The building of the former Special Ability Institute's branch was covered by small devices emitting an ECM signal against the Misaka-Network. Strategically placed auto-turrets, as well as black-clad soldiers protected the emplacements.

That didn't stop the Misakas from conquering checkpoint after checkpoint in this facility and destroying their countermeasures. Mikoto took control of the turrets and shocked the troops with her one-billion-volt strong electric current. Worst had her downgraded railgun and the others used the grenade-launchers attached to their F2000R Toy Soldier rifles.

The whole sweep would only take another 15 minutes, then they'd just have to find Last Order and get out.


Meanwhile Accelerator and Saten had made a prisoner, he was staggered by the boy's excellent marksmanship and then shocked unconscious by an electric baton.

When he woke up, the only thing he could see in the darkness were glowing red eyes in front of his face.

"Hello there. I want you to tell me everything!"

"No way, the boss would kill me! I won't say anything!"

"Do you know how many bones in a human body can be broken, before you die of shock? Wanna have me try it out on you? Or would you rather die in another painful manner?"

The man struggled at the monster before him, it was pitch black. He didn't want to die, the boss briefed them about Accelerators abilities, he didn't even want to imagine. Other than that, they all had special orders in this case to follow.

"Fine! I will tell you. Just leave me alone!"

"What does your boss want with Last Order? Where is she?"

"He wants to see your power, you couldn't be moved to come here by other means, so we snatched her, but she's fine! Follow the stairwell down to the lowest level, the large testing-chamber!"

"Are you all fucking insane? And people call me crazy?!"

Accelerator stood up, a thick black blanket fell to the ground and the soldier was blinded by the light of a locker room. A girl held a shock baton against his back, after convulsing from the electricity, he blacked out.

"Don't you think you were a little too cruel with him? I sure as hell wouldn't want to stand on the receiving end of that!" the black-haired girl spoke to the albino.

"Psychological warfare unfortunately only works like that. I wouldn't turn that on you off course. It was a good idea to darken the atmosphere with that blanket we found in here, though."

Unbeknownst to them, a surveillance spiritual item transmitted their whole conversation to a certain boss. He readied up his new toy from District 23.

The team continued on downwards, there was only light resistance. It seemed, they were occupied with the attacker at the main gate.

Sometimes, it was Accelerators marksmanship, that knocked out the cabal-troops, sometimes it was Satens bat. Surprisingly, the slender girl had enough strength, to destroy a security robot with one strike of her baton.

At the bottom of the staircase was a large vault door, two stories high, Accelerator estimated they had to be at least 30 meters underground now.

An alarm sounded, as the door made half a revolution and popped out of its frame, to sink down into the floor right in front of them.

"This has to be that large testing-chamber our prisoner talked about."

"Yes, they had one of these in District 10 too, I had to fight there countless times, when I was little, until I broke it, off course."

The pair took a step inside, the door closed behind them.


The room itself was made up of multiple areas, there was a wide-open space of concrete floor to the right and slabs, that looked like cover from the tutorial of a shooter game to the left, the room was huge. Larger than a football field, with a ceiling about 20 Meters high.

"Now we know, why there were this many damn stairs!" Accelerator complained, walking on a crutch meant stairs were your mortal enemy. He estimated the chamber to be around 150 by 100 Meters.

At the opposite side of the large room, beyond the area of cover, two figures could be made out, one of them looked like a child, the other was a giant of at least 190 centimeters.

That was when a shipping container dropped halfway between the two pairs.

In anticipation, Accelerator and Saten moved near cover.

The container opened up, to reveal what looked like a giant mechanical spider.

It stood up on it's eight legs and eight red circles lighted up on the forward part of its body. A great deal of transmission equipment was fitted to the back part. Two tank cannons were mounted, where it's mandibles were supposed to be.

As it took a step toward Saten and Accelerator, they caught a glimpse of writing on its side:

Five_Over Modelcase: Meltdowner X_1

"This is bad!" the white-haired boy reached for his electrode, however, when he clicked the button it remained silent. "This is even worse!"

Saten tackled him down behind the cover, when the first volley of tank grenades grazed past them.

*clang *clang

The empty shells were ejected and the barrels reloaded.

The machines heavy steps shook the whole room. It was again getting in position.

"My Esper-Mode is not working, the high bandwidth traffic to the Misaka-Network can't get through! What can I do with a puny pistol, and 34 armor piecing rounds in two magazines? All while moving to slow to dodge."

"Let's work as a team! It can only target one of us at a time. I can distract it. The legs look fragile, maybe you can stop it with that amazing precision of yours?"

Ruiko understood, the situation looked grim, she felt Accelerator was not about to give up, but was out of options, as she suggested her plan.

"Just be careful!

Saten ran out of the cover, across a gap. The Five_Over fired and only hit the wall in her proximity, it's cannons were designed for use against armored vehicles, not people on foot, so the accuracy was poor on unpredictable targets. Pieces of shrapnel stuck to her bullet-resistant shirt, they didn't pierce, but it hurt nonetheless. The girl lay down behind another piece of concrete, not that the cover could stop a direct hit from the main cannons.

This was Accelerators chance, he glimpsed out of his cover and fired his AP rounds at the joints connecting the machines eight legs to its main body.

Normal armor-piercing caliber .45 rounds would not scratch tank armor. These were specially designed for GROUP made, to replace handheld rocket launchers, they used the same principle as a tank's HEAT-shells. High Explosive Anti-Tank weaponry uses a shaped charge to propel a piece of the shell at speeds of Mach 25 to shatter up to 1200 mm of massive steel.

Using a more potent explosive and a composite projectile, the speed in these was almost doubled, it allowed a handgun to shred a tank, if used correctly.

Normally you would aim a weapon like this at the ammunition storage of a vehicle, to blow it up. In the case of this Spider, the storage was behind a rounded piece of armor, diminishing the AP effect.

The joints however didn't have that kind of protection, two of them failed and the legs dropped down.

The boy finished his magazine into where he believed the weapons firing-chamber was. An explosion confirmed his assumption.

Sure, of his victory he relaxed a bit and looked over to Saten, she gave him a thumbs-up and winked into his direction.

What a girl! he thought

The calm was scattered, when they heard the heavy footsteps again. Shortly after that, they both let their bodies fall to the ground, brilliant green beams had pierced the cover. The concrete at the places their heads have been a moment ago was burned and looked like lava. Accelerator had seen this firepower before, it was Meltdowner, the ability of Academy City's #4.

Accelerator doubted, that that the concrete would have held a shell from its main cannons, but the chances were absolutely zero against the Particle Waveform High-speed Cannon. He cursed and honestly hoped to never see a Five_Over wielding his ability.

Without his Esper-Mode, there was nothing he could do. He would die here, however that was not what mattered to him, he didn't want Ruiko to get hurt! Straining the most brilliant brain of any Esper in the whole city, he found no way out.

Its sensors must have been oversaturated by the Meltdowner-blast, it's a prototype after all, it has long intervals between firing, and likely targets us using infrared.

When he thought everything was forfeit, a silent *beep ripped him out of his despair.


"Oi, Misaka thinks, that one looks important."

The network of ECM jammers was structured around a central signal source, the jamming signal would be used for countermeasures, by amplifying the input with the small devices and sending it via an omnidirectional antenna.

Misaka Worst had found the source and smashed it to pieces.

The Sisters in the building immediately realized, where they had to go. Last Order was on the lowest floor in a large testing-chamber.


That sound gave Accelerator back his hope, just as the machine fired it's Meltdowner again, he rushed over to Saten and shielded her with his Reflection. The boy spoke to her

"It's going to be fine, I promise"

The Albino then dashed at the robotic spider at an astounding speed and ripped it apart.

The giant standing at Last Orders side started clapping. He removed his lab coat, as well as his suits jacket.

"Marvelous, Accelerator, just marvelous! I get now, how you transform the vectors of interactions, I should try that out myself!"

He dropped the necktie and rolled up the sleeves of his wine-red shirt, the impressive muscles of his upper arms came into view.

"Don't be ridiculous, a pathetic third-string fool like you could never wield that power!"

Finally, he cracked his neck and spoke in a calm but forceful voice.

"We will see! First let me introduce myself again. Jonas Engelmacher German Scientist and Magician, let me also tell you my other name, my secret name, the name I engraved into my soul! Scientiam663 I shall claim the knowledge of the universe!"

Saten was still behind cover and gulped down hard. "So this is a Magician? It seems way out of my league. I should stay here, maybe I can snatch Last Order, when the moment is right."

The large man reached out with his hand in Accelerators direction. 10 Meters separated those two monsters, a distance the boy could cover in less than one tenth of a second, by Satens rough estimation.

An electronic whistling was heard, Last Order jerked from the interference the EMP caused.

The albino facing off with the magician didn't care in the slightest.

"That pathetic trick again old man? After so many fucking times, even a monkey would figure out a measure against it! I merely boosted the signal of by electrode and weakened your interference using my power. Now let me show you a world of pain!"

Accelerator's anger was at its maximum now. He broke through the sound barrier, while rushing at the blonde foreigner.

The girls estimate was off by one whole order of magnitude after all, as he closed the distance in less than one hundredth of a second.


Engelmacher took a step to the side, before the boy could impact him, he grabbed his hand and redirected his motion. Accelerator was dumbfounded by that action, while he embedded himself into the concrete wall at the chambers end.

The whole building gave off a strange noise.

Those walls must hold a significant portion of the facilities weight. More importantly, how did he escape my attack?

The Albino again jumped at him at high speed, however, he transformed his kinetic energy into rotation to hit him with a roundhouse-kick to the face.

The man didn't even break a sweat, as he defended himself using only his left arm.

Accelerator felt, the energy wasn't gone, when the two were knocked in separate directions, by the backlash.

"Impressive, I like this Vector Transformation!"

"Out with it, how do you defend against my attacks!"

"In Germany, where I am from, there exists a legend, a scholar named Faust made a deal with the devil to gain infinite knowledge and to satisfy all his earthly desires. I constructed a spell around that legend, it lets me learn skills at an extremely fast pace."

"That doesn't explain anything! Espers can't use magic, therefore magicians can't use Esper Abilities!"

"Ah a good point! Let me elaborate! Your Abilities are based around physical principles, like gravity or electromagnetism and around your Personal Reality as a catalyst. Now if a magician learned everything about science and put together a Theory of Everything using magic as catalyst for the changes, rather than Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle, wouldn't it be like using an Ability? Faust, the scholar from the legend said ´Ich will wissen was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhält´ or `I want to know, by what the world is held together in its core´ doesn't that sound like a Theory of Everything to you? Also, if you were to wield the true Theory, you might even become a level 6, too bad I won't tell you anything about it!"

God-fucking-dammit, that annoying spiky-haired hero would be of real use right now. This guy is fucking dangerous.

"Now let's continue! I want to know everything about your Ability, Number One!"

The man copied Accelerator's movements and charged at him. The two exchanged many blows, the vectors were redirected hundreds or even thousands of times. Sometimes, the energy, stored in their punches exploded and shot outward as a blast wave.

One of said blasts almost hit Saten as she watched from behind her cover, while Last Order was sending the pictures across all of the Misaka-Network.

Faust based learning Spell:

Using magic to imitate the deal Dr. Faust made with the devil. Knowledge is gained much faster and skills are learned at an astonishing rate. Side effects include loss of moral sense, bloodlust and an urge to learn everything about the world, no matter if science or magic. Specifically designed, by Jonas Engelmacher after the German legend of Faust.