On one hand, a swansong.
[ASG2: A Flash of Azure (Lumen Version)]
GV felt power flow through him, a power that was even beyond what Lumen had normally given him in the past.
There was a cost to this of course, his brain was currently playing host to Lumen. He didn't know what she'd had to displace to fit in but he was still going to pay somehow.
"Let's go GV." Lumen's voice whispered in his mind. That was all the signal he needed.
Her song was acting to counter the dragon's distorted song, pulling together those present to ensure they had the power to fight against the four-eyed dragon. Of course, GV himself couldn't use much of it, his space wasn't able to support any extra processing right now. He wasn't the only person here though.
Misaka charged forwards with him, her body crackling with uncontrolled power. Touma had started forwards too. The three of them would be working together for this.
The dragon roared and the world distorted. Suddenly there was an infinite space between them and the dragon.
Touma raised his fist and punched, shattering the illusion back into reality as the three heroes split up to take the dragon from different directions.
In Misaka's head, a plan was being explained. Lumen was using the backdoor that still existed in her EM barrier to pass her the data. A three part plan to set Joule free.
The level 5s part was relatively simple. It was simply to fight the dragon and keep its attention as the other two got into position.
Misaka started by creating an iron sand sword and whipping it towards the dragon. Against any normal creature that should have dealt some damage, but the dragon's scales repelled the attack and sent her sand everywhere.
If a physical attack wouldn't work, she'd move next to her more standard attacks. She'd tested these methods against Kimi earlier, she knew what sort of things it took to hurt a dragon seriously.
With a yell, she unleashed a blast of lightning from the sky, aiming for the dragon's main body. She couldn't target this sort of attack at the dragon's head or neck without risk to Joule.
The lightning at least caused the dragon to react, but not by much. It turned its head that had been fighting to keep all three of them in sight to focus just on her before it sung again.
Illusions formed up around her, drawing on Joule's knowledge of her to hurt her. Misaka was stunned for a moment as she was suddenly surrounded by an ocean of corpses, all looking like her. A familiar set of goggles on each of them.
There, off to the side, she could see a laughing copy of Accelerator. To the other side she saw all the Kiharas that had made life hard for her and her sisters.
She felt her internal sense of direction warp and twist. With her line of sight to the dragon broken, that made it so she didn't know where the real enemy was anymore.
The illusion of Accelerator turned towards her with a cruel smile, he went into a low posture and flew towards her rapidly.
No! This wasn't real! She had to focus.
Lumen's song resounded in her head and the illusion distorted, revealing for a moment that what was being shown to her as Accelerator was actually the dragon's swiping tail. Had she just pretended it was fake, the tail would have struck her and sent her flying.
With a power-assisted leap, Misaka dodged the tail and pulled out an arcade token. She was aware of where the dragon was now thanks to that flicker from Lumen. The token was thrown skyward and Misaka flicked it towards her target.
GV was up next as he saw Misaka's railgun blast into the dragon. It was distracted by her now and that left it open to being caught.
"Bolts of rebellion!" The same ability that was used when this all started would put it to end.
"A thunderous voice in his heart!" This was the ability he'd first used to stop the level 6 shift on Misaka.
"Speaks of one true law!" The full power of the Azure Striker Septima when acting on its own.
Thousands of lines formed in his mind's eye, tracing out the path.
"Voltaic Chains!"
The chains shot forth, wrapping the dragon and binding it down to the ground.
The four-eyed dragon screamed out and turned its attention on him. It knew that it would have to break his focus in order to escape. That would be in Joule's mind after all.
The world distorted around him.
"Hey there, Gunvolt."
Nova stood behind him. GV tried to ignore him.
"Long time no see." Nova continued "Now then, there's something I wanted to ask you. Do you think Academy City will try something like I did with Joule's power?"
"That Kihara already tried." GV muttered as he tried to keep his powers focused on the chains.
"True, true." Nova nodded "But they'll try again. They really seem quite insistent. It makes sense really. They and I both needed to keep a large population of psychics under control. Who wouldn't go for the easy option that was already provided?"
The dragon's victory conditions was just making GV hesitate and it seemed like it would succeed if this went on for too long. Luckily, that was when the illusion of Nova flickered away.
As the dragon was pulled down by the kid's chains, Touma ran up
He had to start from the dragon's back and he leaped onto it before he started running across the serpent.
His part in the plan, explained audibly as the telepath had trouble making a connection to him, was just the last section. The rescue itself.
As he ran, the dragon threatened to buck him off. It would be a nasty fall at this point so Touma had to grab onto its body. Wherever his arm made contact, the dragon became fuzzy and malleable so he was able to hold on better than you normally could on something scaly.
The bucking wasn't really even aimed at him though. The dragon's focus was on the two electromasters and it seemed to be ignoring him.
As he made his way up to its throat where the girl was trapped, fused into the dragon's flesh.
"I don't really know how you got caught up in this." Touma said as he panted and looked down at her "But it was probably the fault of my arm somehow. I'm going to take responsibility for that now- and free you from this terrible illusion!"
His arm slammed into the dragon's throat, making it malleable as he pushed deeper and deeper inside.
The dragon roared, it knew what was happening and started forming illusions. Touma was too busy trying to reach for the girl so he couldn't just break the illusions.
Mad fantasies swirled around him. The dragon wasn't pulling from Joule's mind here. She didn't know much about Touma after all. No, the dragon was pulling from what it itself had determined about the boy called Touma Kamijou.
It chose first an illusion of his failures, every story's bad ending. Index made into a mindless puppet, Index as a fake vampire, Himegami's corpse, a sea of dead Misaka's including the real one, a shattered figure of Kazakiri. Dead, dead, dead. Everyone he saved in reality, shown as a corpse.
Even the girl that he was trying to save now. As he continued to struggle to free her, he watched as the form of her body rotted away.
With that all said, Touma didn't hesitate.
"This illusion is nothing!"
He pulled the rotting shape free and the illusion warped and twisted.
Lumen floated in the air, singing her song and watching the three heroes.
She could see that Touma was pulling Joule away from the dragon. Without its power source it was beginning to degrade and become a skeleton like the angel dragon before it.
Lumen watched as its decaying form broke free from GV's chains and tried to strike at Touma, only for the young man to meet the attack with a punch from his illusion-destroying arm.
The mental projection's form fuzzed as the dragon began crumbling away. It wasn't dead. Like the Angel dragon, without it's power source it would return to somewhere safe now that it was destroyed. Said safe place?
Lumen watched as a flow of power entered Touma at a point near his shoulder.
Well then, that was all said and-
Lumen felt the crack form. Yeah, she'd expected something like this.
The Four-eyed dragon had done its best to sure up her spiritual form when it realised it was about to start rampaging. It was only with its help that Lumen had been able to make the bridge to GV to supply the necessary help.
Now though, with the dragon defeated and Joule in this state…
Lumen looked up at the sky, her song ending.
[ASG1: Cyanotype]
"Ah, I had a good time." She reminisced "I can hope we'll meet again, but really, at this point? I just don't know."
The cracks ran along her body and she shattered into a spray of blue crystals. GV looked up at the sound, only to see a rain of small crystals that landed on Joule and sunk into her body.
Touma brought the girl over as Misaka joined them.
"Joule?" GV took her from Touma and tried to wake her "Are you… okay?"
"We should get her to the hospital." Misaka noted "The doctor will be able to see what's wrong with her."
GV nodded "That sounds good, let's finish tonight's chaos already.
End of chapter.
Did I really just kill Lumen again? Well, wait for the next chapter to learn about that.
Either way, that's the end of the dragon fight. I'm not quite sure if it hit the level of climax I was hoping for, I guess that's up to all of your opinions.
Edit: Forgot to upload at the normal time again