Before anything else, be warned that this is my first attempt at a fanfic. I appreciate any feedback so I can improve my writing as the story goes on.

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Chapter 1: The Other Side of a Certain Beginning

Night_Chase

Academy City was dyed in absolute darkness. Due to a certain unusual thunderstorm that had happened earlier that warm July night, a blackout made the streets of the 7th district look like a black maze, devoid of all people. Or it should be.

Two figures were running side by side in the dark sidewalk. One was a blonde girl with blue eyes wearing what looked like a black military uniform and a skirt. The other was a boy with messy dark brown hair, black eyes, wearing jeans and a gray unzipped jacket with a hood that waved violently behind him as he ran. Just to be clear, they weren't a couple. Nor friends. They shouldn't even be considered acquainted. Even though it was the very first day of summer vacation, they weren't hanging out like people of their age should be doing (or not, since it has long past the curfew). While they ran, three shadows just flew above the back alley on their left, going from the top of one building to another.

"There! Did you see that just now?!" Said the boy, while he pointed to where the shadows disappeared to.

"Yup, that's it~!" The blonde answered happily and reached for the communication device on her year. "Mugino, we found them! They are jumping on the rooftops! Ahahahaha, what a bunch of idiots!"

"Oi oi, what the hell is that? Did they really thought they could avoid being caught by going above our heads or something?" Said Mugino through the device. The 4th level 5 esper sounded astonished by the naivety of her targets.

"That super doesn't make any sense… during a blackout, it's super easier to hide on the ground where there are obviously no lights." This other voice belonged to Kinuhata Saiai, which was currently besides Mugino a few kilometers away from the other two.

"Heh, like I care. If they want so much to be prayed by us then why not fulfill their wish? Hey, Frenda, where are you and the time stopping brat right now? We're going to join you, so don't do anything stupid!"

"N-no way! There are only three of them, I can take care of it by myself!"

The boy could only sigh in annoyment. His name was Yamakazi Hishiro, a level 3 esper that worked within the dark side of the city - no, his position should be called as the gray zone instead. But at the moment, he was forced to cooperate with ITEM, the shady organization that did all kind of dirty jobs for the higher ups.

Their current task was supposed to be simple: eliminate the small group that broke into the city during the sudden blackout. However, they couldn't use their tracker Takitsubo Rikou, since her AIM Stalker wouldn't work on non espers, so they had to rely on Hishiro and his backup supporter to find the target. However, he never liked this temporary alliance to begin with, and Mugino's random insults only made things worse.

I should be the one taking care of it myself, dammit. More importantly, forget the target's weird actions, this whole mission never made any sense from the start. Is this city security so lax that a simple blackout is enough to people break in at ease like this? Something is not right…

Ignoring his doubts (and Frenda who was still arguing with Mugino on the radio) for the moment, Hishiro did his best to keep up with the three fugitives above. Since there were no lights, they could lose them at any instant if they weren't careful enough.

"I'm going up there to keep them in sight." Said Hishiro as he headed to the emergency stairway of the nearest building that reached to the roof. Frenda almost tripped as she made a sudden turn in order to follow him, slightly irritated at his intentions to leave her behind. "W-wait, I'm going too!"

"No." A new voice came from the radio. "You keep pursuing from the ground, so the other two can join you more easily. We don't know what they are capable of yet, so we have to keep them under our eyes and strike with all of our firepower as soon as possible."

The calm voice came from Asuka Mayo, master of information breaking and digital warfare, which happened to be Hishiro's backup for a long time. She supposedly is a 26 years old level 1 pyrokinetic. "Supposedly", since nor Hishiro nor anyone else he knew has ever meet her personally.

The blond girl pouted at the orders she just received and reluctantly went back to running. "That's just unfair..."

"You were super planning to take them all out alone for the super bonus reward, weren't you?"

"T-THAT'S NOT IT! Money isn't everything I care ab-"

Pissed at the useless discussion, the boy disconnected from the shared call and focused on climbing the stairs. He could still communicate with Asuka through the private line, and that was all he needed. "You just HAD to make her mad, Asuka… There was no real problem in her coming along, right?"

"Oh - sorry Shiro, I didn't noticed you were enjoying being alone with the cute blond girl."

"Just shut up… Meltdowner and the Dark May girl could just blast those bastards from down there, we don't really need to regroup. I know you did that on purpose."

"And why would I do that~*?" He could almost hear her chuckling and winking on the other side. Because you enjoy teasing people to death more than anyone else in this world. Why do you think I'm the only one left in the team? And… so what if she was cute?

Clicking his tongue, he turned the shared call on again before she made any other annoying comment - probably that was her goal all along (luckily, the discussion had already ended). Once he reached the rooftop, he easily spotted the three silhouettes running a few buildings away from him: two of them were side by side, and the third was a few meters ahead of them.

"Huh?" Suddenly, something that looked like a fireball was shoot from one of the two behind, and it flew past the third into nothingness. It was just as if…

"What the hell? They aren't running away from us, they are chasing someone else… wait, was that just now an esper ability?"

All four females were shocked at his statement. Kinuhata was the first one to speak. "There can't be an esper among the invasors… could it be that we are super late and another team is taking care of it?"

"No, that's impossible." Mugino was the one to answer. "Sending in different groups without warning would just make a mess and ruin everything. It's probably just a random idiot trying to bank the hero… well, we can just ask them once we get them. If they survive, that is!"

As Hishiro kept pursuing, things got more and more weirder. He got close enough now to see that one of them was holding something like a pole or a very long sword, and was using it to attack even from distance.

"Frenda! Mugino and Kinuhata are almost reaching you! If you can change the enemy's route to west, you may be able to flank them from both sides!" Instructed Asuka, as she kept track of all of them trough the GPS.

"Leave it to me!" Frenda picked a couple of missiles from inside her skirt and threw them upwards. They ignited in mid air, tracing a line of light in the middle of the darkness as they flew up until they hit the corner for the next building and exploded. As expected, the targets were forced to make a turn and headed towards west. "Mugino, they are going right in your direction!"

"Great, we're going up as well!" Seems like the operation was going well. Everything was going to end soon. However…

All of a sudden, Hishiro heard a voice. "Wait, wait, you must not give a single step further, nyah~!" It didn't came from the device. Someone had just climbed up to the rooftop and was standing five meters ahead of him. He was forced to stop and broke into a cold sweat once he noticed who this person was.

Blond spiked hair. Sunglasses. Hawaiian shirt. A gun pointed to him. That was all the info he had to know to understand the terrible situation he was in. "Tsuchimikado… Motoharu…"

"So you know me? That makes things a lot easier." The boy nonchalantly smirked and pulled the hammer of his handgun. "You must know why I am here then."

Yes, he knew. Asuka had told him about Motoharu before. He had taken down many organizations that were suspected of betraying Academy City by the orders of who knows who. The scary part is that some of those were just labeled as "suspicious" after the job was done, without any proof or whatsoever. Not even Asuka could find out if they really did something wrong or if it was just cover up, and to hide information even from her was quite a feat. If he had come to erase them to cover some dirt up, then they were as good as dead right now.

Darn… this is bad. I can deal with bullets to some degree with my ability, but the problem is that he is not even trying to hide the fact that this gun is an obvious feint. Hishiro assumed a defensive stance and observed each and every of the other boy's movements. "The city sent the legendary grim reaper after my neck, huh? I gotta say that I'm almost honored."

"Ahahahahahahah, calm down, will ya? I'm just kidding, just kidding." Tsuchimikado lowered his gun and walked a few steps forward. "I'm here just to ensure that no one is going to interfere with what's happening there, nyah. So if you wanna live, you can just turn around and go home."

What?! Kinuhata, Asuka and Frenda were hearing the whole conversation and were just as surprised as him. Stop chasing the invasors? THAT made no sense at all. "Sorry, but we got orders passed down from a member of the Board of Directors. We can't just back dow-"

"Ah, sure sure, about that." The reaper's smile looked wider and sinister by the second. "I have orders from the Chairman himself, so don't be afraid of desertion, got it?"

"SAY WHAT?!" Unbelievable. Why would the chairman want that? Hishiro didn't know what to do anymore. He turned his face to the windowless building, which was the only source of light this night - it probably had some kind isolated of generator.

"Let's abort mission Shiro." Said Asuka with a remorseful voice. "Whether he is telling the truth or not, we can't afford to lose you. You are our last field agent, so a tactical retreat is a viable option."

"BUT-" Retreat when our goal is right in our grasp? And we can't be doing the wrong thing here, this has to be dealt with! Before he could finish, Tsuchimikado cut in.

"That's right, before I forget..." This time, he stopped smiling and asked with a cold voice. "Just who was the director that gave the order to harm our guests?"

The brown haired boy tried to make some sense of this whole situation. Somehow, it seemed like they were tricked into doing something that they shouldn't and now Tsuchimikado wanted to know who was the responsible for that. He couldn't just say who it was, or else he would be killed for sure. As he was searching for way to escape...

ZOOOOOOOOOOM

A beam just passed by, missing both males by centimeters. Hishiro could feel his skin burning from the heat and kneeled down holding his cheek, while Tsuchimikado just turned around without flinching. "Yo, number four! That's not a nice way to greet people, y'know?"

Mugino was standing on the corner of the next building with her hand stretched out, with Saiai on her side. "And he dares to talk back. You was supposed to take your ass away from here quickly if you knew I had arrived. I don't miss junk that tries to get info on my clients twice, y'know?"

"Fu fu fu fu, oh my. Things would get ugly if I had to fight a level 5 here. Guess I'll leave for now, since my job here is already done". True enough, the 3 invasors were nowhere to be seen anymore. Tsuchimikado slowly walked away with a "see ya" and headed downstairs, while Kinuhata and Mugino jumped over to where Hishiro was.

"Can you stand?" Kinuhata offered him a hand and helped him getting up. "Thanks… What happened to our targets?"

"They are supper gone. The woman with a sword super hit the white robed person and he fell down. Then she and the other man just left to somewhere." Answered her while Mugino talked on the communicator with Frenda and Asuka.

"I see…" Hishiro sighed and thought over the whole situation again. The blackout, the invasion, the intruders fighting each other… Tsuchimikado had called them guests. Something big had just happened but he had no idea of what it was. Yet...

So, that's it for the introduction chapter... actually got a bit longer than what I expected. I hope it is at least OK.

Some notes on what this is going to be about: As the title suggests, this is an what-if scenario on what could be happening behind the scenes of the main story line events. As the plot progresses, I might change the outcome of some events.

About the two OCs, Hishiro and Asuka... well, I didn't really wanted to use any OC's on my first fic, but I couldn't find anyone in the cast that could play their role. I'm not sure if using OC's is a good thing or a bad habit, but just to be clear, they aren't going to be the main focus on all chapters. I want to explore the possibilities of "what could be happening to that person while this was going on?" and write some interactions between characters that don't usually interact in the series. Hishiro is there mainly to link those characters together (I do have some backstory and character development ready for him though, but I want to hear your opinion about him before bringing it to the story).

Please tell me how well I did for my first time. I'm open to suggestions and criticism, no need to hold back!