tsubasa stated, with an uncharacteristic firmness; uncharacteristic in his interactions with her, at the least. "We can't afford to dawdle. I guarantee you they've got cams on us, now, and I guarantee you that suspicion's already up, you're not supposed to be a part of this. No one else is, just us."
Just who was this 'us'? Hamasaki Tsubasa had neglected to mention any sort of nefarious group behind the scenes by name.
And, so, disregarding her inquiries for a moment, Ruiko complied, even as her higher mind screamed at her to run as quickly as she could and escape the scenario unfolding before her, like the rotting pages of some grim, darkened tome whose rotting pages were better left unread.
Seating herself within the passenger's side seat, which had been cleared of glass shards, Ruiko's continuously shaking arm pulled the door shut. Instincts took the reins once more as she buckled herself up, strapping the passenger's side seatbelt over her chest.
"Are there keys?" Ruiko inquired, with a voice adorned in only the finest specimens of weakness and timidity.
In silent response to her inquiry, Hamasaki Tsubasa gathered, seemingly from nowhere, but in truth from his own Personal Reality, a handful of void energy. Flowing from his palm, with lengthy, whipping tendrils forming from within, and from its surfaces, the void itself mutated, and shifted, as it was placed near the vehicle's ignition, nearest the steering wheel, with its sweat-plastered and partially-torn surfaces of leather.
Shifting its shape before Saten Ruiko's eyes, Hamasaki Tsubasa's conjured mass of void took the shape of the key required for the turning of the vehicle's ignition. Sliding in without issue, until each groove latched successfully within, the fourth-ranked level five turned his wrist in place.
And, as if by magic, the vehicle roared to life. This, in fact, was the same method he'd used to enter the vehicle in the first place.
He was beyond lucky that the vehicle was clearly a nineteen ninety-nine model, or one quite possibly older; it still utilized a key-based ignition system, and lacked the voice recognition system patented by Academy City vehicular engineers in the year two thousand, the turning of the millennium.
With great force, Hamasaki Tsubasa swiftly switched gears, putting the vehicle into reverse; subsequently, he slammed the gas pedal with his corresponding foot, forcing the vehicle to reverse.
A small group of individuals, likely would-be heroes given the speed at which they'd taken to rushing toward the pilfered vehicle were made to leap out of the way as the object they sought to liberate rushed backward, closing the ever-shortening distance between its own three thousand pound form and the would-be heroes themselves.
Saten Ruiko, observing the passage of events from the passenger's side mirror fought back the urge to duck, and beat back the desire to cry out to be released.
If she did that, she'd accomplish nothing, and she'd be nothing. She finally had power, even if it wasn't a lot, even if it wasn't an esper ability, it was something. Saten Ruiko would be damned if she didn't use it to accomplish something, anything that she could associate herself with, and hold pride in.
To that very same tune, as Saten Ruiko posed an inquiry, both once Hamasaki Tsubasa had steered the vehicle from the Nature Park's designated parking area, and once the vehicle's alarm had finally ceased its incessant blaring, which, up until the point in which it'd gone quiet, both parties had thought to be never-ending.
"Hamasaki-san, c-can I ask you something?"
Over a speed bump the vehicle travelled, its driver exercising the utmost caution as he applied the vehicle's brakes some solid few seconds before the vehicle's encounter with the bump.
Having entered the appropriate lane on the stretch of roadway beyond the Nature Park, Hamasaki Tsubasa was quickly proving himself to be a cautious and almost surprisingly skilled driver.
"You're going to be fine, Ruiko, I've got this under control. Even if Anti-Skill pulls us over, I flash them a badge, and they come back from where they came, they'll turn tail like scared little puppies, trust."
"Thanks for the reassurance. It d-doesn't make this right, but thanks for that… you're thinking about my feelings. That's not what I was going to say though. I was g-going to ask who it is that we're trying to protect."
"That'd require a lot of catching up, on your part," Tsubasa stated, commanding he and Ruiko's pilfered vehicle with a tilt of its steering wheel, and a light, brief tap on the vehicle's brake, "here's the abridged version. Academy City made clones of the third-ranked level five, Railgu…"
"W-W-WHAT DO YOU MEAN… c-clones? T-then the rumours a-are true, about… the number one, Accelerator? Oh… my…"
Saten Ruiko's heart thudded, repeatedly, and a rate far too quick to be considered healthy, especially for a girl her age. With this realization dawning, Ruiko repeatedly took deep breaths, as either of her hands fell to her knees, where their palms came to rest. Her fingers scrunched, and she produced a soft groan of struggle, and of discomfort.
"… if there're rumours about it, then, yes, they're true… Academy City made clones of the third-ranked level five, Railgun, using her DNA map, which researchers obtained through illegal and unethical methods – get used to it, Saten, everything this City does is illegal and unethical – and, through the use of numerous technological advancements available only here in Academy City, the Sisters were produced under the code-name "Project Radio Noise". Originally to be utilized as military operatives, when that fell through, they became fodder for Accelerator's development, and he wiped out…"
"Three thousand," Ruiko interjected, attempting not only to complete Hamasaki Tsubasa's sentence for him, but to prove her understanding.
Understanding which was then subsequently and unceremoniously shattered.
Performing a left turn, and ascending a ramp which lead towards the highway, the means in which Academy City's seventh school district would be reached, the fourth-ranked level five corrected the level zero.
"You're off by about nine thousand dead Sisters; the real number is closer to twelve thousand."
"T-twel… ve…?"
"Just over twelve thousand of them were torn apart, mowed down and treated like animals by Academy City and by Accelerator, who willingly took part in the whole thing, didn't once think about turning his power against Academy City until this crazy bastard knocked some sense into him. I'm not a Saint by anyone's definition, not my own especially, but I can't write down "has killed innocent people by the tens of thousands" on my Dark Side resume."
Another right turn.
The vehicle, at the behest of Hamasaki Tsubasa came to a halt, skidding slightly as it just barely stopped before the adjacent, cobbled crosswalk. Some students, but not many answered the proverbial, silent call of the blinking crosswalk lights, displaying a tiny man with a top hat and a cane striding forward, with a confidence bounce in his step.
Hamasaki Tsubasa gripped the pilfered vehicle's steering wheel, gritting his teeth as tears, salty, liquid agony dripped down Saten Ruiko's cheeks, escaping from the corners of her eyes and fleeing, dripping, falling from her face and down upon her Sakugawa Middle School uniform's skirt.
"It's horrible."
"You don't need to tell me that, I'm aware. Gladio, the black op I'm… involved… with, not by any choice of my own helped to fund the Level Six Experiments, the same Experiments that'd go on to birth Last Order."
"Not by any choice of your own? What… I don't even think I want to know what a "Last Order" is."
From crimson to bright, emerald green the stoplights flashed; Tsubasa and Ruiko's pilfered vehicle, along with others that had gathered both beside it and to its rear pushed themselves forward, commanded and forced to action. Being mere automatons, they were to only obey, never to decide, never to think. Even Academy City's vehicles lacked such functionality.
"They saved my life. Then they proceeded to hold it over my head. Last Order is the eight-year-old girl we're trying to keep from having her brains splattered across a wall," Tsubasa stated, with a calmness that both brought disturbance down upon the higher mind of and disgusted Ruiko.
"To summarize, Last Order's the Moderator of the Misaka Network. The clones operate through a hive mind, and each of the clones can all hear one another's thoughts. Last Order helps to keep them in check, and prevent any sort of catastrophes. Gladio dossiers have a lot of information about the whole Level Six Experiments. Wasn't supposed to go through them, but I did anyways, because I shit on them for fun."
A straightened stretch of roadway greeted the fourth strongest level five esper, and the 'powerless' level zero esper, the failure, the weak one.
She posed a query, her voice softened. Saten Ruiko's vision focused on the rear view mirror, mounted to her passenger's side door.
"Does… Misaka-san even know about the clones? If they're… her, what does that make them, her Sisters or something?"
Hamasaki Tsubasa's own vision remained focused on the road ahead of him, even as he spoke his response.
"The Third knows. Spent months trying to destabilize the Experiments on her own, got trashed by the Accelerator a couple of times when she thought that taking him out would fix it, and then… he stepped in. This… guy, an absolute madman goes and punches Accelerator's lights out, somehow."
"Is that a hard thing to do?" Ruiko inquired, utterly unawares as to the exact power possessed by the number one strongest esper in Academy City.
"If you know anything about the Accelerator's ability, and I wouldn't expect you to, being… a normal person on the Light Side, it's that he can manipulate any and all vectors, as long as he understands the source of the vectors. He's practically invincible. If he got a hold of the void produced by my Personal Reality for even a moment, that would be it, I wouldn't be able to touch him."
Saten Ruiko could only look down at her lap, as she and Tsubasa's pilfered vehicle carried on with its journey.
Misaka Mikoto, her friend, had faced down a monster like that by herself? She'd fought against an invincible foe. She must've had more than a "good" reason for doing so. Competitive as she'd been, she was no fool. Mikoto simply would not have thrown herself against a foe that she could not beat, through any means.
She must've been desperate, absolutely hopeless, to take such drastic measures.
"Misaka-san must've felt that the clones were family. What does Last Order have to do with any of this? If she's the 'Moderator' of this Network of clones, then…"
She would've continued, if the thought of an eight-year-old child being slaughtered didn't twist her stomach in on itself, therefore silencing her stream of vocalized words.
"I don't know about any of that," Tsubasa spoke, with a casual shrug of his shoulders, "I wasn't there, and the dossiers only cover so much. A lot of people would feel comfortable counting the clones as robots, or something, but every sign points to them being living, breathing people. Even if they were robots, who's to say that robots can't feel?
"Dossiers say that Last Order fled from the facility that was in charge of her "well-being" and hunted down the Accelerator following his defeat at the hands of the crazy guy. For some reason, he didn't immediately kill her.
"Guilt, maybe," Ruiko muttered.
"Doubt that. Gladio's tracked everything those two have gotten up to from that point," was a portion of Hamasaki Tsubasa's response, "and, suffice to say, they're… in a twisted way, like father and daughter. Still, no signs point to the fact that the Railgun herself is actually aware that one of her clones is currently in the custody of the Accelerator."
"If this Last Order is the bigwig of the clones," Ruiko began, "shouldn't she hate Accelerator for what he did to the other clones?"
"Stockholm syndrome is lovely this time of the year, I hear."
Silence descended upon the two individuals, level zero middle schooler and level five high schooler, within the pilfered vehicle; Saten Ruiko had a wide array of inquiries she could've posed, and, if the recently-faded proceedings were any indication, then, by all means, Hamasaki Tsubasa would have more than likely been able to answer them.
In truth, Ruiko didn't want to know anything more about the whole situation. It was sick, it was twisted, it was abhorrent, and it was horrid. She could only grip onto her skirt, nearly tearing the fabric of the clothing article with her nails.
Saten Ruiko's heart grieved for Misaka Mikoto, and for the twelve thousand lives lost, lives whose utter destruction most of Academy City mustn't have known even a smidgen about.
It was especially for that reason, with the passion of Misaka Mikoto alive in her higher mind, that Saten Ruiko strengthened her resolve.
She would do everything in her limited power to protect this "Last Order".
February 12th, 2004. 6:34 PM.
"So, this is it? This is the place where this Last Order girl is?"
"According to the directions I was provided with."
Hamasaki Tsubasa and Saten Ruiko gazed upward, from within their pilfered vehicle, up at the towering forty story behemoth of an apartment complex. Light brown in coloration, similar to the coloration of Academy City's cobbled streets, there was no doubt about it.
It was high-end; the styling of the windowpanes and the small, ornate sections of metallic gratings which surrounded each windowpane were like something taken straight from the long-forgotten design plan of some gothic castle.
Saten Ruiko, peering out from her passenger's side window stared onward, her blue eyes seemingly becoming transfixed. Suddenly incapable of moving, even with her higher mind's repeated commands, she tugged at the locking mechanism of the passenger's side door, which, to her surprise, actually managed to unlock the door.
How non-futuristic.
The level five Hamasaki Tsubasa soon joined his friend, the middle schooler level zero girl, who stood as tall, and with as much bravado as a middle schooler level zero girl could muster in the face of potential conflict, which, in this case, was very little at all.
Still, the determination etched onto her facial features was enough to impress the fourth-ranked level five.
Looking away from Saten Ruiko, and downwards, towards his smartphone, clutched in the palm of his hand, Hamasaki Tsubasa re-read the electronic message forwarded onto him by his employer.
Held as invisible and untouchable masses of data within the folder containing a map of the area were digitally enhanced and edited pinpoints, each of which served the function of highlighting locations of interest surrounding the apartment complex identified as Family Side. Included, among other points of interest was a small note regarding a restaurant where, if things turned sour, hostages could be taken in order to deter potential Anti-Skill 'heroes'.
More important to the fourth-ranked level five were the bits of information regarding the floor and room number which were relevant to "Operation Pacifier".
Whoever had come up with that name was an absolute, fetid twat. What did Gladio even pay those idiot field techies for?
Disregarding those thoughts, Tsubasa looked over the briefing within the digital, archived folder once more.
"Relevant: Family Side apartment complex, seventh school district, thirteenth floor, second suite."
Little did those Gladio pigs know that the entirety of their plans were about to come crashing down upon them.
Killing fully-grown men, and even women was one thing, so long as their homicide actually served a purpose, and wasn't simple committed for the sake of achieving some artificial end.
Hamasaki Tsubasa considered himself foolish, for a moment; the soles of his shoes contacted the surface of a cobbled roadway in Academy City, the place where, beneath those same cobbled streets, within the walls of warehouses and other innocuous structures, many of which would seem to be little more than abandoned, derelict relics to most, horrifying experiments were conducted on a near daily basis.
The fact that Academy City would be willing to dispose of some idiot child for profit, or, even, for the furthering of science shouldn't have been…
Zrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaassssshhhhhhhhhhh.
Through the center of the roadway adjacent to Family Side, a great surging ray of purple seared and sundered brickwork, shattered cobbled walkways, and tore the flesh of dozens, those who were unfortunate enough to find themselves simply in the wrong place, and at the wrong time.
From within the plume of opaque smoke rising from the ruined sections of cityscape, a shrill, high-pitched voice spoke aloud, vocalizing noises that were somewhere between words and beastly shrieks.
"You, you need to fuck off! This whole thing, this entire setup, the whole, entire fucking situation, the payout! This is all officially THE PROPERTY OF ITEM!"