Disclaimer: I do not own Toaru Majutsu no Index, or any of its related franchises.
Side note: there WILL be spoilers from the Light Novels in this fic. I highly recommend you finishing reading all of the Index novels on Bakatsuki first, before reading this story.
Yes, every one of them. From the 22 volumes of main story, the Side Stories, and the New Testament ones.
Chapter 1 – 'The Meeting That Was Not Meant To Be'
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Kamijou Touma slept. And as he slept, he dreamed.
He floated in the border between dream and reality, where images and memories shuffled past in a haze. This is no lucid dream, or a trance achieved through meditation… he had no control over what he chanced upon, anymore than a sparrow can choose its path inside a howling tornado.
Dressed in his school uniform of white shirt and black pants, Touma saw a misty figure slowly forming ahead of him.
Someone who is him, yet at the same time also is not, stood in front of him. The outline is blurred, rendering the person in front of him a wavering image. Familiarity, like that of meeting a friend who one had not seen in years, warred with hostile edginess – a negative feeling that tries to warn Touma the one in front of him cannot be trusted; that none other in all of existence can compare to how necessary the one in front of him needs to be destroyed.
The figure extended its right arm, something even more vapour-like compared to the rest of its body. He, or maybe even she, beckoned to Touma to take the hand.
Hesitantly, Touma reached out with his right hand, tingling as if drawn to the hand offered like magnets.
Their hands touched, and a new storm of images assaulted him.
It was a time when Kamijou was just a young child. Shunned by others, this child who was named 'The Plague' became the scapegoat for any and all misfortune in the area, until someone tried to stab Kamijou, seeing this child as the source of his problems.
Touya, the child's father, driven desperate by how easily superstition can take hold of human hearts sent his only offspring into a city where Science ruled supreme. A city where superstition held no sway, where hard facts trumped empty theories.
The child grew up, becoming a teenager who at times stole away the hearts of the opposite sex without even noticing it. Misfortune plagued this teenager still, but nobody went to the extremes of a attempted murder again.
Kamijou was dragged into one incident after another, with barely a week's rest in between. A girl who held the knowledge of 103,000 grimoires, Saints who held powers beyond human limits, and one who's said to wield the Power above that of even God's are just some of the enemies Kamijou have faced.
In the end, Kamijou was struck down… the power of negation robbed by another and the sealed away menace took the chance to break free. Faced with foes both within and without, Kamijou failed where a Hero, in another time, had triumphed.
The human who had the semblance of the might of Archangel Michael as her's to control took no chances, and flung Kamijou into the Void Between Worlds once she had what she desired. Kamijou will perish, and at a place where return and retaliation is both impossible.
Little did he know, forces beyond her comprehension plotted. The fool with a third arm can have her false paradise... for what is one world in comparison to absolute freedom from meddlesome Gods, and countless other worlds out there to conquer?
Eventually, Kamijou ended up in a world quite similar to the teenager's own, yet not exactly the same. It would not do for the host body to be destroyed, at least not before a new world is reached.
The unseen foe howled in frustration upon arrival, for even as Kamijou no longer possessed the seal and its power, this new world's seal interfered. Eliminating the troublesome warden will have to wait.
No matter; this other seal is weak, a pitiful shadow of what it can potentially be. Soon certain events will come to past, and history will repeat itself.
And when that time came, the invisible prisoner promised to devour any and all that would impede its Rebirth.
Startled by the venom the series of pictures had contained at the end, Touma blinked and returned to the much calmer maelstrom of images prior to contact. The spectre in front of him shifted its image, limbs fusing into the torso and elongating at the same time. Reptilian features began to show itself, until the boy with Imagine Breaker stared eye to eye against a dragon that looked like the mirror image of the one popped out of his own right shoulder against Aureolus Izzard.
With a roar that was more felt rather than heard, the jaws of the dragon opened and tried to crunch down on the spiky-haired boy. With an astonished yell, Touma swung his right hand in what he thought was a futile attempt to stop himself from being eaten by a nightmarish monster.
The dragon collided with the panicked blow, and along with a sound like glass cracking the head was torn to shreds like ripped fabric. The pieces floated down gently like feathers in still air, and Touma sighed in relief...
Until he found a floating pair of eyes which did not get torn apart like the rest of the dragon, glaring coldly at the young man responsible for leaving it in this state. Bright crimson eyes, each the size of a grown man's head shined with malevolence; but that was not what shocked Touma.
The reflections on the eyes' surface show a similar dragon, interposed over his image. While his human face is showing disbelief, the draconic shadow over it snarled soundlessly at the eyes in front of them.
Anger soon flowed into understanding, before resulting in grudging acceptance. Touma didn't know how he knew, but it felt like these two have reached a agreement – like 'the enemy of my enemy is my ally, at least until we have the opportunity to tear each other apart without other worries…
Violence can wait until then.'
His right hand abruptly burned white hot, and with a light that surpassed even the brightness of the midday sun everything was consumed.
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Touma opened his eyes.
The afternoon has waned, the sun beginning its descent in the autumn sky. He was seated on a bench at a park, and for reasons unknown to him he decided to take a quick nap before continuing on his shopping trip.
It felt almost like he was possessed somehow, with the idea he needed a nap coming from out of nowhere.
Touma checked the clock on his cellphone. With a sigh, he gave up on trying to run to the supermarket for the discount sale, knowing even if he can barely make it on time something will happen to slow him down. A kid accidently batted a fastball to his head, running into a stray dog, or seeing some thugs trying to chat up a girl despite her obvious intent she's not interested… frankly, the list of possible reasons is practically inexhaustible. He'd be here until night has arrived and made way for dawn before he'll even be a quarter of the way through.
"Fukou Da…" Touma muttered, his catchphrase blown away by the wind.
Ba-dump.
Ba-dump.
With a frown, Touma felt sure he heard something. The feeling intensified as a sharp stab of pain rippled from his right hand up through his arm.
Suppressing a wince, Touma tried to isolate where the sound is coming from. Standing up from the bench, he looked left and right for anyone – or anything, for that matter – that might be the possible cause.
Touma started to walk in one direction, with what felt like his arm have been turned into a compass that will direct him to the cause of all this. Or a more apt description, a guided missile that is homing onto the source of the problem and eliminate it.
Soon a familiar sight came into view: the hospital where he is a frequent resident in as he gets into incidents time and again. With an unjustified conviction this is the place, Touma continued his path into the building.
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"Kamijou Touma?" A surprised voice called out to him.
Turning around, Touma found the Frog-faced Doctor approaching him. Apart from the white coat typical of people in his profession, he also had a nametag with a frog's sticker on it, as if telling everyone that yes, he knows about the nickname that everyone calls him.
"Here again? Surely you didn't get into another mess this soon after your last discharge? It has not been even a week yet." The old doctor joked, a slight smile on his face.
Touma faked a scowl in reply. "Why do you jump to the conclusion whenever I'm here at the hospital I'm the one wounded, doc? I could just be visiting someone, you know?"
"But more often than not, you're the one that's in the hospital bed when you come here." Heaven Canceller pointed out.
"Fair enough." Touma conceded, continuing to walk in the direction his right arm seem to be pointing him towards.
"So who are you visiting? The Shirai girl you visited last time was discharged weeks ago, and to my knowledge no one that has ever visited you when you're in the hospital here is currently in need of medical attention." The doctor mused, nodding at some of his colleagues and nurses as he walked by.
"Honestly, I don't really know." Touma confessed, to which the Frog-faced Doctor raised a eyebrow in response. "Would you believe me if I say I just had the feeling I needed to be here?"
"Probably. I've seen crazier things." He answered. "And I'll believe the cause of that wasn't because of something like being hit in the head either."
The two of them eventually stopped outside a room. Both of them recognised it as the one Touma was relegated to whenever he was placed in this hospital.
"Is anyone currently using this room?" Touma asked.
"There shouldn't be." Heaven Canceller replied. "Is whoever you're looking for in here?"
"I'm about to find out."
Touma knocked on the door a few times, and then opened it to step inside.
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Half-lying, half-sitting above the blankets on the bed is a teenage girl. She looked to be the same age as Touma, and in the same uniform as the one in his school. The only difference was she had black pants used normally for boys rather than the skirt for the girls.
Both herself and the clothes she wore looked like they were pushed to the limit of that the clothes can handle. And considering the school uniforms in Academy City uses textile technology that would have made it usable (if not suitable) from desert conditions in the Sahara all the way to the snowy plains of Russia, these clothes can handle a lot.
Her black hair was messy, and just a bit longer than shoulder length. The cause of that messiness however was probably less to do with being exposed to harsh environments, and more to do with how she herself just doesn't bother too much when it comes to her hair.
Her half-asleep face when they first came in jolted to awareness, showing eyes similar to Touma's own in colour if not quite in shape. Her chest wasn't the size girls like Misaka Mikoto would be envious about, but neither are they at the level what Aogami Pierce would call 'Deliciously Flat'.
She stared at the two who entered into the room, and then looked at her surroundings.
"Can you two tell me how I got here?" She asked. "Because last I checked, I wasn't in Japan, let alone Academy City."
"And you are…?" The old doctor asked with a frown. Touma himself also wanted to know just who the girl is; he's sure he's never seen her in his life (something that even with his memory loss he's absolutely sure – for reasons he cannot fathom), yet she felt like a close relative of some sort.
"I'm..." The girl said finally, after locking eyes with Touma for a brief second. Unbidden, a name came out in a whisper from Touma's lips along with her own:
"… Kamijou Touko."
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*End Chapter 1*
Author's Notes: This may or may not be continued in the long run - I haven't planned this fic to its conclusion.
If I do continue with this, I'll be playing hard and fast with canon events and/or mechanics. Originally I planned on writing this after NT is finished (or when we find out whatever is sealed by Imagine Breaker in LN canon), but who knows how many years that will take. I had enough of waiting and decide to just wing it, substituting whatever that stomped Fiamma at his strongest with another being.
This story is something my muse had come up with, mixing a plot bunny months old by this point with crack-fic components, more than a good dose of the infamous TvTropes (ingredients include but not limited to: Large Ham, Shout Outs, and Purple Prose) and did so under the influence of watching Madoka Magica. I know this will not be a top-tier story, considering I'm just writing this for fun, and I'll be throwing many things into the story 'for the lulz' or 'because I felt like it'.
This story is – or will be – a testament to what I like a crack fic to be: crazy, but not to the point of incomprehensible (aka, not breaking your brain from over-dosage of cracky-ness). And generously filled with humour and awesomeness, preferably overshadowing the crack.
So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.