Witness to darkness
[ACMI: Road to School]
Afterschool on the 3rd, they'd gathered back at the Judgement office as Miyama prepared to take his pictures.
They were very careful about this. They had IV bags of his blood type on standby if he lost too much blood.
The case that Konori had found was also useful, a portable system for helping those suffering from oxygen deprivation. Together, he shouldn't suffer that much from his second stage.
That said, they were still ready to contact the hospital if it turned bad.
The first picture he generated of the day came out and it was scanned into an app.
"Here we go." Uiharu noted as she read it out "An alley. It's near school district 10."
She passed Shirai the phone so she could read the information herself. The teleporter nodded, memorising the information.
"It's not for a while though." She commented, flicking through the app "Should we do another now to see if there's a problem sooner?"
they turned to Miyama to check if he was okay. He hesitated slightly. It didn't look like his nose was bleeding yet but...
"Should we give it some more time before trying again?" Joule asked the young boy.
He nodded thankfully and they paused for snacks.
Shirai went out to deal with the picture as Miyama prepared to take another one. The result...
"Another alley in the same area... oh. It's only 15 minutes from now."
Konori sighed "Another one near Strange? I wonder if Skill-Out is causing trouble again."
Uiharu sent the location to Shirai and didn't think anything else of it.
For Shirai though...
[ACMI2: New Fight]
Kuroko Shirai approached the second alley. She'd already arranged for Anti-Skill to pick up those bullies and now she was checking out the one she had been sent.
She could hear the sounds of fighting from inside though and she didn't have long until the the time of Miyama's vision. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen-
Gunshots!
Shirai rushed into the alley. Cloth in many colours hung between the buildings and cast the alley into many colours.
She quickly took stock, there were a lot of people on the ground. Hopefully they were unconscious and not...
The source of the noise was ahead of her now. A man that was built like a gorilla was pointing a gun at someone on the ground while silver confetti... chaff? Something like that was fluttering in the air.
"Stop in the name of Judgement!" Shirai called out, grabbing her armband and pulling it to show it off.
The man looked up from the figure on the floor, distracted by Shirai. In that moment the figure rolled and lifted another gun.
This... was going to be complicated.
"Hold it!" She ran forwards, keeping an eye on their fingers as she ran the figures for teleportation. Teleporting out of chaff was easy, into chaff was harder. She'd need to displace each piece of foil as she teleported in. Teleporting herself into an object was nasty so she normally used objects in times like these.
She tapped her needle belt and teleported three of them into the students gun, rendering it unable to fire. The man then pointed his gun towards Shirai, distracted for a moment.
"You, get out!"
As he moved to pull the trigger, she placed another half a dozen needles into his gun. His reactions were fast though, throughing the gun at her to force her to dodge.
The student recovered though and-
Oh. Shirai hadn't realised it before but it was Accelerator!
Anyway, he was running for one of the bodies nearby. The gorilla-man was big, she wouldn't be able to knock him down very easily. He would probably even be too heavy for a normal flip. She did have another option though.
He just grit his teeth and raised his hands in a combat posture.
Well, this wouldn't be too hard. Hopefully.
With a rush, he charged towards her. No, past her!
As he ran past she grabbed his clothes with one hand then the other as he moved past, dropped her center of mass and stuck out a leg.
Tai Otoshi wasn't the most complicated part of Judo but in cases like these-
The man fell. Or more specifically he was made to trip over. She then went for her needles.
She had to admit, she quite liked the sound it made when one of the needles was teleported straight into the ground, pinning someone's clothes in place. She associated it with a job well done.
Now then.
"Don't struggle, you wouldn't like me putting this somewhere that might actually hurt." She lifted her last needle as she threatened him before checking on Accelerator.
He'd found a gun on one of the injured people in the alley but he wasn't point it at her or the man but instead the cloth hanging over the alley. A bullet shot out that clipped one of the clips holding the cloth in place and it began to flap in the wind, clearing the chaff out of the air.
Calmly, ignoring the gun still in his hand for now, Shirai pulled out her phone as she sat on the man. Lightly, she didn't intend to hurt him, just prove a point.
...The signal was clearing up as the chaff blew away and she began to dial. Accelerator looked largely bemused as he put the gun in a holster at his waist. It didn't quite fit, but the one that was meant to fit was broken now.
Accelerator tilted his head to the side at her forced nonchalance.
"And who are you again?"
"I don't think we've actually met." Shirai remarked thinking back, she couldn't be sure, nothing was coming to mind. "I know your face though. All you need to know about me is that I'm a friend of Mikoto Misaka and a member of Judgement."
"Koroko Shirai?"
Shirai blinked, the man had said that.
"You know me?"
"From rumours. You helped take down Big Spider."
She nodded at that "Are you from Skill-Out then?"
"He's their leader." Accelerator remarked "And the city apparently wants him dead. I wouldn't be shocked if when Anti-skill came to collect him, he'd end up dead before even getting to prison."
...That...
Shirai hesitated. The man let out a short bark of laughter though.
"I guess that's to be expected. That's the price for being a leader."
What could she do? If he was doing something bad enough to get this kind of force against him, he must have done something bad. But if the choice was to either leave him to die or call for Anti-skill and give him to them only to die another way.
"Hey, Teleporter." The man noted "I don't like you, but I do appreciate what you did back then. If you have to see it any way, I'm just the next Hebitani. Let justice do its work."
Accelerator spat "You looking to give yourself a chance to escape?"
"Nah." The man noted "I do have a request though. Skill-Out's purpose has always been more about Protecting level 0s than attacking Espers."
"Could have fooled me." Accelerator remarked.
The man tried to shrug, but couldn't due the restraints "That's the new blood mostly. Anyway," He nodded at his phone "I have a list of Level 0s on that phone that require special attention. Many of them are being targetted for one project or another. I want them kept safe. If I am unable to do it, someone else must."
That... still didn't solve the problem. Whatever happened, this man would die soon. Time didn't matter, the means didn't matter. Miyama's prediction... how could she break it?
She couldn't find a way.
Accelerator let air hiss through his teeth as he grabbed the phone.
"I'll check on them, at least. I promise that much. I won't have time to protect all of them though."
Shirai stood up quickly from the man's body "Then let me copy down the list too. Judgement will be able to help keep them safe."
They shared information. Then with a heavy heart, she contacted Anti-Skill.
Officer Yomikawa was filled in with the details, along with the fact that she'd been told that his life would be in danger. All she could hope was that there was enough good to out weigh the bad.
This problem was over at least. Time to get back to the others.
End of chapter.
Hey, did you know these were happening on the same day? I didn't until I came to write this chapter.
I won't touch on the rest of the Skill-Out Uprising though. It would be too much of a distraction from the Indian Poker card arc.
Oh, and if I described Tai Otoshi wrong, I'm sorry. My friend who does Judo was trying to explain it and I don't think I fully got it.