"Damn it, I'm so hungry..."
Misaka Mikoto clutched her rumbling stomach and walked listlessly through the streets of New York.
She had been wandering aimlessly for nearly an hour, and without realizing it, had walked from the dusty, skyscraper-filled Manhattan to an area that looked completely different.
The buildings here were mostly red-brick townhouses, and the streets were lined with trees. It was much quieter than the city center and full of the atmosphere of daily life.
"Is this... Queens?"
Mikoto looked at the "Queens" sign on the street post and muttered to herself.
Since it was already late at night and the security in Queens wasn't as good as in the wealthy districts, there were only a few scattered pedestrians rushing along the streets.
This place reminded her of some residential areas in Academy City, though the architectural style was completely different.
The peaceful atmosphere allowed her tense nerves to relax a little, but the protests from her stomach grew louder. All she could think about now was a steaming bowl of pork cutlet rice, or even just a piece of fried chicken from a convenience store.
Just as she was feeling dizzy from hunger, a shout from a nearby street corner made her instantly alert.
"Give me the car keys! Hurry up, old man!"
A man wearing a hoodie and a mask was pointing a dark pistol at an elderly man with gray hair.
The old man looked a bit frail, but his eyes were calm. He gripped the car keys tightly in his hand and did not yield immediately.
"Young man, there's no need for this. We can talk about it."
"Shut up! I don't want to hear your nonsense!"
The thug was clearly very agitated; he stepped forward and pressed the muzzle of the gun against the old man's chest.
"Last chance, give me the keys!"
This old man was none other than Ben Parker.
He had come here tonight to pick up his nephew Peter, who made him proud yet gave him headaches, to take him home.
Peter said he was at the library looking up information, but Ben Parker always felt that the kid had been preoccupied lately. What he didn't know was that Peter Parker had recently been bitten by a radioactive spider and gained superhuman abilities.
At this moment, Peter was not at the library, but on his way there. Peter had been quite unlucky today; he had originally intended to use his abilities to win prize money from an underground wrestling match to buy a new car for the family and ease Uncle Ben's burden.
But after easily winning the match, the promoter didn't honor his promise to give him the prize money he deserved, instead giving him a mere hundred dollars and telling him to get lost.
Fortunately, Peter got some satisfaction later. After seeing the promoter get robbed, he didn't stop it, but instead watched as the robber ran past him and entered the elevator.
Recalling the promoter's angry expression when he questioned why Peter hadn't stopped the robber, Peter had simply retorted calmly, "I have no obligation to do that."
Although doing this made Peter feel good, he hadn't expected that the robber he let go would trigger a butterfly effect.
The perspective shifts back to Misaka Mikoto.
Seeing someone committing a robbery, Mikoto was instantly energized, her eyes locked onto the two of them.
Robbery at gunpoint in broad daylight? In the United States of this World, had the security really deteriorated to this point? Her sense of justice and that stubborn, unyielding spirit within her were immediately ignited.
Without the slightest hesitation, she quietly reached her right hand into her uniform pocket, her fingertips touching that cold, familiar metal arcade coin.
"I'll count to three! One! Two... three!" The thug lost patience, his finger already resting on the trigger.
Ben Parker could feel the cold breath of the Shinigami, but he still didn't let go. He wasn't thinking of himself, but of what Mei and Peter would do if something happened to him.
Now!
A thousandth of a second before the thug was about to pull the trigger, Mikoto moved like lightning.
With a flick of her thumb, the arcade coin flew from her fingertips. In an instant, a blue-white flash of electricity streaked across her bangs, and a powerful current instantly gathered at her fingertips along her arm.
"Hum—"
A barely audible hum.
Then, a beam of light tore through the night, hitting the gun in the thug's hand with precision at a speed invisible to the naked eye.
"Bang!"
That wasn't a gunshot, but the sound of metal instantly twisting, melting, and vaporizing under super-high kinetic energy. The pistol in the thug's hand, along with the entire palm holding it, was instantly pulverized into a spray of metal fragments and blood mist.
Time seemed to freeze for a moment.
Ben Parker only felt a flash of orange light before his eyes, and a piercing, sharp sound echoed in his ears.
He closed his eyes instinctively. When he opened them again, the weapon was gone from the thug in front of him, replaced by the thug clutching his mangled, severed wrist, letting out a scream so shrill it didn't sound human.
"Ahhhhhh— My hand! My hand!!!"
Because of the intense pain and fear, the thug's eyes rolled back, and he fell straight backward, writhing and wailing in pain on the ground, along with the arcade coin that had rolled to the side.
Ben Parker was completely stunned. He stared blankly at this surreal scene, his mind completely blank.
What happened? Was it a miracle from God? He looked in the direction from which the beam of light had come, seeing only a blurry, petite figure standing at the street corner in the distance. It seemed to be a girl in a school uniform, who was still holding a strange throwing pose.
Before he could see clearly, the figure had already run rapidly toward him.
"Uncle! Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
A crisp, anxious girl's voice rang in his ears, pulling Ben Parker back to reality from his shock. He lowered his head and saw a girl with short, tea-colored hair and a pretty face looking at him with concern.
The girl was wearing a dark brown Western-style school uniform he had never seen before. Her face still held a hint of childishness, but in those tea-colored eyes, there was a resilience that didn't match her age.
Was it her? Was it this young girl, who didn't even look like an adult, who saved him?
Ben Parker opened his mouth, and it took a while for him to find his voice. He pointed at the wailing thug on the ground, then at Mikoto, his tone filled with disbelief: "Did—did you do that just now?"
"Yeah, it was me."
Misaka Mikoto did not shy away at all; she nodded calmly, her gaze passing over Ben Parker to land on the twitching thug on the ground.
She saw the arcade coin scattered next to the thug, so she stepped over the wailing robber, picked up the coin, blew the dust off it, and put it back in her pocket.
She frowned slightly. The part of the thug's right hand below the wrist had completely vanished, the edges of the wound showing an eerie charred and melted appearance, and there was a lingering, strange smell of burnt protein and a faint scent of ozone in the air.
Seems like I went a bit too hard.
But on second thought, that guy was about to shoot and kill someone; at most, this could be considered an emergency, and she was acting in righteousness.
Thinking this, the small bit of guilt in her heart vanished into thin air.
She withdrew her gaze and looked back at the shaken old man in front of her, a hint of apology on her face, her tone softening:
"Um—are you okay, Uncle? The situation was urgent just now, and I didn't have time to think. I didn't scare you, did I?"
"I—I'm fine, child. You saved me..."
Ben Parker's brain was still buzzing. He looked at the petite, seemingly even frail girl in front of him, then at the thug in the distance who had been disabled with a single blow. The huge contrast between the two made it difficult for him to form words for a moment.
He took a deep breath, clenched his fists, and said gratefully, "Really, thank you so much! If it weren't for you—"
"Just a small favor."
Mikoto waved her hand, looking indifferent.
To her, teaching such social scum a lesson was as natural as breathing. Moreover, this had allowed her to vent much of the frustration she had accumulated from transmigrating, and she felt refreshed.
Just then, the sound of sirens approached from afar, the sharp noise piercing the quiet of the Queens night. A few seconds later, a police car with flashing red and blue lights braked sharply and stopped at the street corner.