Chapter Two: Aki
Uiharu, along with the Skill-Out members, turned to the voice in question. Standing just at the door that led back into the building, was a girl a bit older than herself with sleek crimson hair and sapphire blue eyes, holding an overcoat over her shoulder. Uiharu was wondering what a girl, who didn't appear to be a part of Judgment given the lack of the armband, was doing here. Shouldn't Anti-Skill or another member of Judgement stopped her from getting into the district?
"Who the hell do you think you are?" shouted the Skill-Out leader, pissed off that his fun would have to wait. "Leave or else I promise you'll only find pain." The girl in response clicked her tongue in annoyance.
"Typical idiots you lot are, thinking that taking the fight against civil servants will change anything," the girl scoffed. "Seriously, all you guys are doing is pouring oil onto your own funeral pyre."
"Fuck this bitch!" yelled one of the lesser Skill-Out members. "Even if she's a freak like this one-"here the member pointed down at Uiharu, who had scrambled back to the edge "-we still out number her six to one, and we have this!"
The member whipped out a stereo unit, and Uiharu's eye's widened, realizing that the stereo would probably have Capacity Down, a noise generator that impaired with Espers' abilities using infrasonic sound waves. To a non-esper it would be a mild high-pitch whine, but to an esper it was comparable to having a constant ringing after having a gun shot off right next to your ear. Uiharu watched as the Skill-Out leader pushed the play, and heard the god awful ringing in her ears. However, to her (and the Skill-Out gang's) surprise, the girl seemed not even affected.
"Really, you are going to use that overhyped piece of sh-junk? C'mon, you'll have to do much better than that," the girl said, goading the Skill-Out members.
"Fuck that bitch up boys!" the leader shouted. "Let's see how she likes a bit of fire!"
A Skill-Out member pulled out a one of the few undamaged Molotov cocktails, grinning like a mad man. He was about to throw it when suddenly the bottle shattered for next to no reason, engulfing the member's hand.
"Ah AHHH, MY HAND IS ON FUCKING FIRE!" the member shouted. The other members who were about to make a move to the fire bottles, wisely back away, with only one of the members trying to help the burning one's hand. The leader pulled out a switch blade.
"Fuck you bitch!" the man shouted, lunging toward the girl. Uiharu, still under the effects of the Capacity Down, could only watch in horror as the man lunged, fully intending to stab her in the gut.
The leader thought the girl was much like most espers; all ability, no strength. That was why Capacity Down was so useful; to remove an esper of their ability was like giving a guy an empty gun against someone with any form of close quarters combat training. So while the girl didn't seemed fazed by the machine, he figured he could still take her. However, this was seemingly proven wrong when the girl grabbed the guy's shirt, pulling him down and kneeing him in the gut.
Uiharu winced as she saw the leader double over in pain, dropping his knife. The leader glared at the girl before turning to the other members.
"What the hell are you waiting for, and invitation?! Get her boys!"
This seemingly rallied the few other members into action, and they began a haphazard charge at the girl. The girl smirked before going forward, putting herself in the middle. Launching quick punches and kicks, she quickly made short work of the group, targeting the knees, private areas, and guts to quickly disable the gang members with nary a scratch on her. The leader however still had some fight in him and got up to his feet.
"Well, color me impressed, but know this, these guys were just the bottom feeders," the leader remarked. "I'll kill you the next time we meet." Before Uiharu or the girl could react, the leader jumped off the roof with the Capacity Down. Finally freed of the effects, Uiharu slowly got up and went to see what had happened to the leader, only to see him unscathed despite falling quite a way.
"Huh, I guess he was a low rank gravity or air manipulator," the girl commented. Uiharu was breathing heavy, not used to be kicked around after running up several flights of stairs, but she managed to get her breath to ask an important question.
"Who are you?" Uiharu asked the girl, who promptly smirked.
"You can call me Aki, I detest my family so I don't often bother giving up my name," Aki answered. "Although, you look pretty banged up, how about you contact your partners at Judgement and then get you to see a doctor?" Uiharu nodded, pulling out her data pad and quickly contacted Kuroko.
"Kuroko, you there? Good, can you come by my location, I got a few members of Skill-Out and a civilian that need extraction, as well as myself."
An hour later saw Uiharu being examined by a medic, while Saten, Misaka, Kuroko, and Aki outside the medic's van. The rioting had died down in less than an hour, seemingly without cause, confusing both Judgement and Anti-skill officials. As a result, judgement and Anti-Skill were pulling out of the district, although a few units would remain behind just in case the rioting started up again.
Uiharu winced as the medic examined her body. He prodded her body with his fingers, checking for broken bones and the like. The medic sighed before standing back.
"Well Ms. Uiharu, you don't appear to have any broken bones, though you will have some bruising. I recommend you take it easy for the next couple of days. You fine for desk work and light field work, but until the pain is gone, I wouldn't recommend trying to handle a skirmish for a while."
"Okay sir," Uiharu said, slightly depressed. This day once again showed that she was weak, so pathetic that she had to be rescued by a civilian. She hated the fact that her ability once again proved practically useless in the face of danger; what point was there in being able to maintain how hot or how cold something was?
"You okay Uiharu?" Saten asked softly, resting her hand on Uiharu's shoulder. Uiharu sighed.
"No, I got beaten around and had to be saved by Aki," Uiharu answered before glancing at Aki. "Thanks for the save by the way Aki." The red head shrugged.
"No problem, just glad to have done some good," Aki replied. "Although you did some good by distracting though Skill-Out members, considering they had Molotov Cocktails. Who knows what would've been put to the torch?"
"What were you doing there?" Kuroko asked Aki. "The entire district was in lockdown due to the Skill-Out riot." Aki once again shrugged.
"I was taking a short cut to my place, District 17 is a lot easier to navigate and has generally less foot traffic so when I have to go from District 21 to 20, taking 17 is much faster than going around through district 9."
"I see, but still, you're an esper and the Skill-Out gangs had several Capacity Downs, it was extremely dangerous for you to be around." Kuroko pointed out, to which Aki nodded.
"That's true, but thankfully my ability, Wavelength Modification, allows me to render Capacity Down useless by manipulating the wavelength of the sound waves before they get to me," Aki explained. "That said, I took refugee on the roof where I found Uiharu when I realized the rioting was going on."
"Wavelength Modification, never heard of that ability," Misaka muttered. Aki shook her head.
"That's because most times people who operate within the spectrum of wavelength modifying often specialized within a certain area, like modifying sound's or light's wavelength. Therefore, their ability is given a name based on what they modify, not how the modification occurs."
"I see, so I take it from your explanation that you can modify a wide range of um, items?" Kuroko asked. Aki nodded.
"Yeah, for me I can modify sound, temperatures, light to a lesser degree, and finally vibrations that exists in solids and liquids though again to a lesser degree than sound," Aki supplied. "Although I must ask, what's your ability Uiharu? If you don't have an ability that suited for confrontations, you shouldn't have been on the frontlines. I don't mean to insult you in anyway, but I wouldn't want you to get needlessly injured."
"It's fine, it isn't like I haven't heard those same concerns," Uiharu said dejectedly. "My ability is Thermal Hands; I can maintain, heat up, or cool down the temperatures of items in my hand. It's not that useful except being a glorified thermos."
Much to the surprise of the four girls, Aki smiled.
"Ah, I see. Thermal Hands huh, I bet I could help you with that."
"What, how?" Uiharu asked. "I remember my teachers telling me that they had little data on my ability and that unless I increased past Level 1, there wasn't much they could do for me." Aki sighed, shaking her head.
"Those liars, the truth of the matter is that at the off set, your ability seems weak and pointless to level up," Aki began. "Unlike electromasters, whose abilities are numerous and have a plethora of applications, your Thermal Hands seems to be a one trick pony. So they tell you the lie that they don't have data, when in reality they are probably ignoring your abilities in favor of those that show more promise."
Aki's words rang through Uiharu's head like a gunshot echo. Her teachers were intentionally leading her on with no real intent on their part to help her improve? She felt herself begin to fume with anger, before she squashed it, thinking about how hard it must be for a single teacher to try and level up anywhere between twenty and thirty students with widely varying abilities. She let out a deep sigh.
"I see, that sucks," Uiharu muttered. "But then why do you think you could help me with my ability?"
"Because while your ability is focused solely on manipulating temperature ranges, I can do it, though to a lesser extent than what you can do when you get level up," Aki stated confidently. "I can come over to your place and go over how the mechanics of your ability works, and then we can begin training your ability so you can level up."
"So you plan on taking Uiharu under your wing because your abilities have enough of a common factor to work with?" Kuroko asked. "If that's the case, then why don't most research groups and academies use this mentor model?" Aki shrugged before replying.
"Well, most espers are extremely prideful and thus see help from a peer are a sign that they are weak. That or there aren't a lot of espers that share enough common ground to make use of a mentorship. I mean, there's what, like 50 or 60 teleporters in all of Academy City, of which less than 20 can teleport multiple objects? Now apply that to more obscure abilities, like Uiharu's or mine, and the problem becomes even worse. The only group of espers that would benefit greatly from mentorship would be electromasters, and that because it's the most abundant ability group there is."
"I see," Misaka said. "Well, it's up to Uiharu if she wants to go under your wing, but just promise me you won't hurt her."
"I won't hurt Uiharu," promised Aki. "Well Uiharu, want me to be your mentor?"
Uiharu didn't even need to think about it. She was tired of being completely helpless and needing assistance from her friends when the going got tough. She needed to improve her ability because without a doubt she and her friends would likely get caught up in something and she might not have her friends to protect her.
"I will Aki," Uiharu stated. Aki smiled.
"Alright then, meet me on Friday after school near the park," Aki said. "You guys have a good evening; I need to get home to finish some assignments I've been neglecting to do."
"Bye Aki," the four girls said, waving their new acquaintance good bye. Uiharu and the four began walking back to the Judgement HQ, a smile on her face.
Author's Note: I'm back again, sorry, I've been busy since the first chapter. I move last month from Pennsylvania to Nevada, so the months leading up to it I was packing, dealing with work, and working on a plethora of other projects. I didn't mean to start the rewrite only to be delayed for 5 months, hopefully I can keep the updates more frequently. But enough excuses, on to some points.
First, we meet Aki once more, and I hope to have done a better fight scene than my first attempt (looking back on it, the fight was more a one-way slaughter and badly written at that). This time Aki will definitely mentor Uiharu while becoming one of her closest friends, which'll make the eventual schism more impactful.
Second, I want to explain something. When I did my first story, I had Uiharu x Kakine, but as some of you pointed out, it clashed with several canon sources, and it made little sense. Why would there be Dark (or the original) Kakine if Beetle 06 took over the collective mass of Dark Matter? I therefore have begun to work an idea that has Dark Kakine reappear, but his interactions with Uiharu, along with some plot material that will appear before his arrival, allow for a more understandable Uiharu x Kakine (btw, what is this ship's name?).
Finally, next chapter will begin Uiharu's first lessons in understanding her ability, along with a little surprise, something that wasn't in the original story but will begin the slide towards the Gates of Hell Arc. Until next times guys, please read, follow, favorite, and review the story, and hopefully I'll see you guys in a month or so.
