Pre-Chapter Notes: I'm back! This is my first update of 2014?! Crap!

I wasn't really dead, but I've been busy with stuff. I did give warnings that my updates might become sporadic…

Congratulations to TheTrueMasterofTempest for being this fic's 400th reviewer!

I need to say that I wasn't giving up on this story. I got caught up with other anime and manga, some Real Life stuff, laziness and writer's block.

Kill la Kill, NT9 (which has increased my urge for OTP), and the new up-comers for this year.

For example, there's Captain Earth by Studio Bones and also No Game No Life. The latter is a light novel series that is now getting an anime (currently at two episodes). Oh right, there's Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei to consider as well.

Plus, Yen Press licensed Index! On one hand, no more Baka Tsuki translations. On the other, you will be able to hold the actual books in your hand in English!

Js06 won't stop his translations, so he's going to move them onto another place. That's in case you were worrying because this news was so close to the release of NT10.

Disclaimer: I don't own Index. Seriously, if I did, do you think I'd be making this fic?

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'…Eh?' A rather plain looking boy thought as he saw a dark spot in the sky. It was growing larger to his vision by the second, the sight shifting from a strangely-colored blob into a falling human being.

'EEEEEHHHHH?!' Haratani Yabumi's eyes widened in panic as that falling human was going to crash right where he was standing. If he didn't do something (anything, really!), that falling person would die!

But that falling person was not a normal human boy. Moreover, that boy was a Level 5 esper. He was one of the seven individuals with an ability that was so powerful that it could be used to destroy an army. It would take more than falling from a height taller than a skyscraper to take down that certain Level 5.

Sogiita Gunha, whose ability was dubbed as a 'black box' by Academy City's scientists, had been flying through midair for a solid twenty minutes after being launched with a single punch. With his ability, it was several times more difficult to stagger Attack Crash.

It was a matter of circumstances that the one who had struck and launched him was a human boy with strength more excessive than a monster from another plane of existence.

But Sogiita Gunha did not know of that. At that moment, he was in contemplation. Despite the wind whistling past his ears and the unforgiving concrete that he was about to crash into, the boy was onto a completely different subject than his inevitable crash.

'A single punch! Kamijou's definitely gotten even gutsier than last time! But this means I have to train my guts even more to fight him on equal ground!' Gunha crossed his arms and nodded at his own reasoning, despite the fact that he was falling to the ground. He looked up (or what was known to rightly standing humans as 'down') and realized that he was about to crash.

'Alright! No better time to start than right now!'

With that dangerous thought looming in his head, Sogiita balled up his hands into fists and thrust them in front of him. This effect caused his body to sail toward the street even faster, his speed almost breaking the sound barrier. As Gunha came closer and closer, he roared out.

"GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTTTTTSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

"GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

Haratani screamed in terror as he saw the white, blurring human cannon-ball moving even faster. The plain boy dove to the side and maneuvered himself into the shape of a ball, eyes tightly shut as he waited for the upcoming collision.

And it was quite the collision.

In a split-second, the Level 5 and street met head-on. The latter exploded with flying dust and gravel, large parts of concrete descending and crashing everywhere. Yabumi could feel the ground quake and undulate (!?) under his quivering body as he waited for the seismic occurrence to end.

'I…Is it done?' Haratani cautiously poked his head out as he shakily picked himself up off the ground. He put a hand to his mouth and coughed, attempting to empty his lungs of the dusty smoke that now enveloped the ruined street.

Yabumi looked at the steel junk piled up in the middle of the street and remembered that falling human. "Did he die…?" His question was answered in a way that almost gave him heart palpitations.

Parts of the pile quivered as the boy heard a muffled shout. "Amazing Punch!"

All of the steel exploded outward and went flying to parts unknown as an unscathed boy with tattered clothes trotted joyfully out of the wreckage. "Ahh, nothing like a good punch to get the guts burning!"

"…Bwuh?" Yabumi's mind shut down as he had been made witness to the insanity of a Level 5. He wasn't sure how much more he could take!

Luckily for him, Sogiita hadn't spotted him or else another 'gutsy' spectacle might take place. Attack Crash simply walked away cheerfully with no indication aside from his clothing that destruction had taken place.

"…" Haratani stared after the Level 5. And stared. Then stared some more.

He flung his hands into the air with mute frustration. "Why doesn't this city get some goddamn psychologists to deal with these nutcases? There are too many crazy and illogical people in this city as it is!"

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All over Academy City (including a few feet away from Yabumi), the seven Level 5's and several other individuals sneezed as they felt someone make a remark about them.

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"Achoo!" Kamijou Touma sniffed, rubbing his nose with a hand that was already holding something. "Why do I feel like someone out there just delegated me as a crazy and illogical person…?"

"Bless you." A voice from the spiky-haired boy's new bathroom called out.

"Thanks. Here are the pain killers and some water. Give it a half-hour or so and the headache will stop." The extremely strong boy said, walking to the bathroom to hand over the medication.

Touma wasn't sure what chain of events caused him to let the enigmatic woman into his apartment. Maybe he felt that she needed sympathy like any other human and wanted to give her some medicine to soothe the pain. Maybe he felt that he needed to observe her closer and decided that the perfect place to observe was from the confines of his very home.

Kamijou just hoped that the situation wouldn't end with a round of explosive fighting. He'd already lost his other apartment to an explosion and he didn't want to lose his new home either.

'It's not my fault that the fights I get myself needlessly involved in cause so much destructiooonnnnnnnnn! It just happens! Doesn't it? Doesn't iiiiiiiitttttt?!' The spiky-haired boy screamed sorrowfully in the depths of his mind.

"Why, that's rather kind of you." Laura Stuart teased as she kept looking at the object before her.

Kamijou ignored the remark, feeling that a tsukkomi would only fulfill the woman's amusement. "What are you doing?" He followed her gaze, finding that the only thing in sight was the bath tub.

"Standard design…no elaborate carvings…so plain." Laura 'hmph'ed and gave a shrug, a deriding look on her face. "This tub is truly cheap."

"…Hey. Was all of that serious staring you've been doing since you've entered the bathroom because you wanted to appraise my bathtub?! You should be grateful that this Kamijou-san with a bleeding heart is helping you!"

"Oh! Could it be that you had helped me because I was beautiful maiden in distress?" The blonde woman smirked as she rubbed her chin in an investigative manner.

"If you're speaking like this, then I guess your headache will be all gone now. There's no need for this medicine in my hands then." Touma spoke in a robotic tone. "Excuse me while I go put this away…" He swerved in a perfect one-eighty movement and began a slow stride back to his kitchen.

For Kamijou, having items like medicine and gauze in his house was common and odd of itself. His body was several times more resilient than the average human body and could take much more damage before requiring medical attention. However, that did not discount the possibility that Touma might have to perform first aid for an injured friend or stranger.

The Archbishop winced discretely as the headache came back full force, unimpeded by mental distractions. "W-Wait!"

"Hmm?" As he headed for the door, Kamijou's head turned to look back in behest of her call as he raised an eyebrow quizzically.

"I-I…" Laura blushed despite herself, working up the strength to speak words that were very unfamiliar to her. "I apologize. N-Now, may I please have the medicine?" She glanced to the side shyly as she cradled one arm with the other.

"Gbh!" Touma gulped as he witnessed a new side from the shrewd woman in front of him.

'W-What is this? Where did the enigmatic, sharp-tongued lady go?! Is this the legendary power of a high-class foreign lady who is easily embarrassed by doing things she's not used to doing?!' Kamijou felt his heartbeat speeding up to a dangerous rate.

The teenaged boy gulped again and simply handed over the water and medicine with a mumbled 'Here', snapping his arms back as soon as they were in the Archbishop's grasp. He backed up quickly turned back to the door, clutching a hand over his chest.

'That was too dangerous!' Touma gasped internally, feeling that his heart was slamming on the inside of his chest like a sledgehammer. He reached a cool hand up to his cheek, hoping to quell the burning on his face.

'He's…odd.' The woman behind him noted with sharpened eyes. 'This requires further investigation.'

'Now if only this accursed blush will finally drop!' Laura thought indignantly.

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"…Hm?" Kanzaki Kaori raised her head up from the novel she was reading, looking at the ceiling of the building she was in with confusion.

"Is something wrong?" Index asked as she lounged on the couch across from the Saint.

"No...In fact," The pony-tailed girl smiled, not knowing why. "It feels as if a meddlesome person is getting a taste of her own medicine."

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"…"

"…"

"…"

"Why are you staring at me like that?" The spiky-haired boy voiced a logical question as he sat right next to the blonde woman, both of whom were on the couch in his living room.

"No particular reason."

"No, no, there's definitely a reason that it looks like you're trying to use laser eyes on me."

"As if I'd have that kind of convenient ability. Or do I?" Laura smirked as she presented a conundrum to the high-school boy.

"You have laser eyes?" Touma looked at her skeptically. "Or is this bait to make me slip up and reveal an unconventional secret of mine?"

"What is this, twenty questions? Anyway, it's boring to just sit here."

"And whose fault would that be? You can't go out there without getting a headache-"

"Urk!" The woman twitched, but it seemed that the boy was not done.

"-And I have no desire to carry you around, no matter how attractive you ar-..." Kamijou's eyes bulged as he made the first slip up in the battle of words.

"Oh ho?" Laura smirked, capitalizing on the advantage. "Is that what you think of me-"

Before she could begin her counter-attack, the doorbell rang. Touma sprung off the sofa and eagerly speed-walked to the door. Reaching forward and turning the knob, he opened it to find a girl whose appearance was identical to the Railgun.

'What's with the goggles, though?' The boy thought, glancing at the top of the girl's head.

"Is the Savior busy with something? Misaka asks urgently, hoping that the Savior has a moment of a free-time." The Misaka Mikoto-lookalike spoke monotonously.

"Ehm…" Kamijou scratched his head and glanced back to the foreigner on his couch, who waved with a devilish smile. "What's the problem?"

"Can you please assist the Sisters? Misaka requests humbly."

Misaka 10032 blinked as she found herself gently guided along the hallway with one arm on her shoulder, seeing that it was Kamijou's right limb. The girl wondered who the blonde foreigner with the surprised face was as she was dragged along by the boy's other arm.

'B-But how? I was all the way on the couch and then I'm just on my feet…' Laura looked back and forth between the serious-faced Kamijou and the blank girl in hospital pajamas (?), finally setting her eyes back to the apartment door that grew more and more distant. 'Just how many tricks do you have up your sleeve…?'

"Lead the way." Touma said, not paying heed to the girls' surprise as they headed towards the apartment complex's elevator.

Night fell upon the trio as they strode on.

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"Tree Diagram got blown up. Then, Academy City sends up shuttles to retrieve the remnants because they're still part of a powerful supercomputer. Because it had the data from the last Level 6 Shift Project, some asshole scientists were going to use that as a base to start another experiment to reach Level 6 and you want me to destroy the fragment they got their hands on." Kamijou paused in his simplified reiteration to look to the clone for clarification.

"You are correct, Savior, Misaka confirms as she gives a small round of applause." The girl clapped.

"…Please work on your expressions. I can't tell whether you're honestly pleased or being sarcastic." Touma sighed as the trio kept their brisk pace.

"Why am I being dragged along, anyway?" Laura questioned, still being pulled by her wrist.

"I don't trust you out of my sight. I think you'd start a rebellion or something to similar effect if I left you alone." The spiky-haired boy's tone was blunt and merciless.

"Hmm, what's a trip to a foreign country without a little enjoyment and anarchy?"

"Having an intercontinental trip doesn't justify anarchy, damnit! Wait, are you pouting?! Gah, people like you that are the most difficult to deal with." Kamijou glared to the sky as he cursed every mythological deity that he could remember the name of. Putting his eyes back to the empty night street, he saw a familiar figure.

"Yo, Biri Biri." Touma waved as he let go of the 10032's hand.

"Don't just 'yo' me, you super puncher." The original Railgun, Misaka Mikoto, huffed irritably. "And who's the European stranger behind you? I don't recall someone like her being allowed."

"If she becomes a problem, then I'll take responsibility. Until then, please bear with her." The boy clapped his hands together in a begging motion. "Seriously, I feel as if she'll do something disturbing to this city if she's left alone."

'Why is it that I'm being regarded like a radioactive substance?' Laura's left eyelid twitched as the two residents of Academy City continued to converse, leaving her and the lookalike to simply stand and watch. 'Where does he get off doing that?!'

If the Archbishop bothered to ask other people that Kamijou had interacted with, she would find that they bore the same kind of thoughts as her. The blonde woman had decided that now was the best opportunity to see if those Japanese lessons she had taken would actually be of help.

"Excuse me, but this European stranger can speak for herself." Laura spoke with a saccharine tone, taking a small bit of pleasure from the startled looks on the girl's face. "I can speak and understand Japanese perfectly well, thank you very much." She would've enjoyed it more if Kamijou had been surprised, but he looked confused instead.

"Hey, what's with that pronunciation? It's weird." Touma said. "It's like you're trying to be cutesy, yet ancient at the same time."

"The common Japanese citizen doesn't really use that type of outdated dialect anymore. Whoever taught you to speak like that, they were either traditional or playing a joke on you." Mikoto chimed in.

"Misaka also finds it odd, Misaka confesses." The clone knew she was being slightly hypocritical with her own third-person tone, but at least she was using proper pronunciation.

"W-What? But that Tsuchimikado said that this was all of you people spoke to each other!" The woman defended herself feebly, feeling as if she was the target of derision again.

'How do these people always catch me off guard like this?! Did Crowley put something in the lesson plans here for them to be like this?!' Laura was beginning to fear what kind of classes the youths in front of her were attending if they could so easily synchronize their efforts against her.

"Wait, wait, wait." Kamijou halted the Electromaster and her clone before she proceeded further in the questioning. "Hold on a sec." He took Laura and led her away to a fair distance to inquire on something that had been bugging him.

"You said that Tsuchimikado Motoharu told you that?" He asked seriously, looking her in the eye as he held steadfast onto her shoulders.

"Yes?" The blonde confirmed, attempting to lean away to no avail. She felt her face heat up again at his serious visage facing her. 'Too close...And how does he know Tsuchimikado?'

"I have a question to ask."

"Y-Yes?"

"Why did you trust the words of someone whose magic name is the Backstabbing Blade?"

Laura's mind almost completely shut down. The words swirled in her head along with everything that had happened that day. The headaches, excessive bantering, and illogical boy and his damnable enigmatic nature were irritating, but tolerable.

Until that question he asked.

The sheer logic and timing in Kamijou's words had been the last straw.

"Gbh…"

"Huh?" Touma blinked as the blonde woman trembled with her head bowed, hair covering her eyes.

"GRRRAAAAAHHHHHHHH! I'M DONE WITH THIS CITY!" Laura screamed while throwing her arms in the air, a trace of tears in her eyes. "THIS IS ONE OF THE WORST TRIPS I'VE EVER HAD!"

She quickly shook Kamijou's arms off of her and began walking in the opposite direction, pulling a cell phone from somewhere in her dress. Hitting a number on speed dial, she impatiently waited for the person on the other side of the call to answer. When they did so, The Archbishop yelled. "GET ME A PLANE READY TO LEAVE ACADEMY CITY! THIS PLACE IS A MAD HOUSE! MAD HOUSE, I SAY!"

The students of said 'mad house' watched with shock as the woman sighed and put her cell phone away after hanging up, walking off while grumbling.

"…Was it something I said?" The spiky-haired boy wondered aloud.

"…Are all tourists that crazy?" The Railgun tilted her head in confusion. She'd heard that the world had eccentric people (Academy City was chock-full of them, she remembered), but she'd never had the (mis)fortune of meeting one.

"Misaka would like both the Savior and Onee-sama to please focus on the current predicament, Misaka pleads as she tries to divert their attention from the crazy lady!"

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"Ah…" Shirai Kuroko lay on the ground of the wrecked restaurant, watching her surroundings distort as it was readying to crush her.

She'd been on a wild goose chase ever since that luggage robbery a while back. Somewhere along the way, Kuroko didn't expect to be caught up in a mess involving a remnant of the Tree Diagram supercomputer, the mysterious events of what happened on August 21 (coincidentally, that was around the time that rumors sprung up about Accelerator being defeated by a certain Level 0), or the guide to the 'mythical' Windowless Building where the mysterious General Director resided.

The guide, Musujime Awaki, was a Level 4 Teleporter just like Kuroko. However, she seemed to use the ability on a better level than the Tokiwadai student. The evidence was proven in that Shirai was beaten down after their previous bout, but that did not deter the girl. In the second confrontation, the younger teleporter gained a foothold over Awaki on psychological grounds and 'broke her illusions' regarding the usage of power.

And that had cost her dearly, seeing as she'd been shot by Move Point and about to be crushed by 4,520 kg of weight.

'An entire building. She's desperate enough to collapse a building on me? I'd be flattered that she'd go to such a degree if it weren't for the fact that I was about to die…' Kuroko thought woozily, becoming delirious from the blood-loss and constant beating that she'd taken.

A particularly loud boom rang out near her left.

'At least Onee-sama didn't get involved…'

"A bit too late to say that, Shirai-san. You already know that your dear 'Onee-sama' was in this from the very beginning."

She'd said that out loud? 'Ah, the wounds have finally gotten to me. I'm finally hearing voices from nowhere…'

"I'm being passed off as a crazy voice in an ojou-sama's head? That's a new one…"

She'd heard that voice before. No doubt about it. It was...

Kuroko opened her eyes slowly, head thumping from the rumbling. The blurring in her sight faded to the edges of her eyes and she could see a dark figure crouching over her.

"Kamijou…Touma?" She croaked. Even speaking just his name took a hefty amount of effort from the girl.

"Yes, this is Kamijou-san. A certain sparky girl and her legion of sisters requested me to help and here I am."

"Huh?" Kuroko's tired mind could barely follow.

"Ehe, I should probably save the chit-chat for when we're not about to be crushed by a restaurant." Kamijou scratched his head with a lopsided smile. "C'mon, let's get you out of here and into a hospital."

With that, he scooped up the girl (who had blacked out quickly) into his arms, taking care not to aggravate her wounds. The boy hopped down through the hole he'd kicked his way up through, making sure that the teleporter was properly covered from the debris as they descended.

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"Here you go. One Shirai Kuroko, delivered fairly alive." Touma said, handing over the girl to the Railgun.

Mikoto took a moment to make sure that she had a proper hold on her friend, muttering her thanks. She glanced over at the distorting building near them with a worried glance. "Shouldn't we get away from that?"

"Ah?" Kamijou dusted himself off and looked. "Oh right, that. I'll take care of it."

"Might we inquire how the Savior is to do such a thing? Defeating Accelerator is one thing, but stopping a teleportation is another, Misaka asks worriedly." 10032 didn't want to see him get needlessly hurt for their sake. It was heartwarming, yes, but the Network unanimously agreed that they preferred their Savior to be as undamaged as possible.

"You don't need to worry about tha-" His words cut short as he snapped his head back to the building with alarm.

Mikoto frowned, wondering what caught his attention. "What's wron-"

Her question was answered as she and her clone felt an unknown and invisible pressure on their shoulders. In her mind, the Railgun felt primal fear win out over every intellectual thought she attempted to muster. The only coherent bit left could only whimper 'make it stop' repeatedly. Even though she was unconscious, Kuroko shuddered and drew in on herself as she felt an unnatural cold blanket over her. Mikoto could not turn her head, but she could tell that 10032 was in the same boat as her.

"Son of a bitch…" Kamijou hissed through frosted breath, proving that the lowered temperature was not just the Level 5's imagination.

"W-Wha-" The Railgun eked out.

"Don't speak. Use that remaining free will of yours to escape." Touma said. He frowned upon seeing the girls make no move to escape.

'Rather, they can't make a move.' He corrected himself, knowing all too well the alien presence. 'It's like that thing in the Imagine Breaker.'

Kamijou had the correct answer. An Other Being was attempting to enter the realm in which humanity resided by taking advantage of the distortion in both space and time. From a certain viewpoint, the entire problem could be indirectly perceived as Musujime Awaki's fault.

"I'm going to have to clean up this mess." Touma said calmly.

The building twisted and inverted. Impossibly, it shifted from steel, glass, and brick into ice. Thermodynamics meant nothing to a creature that was not restrained to what humans had deemed the 'laws of physics'. A snowy white mist expelled from the ice and coated the perimeter near it, frosting the ground and the buildings near it. Every electronic appliance in the vicinity began to malfunction and shorted out, coming into contact with the alien presence being emitted.

A series of complex sounds rang out. They did not fit be called rings, howls, bangs, or any sort of classification that humans would find for it.

Because it was beyond human understanding.

"Juuust great." Kamijou muttered, unfazed by what he was witnessing.

He had already faced IT before. It had torn through his mind, taking advantage of any and every opening It could find in order to fight him. Touma and It had fought relentlessly, disregarding concepts like 'damage' and 'range' and an entire amount of others. Such things were below both him and It.

'But,' Kamijou reminded himself. 'I'm still a human.'

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Despite all of his strength, all of his will, all of his mind, Kamijou Touma was a human teenage boy.

At the tender age of seven, he developed a power beyond compare and comprehensibility. He worked tirelessly to ensure that there would be no incidents with it. He could not afford it. Kamijou went as far as to restrain himself with the Imagine Breaker, allowing himself to endure misfortune and to be humbled. He had to ensure that he would feel as a human should feel and experience as a human should experience.

Touma wanted to stay human. That was all there was to it.

But the Invisible Thing and the Others endangered his human perception, forcing him to see colors that were not known to humans, learn knowledge that would break a human's mind, experience phenomenon that a human could not perceive.

Thus, Kamijou fought. He fought and fought and fought. He fought with his will and his selfish desire to be human.

Twenty thousand times he battled the Invisible Thing.

In the human world, Kamijou had only been gone five minutes. But in that alternate realm that he forced It to fight with him in, he fought for what could have been one or two or three million years.

Touma had lost track of time after the seven-thousandth battle. Miraculously, he was still a human, but within his grasp he held an absolute and refined might that even gods would bow before. His power proved infinite.

The Invisible Thing, before first contact with the human known as Kamijou Touma, knew only one desire upon entering the universe of his.

Devour.

It wished to Devour all that It could Devour. The first thing It had gleaned were the innocent thoughts of the ten-year-old boy. It tore from him the image of what the humans had called a 'Dragon' and assumed its form, completing its transference from the Other.

But Kamijou had stopped It. With his otherworldly power, he halted the creature and forced It back. He pushed it away from Earth and shoved it into an empty dimension, not wishing a hint of destruction on Earth.

The Invisible Thing fought for the right to Devour. It could not understand the meager feelings of a human and It did not care. All It desired was to Devour.

It lost. Again and again and again.

It lost against the might of the human boy with the unstoppable power. Through each strike, It learned of Kamijou.

Through each battle, the Invisible Thing learned to fear Kamijou.

No matter how many times It yearned to Devour, Touma would stop It.

As Kamijou had reared himself up for what might have been their twenty thousand and first battle, It relented and surrendered.

At the young age of ten years old, three years after he first gained his power, Kamijou had broken Its will.

After he finally confirmed Its' defeat, Touma trapped It within the Imagine Breaker to ensure that It would not regain the desire to Devour.

The Invisible Thing had not been the only thing that Kamijou had gained during those harrowing battles.

While each rendition of the fight bearing no resemblance as the Invisible Thing continued to shift Its form every time, Kamijou gained invaluable experience in learning how to fight the monster.

And that experience would carry over and arise in the event that another inhuman monster of any kind was to attack.

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'I have to get them out of here first.' Kamijou thought, shifting his gaze over to the immobile Railgun, her clone, and the teleporter. His mind was slowly reverting to the battle state it had developed during the battles with IT.

"Get Shirai-san to a hospital if you can. Things are going to be a bit…weird." Touma said.

They remained still.

"Right, immobilized by alien god-monster thing." He grimaced. "Looks like I have to use unconventional means."

Kamijou held out his left hand with spread fingers. The limb glowed an ethereal blue, a low hum thrumming through the air. He waved it and one bright flash later, the girls were gone.

Essentially, Touma had only warped them to the lobby of Heaven Canceller's hospital. The receptionist was already indoctrinated to the spiky-haired boy's strange ways and probably wouldn't be surprised about three middle-school girls (one of which was bloody) suddenly appearing in the room. Even if they would be surprised, they would move with utmost haste to assure that the injured teleporter would get the proper medical treatment.

'I've got to send a basket of something to Dr. Frog Face for putting up with this crap…' Kamijou felt that he needed to do something to pay back the favors he'd accumulated with the doctor.

A monstrous screech brought the spiky-haired boy out of his thoughts.

He blinked, sheepishly remembering the eldritch danger in front of him. 'I should probably stop that thing first.'

Touma breathed as he filtered useless thoughts out of his mind, waiting for the Other Being to make the first move. He crouched slowly, readying himself to lunge at the beast if it came down to it. Subconsciously, the pupils of his eyes turned from black into an ocean blue, contrasting with the brighter sky blue of his irises. His hair started flowing as if being moved by an invisible breeze.

"Let's get dangerous." The boy snarled.

The icy creature made the first move, lashing out with a concentrated cloud of mist moving faster than ordinary human sight could follow. Coming closer, the mist split into different clumps that extended into ropes. The ropes quickly condensed back into enormous water spheres as they barreled through the air.

The entire process had taken place within a tenth of a second.

'The Imagine Breaker can't really help here. It's a good thing I have other methods to do this, though.' Kamijou clicked his tongue, lashing out with his arms. Snapping his left forward, he caught the first sphere with superhuman precision, using his power to completely remove and destroy any motion it had gained. Under his command, the sphere shrunk until it fit in the palm of his hand.

Using his right, the boy completely stopped the motion of the other spheres in mid-air. Touma slowly curled his fingers inward, compressing the projectiles until they were the same size as the one in his left palm. He pulled his right arm back and allowed the spheres to hover over his left hand to join together with the first one.

With a neutral expression, Kamijou united the water into a perfectly round sphere. He tapped it with his left index finger, turning the water into something else. The liquid changed into a pure and never-ending explosion, kept in check by the boy's power. A rainbow of colors surged across the spherical surface of the condensed explosion, attempting to be freed from the shape it was confined in.

Touma looked up to the center of the distortion which had brought forth the Other Being into Academy City. There was a tiny, inverting fragment of space hanging there in mid-air.

'Such a small thing brought a monster here…' The comparison between the 'harmless' appearance of the space-time distortion and the monstrous Other Being was almost laughable.

Kamijou leaped high into the air above the icy abomination. Making a single flip backwards, he kicked the air with enough strength to propel himself down towards the monster, leaving behind twin sonic booms.

"If you think you can just come into this dimension expecting to cause terror or whatever it is you monsters do," His left hand moved forward with curled fingers, pointing the spherical explosion at the monster. "Then I'll have to break that illusion!" Touma straightened out his fingers and let the explosion fly at the monster's body.

As soon as the sphere made contact, everything went quiet.

Then the explosion went uncontained. The flare splashed and spread out, consuming all of the mist and ice that had occurred from the beast's entry. Blossoming from the sphere, fire mercilessly ate away at the screeching creature. The wails were slowly decreasing in volume as the monster slowly lost its semi-corporeal form. Soon, the entirety of its being had been extinguished, but the explosion lived on.

Tendrils of fire lashed out at the distortion and coated it, allowing the phenomenon to be filled in by the otherworldly energy. The tiny inversion slowly expanded back into proper space, restoring the rightful state of physics.

But the explosion raged on.

'Oh shit!' Touma cursed, his eyes turning back to their normal colors. He backed up slowly at the throbbing fires that were gaining ground.

"This isn't one of my better ideeeaaaaaaaasssssssssss!" The boy screamed as he sprinted in the opposite direction as the explosion steadily became quicker.

Concrete was uprooted and fragmented, flying into the buildings and crashing through windows. It was only a miracle that it was a business district and all of the workers had already left for home. Otherwise, there would have been casualties that Kamijou would feel responsible for.

"Such misfortune, such misfortune, such misfortune, such misfortune!" Touma chanted with gritted teeth, running all the while. "This is the last time I'm using a condensed explosion in such a densely packed area!"

Looking behind him, the spiky-haired boy slowed down and came to a stop as the explosion finally quelled and stopped. He could plainly see the wreckage and smoke trailing up from all of the scorched buildings, reaching into the night sky. In the distance, Kamijou could hear sirens wailing from the nearby cars and what might've been the fire department coming closer to stop any sign of leftover fires.

"Agh." The boy let his grimacing face descend into his palms, feeling guilt from possibly putting several people's jobs on hold. His head came back up as he saw a nearby human-shaped blur crash into a building.

"What the hell?"

He jogged over to the fallen figure and saw that it was an unconscious, red-headed girl that was about his age. Her attractive face was marred by a broken nose and blood leaking from her nostrils. Her attire consisted of a short dark shirt, a black jacket loosely placed over her shoulders, and her chest was barely covered by sarashi wrappings.

"If it's not one thing, it's another." Kamijou sighed, but nonetheless picked up the knocked out girl. He looked over to a nearby street sign and mentally mapped out the directions to Heaven Canceller's hospital.

"This has been one hell of a day…" He walked down the night street, completely unaware that he was holding Musujime Awaki, the guide to the Windowless Building.

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After dropping off the girl at the hospital, Kamijou made his way back to his temporary apartment. Stopping in front of his door, he pulled out his phone to check the time.

'This late already? Time flies by and all that, but still.' He made a low whistle and pocketed his phone, reaching out and turning the knob on his door. Opening the door with a low creak, Touma slipped in quietly and set about to get ready for bed.

'Changed out of uniform, check. Made sure that nothing got stolen, check. Got my homework done, check. I'm surprised I actually had any time to do it today.' The boy chuckled, flopping down onto his bed. He closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come over him.

Kamijou abruptly sat up, a stray thought popping up in his mind.

"I never found out what that Stuart woman was doing in this city! Fuck!"

Between The Lines

Laura Stuart rubbed her left temple with two fingers, wishing for the headache to go away. The medicine that Touma had given her did work, but her tantrum (she cringed at calling it that) made it come back in full force.

'Note to self: make sure to have pain killers on hand the next time I come into that city.' The woman groaned. She was seated next to a window in her private jet, watching the clouds roll by as it made its way back to England.

"Kamijou Touma…he is an interesting person. Let's see how things go from here." The Archbishop said, a mysterious smile growing on her face.

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Post-Chapter Notes: That's a wrap!

My original goal had been 5k words for this chapter, but it somehow turned into 6k! So, there's that at least.

Now, Laura didn't really fall for Kamijou (dunno how I'd go about doing that). They'll have future interactions, but that will have to wait until later. For one thing, she's a bit weary of him after getting a glimpse of his enigmatic ability. The woman knows that he's got a mysterious hand going (Laura's not really one to talk, y'know?), but she can't figure out what.

Wasn't expecting the surprise invasion of an Other Being, were you? I took advantage of Awaki's ability and had an eldritch being hijack the process for its own gain.

You wouldn't believe how much trouble I had working a conclusion to the Tree Diagram Arc! My brain kept wracking for lots of stuff to just get this over with.

To be honest, I just wanted this Arc over with so I can get onto the Daihaseisai Arc. Things are going to be kooky in that one, I can guarantee.

I might also change my penname to something else and this fic's name to a different name as well, so I'm just giving a bit of a warning.

Review if you can, please.

Signing off- Loopsey