Hello there. First thing's first, sorry about the delay. Exams hit hard, and I have been very tired. I hope you've had a nice few weeks. Writing this has been a nice way for me to relax during exam season. Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed the introduction to the plot: Greek Artefacts

Anyways, to make up for the delay, this one's significantly longer than the others. It's not amazing, but it's alright. No character destroying moments in this one, folks.

Once again, your reviews really help me keep going. They're great for keeping me motivated, so thank you for all of them. They also help me recognise where I screwed up, which is nice too.

I hope you all enjoy this one.

Ascent

The sky was a beautiful place. The clouds beneath the heavens created impossibly detailed structures within the sea of blue, and the darker areas ominously looked over the land below.

Mikoto took a moment to experience the view below her as she fell from the sky. She focuses, and began extracting particulates of iron sand in the air while she moved towards Touma. He grabbed ahold of her right hand with his left, looking panicked. She tilted her head, as if to ask what was wrong. He worriedly pointed at the backpack on his back, and she checked inside.

It was empty.

Her eyes widened as he pointed up into the sky, where the parachute fell down in the shape of a ball, completely free.

And then it fell apart in the air, as if the stitches all had come loose at once.

He pulled a face that she knew very well. It was a face that screamed "Things were going just a little too well recently."

She immediately began focusing on the situation, adjusting her goggles over her eyes. She could hear the wind in her ears, but she started to drown even that out. Two ideas immediately came to mind: using the iron sand in the air to slow their fall, and magnetising themselves and the ground to slow down at the end. She shook her head. No, neither would work. The iron sand was barely enough for one, and Touma would cancel out any magnetism on him.

If that asshat Tsuchimikado had given her a parachute then she would've been able to give him hers, but of course that wasn't what happened. She narrowed her eyes, thinking of more drastic measures. If push came to shove, she could aim her railgun towards the ground to significantly slow their fall thanks to the immense amount of force each coin could output, but the force of them hitting the ground would create a huge crater, so it was a less than ideal solution.

She squeezed Touma's hand as they began to fall through the dark cloud. She had no idea how close the cloud was to the ground, so she had to think fast. If she had no other choice, she could allow herself to start ascending through different stages of her 'angel' to increase her output, but doing so was extremely dangerous. She could potentially hurt him if she held on to him, and he could just as easily cancel her powers completely if any electricity conducted from her body to his. Whatever she was going to do, it had to be controlled.

She took a deep breath as they came out the other side of the cloud, into the view of the snow-covered city beneath them. Directly below them were office buildings, shopping malls and skyscrapers, and a plan quickly formed in her head. Judging from the distance, they had about 30 seconds at their current speed before they hit the ground. She signalled for Touma to wait, and let go of him.

Taking a deep breath, she dived toward the closest skyscraper. Extending the small mass of iron sand she had gathered from the air like a wire, she magnetised herself to the wall, crashing into the side of the building, tearing up glass around her as she slowed herself to a stop, silently hoping that nobody was on the other side of the wall.

20 seconds.

The next closest skyscraper looked to be over 200 metres away. This was going to be painful. Glancing up, she could see that the unfortunate Level 0 had predicted her plan, and had altered his course toward the path between the skyscrapers. She smiled to herself. He knew her recklessness far too well. She gathered electricity around herself, magnetising the area around her, turning the side of the building into a makeshift cannon.

She closed her eyes. She had one shot.

10 seconds.

She reversed her polarity, and shot up like a bullet. Glass shattered, concrete cracked and crumbled, steel buckled and snapped. A shockwave tore through the wall as she flew through the air, holding out a hand. In under a second, she had already reached him, and proceeded to almost rip her left arm off as he grabbed onto it. Now, all they had to worry about was the rapidly approaching wall.

2 seconds until impact.

She extended her right hand, putting as much electricity into it as she could without arcing out towards Touma. It slowed her down as she got closer, but not enough as they crashed into it. Ignoring the pain shooting through her body, she placed her right foot on the wall as she fell eventually coming to a halt.

She took a deep breath, looking down, and her eyes widened. They were about two feet off the ground. One moment later with her jump, and they would be a red paste on the ground.

Touma jumped down, and she jumped into his arms before sitting on the snowy ground.

The pain hit all at once. She clutched her left arm, barely able to move it. Her shoulder hurt like hell, and it spread like knives down the rest of her arm. Cuts and bruises covered both arms, made from the shattered glass and impacts with the buildings.

"Firefly, are you okay? Wait, scratch that, you're clearly not okay. Can I do anything?"

She started to get to her feet. "Don't worry, Dragon... I'm fi-" she yelped as her arm moved, and she fell back down, whimpering.

He quickly moved to her side. "Hold on, I need to make sure of something. I'm sorry if this hurts." She could feel him carefully moving her hoodie out of the way, gently taking it off her right arm. He looked quite relieved by the zipper at the front. Gently moving her shirt over her shoulder, he froze. "That's not good. Damn thing looks like someone's who's been in a train crash."

Mikoto looked over her shoulder. "T-Touma, what's wrong?"

He gently took a shard of glass out of her collar, making her flinch. "I'm no doctor, but I'm fairly sure your shoulder's not supposed to go down the back of your arm." He hesitated. "Do you want me to fix it?"

"If it's possible, then yes."

"It'll hurt. A lot. I'm concerned that-"

"If you can do it, then please do!" She grit her teeth. "It hurts enough as is, and I'm not going to be able to fight like this."

He gently took hold of her arm with his right hand, and her collar with his left. "Okay, I need you to relax your arm to the best of your ability. Ready? Three, two, one."

He yanked her arm out. The pain of her shoulder pressing against the bone made her seize up, but he didn't stop. She could even hear the sound of bones grinding against each other. She slammed her left fist against the ground, trying to distract herself from the feeling. "Almost there!" With one last pull, the pain almost instantly subsided into a dull throbbing, and he let go of her arm.

The Level 5 slowly got to her feet, gently moving her arm around to try to settle the shoulder. Touma was knelt down, breathing heavily. He seemed mostly unharmed, aside from a few cuts and bruises. She held out a hand for him. "Thank you."

He took it, smiling. "I'm sorry it hurt so much." He ruffled her brown, snow-speckled hair. "But please, in the future, don't do something quite as reckless as that. I'm happy to be saved by you, but only if it doesn't put your life on the line." He took the knife out of his arm guard. "If push comes to shove, I can always just cut off my arm and let it do its job before sealing it again. I'd rather do that than see you hurt like that again for me."

Mikoto put on a face of disappointment. "And you need to value yourself more. You're an anchor for me, and I can't allow you to put yourself through so much pain and stress just to avoid me hurting myself by my own volition. I hate to see you use those dragons, because you clearly don't like using them. They're dangerous and uncontrollable. Unless it's an occasion where I can do nothing, keep the power you hate so much tucked away."

"Fine. I'll won't do it unless I have to." He started to look around, when a voice came from the shadows.

"You two certainly know how to make an entrance." It was a girl's voice. Despite the fact she spoke near-perfect Japanese, she had an English accent.

Mikoto didn't recognise the voice, but Touma certainly did. He slowly backed away from the direction of the voice, a mixture of concern, distaste and fear on his face. "Of course it would be you, Lessar."

A fairly short girl emerged from the shadows of an alley. She looked to be the same age as Mikoto. She had long black hair with light brown highlights on her bangs. Her whole outfit seemed to follow the colour scheme of the British Flag; her jacket was red, white and blue, her stockings were red and white, and her miniskirt was blue with a singular red line at the bottom. However, what didn't follow her theme was the succubus-looking tail that protruded from underneath her miniskirt, flipping it up at the back and showing Mikoto something she wasn't very fond of looking at, and by the looks of it, neither was Touma.

She shrugged. "You looked like a damn comet, you know. It's impossible that anyone missed it, which is annoying because now those thieves know where we are. They could send someone after us for an ambush."

Touma leaned into Mikoto. "Just so you know, if you hear me shout for help, I will very much need it." He sighed. "She is quite the character."

She eyed him suspiciously. "What do you mean...?"

He watched Lessar wave them over and groaned. "Hopefully you won't have to find out." He shook his head as he cautiously approached the girl, Mikoto following him closely.

The sorceress looked around before leading them deeper into an alley. "First of all, I'm definitely not the only one who saw you two." She glanced around. "To be honest, we're very lucky that this snowstorm is going on. Mexico City is very densely populated, and it would be impossible to have any kind of covert battle here without far too many bounded fields. Fortunately it being about 25 degrees Celsius under the normal winter temperature has left everyone completely unprepared, so nobody is going outside."

Mikoto placed her hands on her hips. "Tsuchimikado told us that there was the artefact that's generating this cold, as well as another one that's being tracked in this city. Which one are we going after first?"

"As much as I'd like to go after the one we can track, its user is being extremely elusive. Thanks to the weather we can't get it pinpointed, and worse than that, we simply can't find them. It's almost as if they can see where we are or where we're going to go. Some kind of clairvoyant, perhaps."

The Level 0 seemed confused. "How do you plan on finding the one that you can't track then?"

"Ah, that's actually fairly simple. The storm from Khione's artefact seems to remain stationary most of the time, and when it does move, it only tends to move a few hundred metres before going back to its original position."

Mikoto snapped her fingers. "Which suggests that its user is at the centre of the storm."

"Bingo. If we can identify where the centre is, then we can-" She froze as she reached a turning in the alley. "We've got incoming. Several magical signatures just passed over some sensors I placed around here earlier." She indicated straight ahead. "I know you can handle yourself, so you can deal with them. Touma can make sure I don't take any fatal hits, so he'll come down this way with me, capeesh?"

She grimaced, looking for a rebuttal. She knew that Touma was uncomfortable around her, for whatever reason, but she couldn't stand here and argue. Begrudgingly, she jogged down the alley, and the other two split off from her.

As she reached a corner, she peeked around it, where two people stood. One was a large toned man, the other a beautiful and serious-looking lady. The man said something in a language Mikoto didn't recognise while he looked at his compass. It sounded European, but other than that it was completely new to her.

The lady pointed toward where Misaka and Touma had crash-landed, before speaking in the same language. She didn't recognise any of it, except for a single word: Khione. She didn't want to have to fight them and end up making a scene, so she slowly exited the alley.

She smiled at them, and began speaking English, hoping they knew it too. "H-hello."

The man raised an eyebrow. "Greetings. What might a young Japanese lady like you be doing here at this time?"

She paused for a moment. While she knew English and could speak it fairly well, she was in no way fluent. She had to think about every word she used. "I believe you're going to the... crash site?"

The two Europeans glanced at each other suspiciously. "Yes, we are. We would like to make sure no threats to our masters are there. Might you know how we can get there?" Mikoto pointed directly away from it, and their eyes narrowed. "Why are you lying to us?"

The Level 5 sighed. "Okay, here's the thing. I'm the one who crashed. I'm from Academy City, and I'm trying to stop whomever is controlling the power of Khione. I would advise you to not fight me." Sparks flew from her bangs. "I'm the second ranked Level 5, if you get into a fight with me, you'll end up hurt."

They backed up, and got into a fighting position. "We'll see about-"

That was all they were able to say. A bolt of electricity cracked through the air, striking one in the chest and arcing to the next. It was nowhere near enough current to kill them, but it would leave them unconscious for some time. She was about to leave then there, until she looked up at the sky. While they were enemies, leaving them to get snowed on and end up with hypothermia was a bit too much. The idea of a body count didn't really appeal to her. She dragged their bodies underneath an overhang on the side of a building. While it obviously wouldn't keep them out of the cold, it wouldn't put their lives at risk. They were warmly dressed, so as long as they didn't get wet they would be fine.

She turned around, heading back into the alley. Despite the situation she found herself in, she felt incredibly calm, and there were no scales of light forming on her. Perhaps because it was so far from home, she felt she had no personal stake in this conflict, aside from her and Touma's physical well-being. At the end of the day, once she arrived back at Academy City, she could eat her dinner and go to bed and have a good night's rest. Actually, it would probably be nightmare-fuelled, but the point still stood. The outcome of this little skirmish wouldn't affect her.

She looked around in the crossroads within the alley. She'd set off from here, but Touma and Lessar were-

"...oto hel..."

That was him. She immediately sprinted down the street toward the sound. What the hell was happening for him to be-

She froze.

Before her stood Touma, tied to a wall and gagged. Both his arms and legs had been pinned. Lessar, on the other hand, was completely free, looking over him with a smirk on her face.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Lessar glanced over, before ignoring her and started to take off the boy's belt.

The Level 5 shot a powerful bolt of electricity at her, but it was waved away as if it was deflected by some kind of shield.

"You're going to need a bit more than that." She threw the belt to the side. "I don't know whether Touma's told you about me or not, but if you just let me get his seed, I'll leave you both alone." She laughed. "You're nobody important. You need to be more forward, more confident and more aggressive if you want a man's love. Besides, he can do so much better than..." she smirked, turning back to Touma, "you."

She grit her teeth, about to say something else, when she saw the look in Touma's eyes. It was a look that she remembered having herself five years ago. A look she wished she couldn't remember.

The dam she had set up in her mind broke.

Her body became coated in white scales, horns jutting out of her head. Electricity crackled in the air, abs it smelled of ozone.

Lessar immediately looked up. "What the hell is that Telesma signature? It's insane! Where is it-" she glanced at the Level 5, and her words got caught in her throat. "W-wh-whatthefu-"

Mikoto took a step forward. "Back away from my boyfriend." Her voice resonated in two separate pitches, as if she had a voice changer.

"What's going on?! Why is there an angel here?!"

The angel struck the ground next to the sorcerer with her newly forming belt of energy, gouging out the stone and concrete, and the girl yelped, falling over backwards trying to get away. "Back. The hell. Away. From. My boyfriend."

The mage quickly picked herself up, and thrust what seemed to be some kind of pole towards the ground, grabbing a chunk of debris with it and throwing it at the angel.

The angel tilted her head, batting it away with ease. A singular black eye between her intertwining horns looked behind her at Touma. He doesn't seem particularly alarmed by her. Instead, she saw a warm familiarity in his eyes. Just that look made her feel less anxious. The scales had grown over her legs and arms to make them spiked at the ends, completely ridding her of her hands and feet. She could hover, but she simply didn't feel like it, instead opting to take steps toward the defiant sorcerer.

Lessar quickly began to chant, taking out a runed knife. "By the power bestowed upon me by the goddess Freya, heed my call and assist me in taking down this false-"

The angel hit her onto the ground with her fence-shaped belt, before it retreated back to her body, the knife flying out of Lessar's hands. The angel continued to walk, all nonchalant as if nothing had happened, cornering the poor mage.

Bright scales covered her body. Aside for her hair, the body of this angel no longer resembled the girl called Mikoto Misaka. She was so impossibly bright, she was difficult to look at, as if she had basked in the the glory of some kind of deity. And yet, despite the fact that white scales covered her body, her head showed the darkest abyss. Looking at it allowed you to see the depths of space. Galaxies and planets that had never been discovered, stars that lit unknown lands.

Lessar was cowering on the ground, unable to crawl any further. She went to pick up her staff, but the angel kicked it away before she could reach it, and she could feel a real glare coming from beneath that star-spangled face of hers.

The angel stepped right up to the sorcerer, looming over her, tilting her head, and the girl clutched her chest from the familiar pressure exuded from the monster. "fghdDOgjfu lpfqNOTfjko"

Lessar froze. She could only just understand what the angel before her was saying, but the fact that she knew what it was saying scared her. She recognised this unforgettable feeling.

The angel stepped on the girl's stomach, electricity arcing around her back. Iron sand gathered around Mikoto's back, forming a web of metal behind her, twisting around each other to form makeshift wings. "djuSTAYokm woxAWAYpeb evtFROMwvd pkyMYssz tksBOYFRIENDyjsg" a small sphere of swirling black and purple energy appeared around the end of the angel's right arm. Something about it didn't look quite right, as if it didn't belong in this world, and she aimed it up at the sky. "djdORmue dbkrELSEacm."

She fired out into the sky, as it rapidly floated up towards the cloud, unaffected by wind resistance.

The sky cracked.

Cracks appeared in the sky.

As if mimicking a spider-web break that you might see in a windscreen, the air above them had cracks form from nothing.

The cloud that hovered above the city began to disappear into the cracks that lead to who-knows-where, before it exploded outwards, turning the sky a shade of crimson. For a moment, the sky was completely clear, until the cloud reformed, once again blocking out the sun.

Lessar lay there stunned. The angel tilted her head. "gjdCONFIRMdbd"

The magician frantically shook her head. "Okay I promise I'll never do that again I really promise okay please don't kill me I beg of you have mercy!"

The angel nodded, before tip-toeing towards Touma, one arm against her temple, the other trying to pry the rope from the wall without any kind of fingers. Lessar moved to get up, and she immediately pointed the arm on her head at the mage, immediately stopping her in her tracks.

The moment Touma's right arm was pried free, he held onto the angel, and a loud sound like shattering glass resounded throughout the alley, as if someone had angrily thrown a bottle at a wall.

The moment the scales retreated, Lessar jumped up, cautiously approaching the duo. "How did you manage that?!"

Misaka raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean? I can ascend closer to level 6."

"No, like, that was Telesma that I felt. The crushing sensation of being in the presence of a holy being."

"I mean, I can go like Kazakiri can, though it's quite a long story as to how."

"No. No you are nothing like Kazakiri. You aren't some fake power, created within academy city for their own purposes. You aren't an abomination like that."

"What exactly are you getting at?"

Lessar put her hands on the Level 5's shoulders. "Mikoto Misaka, you are a true angel."