Chapter Text
Kikyou Yoshikawa kept her phone on despite the fact she was pretty sure that Accelerator had flung his own away when she told him that he would not have the power to do something impossible. It was still on allowing her to continue to track his position but it was unclear if that was his intention or he forgot to turn it off. There was also the added benefit that it would continue conveying the scene which she continued to listen to and her breath caught as she heard a gunshot after an indecipherable yell.
Worry was pooling in her gut even though she told herself that there was no need for any of that since Accelerator could stop the bullet no problem and he proven that throughout the experiment endlessly. The logical part of her brain then supplied the fact that he was trying to do a nearly impossible calculation that might possibly leave him open to an attack. There was always that possibility for him and she rarely thought it crossed his mind since his brain was basically a supercomputer. She was almost there but she forced herself to not press down on the gas as that might end up with her being pulled over and delaying her worse than if she was doing the speed limit.
Her worry continued to grow as she pulled into the parking lot and saw Accelerator on the ground and Ao Amai standing over him with a gun pointed at his head. She quickly parked her car and jumped out just in time to send a bullet into Amai. He fell stunned by her bullet but she had not been able to bring herself to land the fatal shot to a man with his back towards her. Quickly, she moved over to Last Order in the car and moved her to the mobile incubator. Once the girl was secure she turned back to the white-haired esper to see the damage that could cause the first-ranked level five to be completely out of the fight.
She saw the puddle of blood growing around his head and decided it would be best to call an ambulance to bring the esper to the frog-faced doctor as soon as possible. With that done she turned around to finally confront Ao Amai and maybe prove to herself that she could be a kind teacher.
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The ambulance crew hurried over to their call of a gunshot to the head outside some shutdown lab. Unusually, the caller had told them about a little girl in an incubator who the frog-faced doctor at a certain hospital would know what to do with. They arrived relatively fast and surveyed the scene to prepare for their task of saving a life which turned out to be more than one person mentioned in the call.
The little girl was secured but more concerningly were the two with blood drenching the ground beneath them. The last person was remarkably unbloody and the bleeding boy’s hand was positioned into the hole in her chest. This was Academy City after all so the paramedics had the very good idea that he was using his ability to keep the blood in somehow even if he was not attempting to help himself. They checked her pulse and it was still strong with blood still pumping through the torn veins around her heart. Surprisingly, the boy’s eyes were open, glazed out in shock from blood loss but open and tracking their movements seconds after they made them.
“She was… shot but I can keep her blood in,” he gasped out. “The kid… the kid needs… help.”
“Don’t worry we will take care of them,” the paramedic saw some tension release in those red eyes but considering the gaping hole in his forehead it would be a hard fight for the boy to even save this one woman.
Gently but with speed the three were loaded into the two ambulances and the dead body left for Anti-Skill to examine. It was not the paramedics problem at the moment as the team focused on keeping the boy alive. If he stopped using his ability then the women would die no matter what they did for her so they would make sure he had all their attention right now.
They had the boy on a slightly raised position to open up his airways and have his head elevated. They found no other injuries on him or the women and had wrapped the boy up in a blanket to keep the worst of shock away. He was still conscious but with every slower blink it was clear he was not going to last long if they could not reach the hospital fast. They attached monitors to him and they reflected the steadily dropping vitals as he lost a large amount of blood already so they hooked him up to a blood transfusion. Not long after the boy fell unconscious but the blood stayed inside their other patient. It seemed that the boy’s ability would continue on even after he was not awake to control it which was good but the pressure was on that there was now no telling if he could hang on.
They arrived at the hospital and could only hope that the surgical teams could make sure that the pair pulled through. The doors of the ambulance was flung open and the staff was quick to help transfer the patients onto the hospital's gurneys. They explained the situation as best they could with the strange arrangement and the boy’s esper power which the hospital staff took in stride.
The staff moved quickly taking over the boy’s vitals and started take a section on his bloodied shirt to use as DNA guide to finding him in the banks. That way they would know if there was any kind of medication that would be a problem for him and another nurse carefully did the same to the women with a syringe to the crook of her elbow.
It was always a scary thing when they were tasked with saving lives in the supposedly safe Academy City but the paramedics let out sighs of relief when they saw the Heaven Canceller waiting for them with a smile that everything will be fixed.
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September first was the return to school which was a strange feeling to Misaka after everything that happened over break. Project Level Six had changed her life and her opinion on Academy City itself since they were the ones who wanted the experiment to go forward. Going back to school, to return to normal, was going to be difficult by how much changed for her and how little for her fellow students who continued to cheerfully chat during their breakfasts.
Would they notice the changes in her or would her status as a level five keep them from noticing? She was a bit of a celebrity and that put her on a high pedestal that not many were brave enough to approach. Still, her friends had noticed but they still let her continue on without question which was fine by her.
Her breakfast sat heavy in her stomach as she and Kuroko were sitting in the dorm’s cafeteria. Thankfully her roommate was busy looking at updates from Judgement to disturb Misaka’s own thoughts about her return. Misaka finished up her orange juice and watched her friend’s face for any hints about what was happening in the seventh school district. Currently Kuroko’s face was drawn with slight shock at whatever she was reading.
Usually there was not anything beyond some theft and trouble with Skill-Out so she decided to ask, “Did something happen?”
Kuroko jumped and smiled, “Oh, nothing for you to worry about, sissy. There was an incident that resulted in two injuries and one death but Anti-Skill was able to quickly close the case.”
“That’s still pretty bad,” Misaka said. “Did they say where it happened?”
“Yes. It was in the parking lot of a medical research facility, called S-Processor,” the younger girl gravely responded. “Apparently is was already closed down but one of the former employees was still able to go through some security.”
Misaka froze. She remembered that parking lot from when she broke in and learned about the project to clone her. That entire facility was, despite its claim of researching muscular dystrophy, a key part of cloning research so any employee had to have been part of the experiment itself. She was unnerved but wanted to be cautious about how much she asked Kuroko so she wouldn’t become suspicious and be have to be forced to explain why she was so interested.
“It wasn’t anyone we know who is involved right,” she asked hoping it seemed like a neutral tone.
Her roommate shook her head, “They never released the names but those involved were a high-school student and two adult researchers so it is highly doubtful it was anyone we are familiar with.”
She nods and Kuroko goes back to the rest of the reports with none making her react as strongly. Misaka was fairly sure that those two adults were part of the experiment but the high-school student was an oddity. She bit her tongue to keep her the panic off her face as she thought of a certain high-school student with spiky hair who saved her and the rest of her sisters from a sure fate. They never shared contact info so she could not just text him asking if he was involved or be in the loop of his own life.
The level five would just have to painfully wait till her classes finished to go see if Touma was alright.
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Last Order was empty without any knowledge besides that currently starting wake up and thoughts were coming into her head from various others but she could not find anything from herself which felt like some great malfunction. It was a feeling like she knew something had happened but now was missing from her individual mind and that she could not even find information about her individualness. She was interconnected with others who would have shared her experiences so she connected and found the memories that she was missing then even bringing forth who she even was.
It all came rushing back and she gasped out, “Where is he, asks Misaka Misaka worried for his well-being.” She remembered that he had been shot but now it added into the fact that she was in a hospital room without him. The network gave her the answer that this was the hospital of the frog-faced doctor who was treating her sisters who knew she were here. As if the network was connected to him too the doctor entered the room with a smile on his face which caused Last Order to start squirming out of bed to hopefully have an easy answer to where the white-haired esper was.
“Easy there, you’re recovering yourself so you need to not stress yourself,” he held up his hands and then sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to go see Accelerator.”
She immediately continued in moving to leave the bed but the doctor cautioned her to be slow and the dizziness that started convinced her that he might be right. She slowly walked after the doctor while her dizziness passed and they eventually reached a room down the hall. She grinned as she realized how close together they were and how easy it would be for her to visit.
“You have to be quiet, all right. He is only just starting his recovery just as you are,” Last Order nodded knowing that it was already the next day so she was assuming he was feeling better like her but she would try to keep her volume down for their reunion.
The door opened and she was in before the doctor could catch up with her but she stopped in her tracks. She was expecting a happy reunion and a possibly relieved smile on the white-haired espers face but the figure on the bed was completely comatose. She approached cautiously and saw the oxygen mask forcing air into his lungs so she knew he was alive but his eyes stayed closed. She approached carefully and saw that there was a bandage wrapped around his head with thick padding where she assumed his wound was. His eyes also had deep bags of exhaustion and she realized that his energy was being completely taken up by his body trying to heal itself which she hoped the IV bags connected with his arm were helping with, along with multiple wires connecting under the blankets.
“I was going to give you another warning before we came in but I’ll just give it to you now,” the doctor put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It was not just a glancing blow, even though he was able to reflect it before it killed him, it broke his skull which caused damage to his brain by the broken shards. He hasn’t been able to wake up for long but we do think there is a significant chance of permanent damage that we are hoping the Misaka Network can help with.”
She reached into the network to see that her Sisters had already been asked and agreed to open up the network to a foreign entity. There was no malice and just the twinge of hope that maybe all of them could move on for actually living for a change. There was still no hint in the network that he was connected to it and she felt a little angry that he was being left in his current state. “Why isn’t he connected yet, says Misaka Misaka wishing that he was awake?”
The doctor sighed, “I have already started the process of making the device to connect to his brain but first I need to do a full test to see just how much of his brain is damage and while I can do part of that through machines, I need to talk to him.”
“Then why is he still sleeping, says Misaka Misaka hoping that she can tell him ‘thank you for saving her.’”
“This is an extreme injury that will take time to heal and it is extremely painful. He is being given a decent amount of painkiller so he can be comfortable and not risk himself to further injury,” the doctor said. He was a tad bit harsh but the girl needed to understand just how serious this was. It would not be a quick recovery or even a quick rehab for the white-haired esper.
The little girl nodded slightly and turns back to the sleeping teenager, “Can Misaka stay, says Misaka Misaka hoping you say yes.”
“That’s fine as long as you keep things quiet for him to rest,” the girl turns back and the doctor starts checking on the esper’s vitals. They were holding steady but were still a little on the weak side for his tastes but hopefully that would change soon. He was already seeing signs that the boy was going to be struggling with more than just aftereffects in his brain but only time would tell. He was already going to start taking him off the painkillers so he could finally have the examination that was needed, then they could start the testing before the real thing.