I stared down at the new clone in amusement. Honestly, this whole experiment is getting boring. I mean I guess that it keeps me a bit entertained but it's all the same thing. Guns, electricity and bombs. It's quite troublesome considering how long it's gonna take to finish the experiment, but that's besides the point.
"No we will begin experiment #10032" she says in a monotone voice.
We both started going down the train track we were standing on. The gravel crunched under my shoes, a sound as familiar as my own breathing. At 8:30 PM, the unlit switchyard was supposed to transform into a battlefield. For me, it felt more like a commute.
Our two pairs of footsteps pounded into the gravel, separated by less than ten meters. The script was already written.
"Hah! Why're ya walkin' around like it's nothin'?" I called out, my voice cutting through the stagnant air. My arms were spread wide in a gesture of utter contempt. "No new plan? If you wanna feel the pain that bad, then I'll make you cry! Maybe suck on a cough drop or somethin'!"
I crouched and closed in on her like a wild beast. My charge lacked the very concept of defense. Why would it? It didn't even need the concept of offense. This was the dance of someone who reflects every attack and kills an opponent just by touching them. It was simply a matter of how quickly and certainly I could make physical contact. That was the entire, tedious script.
Since her attacks would all bounce off me, there was no slowing down. Given this outrageous mayhem, a tank plunging straight into a demolition squad, Little Misaka…
"Ah?"
I let out a discontented voice. How novel. She was taking backward steps, placing distance between us as if running away. To the right, then to the left; as she kept up her flight, her eyes darted around, surveying the situation. I shifted my attention and was hot on her heels.
"What, what, what is this, this unsightly display?" I taunted, the gravel exploding softly under my feet with each step. "Hey, now, just what are you expecting, eh?! It doesn't matter how long you stall, a miracle ain't gonna happen!"
She didn't listen. Of course she didn't. She was just following her programming, even if this evasion routine was a new line of code. As she continued to widen the gap, my indignation at her halfhearted act began to simmer. And then I noticed it. The air around me was… tingling. It was charged.
Sparks burst around me in pale blue, camera-like flashes, but there wasn't a single attack aimed directly at me. What the hell's she doin'? I thought, grinding my teeth. A flicker of something other than boredom.
That's when I realized I was short of breath. I thought for a moment I'd been talking too much while running, but no. Something else was up.
A smell. Sharp. Acrid. It was ringing warning sirens in a brain that rarely heard them.
"There's no wind tonight, I see…"
Little Misaka's voice echoed through the windless switchyard. A statement of fact. A piece of data.
"…which means Misaka may have a chance at victory, says Misaka over her shoulder."
And then I got it. I took in the situation: her flight, the peripheral lightning, the shortness of breath, and myself, the one who reflected all things.
Hah. Ozone, huh?
She was using her electricity to break the oxygen molecules. Turning my very atmosphere into poison. She didn't need to hit me. She just needed to make the air around me unbreathable. A slow, suffocating trap for the untouchable.
A wide, genuine smile split my face. This was new. This was different.
"All right, all right! You're the freakin' best, you know that?!" I laughed, the sound echoing in the toxic air. "I take it back, you really are tryin' to be a worthy opponent! Ha-ha! Ten thousand of you were killed, and now you bring out a crafty trick like this? Is that it?!"
I was positively beaming, even as my lungs complained. The boredom was gone, replaced by a thrilling, razor-sharp focus.
"How-ev-er." My voice dropped, laced with a predatory glee. "There's a weak spot!"
Her shoulders twitched, a tiny, human tell in her otherwise placid frame.
"If I catch you," I snarled, "then your plan is a failure!!"
My advancing foot altered its vector, and the gravel behind me exploded like a bomb. It was just one step, a single application of force that launched me forward like a bullet. I closed the seven meters in an instant.
Shock finally registered in her red eyes. She attempted to jump backward, a pathetic, sluggish response compared to the ruthless physics I commanded.
"You wanna die? Then by all means, stand still!"
His outstretched hand, more a caress than a strike, brushed her cheek.
A sickening crack echoed from her neck. Her world became a violent top, spinning wildly before she crashed onto the gravel.
And that was him holding back.
A serious touch wouldn't have left a body to hit the ground.
"Let's start with a question!" he crowed, his broken laughter a physical weight in the air. He was a storm given form, a darkness that consumed everything. "What's the count? How many times have you bit the dust already?"
His grin was a terrifying, unnatural slash across his face, wide enough to drool. He was a portrait of madness.
The dam broke. With her defenses shattered, he unleashed a torrent of calculated violence. A shoe dug into her ribs. A fist slammed into her arched back, each impact precisely calibrated to fracture and maim, but not to kill immediately. She was plunged into a vortex of agony, like being sealed in a drum and beaten relentlessly with iron bars.
"Hk… guh…?!"
A kick to her stomach flipped her onto her back. Blood, warm and thick, trickled into one eye from a gash on her forehead, blurring the world into a red haze. Above her, Accelerator took a ragged breath, casually wiping the spit from his crazed smile with the back of his hand.
Through it all, she felt no hatred. The concept was foreign. Her life had a price tag, not inherent value. When this was over, she'd be collected and disposed of, a used lab specimen. That was the simple, unchangeable truth.
It should have been.
But then, Accelerator froze.
His entire body went rigid. Slowly, with deliberate, unnerving calm, he turned his head to look behind him.
What…?
His form blocked her view, a wall standing over her broken body. He was utterly still, as if the grand experiment to cement his invincibility had suddenly vanished from his mind.
"…Hey," he said, his voice unnervingly flat. "What does this got to do to the experiment?"
The question was absurd, directed at the very person he was in the process of dismantling. She waited, but he didn't move.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, she dragged herself an inch across the sharp gravel, craning her neck to see what had stolen his murderous intent.
And there she saw them.
Not one, but 2 people watching this experiment. They had no business being here, they had nothing to do with the experiment. One of them was tall with spikey black hair, the other one was short with blond hair and red eyes.
"Get the hell away from her you bastard." Shouted one of them, the one with spikey black hair. The one with golden hair let out multiple chains to appear from about 5 golden portals. The chains entrapped Misaka and pulled towards them in an instant.
"Alright, little Misaka acquired it." The blonde one said with a grin on his face.
POV Change - Oogimiya
After acquiring Misaka I looked back at Touma. "Alright, be careful he can pretty much obliterate your internal organs in like 1 touch, so when fighting him be on the defensive, I'll cover you."
While talking little Misaka just looks at us with worry. "What are you two doing, asks Misaka?" I look back at her, before just sighing and responding. "We're saving you, oh and don't do all that 'I'm a clone, I can be easily replaced' bullshit because we frankly don't care." Misaka still looked at us with worry before I cleared my throat again. "Just shut the fuck up, look lets just beat his ass then we can all go home, I don't care about the whole experiment thing nor the fact you're a clone so just sit your cute ass down and watch me and Touma kick some ass."
After hearing my short monologue she decided to keep quiet for a bit, but someone else surely didn't.
"HAHAHAHA." Accelerator had his hand on his stomach while doing the most obnoxious laugh I've ever heard in my life. "Do you really think you two could beat me? The number 1 level 5. The strongest in Academy City"
I let a wide grin onto my face. "That's the best part Accelerator, you're the strongest in Academy City. That doesn't mean you're unbeatable."
Before he could respond back Touma decided to close the distance, he ran towards him with his right hand raised in a fist. Accelerator was ready for it though, he simply just let out a burst of air pressure, sending multiple rocks flying towards him. Touma put his arms up in defense trying his best to block his head and torso from the pebbles that were flung at him. Cuts appeared all over his arm and waist but thankfully he hadn't sustained any vital injuries.
"Too slow" Accelerator said in an almost bored tone. He stomped his foot onto the ground and a steel rail flew up. He used one of his hands to hit it and sent it flying to Touma's direction.
But before it could even get the chance to hit him several swords impacted it. "Don't forget about me dipshit." I let out more weapons towards him but he simply just used steel rails to deflect them.
He leapt up in the air with a wide grin on his face, "ALRIGHT THEN, LETS SEE HOW FAR YOU'LL GO. HOPEFULLY YOU'LL ENTERTAIN ME MORE THEN THE BORING SISTERS AND THE ONE OVER THERE."
What followed was a storm. A relentless, deafening ballet of destruction. I rained down a torrent of legendary weapons, swords, axes, spears. Each one a treasure that could level a building. They shattered against his reflection, the feedback screaming through the air. Touma weaved through the chaos, trying to find an opening, but Accelerator was controlling the entire battlefield. He redirected the shattered fragments of my own weapons back at me, forcing me to summon shields to block the shrapnel.
I stop my onslaught of attacks, simply because it would be useless. I can't even land a hit if he keeps reflecting everything back at me. I need to create an opening for Kamijou so he can deck him in the face.
Accelerator's grin didn't fade, he just looked back at me before roaring "MY TURN."
He didn't wait for my barrage to end. His hand snapped out, not towards me, but towards a stack of freight containers beside him. He touched one.
And launched them towards me. The multi-ton container didn't just fly; it damn near vanished from its spot and reappeared directly in front of me, moving at hypersonic speeds.
"Shit—!" I barely had a fraction of a second to react. A massive, golden shield, Ajax's Aegis, flared into existence before me. The container disintegrated against it in an explosion of shredded steel, the force of the impact throwing me back like a ragdoll. My bones rattled.
I hit the ground rolling, my portals flickering. "You bastard—!""KEEP BEGGING! I LOVE IT!" he screamed, his laughter unhinged.
With a series of touches, the entire switchyard turned into his personal arsenal. A line of tanker cars was ripped from the tracks and whipped through the air towards me like a colossal serpent. I frantically summoned a wall of legendary spears to intercept, shearing the first two cars apart, but the third slammed through my defense, forcing me to dive behind a concrete pylon that was promptly pulverized.Gravel, steel rails, entire chunks of the ground—it all became a storm directed solely at me.
I kept dodging everyone while he was laughing at my suffering like some maniac. "IS THAT IT, WHERE'S YOUR WEAPONS NOW?!" Accelerator stalked towards me through the devastation, a freight container hovering over his head like a guillotine's blade.
"Well Accelerator… You didn't realize something." I say with a smug smile on my face. "Oh and what's that." he replies with a hint of mockery in his voice. "I was just a distraction."
The smile on his face stops but before he could make a move a loud crack hits the air.
He looks down to see Kamijou Touma's fist buried deep in his crotch from behind him.
…
This chapter shouldn't have taken this long to come out. I just simply got bored of the story for a lil while.