Loud intruder alarms went off in a lab that engaged in the dark side of academy city. This lab did not have research going on that partook in massive ethical violations. Instead, it contained research that was strictly need to know. Currently the person running from the automated machines in the lab was not one of the people who were need to know.

"Heh! One hundred more meters and I am out the front door. Then, it doesn't matter what they do to me! I can activate this, as my group wants, and things will start to go according to our plans!" the thief thought. They burst through the door, and into the grounds of the compound.

They were greeted by a large quantity of special power suits and a crack team of the hound dogs' elite unit, the Attack Wolves. "Give it up! We have automations behind you, and armor in front of you! You have nowhere to run, and are surrounded!" a voice said over a loudspeaker.

"Ha! That is what you think! Give my regards to Aleister! I know you can hear me! The sun will soon set on this façade of an empire he has created!" The person shouted back. They took off their cloak to reveal a beautiful redhead underneath. They lifted the device they stole in the air, and moved several knobs on it, while doing a chant. Suddenly, the sky lit up in a turquoise color, and all the combatants around her disappeared.

"I guess it did work. Good thing I have this chronology keeper and this enchanted iron ring, or else I would be back to square one" the thief thought. "Hello? Marybelle? You there?" someone asked over a communication device. "I am here Periwinkle. What's up?" the thief asked. "I see you acquired the device, and used it. You will be on your way to make contact with the target, correct?" the person on the other end of line asked her. "Yep! If he thinks he can resist my charms, then I will shatter that illusion of his!" she said, and started laughing. "You always make the worst puns. Let me know how it goes" the thief's handler said. "Ok. Over and out!"

It was a warm Autumn day. The thief, whose name was Marybelle, found her target. He was a freshman high schooler that held the most powerful force to exist: the Imagine Breaker. "He is pretty cute" she thought to herself as she looked at the picture of the target. Her job was not to harm him, no. Rather, it was to seduce him, taking him out of play from the game that Aleister Crowley and Laura Stuart were playing with the lives of everyone on earth.

She found her target. Step one was complete. Step two was to seduce him. Her files indicated that he helped people in need, and that most of them tended to be women. She had a stuffed toy she had bought earlier, and hid it a few blocks away from his current locale. She then returned to where he was.

"HELP! SOMEBODY HELP! MY LITTLE SISTER LOST HER STUFFED TOY!" she shouted. This caught the boy's attention, giving her the opening she needed. "Hello! Can you help me find my sister's stuffed toy? I would REALLY appreciate it!" she told the boy. "Um, ok, sure. I guess I can help you" the boy replied.

After dragging her target around for twenty minutes, pretending to look, she finally steered him towards it locale, so that he would "find" the stuffed animal. "Oh, thank you! My sister is going to be so happy that you found her toy! I am going to have to give you something as a thank you! How about lunch at a diner, my treat?" she asked him.

"That's ok, you don't have to do that" the boy started to say. "It's ok! I insist! My name is Marybelle. What is yours?" she asked the boy. "Oh. Its Touma. Nice to meet you" he replied.

They had just gotten off the bus to the district where the restaurant, they heard a middle school aged girl shouting for help. It seems there were some thugs robbing a post office, and they were about to hurt people. Touma had apologized and started to run in to help the girl and her friends. This annoyed Marybelle greatly. How was she supposed to complete her mission when her target was getting away from her?

Suddenly, her communicator started making noise. "Marybelle, don't go after him. Proceed with the mission as planned. Besides, this could mess up the previous timeline, and might just put a wrench in the plans of Stuart and Crowley" the voice over the radio said. "Confirmed" Marybelle stated with a sigh.

Touma ran into the post office where someone who appeared to be a sophomore in high school, and a member of judgement, was trying to protect another girl from an esper user. After a short fight, Touma emerged from the building carrying the middle school girl on his back, as she was crying, while talking to the member of Judgement.

"TOUMA! I am so glad you are ok! You were such a big hero! We had better be on our way!" Marybelle stated. "Sure, hold on. I promised Mii I would change numbers with her. There. Done. I am ready. Let's go" He said with a smile on his face. Marybelle didn't know it, but she was fiercely blushing, and her heart beat faster.

And so, the sands of time shift, and so the fabric of the universe is rewoven. What does this new future bring us, in worlds of illusions of dragons and madness?

It was the first week in May. Touma had started school at a Certain High School. He had moved into his dorm, and had been hanging out with Marybelle. A LOT. He also had been hanging out with the sophomore he saved, Mii Konori quite a bit as well, a fact which annoyed Marybelle end, though she couldn't figure out why.

Touma also had been visited by Kuruko Shirai, the elementary school girl he saved, quite often. She had the annoying tendency (to Marybelle, at least) of teleporting into his dorm to say hi and give him a hug, and hang out with him. Every. Single. Day. Her friend, Kazari Uiharu, who was the one calling for help, visited quite a bit as well. Marybelle could tell that Kuruko and Kazari both had feelings for Touma. Again, this displeased her, but she couldn't tell why that was, so she focused on her mission.

Kuroko decided she would enroll in Sakugawa middle school, which happened to be the same school Kazari enrolled in. She had every opportunity to enroll in the famous Tokiwadai middle school, seeing how she was a level four teleporter, and that she came from a more affluent family. She chose to decline the invitation, however, because of two reasons: one was to be able to spend more time with her friend, Kazari, and the other was to be able to spend more time with the boy that saved her, Touma.

It was now the third week in June. Classes were going well for Touma. Marybelle was laying low, and trying to pursue a relationship with the Imagine Breaker. She found it difficult because he wasn't very good with noticing the cues Marybelle gave that indicated she was interested in him. Come to think of it, he didn't pick up of the cues the other girls gave him either!

The other reason she was not making a lot of headway with him was that she had competition. Kuruko, Kazari, Mii, and now a girl by the name of Ruiko Saten, who was a friend of Kuruko's and Kazari's, were going after the boy's heart. The only real competition for Marybelle was Mii, for both women were the buxom Onii-san types, which were his favorite, from what her intel stated.

It was now the seventeenth of June, and Marybelle had gotten Touma to agree to meet up with her across town. From some of the intel her group had, today was the day that Touma first met Mikoto Misaka. If she was successful in her efforts to keep Touma from the area that Mikoto was in at the time they first met, she was sure she could prevent them from meeting each other. This would lead to a rift in the space-time continuum, and would further her organization's cause in taking him out of play in the game that Crowley, Stuart, and the Pope all played between each other.

Her group had figured out where Mikoto would be in advance of their breaking into the lab that was developing the Chronologer (the technology that she used to travel time) by looking at the areas that were affected with power outages on that day. Mikoto, like all the other level five espers of Academy City, had fragile psyches. She also didn't do a good job of controlling her powers, especially when she was reacting to something emotionally. Thus, since she was an electromaster, and that she probably would be upset with Touma (given that much of their data hinted that she was a severe tsundere) and discharge copious amounts of electricity, causing blackouts.

With all that data in hand, Marybelle took Touma into a district of the city that was in the opposite side of where they figured Touma and Mikoto had made first contact with each other. She figured she had a good chance of keeping them from meeting up if they were not in the same part of town. Still, something was nagging her in the back of her mind. Something told her that since the fabric of space and time itself was being reworked, that events would not line up as they had before.

Marybelle took Touma to a diner in that section of town. They were having a very good time, when, out of the corner of her eye, Marybelle noticed someone who looked familiar. She was wearing a Tokiwadai middle school uniform, and had tea colored brown hair.

"Dammit! She's HERE! How did this happen! I KNOW she was wasn't in this area before! So how…." the magician was asking herself silently, as she talked with Touma. "DAMMIT! That's it! When he saved that Kuruko girl, and she enrolled in a school other than Tokiwadai, the fabric of space and time changed! This isn't good!" she thought to herself. She was trying to think of a way to get Touma out of there before he interacted with Mikoto, when misfortune struck.

A group of guys approached Mikoto and started harassing her. Before Marybelle could do anything, Touma was on his feet and heading over to aid the Railgun. Before she could stop him, he had started to get Mikoto out of the situation. Mikoto, like the previous timeline, got upset and discharged a large quantity of electrostatic energy, shocking everyone around her. Everyone, except for Touma, who had held out his right arm in time to protect himself.

Marybelle walked up to the booth Mikoto was sitting in, and put her arm around Touma. "Touma! It's rude to walk off when you are with me! Especially for such an ungrateful person! He was only trying to save you, he didn't know you could protect yourself, you know? You should be grateful!" Marybelle said. "Come on, let's get out of here!" she finished while walking with Touma, their arms linked.

After she paid her bill and they left, they got ice cream. Marybelle walked him back to his dorm. When they arrived at his dorm she told him "I really enjoyed our time together, even if it was interrupted by that brute. In fact….. I would like to go out with you on a proper date sometime, if you wouldn't mind." A heavy blush started forming as she spoke the last sentence.

The air was still for a few moments before Touma replied. "Sure. I think I would like that. You are a very sweet and beautiful girl, after all" he said. A huge blush overtook Marybelle. "Great! Well, um… see you tomorrow then?" she asked. "Sure. I probably will be in school, so afterwards we can hang out. When did you want to go on that date?" he replied. She thought for a moment and replied "How does Sunday sound to you?" "That sound great" He responded.

After they said their goodbyes, Marybelle took out a rune to communicate with her cabal. She filled them in on the details of her night, how she tried to get him to avoid Mikoto (and failed), and how she intervened to prevent Mikoto from attacking Touma for most of the night. She then concluded with the information she was going on a date with Touma.

"Excellent work, Marybelle. It sounds like you are making headway! Since there have been some complications in the timeline, you need to start running on the assumption that you the old timeline may or may not be accurate. Be mindful of the past timeline, but also be prepared that things have changed. Because of this, you are to enroll in his school" the voice on the other end told her. "Won't that make it so that my cover might be blown, Periwinkle?!" the mage asked. "It will increase the danger you are in, but it shouldn't increase it by much. Besides, we need you to keep a closer eye on him" the person on the other end stated. "Ok. That doesn't sound do objectionable" Marybelle stated dreamily, as she thought about seeing Touma every day at school. "Sounds like you already have a thing for the Imagine Breaker. That is quite all right. It will give you more motivation to get him to side with us then" the person on the other end said with a laugh. "PERIWINKLE! That's mean!" the mage said with a blush.

"Anyway, thanks for the update. Also, you will need to tell them that you cannot go through the curriculum there. Make something up about being allergic to the chemicals in the course or something" the mage's leader stated. "Ok. I will talk to you later!" she replied.