"A Monster Incarnate"

August 24, 2020

LAST ORDER changed her stance to a more relaxed one, shifting one arm to rest on her hip whilst the other remained idle by her side. She flung her hair behind her shoulders and began a seemingly endless volley of words.

" "MISAKA is glad to finally meet you." Says-says MISAKA as she corrects-corrects her choice of clothing that might be a little too invocative for a teenage boy such as you. "MISAKA also remembers that she forgot to shower before leaving. Did all MISAKAs bathe correctly before leaving tonight? How about you Accelerator?" questions-questions MISAKA as she attempts to create idle chit-chat with Accelerator to makehim feel more comfortable in MISAKA's presence. "Misaka thinks…" " she rambled with no actual content in her words.

Accelerator tilted his head slowly. His puzzled expression linked to the thoughts of what exactly made this woman think she was so important to rant in his presence, to act so friendly towards him. Breathing in his presence alone is pushing the envelope. Gradually, his patience was running thin.

"Ahhh! I don't care, bitch! You keep going on and on about nothing! I'll give you one chance before I kill you – Tell me what are you doing, and why you are doing it." He barked, breaking his stunned silence and interrupting her pointless conversation. She stopped and stared him expectantly – perhaps she expected him to react in such a way.

""MISAKA was told you would be like this, but opted to try a more peaceful solution to this problem" announces-announces MISAKA as she loses hope in a conclusion not filled with blood." At the end of the demoralised words spurted by LAST ORDER she dissolved into the sea of green that was the girls behind her. As she disappeared behind them, Accelerator lost track of her. The light from the head mounted displays of the girls only allowed vision of what as in front of them, the space between them and Accelerator.

"Where the hell do you think you're going! Who do you think I am, bitch!" yelled Accelerator viciously, his intent mainly sourced from the damage his pride had taken by the woman standing up to him – it was a first someone has done that and lived.

And one loss can lead to another, then another and so on. It was in his best interests to nip this in the bud now.

As Accelerator moved to pursue the woman, the girls in position apposing him took a defensive stance and the clatter of the rifles they held discretely filled the airwaves of the street they were in. He would have to dispose of the people blocking his path to be able to chase after her it seems.

This was something he was obliged to do.

"Well! I was going to let you sweet young things go, but it see-" Accelerator was cut off by the intense volume of the actions taken by his opponents.

A count; thirteen identical girls. All of them opened a volley of fire on Accelerator at the exact same time. The flash from the barrels was extraordinary – it would pierce the depths of a blind man to see light again momentarily. The sound as well would have deafened even the Valkyrie watching these combatants proceed. The senses of a lesser man would have been nulled by the shear exposure to the delicate organs corresponding to each sense.

But Accelerator was no lesser man – he was the strongest in the city.

With concentration of the potentially affected areas, he is able to reflect, or deny access of the extreme light and sound entering his sensory organs. However, that is not all that is reflected, bullets danced off him and back into the direction of the shooters.

Multiple riflemen received a blow from the reflected bullets. Some are more badly hit then others. Four out of thirteen of the gunners take a blow into vital organs – one receives a bullet lodged straight into the cranium through the electro-spectacles they wear on their foreheads, shards of glass shatter around her and impregnate the now dead tissue on her lower right arm and chest. Death was instantaneous. Though seemingly brutal, it was one of the more pleasant ways for the recently felled combatants to depart the battlefield.

Another was struck multiple times in the stomach repeatedly. The bullets struck her abdomen, almost perfectly, and found their way into the liver, stomach and intestinal tracks after passing through the solar plexus nerves. The intense trauma felt in such a short amount of time caused induced vomiting in the girl who first proceeded to expel food substances which slowly degenerated to blood of immense volume. Whilst that occurred, the intense pain from the severed nerves made every involuntary expulsion all the more gut wrenching. She died of blood loss, long after Accelerator had left to chase after the remaining threats - it was a long and painful death.

The other two took simpler, more "Hollywood" deaths – a bullet to the throat and heart. Death for both was not instant, but fairly mild compared to one of their comrades. The screams heard before their deaths however, were particularly unpleasant. It would tug at the heart strings of even the most evil man.

Accelerator was no man, however, but a monster incarnate.

After the initial burst the remaining undamaged girls stopped firing. Their placid expressions now showed one of shock as a few dropped their weapons and lowered their goggles whilst a few wounded ones fled the scene in an organised manner. Accelerator showed a smile at the girls confronting him with their electro-spectacles lowered – he counted 4 in his presence.

Raising their hands to eye level in symmetry, sparks began to generate between the space of the goggles and the tips of their fingers. The sparks broke the symmetry of their actions as they flew in all directions without control or restriction. Initially, the sparks were few and minute but they grew in number and ferocity as time passed. Accelerator waited for them to initiate, he held a certain satisfaction of allowing his enemies to throw all they had at him before crushing them. The same cannot be said for his game when he hunts, however.

When the electricity of the girls had built to fever pitch and the air itself felt electrified, they synchronised the release of a bolt at Accelerator. The several bolts converged mid-air and formed a larger, singular beam. As the intense force of energy approached Accelerator, he giggled and smirked then boomed into howling laughter as it bounced off and struck one of the psychics. The one struck was instantly electrocuted. A charred, seared body with burnt and frizzled hair fell to the ground. The body had an accelerated rigamortis state from the electricity removing the oxygen in her muscle tissue, thus fell in the same stance she took whilst being shocked. It was better for her to die that way, rather than having the melted goggles that were placed over her eyes melt into the sockets, blinding her with unimaginable pain.

As the sick smell of burning hair and melted plastic wafted through the desolated street, the remaining girls looked at each other in horror. They were obviously not as well informed of what their opponent was capable of as the elder woman was. In a different way to the earlier escape some of the girls took, the one they participated in now was less organised. It's about the difference between a "fall back" command and "retreat" order, with the retreat order entailing an underlying notion of "every man for himself".

His opponents have been downgraded to game.

Accelerator chased the fleeing girls relentlessly. He caught up to one fairly quickly and ended her troubles by making her body become part of scenery, thrown headfirst into a building with little features bar the newly implemented limp legs and fluttering skirt. Moving on from her he saw the shadows of the others fleeing into a nearby park. A growing smile and laughter from Accelerator pierced the darkness of the city as he pursued them into the park. A repetitive 'thwomp' noise was heard as it got louder and louder the closer he moved to the park.

Accelerator possessed little physical prowess - however with the calculations of his VECTOR CHANGE, he can turn that little strength into a waterfall of force. This allows him turn a push of two metres into a shunt of one-hundred. This is the method behind his absurd abuse to the game he hunted.

The park itself was filled with trees on the outside, but in the middle of the oval was a large, open area with no notable landmarks, normally. The trees created a veil that blocked people seeing inside the park from the road. The park was about five-hundred metres square and about four-hundred metres of it was plain grass, grass that would be used for a first grade sports oval.

In the middle of the park was a black image with lights coming from inside. He couldn't see it in much detail, the image was about the size of his thumb, but it was incredibly obvious in a background of nothing. The girls fleeing were moving towards source of the loud noise, they were about two-hundred metres away from it. Accelerator was in pursuit.

Whilst following, he noticed one of the girls had disappeared. Two shadows still appeared to be running to the large shadow in the middle of the park, but one had vanished. He thought about searching for the missing one until it became apparent where she had vanished to.

A small distance in front of Accelerator laid the body of one of the girls, outstretched. She was crawling away slowly without noticing his presence. Accelerator sounded his arrival with a laugh and mocking words.

"Well, scumbag, you guys sure do play a great game of Tag! I might lose count of how many times I have tagged you, however, since you all look the same! How about I kill you if I catch you? I'll never have to second guess myself then!" he sinisterly cackled. He slammed a foot into the back of the girl on the ground and she writhed in pain. A few bits of equipment rolled out of her vest and to the other foot Accelerator had placed on the grass. He examined the tools – A grenade, tear gas, plastic explosive, but one piece stood out the most - a "flashbang", a stun grenade used to destroy the sight and sound senses of a person as well as cause extreme pain. They are mainly used to paralyse a room of hostiles and are only used by special units of all armed forces. They are, however, not lethal.

"Well this is a new piece of shit, never seen one before! I wonder what it does!" he boomed as he picked it up off the ground. It was a small canister with the label "FB-228" and a small pin at the top. There were minute holes all over the canister, you couldn't see them but you could feel there existence.

He placed his knee on top of the girl's neck and planted her face into the ground. She groaned as her noes slammed into the dirt and blood began to run from it.

"Oh no, don't tell me. That'll ruin the surprise! How about we do an experiment instead?"

By the child's hair, Accelerator pulled her head as far as her body allowed and pulled the pin on the flashbang. He placed it in front of her eyes, and waited for moments for nothing to happen. He looked inquisitively at it, the seemingly dysfunctional tool. After examining it, he became infuriated and slammed the girls face into the flashbang then into the ground. A 'bang' of the flashbang going off went off as he slammed her head into it. The girl took the entire force of the explosion, Accelerator receive none of it.

A flashbang can disable a medium sized room of people for 2 minutes if it is thrown near the door and the people inside are at the farthest point possible from it. Lord knows how bad the effects are if it was placed directly into the sensory organs.

From the girl's perspective, her vision and hearing became useless. Her hearing screeched like static and her eyes were blinded by the white lights of heaven. Her eyes watered and head ached, it felt like it was going to burst, that she would die from it. In this position, she was completely disorientated, she had no idea what was happening and only felt the pressure of where Accelerator's knee was relieved, but the pressure replaced back onto her back.

The girl had be unknowingly screaming, she was unable to hear herself. Accelerator relished in her cries until he noticed the remaining girls had gotten very close to the source of the 'thwomp' noise. He decided to finish the girl underneath his feet off by pushing his foot through the girl's spine and severing her spleen. She died with the force of a car crash travelling at the speed of sound.

By the time he had removed his foot from the clone's carcass the shadow of the fleeing girls moulded with the large one. The distance he was from it allowed him to designate some features, he could see a tail wing and a large body of a vehicle. By process of elimination, he determined it to be a helicopter. Closer inspection would reveal it was a UH-60 Black Hawk, which was odd as the technology used to build it was old and out-dated in Academy City.

As Accelerator got closer to the presumed helicopter, it started to take off. He hastened to try to board it, but the door that had just allowed the two escaped girls in closed and the helicopter was now in rapid ascent. Accelerator mustered his strength and with a little help from his ability, sky rocketed to the Helicopter. He would have sprung eigthy metres into the air.

When he came close enough to the helicopter he reached for the landing rails underneath the helicopter and latched onto them. One by one, his hands wrenched closer and closer to the door of the helicopter which was closed and locked, all the while the helicopter was increasing in altitude. Placing his hand on the bolts of the door, he ripped it off and pulled himself inside.

Inside, while Accelerator gripped and slowly pulled himself to the door LAST ORDER was inside, sitting calmly. With the thuds of him getting closer and closer, the recently escaped girls trembled with fear. The five others with bullet wounds as well look at LAST ORDER with concern.

""What do we do" ask MISAKA politely for orders, trying not to let her cowardice show in the presence of LAST ORDER" questions one of the wounded girls who still had hold of her gun. The two that had escaped discarded their guns in order to attack Accelerator and lost most of their tools in the escape. The pilot, also a clone, looked back to hear the conversation at hand.

""MISAKA serial-codes 10032 and 10033 have nothing of value whilst…"" another one of the injured girls remarked pointing to the two girls huddled together, tears running down their faces, before being cut off by LAST ORDER.

""When the Target enters the plane, hit him with stun grenades. All MISAKAs equip electro-magnification-spectacles." orders-orders MISAKA with hidden knowledge only known-known to MISAKA." She ordered strongly, yet remained calm. She obviously had control of the situation at hand.

When Accelerator looked up after entering the helicopter he saw LAST ORDER smiling and waving to him. It was a "goodbye" wave in comparison to a "welcome" one. Around her were the remaining clones all wearing their goggles and holding flashbangs. Before he could react, they threw down the grenades at Accelerators feet. LAST ORDER averted her eyes and Accelerator smirked at their actions.

However, his body reacted differently to what he expected.

Accelerator was momentarily blinded by the flashbangs and suddenly felt a force on his chest impact with him - a footprint analysis would determine it to be a heel. This impossibility confused the already disorientated "Number 1". How could he – Academy City's Number 1 be touched by another person?

He fell out of the Helicopter which flew on into an unknown section of Academy City as Accelerator fell, unbeknownst to predicament he was in – seven-hundred metres in the air.