Toaru Aku no Kei

A Certain Scourge of Evil

Kuroko sat on the edge of a random building no more than 1,147 meters from the dorm. She knew this because she had remembered teleporting only 12 times and her maximum distance when teleporting her body weight in addition to the 24 kilograms of equipment that she was carrying was 95.6 meters. She hadn't really kept track of where she was going within those 1,147 meters nor was she too concerned with figuring it out.

She put her arms behind her and rested her weight upon them, letting out a long sigh. She thought about what had happened and realized something.

"It hurts Kuro," she said simply. She wasn't sure what hurt, maybe it was everything, maybe it was nothing, but it hurt.

"Kuro!" A voice rang out from beside her.

Kuroko turned to look, surprised that she had company and even more surprised to see who, or rather what, it was. A jet black raven was perched beside her perhaps 5 feet away, staring at her with what Kuroko felt was a deep seated purpose. The gaze had an eerie sort of weight to it but she couldn't truly place it. "Ah," Kuroko said, "am I in your spot?" she asked before realizing how silly she was being.

'My spot'? The raven thought. It was an odd question. He was a bird, all the world was his spot in a way but he hardly laid claim to any of it. And what was so special about the spot that she was sitting in that would make her think it was his? It wasn't like she was sitting in a nest; he didn't even have a nest to sit in. He tilted his head to convey his confusion.

Kuroko rubbed her temples and sighed. "Never mind, just forget it," She said, "It's not like I'm not used to being a burden to others or anything…"

Burden. That was an interesting word. It wasn't too common in the raven's experience and in most cases in which it was used it was in reference to a physical burden. This made him wonder in what situations a person could be a burden. Did other people need to carry her? The girl in front of him was so small compared to other people that the raven had seen that, even were this the case, it would hardly be an issue. But despite the fact that he was still confused he felt like the girl wanted him to respond. "The straw that broke the camel's back," he said after sorting through his limited vocabulary to find a phrase that made sense. When people spoke about burdens this was what they tended to say. He didn't really know what it meant; he had never seen a camel before nor the back of one.

Kuroko looked at this pitch black bird in front of her. Then she smiled and laughed. She laughed for a solid minute until it finally petered away. The raven had inched closer to her in this time and was looking at her with his head cocked again. She reached out with her hand and stroked the bird. She knew a little about ravens, she knew that they were extremely intelligent birds but also quite aggressive, normally she never would have done something like this and risk being attacked by it. But she had just seen something that made her realize that something like that didn't really matter.

"Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished," she began, "Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them." She pointed to the horizon. But all there were for as far as the eye could see were several buildings and one of the city's numerous wind farms.

What in the world are you talking about Shiro? What giants?

The raven looked similarly perplexed.

"Those you see over there," replied the girl now pointing directly at the wind turbines, "with their long arms. Some of them have arms well-nigh two leagues in length."

Kuro recognized the line now. It was from one of Shiro's favorite books growing up, Don Quixote. It had been a long time since she had last read it so she was still quite confused as to what the point of randomly spouting out lines from the book could possibly be? Why wasn't Shiro upset now like she had been just a minute ago? What's the matter Shiro? Why do you suddenly bring this up?

The raven had, at this point, concluded that this girl was quite insane. It didn't really matter, all things considered, and the stroking was quite nice, so despite the fact that he was perched next to a nutjob, he simply stood there and continued listening to her deluded rantings.

"All this week," Kuroko began, grabbing the emblem she had received the other day from the ninjas from her bag, "All this week I have been doubting my sanity. I wasn't sure if what I was experiencing was nothing more than a hallucination and it scared me so much. It scared me because I was happy. But now I'm not, now it hurts. And that is the reason why I can now fully accept the fact that I am insane." She tied the emblem around her shoulder, a symbol of her fragile grip on reality.

"After all," she continued, "I am sitting next to a talking bird speaking with a little voice in my head holding something that I got from ninjas after attempting to steal a device made by a childhood friend that disables ESPers which was held by a crime family using something I got from another crime family. What about my situation is believable in the slightest? My whole life seems like a work of fiction now that I look back on it. Just another novel about a poor, deluded knight."

So you're just going to sit back and accept this? You're going to resign yourself to insanity?

Kuroko shrugged, "not really, but now I know exactly what to do next," she said teleporting to the base of a close by windmill, she put her armored gloves on as she continued talking, "as I see it either I am an inconvenience to the entire world or the entire world is just a hallucination, meaning anything I do doesn't matter and I can do what I want. That makes my course of action simple. I need to do things to ensure that I am not considered a burden. Seeing as I'm in Judgment the easiest way to do this would be going around and doing my best work. If it turns out that I am indeed insane then all I'll actually. Be doing. Is. Punch. Ing. Wind .Mills ." She said, hitting the solid metal base of the turbine hard with each syllable as the blades whipped by behind her. The gloves, specially designed for both combat and infiltration, easily dispersed the hit keeping her knuckles unhurt and intact, "and that doesn't do harm to anyone and will simply keep me occupied. It's a win-win."

Anyone else would have seen these words as sign of a complete and utter mental break, but Kuro knew better. She felt the pain and grief that still coursed through her. She knew that this was a simple defense mechanism to dull the pain as much as possible and more importantly keep herself from slipping into the depression that Kuro had been worrying about.

After all, allowing herself to slip into that depression would be equal to giving up. Shiro hated giving up. But if she was really truly fighting giants then it was futile to do anything but to give up.

If she was fighting windmills, however, then even giving up would be futile. What would be the point of going into a state of depression over something that existed only in your head?

Kuroko teleported back to the roof of the building she had been on. The raven was still perched there looking slightly perturbed by her teleportations. "Don Quixote might have been crazy but he was still valiant and brave. He was the most admirable person in the entire story; I don't care if he was made fun of. He was an insane knight but at least he was a damn good one, better than I ever was."

It was an… acceptable reaction for Kuro. Much better than what she had predicted, much more stable. She decided that it would be best to encourage this until Shiro had calmed down. That makes sense I suppose. What exactly are you going to do then? Wander around and look for people in trouble?

"Nope, far too unreliable. I'm hallucinating all of this so why should I have to deal with inconveniences like that?" She said as she unzipped her sports bag and began putting on the armor that lay within, "like this armor. It certainly saves me from getting so many injuries… how convenient ne?" It was so obvious to her now all the little things that should have tipped her off to her growing mental instability. Of course this was overlooking all the things she had had to do to get into a place where getting the armor was even a remote possibility which, though involving a lot of luck, was far from pure coincidence.

So what are you going to do instead?

Once she finished putting the full suit, minus helmet, on, she pulled on the sweatpants and sweatshirt that were also in the sports bag to cover up the otherwise quite visible armor. Then she got her cellphone out of her bag. "I'm going to get someone to do the looking for me of course," she said as she dialed the number she had seen on the sign the other day.

After two rings a familiar voice picked up the other end of the line, "Ah, hello Kuroko. How can I help you on this fine day?"

"Hello Riko," she said, "I have a little proposal for you and I was wondering if you would be interested."

"Oh?" Riko responded, curious. The little girl was turning out to be far more interesting than he had first expected of her. He had heard about her exploits over the past couple of days and was quite keen to see what she was planning now.

"I'd like to hire you to provide support and information as I go around and do my job as a Judgment agent," the (assumedly) crazy little girl said, "I will pay you quite well for your time."

"What exactly do you mean by 'support and information'," Riko asked.

"Simply put I want you to tell me where I can find criminals so I can go and arrest them."

Riko smiled widely as he heard this. He had expected something entertaining but this… this was better than he could have hoped for. He knew about this little teleporter's potential, he knew that she could easily take out a warehouse full of criminals with nothing more than needles and a few calculations. Now she was allowing him to man the steering wheel of the weapon in human skin that was the powerful young Judgment agent.

"Can you do this?" Kuroko continued, "And even more importantly, can I trust you to do this?"

"Of course I can do it," Riko replied. Ever since he had spread his spiders web of informants and hacked into the city's security systems six months ago very few things in this district, District 7, could go on without him knowing about it and with his advanced software he could quickly scan huge portions of the city for activity, or a specific person, in a very short amount of time. He knew about almost all of the illegal goings on around the district and had accrued quite the index of criminals and crimes that were unknown to Judgment or Anti-Skill and thus had never faced justice for their actions. He could easily guide the teleporter to any current crimes that were happening, and when there weren't any of those to report he could just as easily guide her to one of these criminals who had committed crimes but hadn't yet faced justice for them, "I can do you one better in fact. I can even help gather all the evidence of their activities so they can actually get convicted."

The overeager Judgment agent was glad Riko had thought of that last bit. She had overlooked the fact that, without evidence, any arrest would be void and she would instead get in trouble for assault and police brutality. "But can I trust you to do this? Can I trust you to guide me towards people who are actually criminals instead of profession rivals or personal enemies?"

"I understand your concern but I can assure you that I can, indeed, be trusted in this respect. I have no professional rivals who can match my ability and I don't consider anyone in this city worthy of being my enemy. Even if I did have a disgruntled customer that I wanted to get rid of, considering my job and thus their reason for visiting me, doesn't that mean that they are still criminals? My customers generally deserve to be arrested for some reason or another," Riko reasoned. Not that he would be guiding her to any of his customers, a group comprised mostly of the more organized criminals. That was bad business. No, he would guide her to criminals that he knew about but had no direct connection to, like Skill-Out.

Leading her to the hideouts of Skill-Out had another advantage. It was a surprisingly difficult organization to infiltrate and spy on so Riko had surprisingly little information on them. If he could direct her to some of their hideouts then he could hack into their systems using the wireless accessing abilities of the Gaokerena. Really this little deal did nothing but benefit him and keep him entertained while doing so.

"You're saying this to one of your customers you know," Kuroko reminded him.

"I did say generally," he responded slyly.

"So how much is this going to cost and how are you going to get the evidence to me?" Kuroko asked, changing the subject.

While he recognized that this was a magnificent opportunity to exploit the rich little girl for a considerable sum of money, Riko just smiled and said, "I'll do it for free." He didn't care about money. He had more than enough and he hardly even tried. In addition to his lucrative information brokering business he was also the single most successful software designer in the city, and that was without even releasing most of what he had created. "and as for the evidence, do you still have the Gaokerena? The little device I gave you when you went off to hunt down the bounty hunter?"

Kuroko sat down and fished around in her bag until she found the hockey puck-like device. "Yeah I do."

"We can keep in contact with that, it's easier and more secure than a cell phone. It can link up to a headset if you happen to have one handy as well." Kuroko got out the headset that went with her cell phone and put it in her ear and Riko did the rest, "It also has a USB slot on the opposite side of the switch. If you plug a flash drive into that I can transmit the data into that and you can simply give it to Anti-Skill or leave it behind."

Kuroko considered it for a while. While she was fairly certain that Riko was a hallucination she wasn't sure that Anti-Skill was. She didn't really want to deal with real people at the moment so the ability to leave behind everything that Anti-skill would need for evidence without having to deal with the people themselves was quite welcome. 'So I'll need flash drives and a lot of handcuffs…' she thought. The first could be purchased at any number of stores around the area, quite easy to get. The second, surprisingly, would be just as easy to obtain. Branch 177 had actually recently received a surplus supply of handcuffs, plenty enough for the teleporter's need. Another convenient coincidence…

Once again it was not actually a coincidence though. It had been Kuroko who had ordered the handcuffs a few days ago, after being told to by Konori. She had been quite sleep-deprived at the time and had accidently added an additional 0 at the end of the number requested, turning the order of 30 into an order of 300. Since the rest of the process was handled by computers this mistake had not been noticed by anyone else until the order arrived in 3 large boxes instead of the standard 1 medium one.

So she went off and purchased a few flash drives then went to the offices. She stopped several buildings over from Branch 177's headquarters and put on her sunglasses. She switched between the various features until finally she found what she was looking for. She pressed the button and suddenly several dots were highlighted on the map on her HUD. The dots represented each of her friends, as well as Konori and the dorm mistress.

The reason for this could be attributed to her concern for the safety of her friends. She cared deeply about Saten, Uiharu, and of course her Onee-sama. So when she had received the sunglasses and the tracking devices that had come with them she didn't even give it a second thought before planting them on her friends so that she could be sure to find them in case of an emergency. The tracker on Konori and the dorm mistress had more to do with concern over her own safety and well-being. She did not want to serve any more detentions after all.

Today these dots served the additional function of letting her avoid all of these people for a while. she wanted to see any of them right now, not until she was sure they wouldn't consider her a burden any more.

She saw that Konori was out on patrol and Uiharu was back home (oddly enough Saten was with her as well). She then scanned the building with her T-ray scanner to be sure that there were no other people in the office. Seeing none she teleported inside to the storage room where the extra cuffs had been stored. She began loading them up into her sports bag. Once it was filled she zipped it up and hefted it onto her back. Then she teleported the remaining handcuffs, including the ones in the other boxes, to one of her safe-spots that was within 92.1 meters of Judgment headquarters.

"Are you ready to begin?" Riko asked once the teleporter had reappeared on the street. Riko had moved from his main desk to his surveillance room and was running his searches through a specialized set of criteria that would best locate any disturbances. From here he could lead her to any ongoing crimes or any high risk sites.

It was a common complaint that Judgment agents never arrived on time. They didn't have the resources. Precognition was too unreliable for those kinds of things, and Judgment's other monitoring resources were quite insufficient. But Riko's resources were anything but insufficient and with Kuroko's teleportation ability she could respond seconds after a crime was being committed, or even before the crime was committed.

Riko was so excited about this that he was already planning on how to spin the events of the time to come. After all, half the fun of having information was controlling how it went out. It was why he was the creator and administrator of so many urban legend websites. He loved leaking just a small piece of information and seeing how it morphed and mutated by the time it reached the public. This would be great legend fodder, all he needed was something flashy, something big, something that would be great to test the hapless little girl's mettle. And he had just the thing for her.

"I'm ready," Kuroko said with an odd mix of determination and disregard in her voice.

"Good, I have just the thing for you. If you hurry you can get there before anyone gets hurt," Riko told her, and in his head he added, 'We'll just see if you can avoid getting hurt. Don't let me down my little teleporting mad girl and I will help you be as a scourge to this city. Scourge… that has a nice ring to it…' Riko grinned as he directed her towards her first herculean labor.

In the middle of a deserted road 24 teenage boys were gathered in 2 groups of 12. Each person wore a colored fabric bandana tied in various places on their bodies. Both groups had their own color, one being a dark red with long horizontal stripes of orange and gold. The other group had cool blue bandanas with circles of white. Each of the boys wore the same uniform constructed of a specially made fabric that was non-flammable and did not transfer heat well. They were all from the same school, the Thermodynamic Manipulator's Academy for Development, a simple school that specialized in thermokineticists, including pyro- and cryo-kineticists. These groups happened to have heavy rivalry amongst themselves dating back to the foundation of the school and they often had minor scuffles. But this time there had been an inexcusable crime committed and this "scuffle" was to the death between these two gangs.

"I'm surprised you hotheads showed up," the leader of the cryokineticists known by his men as Absolute Zero said. He was a gaudy looking man whose pride in his power was over-the-top. It had caused him to dye his hair pure white, wear a thick winter coat over his school outfit despite it being the middle of summer, and speak only in a voice that he considered suitably "icy".

"A bunch of zeros like you aint gonna scare us," the leader of the pyrokineticists said. While he did actually use his given name, Calvin, he was just as pointlessly prideful of his power. He had, as well, dyed his hair a fiery mix of red, orange and yellow. "We are going to finish you off for good today."

Suddenly a voice announced from down the street on which the gangs stood, "I am Judgment. Disperse immediately and peacefully or I shall be forced to arrest you." Down the street stood a little girl no more than 12 or 13 years old. She wore a sweat-suit and sunglasses and she had a Judgment armband around her shoulder.

Zero and Calvin looked at each other. They hated each other more than anything but that didn't mean that they couldn't agree on anything. They agreed that interrupting someone's fight was exceptionally rude. They could kill each other in a minute, after they dealt with this girl.

Calvin immediately launched a fireball at her while Zero fired a pointed spike of solid ice. The girl stood there calmly as the projectiles headed towards her. Only when the fireball was almost upon her did she move, simply raising her hand, tilting it upwards slightly, to intercept the missile. The fireball hit and sent fire spraying in a fan over her head, not hurting the girl at all. Then she leaned ever so slightly to the left, dodging the icicle effortlessly.

"Illegal use of ESPer ability, assaulting an officer of the law," she listed, and at that moment the icicle she had dodged crashed into a window of the building behind her. "Vandalism," she added casually. Kuro had told her that she needed to make sure they had committed crimes before she arrested them so she was doing so, a task that was proving to be exceptionally easy.

The cocky little girl was getting on Zero's nerves; she was as cocky as the damn pyrokineticists he hated so much. So she could dodge one little icicle, 'let's see if she can dodge this,' he thought as he pulled a sawed off shotgun from his coat and pointed it at the girl. 'One shot for her one for that hothead.'

Then suddenly the girl disappeared only to reappear the same instant standing to the side of him, hand on the barrel of his gun, "Illegal possession of firearm," she said calmly and suddenly the shotgun disappeared as well embedding itself into the ground, completely ruined and inoperable. 'Teleporter!' Zero managed to think before she hit him in a nerve cluster on his neck and sent him to the ground.

Calvin was happy about this for two reasons. The first was that the teleporter had taken care of his opponent for him and the second was that, in doing so, she had opened herself up. He drew a sword with a gasoline soaked blade from his belt, lighting the blade on the way so that it was wreathed in flame.

He raised the blade high above his head and swung it down. But Kuroko was not so stupid or inexperienced to disregard an enemy just because they were not in her line of sight. She easily heard the sword being pulled out of the sheath and sidestepped the sword-swing, letting the blade brush past her armored glove on the way down allowing one of the gloves numerous features, small carbon micro-blades nestled in the gaps between her fingers deployable from the finger pads, to destroy the katana and send the blade clattering, in pieces, to the ground. The material of the gauntlet also, as demonstrated before, was heavily insulated allowing her to block the heat of the flame, preventing it from harming her.

The swing unbalanced him, sending his weight forward and, without anything to hit, down. Kuroko was easily able to complete his rotation and flip him over onto the ground on his back at high speed.

Seeing their leaders taken out by this little girl the remaining members of the two sides drew their weapons and fired up their powers, ready to destroy this little Judgment girl. One member drew the handgun that he had brought and pointed it at the girl. It was 22 against one, and they had her surround-… why was his pistol now nailed to his holster?

Ever since Friday Kuroko had learned her lesson to immediately disable any firearm before it could even be pulled against her. One of the first uses of T-rays were body scanners in airports designed specifically to look for firearms or other weapons so the utilization of her visor's scanner for that purpose was extremely simple and efficient. Kuroko had also learned, a long time ago, that being surrounded was a very bad idea. She had also learned that a teleporter never needed to be surrounded if they didn't choose to be.

She teleported behind and above the man with the now-useless weapon and delivered a kick to the back of his head knocking him unconscious.

The next group of three launched fireballs at her, but she easily dodged them. Her infrared scanner, which was what she was using right now, gave away the telltale signs of the fireball's trajectory before they even launched allowing her to weave effortlessly through the flames until she reached melee range. Now the group of three surrounded the girl and began trying to attack her all at once. A simple circular dodge sent her spinning around to behind one of them where a simple push sent him crashing into the attacks of the other two, knocking the wind out of him and sending him to his back. Then the Judgment girl teleported above the other two, hanging in the air upside down. She grabbed their heads and knocked them together using her ever-increasing downward momentum to send them to the ground on top of the other one, preventing him from getting up and moving them out of the way just in time to avoid an otherwise lethal barrage of icicles from the other gang.

However she would need to ignore this for now. The flames traveled five times faster than the icicles with the same amount of time for a warning so they were the greater danger. Seeing as most of the members of the flame gang were now rushing at her she teleported in front of the lead one and swiped his legs out from under him, sending him tumbling to the ground where a few well-placed needles ensured he stayed.

Then she teleported to the very back of the pack, just in front and to the side of the last charging gangster. She struck him in the stomach, his own momentum adding to the power of the blow. He too went down. In his last moments of consciousness he could swear that he heard the screeching of a bird before his vision faded to black.

It continued on like this as she dealt with each member of the gangs one by one swiftly, safely, and efficiently. The only times they touched her were their faces touched her fist or the one time when a member of the ice gang managed to grab hold of her. She had used him as a weapon. She teleported him upside down over another member of the gang who was charging the apparently helpless girl with a baseball bat, much like the time she had used Uiharu for the same purpose against her Onee-sama, though that was more of a distraction than an attempt to hurt, she hadn't even meant to do it that time.

Finally all 24 of the criminals lay immobile on the ground. Kuroko, having used as little energy throughout the fight as possible, was still perfectly fine and hardly tired at all as she went over to the place she had dropped off her sports bags and brought it over to the location where the fight had taken place. She retrieved the handcuffs from the bag and walked around, cuffing each and every criminal. When she was finished she zipped the bag back up, plugged one of the flash drives (already labeled "Evidence") into the Gaokerena, attached it to the leader, and pressed the button on the front of the handcuffs. This button was used to summon Anti-Skill to the location of an arrest if contact cannot otherwise be made. It also summoned security robots to watch over the criminals until Anti-Skill arrived. Now that this conflict done with, she teleported away to continue on her Windmill Crusade.

Back in his headquarters Riko grinned like a mad man as he began uploading the video of the fight which he had gotten from a nearby camera. He had high expectations of the little teleporter and knew just how strong she was. The only reason he had leaked her location to the Honoguns was because he knew that she could handle them. Still even he had not expected that fight to go so perfectly, so smoothly, so entertainingly. He had thought that he would need to alter the video but it was perfect as it was for his purposes. Now all he needed was her to stop a few more crimes, even small ones and he could begin the process. And wouldn't you know it, another interesting one just popped up.

"217 meters 17 degrees, one target, immediate danger, better hurry," he told the girl with the voice of a man ordering a tactical airstrike.

"So, bitch," a tall boy said to a girl who was backed against a wall. The man held a small knife like blade, formed by his ability, which he was threatening the girl with, "you really think you can just break up with me and I'm going to let that go? No way, you ruined my life, now I'm gonna repay you in kind." He said as he drew his arm back and stabbed. The girl flinched, waiting for the end. But after a second she felt nothing, she opened her eye to see another girl standing in front of her. The girl was an inch or two shorter than her and was wearing a Judgment armband on her shoulder. The blade was sticking through her shoulder like a ghost, not disturbing the fabric of her sweat-suit at all despite the fact that it was clearly sticking through it and the tip was soaked in the girl's blood as a result of the boy's ability to create a blade which could bypass non-organic material and affect only cells.

It was unexpected and quite painful but Kuroko pushed the pain aside. She grabbed his wrist pulling outwards as she drew herself back away from the blade. Then, still holding onto his wrist, she ducked pulled and flipped him over in a basic judo throw. After that she quickly cuffed him.

She looked up at the girl she had just rescued and asked, "are you okay?"

"Um… yeah I am. Thanks to you," she responded with a slight blush. Her heart was beating quickly in her chest, and it wasn't from fear anymore.

"You should probably get back home now. Do you live close by, would you like me to escort you?" Kuroko asked as standard procedure as she got the flash drive of video evidence and deposited it on top of him.

"Y-yes, quite close. I just came from home, it's just 5 streets over, number 1554. If you would please walk me back, I would feel much safer." She said.

Kuroko pressed the button on the cuffs then held her hand out to the blushing girl. The girl took it shyly and suddenly found herself in front of her house. The Judgment agent nodded to her and wished her a good day.

'So cool…' she thought as she watched the girl disappear, 'kind of cute too…' Then she realized that she had never asked for the girl's name, causing her to frown unhappily at the missed opportunity.

For the next several hours Kuroko continued to teleport around District 7 based on the information she was given by Riko. Several times she arrived to crimes in progress or even before occurrence, allowing her to protect the victims from getting hurt in the first place. Other times she was directed to criminal dens, including the storage facility for an arms dealer and a drug dealer. Other times she was directed to the lairs of gangs like Skill-Out.

Of course this left Anti-skill with a hell of a job to do. For the first hour and a half the streets had been blaring with Anti-Skill sirens as they chased the trail of cuffed criminals that the teleporter was leaving behind, after that they decided to turn the sirens off as the constant blaring was alarming the citizens without any real emergency. After all, the criminals were wrapped up like presents already and the evidence was apparently pre-prepared.

The only problem was that there was often three or four alerts going on at once. At first they thought it was a computer error or a prank, but at each site they checked out there was indeed a criminal, or even a group of criminals, arrested. So they were obliged to check each and every one of the alerts, even calling on help from out of the district simply to make the arrests and check out piece after piece of evidence.

Anti-Skill agent Aiho was understandably frustrated by the state of affairs. She was going to have a hell of a lot of overtime because of this.

She knew whose fault it was too. Each pair of Judgment handcuffs came with an electronic signature stating which branch it was issued to. All of the cuffs had been from Branch 177 leaving her pretty sure that the teleporter was behind this.

The teleporter had always been good at her job. She was the most consistently successful Judgment agent there had ever been. But this was ridiculous, and more than a little suspicious. How could she do this so quickly, so efficiently? Even Anti-Skill couldn't keep up with her and they had far more resources than Judgment, she wasn't even waiting at the scene of the crime to give her report. And the evidence, all left behind on a flash drive, was suspicious as well. How did she gather it and was it valid? So far it had proven consistent with other sources of evidence, like fingerprint evidence and the security videos but it was still a little too perfect to be unquestioned.

Aiho would need to have words with the girl when they finally caught up with her.

Of course they never did catch up with her. The sun had set by the time Riko was finished for the day, and therefore when Kuroko was finished. He told her that he would get in touch with her the next morning at sunrise.

She decided to get some rest as well. She teleported to her safe house below the city and curled up with the sleeping bag that she had stored there a while ago. It had been a long time since she had fallen asleep alone. It had been a longer time since she had had to stay here. The dark pocket of earth was her last bastion; she usually slept here when she was afraid to sleep anywhere else. She knew she was safe here. But this time the cause of her stay was not because it was safe here, but rather, not for the first time either, because this was the only place she felt she belonged.

It was a lonely place of darkness deep within the bowels of the earth where no one had been for many years.

It fit her well…

Author's Note: Angst is boring to read. I like a good drama every now and again but it is never fun to listen to a character whining on and on about their problems. I believe the key to making drama bearable is to tell of a character's issues without having the character themselves talk about them at all, or at least having them react as if they don't care. An example I can think of is in the anime Hayate no Gotoku. He had a very rough childhood full of parental issues, but whenever he brings up his past it is as an offhand comment, more like he was describing the weather instead of the horrible abuse he suffered.

One of the most common tips for a writer is "show don't tell". If the character is the one whining about their past then you are telling, even worse you are telling about someone else's problem and ordering them, in a sense, to feel sorry for the character, which a lot of people will greatly resent. But if you present it in a neutral manner and let the audience choose how they want to react to it then you are simply showing the way things are, which makes for a far more bearable reading experience.

Oh, and it might be obvious but the raven's reactions aren't its actual reactions to what is going on. They aren't the thoughts that are actually going through the raven's mind, for the obvious reason.

Dedications: I'd like to dedicate this chapter to another faithful reviewer, the only person who has left a review for almost every single chapter: LadyPoisonDreams. Your reviews are enjoyable to read and quite thorough, I like hearing what parts of my chapters people enjoy and don't enjoy so I really appreciate it.

Coming soon: Knight takes Bishop, the introduction of the shepherd.