An Angel Rises / Split up to search for clues

[ACMI2: Raid]

As everyone ran out into the rain, Lumen began searching around. She first went backwards though to one of the sisters. Tracking the network's movement without a song was very difficult but she got the basics at least. Last Order was the control tower. While it seemed like sisters talked to each other via telepathy, their network always sent the message via Last Order. It's what gave the girl her authority.

Lumen found a stray radio wave, the signal that a sister had created and followed it roughly. She lost it once they reached open air though. She new the frequency well though. Or rather the frequencies. The sisters communicated over a spectrum of different frequencies in order to keep their thoughts private.

When Lumen was ready, she began making a mental map of the sources of various signals.

"Found her." She finally spoke to Joule "It's a fairly normal building but-"

Then something changed. A large blast of radio waves from Last Order's location. A command?

"Lumen?"

"I'm not sure. It reminds me of the Virus that Kihara implanted in them before."

Misaka stepped back, worried "Am I the-?"

"No. I don't think so." Lumen noted as she scanned the rapidly shifting AIM fields. Her eyes widened as she realised the actual target.

"It's the fields that make up Kazakiri."

Joule frowned "We're missing something." as she spoke though, Index pointed.

"Over there!"

Light, shining ribbons that reached up towards the sky. They waved around as if the limbs of a sea creature or banners caught on a windy day.

"What is it?" Misaka wondered.

Index frowned as she put it together "It's Kazakiri! Right?"

Lumen nodded "They're doing something to her. She's bound together and some kind of... thing is acting on her."

"It made her into an Angel." Index added as she looked at it.

Ahead of them, they saw someone running. Index recognised them first.

"Touma wait!"

As they all caught up to him, Touma turned. He was panting slightly.

"Index? Misaka? What-"

Misaka was looking away so she noticed the sound of a car door closing first. Soldiers, the same ones that had been causing problems all evening.

"We can't talk here." She pointed them out and they all rushed a little ahead so they wouldn't be spotted.

Turning into an alley, Index explained the situation to all of them.

"That angel is Hyouka." She held on to Touma "Please, don't kill our friend."

"So you're saying that THAT'S Kazukiri?" Touma glanced up. A single ribbon could be seen from here as the buildings blocked easy sight of the main swarm.

"Please, just tell me you won't go over there? We've already got an idea of what could stop it." Index pleaded.

Joule nodded "It's the Misaka network again. We're on our way to help Last Order."

Touma's face fell a little but he turned back to Index "I can't stay out of this. I have to stop her and you know it."

"But she could die!" Index continued on but she was interupted quickly as Touma raised his voice.

"I won't let that happen!" He calmed down slightly and stated simply "I'm going in there to save her. How could you even think for a second that I'd kill her?"

He raised his hand and gestured at the ribbon.

"Is that what Kazakiri normally looks like? I need to go there to see if I can do anything to help pull her out of trouble."

Everyone took a moment after that and Index nodded "Okay."

Touma looked at everyone else "Accelerator is already on his way to save Last Order. He'll probably get there first-"

"There they are!"

Behind them, the soldiers from earlier had caught up. Misaka flicked a coin and fired a weak railgun to blast them away.

"I'll deal with the bad guys. Joule, you might be needed to help the network, can I ask you to come with me?"

Joule nodded and Touma turned to Index.

"We'll be dealing with magic. Can I have your assistance?"

"Of course."

"Let's keep in contact." Joule pointed out before they all split up "It's possible that either team may have to deal with something unexpected."

Touma nodded and they quickly traded phone numbers before running off in their own direction.

Lumen had Last Order's location and she began leading Joule and Misaka towards it.

It took a few minutes to reach it. By that time they saw that one of the windows of the skyscraper was broken.

"I'll go up now." Lumen said "I'll check how Accelerator is doing while you two get up there."

Joule nodded and forced a smile "We'll be right up."

End of chapter?

I'm sorry, this feels like a terrible 200th chapter.

The quality and quantity are both awful. I had to stop here because Accelerator's thing is going to take a while. That might just be me being jaded as when I went back to read the previous chapter there were enough errors in the grammar to really annoy me. I fixed some of them but...

Screw it.

Some info: I write these chapters two days in advance. After I put up this chapter in two days time (or today from your perspective) I'll write another chapter of the side story to celebrate 200 chapters in the main story.

Or at least I would.

I've become sick since I wrote this chapter. Chance thaat previous comment to be "Sometime between this upload and the next." Hopefully I'll recover this week.

Regardless, I hope you can enjoy it when it does come out. This is one of the big chapters for the side story after all.