Ok, because I'm not allowed nice things, this worked its way into my head. First things first. One of the characters is going to be pretty much OOC. You have been warned. Also a warning for foul language.

"Seems this one was a failure. Not even six months of waiting could save her."

"Yeah, figured a Level 0 wouldn't work. Oh well, time to figure out why it didn't."

I groan, the two voices coming next from me waking me up. What are they talking about? I feel a pair of arms grab me and put me on something, a stretcher? I open my eyes, but the brightness makes me shut them immediately. I feel some straps pin me down. What's happening?

"Yeah. Not everyone can be like those two. Well, in terms of power achieved, not sanity. You know what I mean."

"I do. Oh well. Not like this one had much of a chance. A full year, simply because they thought that using a Level 0 may have better results."

"Eh, not really? We did spend six months preparing her, then another six months waiting after we did the procedure."

"Fair enough. I did like her though. She was one of the sweeter ones."

"You know you're not supposed to do that, right?"

"Oh, I know. Just because I said that doesn't mean I feel she shouldn't be disposed of. Always other and better subjects! Plus, she'll be useful for advancing our knowledge."

And everything becomes rapidly apparent. I failed. I'm going to die. They're going to kill me to figure out how exactly a Level 0 ticks, what makes us defective. Come on, Ruiko, wake up!

"N-no..." Please... I'll try harder! Just give me another chance!

"Shit, she's waking up."

"No matter, she'll be out again once we get her to the room. If you want, I could gag her so she doesn't make any more noise."

"Nah, no need."

I panic, but my body is completely immobilized. I can't do anything, but I have to or I'm dead! Suddenly, I feel the stretcher stop moving. I open one of my eyes, and despite the bright light above me, I can make out that I'm surrounded by people in blue scrubs. One is preparing a syringe; the others are talking amongst themselves. The one with the syringe approaches me, and I scream in terror, suddenly completely and totally aware. I'm going to die in a minute.

"So, another failure?"

"Yup. You know the drill."

"Understood. Sorry, Saten," the researcher says with all the fake sincerity in the world. I heard the stories but... no, please... not me! I'll do-

The last link holding me back snaps, and everything falls into place. Everything suddenly makes sense. A light breeze goes through the room. It's nothing strong, but his surgical cap blowing off is enough to get the bastard to stop before he injects me.

"What the hell? Who turned a fan on?"

"No one!"

It all makes sense! All of this! It's so fucking simple! These fuckers want to kill me? Well I'm not going down without a fight!

"What's going on?"

"Where is the wind coming from?"

The researcher closest to me realizes just what's going on. "Oh god! Her powers are-" and he goes flying as a heavy burst of air slams into him. The wind picks up more. I start laughing as the researchers scream and run in terror. The door slams shut, and I just grin. How does it feel, shitheads? How does it feel to be trapped like this?!

They panic more, and I've had enough of this bullshit. "Fuck. all. of. YOU!" The room turns into a swirling storm of medical instruments, picked up by the strong winds, and I'm in the eye of it. Eventually the winds die down, and I just lay there laughing. Fuckers had it coming. They're not going to kill me, not anymore if I just did that to them. I'm smiling for the first time since I came here. I feel alive. I feel a jolt on my side and black out as a pillow hits my face.

"Shut up!" I sit up and glare at my roommate, who just sighs. "Seriously, Saten, if your nightmares are affecting you that badly, you should get some help."

I resist the urge to growl at my roommate and simply mutter, "You don't fucking understand, Kongou," under my breath as I throw the pillow back, tweaking the airflow in the room so it hits her with higher force. She gives me a glare in return and lays back down.

I fall back on my bed and sigh. That was the moment everything changed for me. The moment I stopped being Level 0.

I look over at my roommate. She really doesn't understand what I had to deal with, though. I'm serious about that. No one really does, except for those of us who went through that hell. The hell that was the Dark May Project...

I tap my pencil on my desk, waiting for class to be over. Last night's nightmare is still floating around in my brain, but I can't let it get me down. I'm out of that place now and back to normality. That, and it's one of the last days before summer break and what not. The teacher is droning on about the whole Power Curriculum. This is all old news to me. I don't know why they even teach it to us at this point, especially given the lowest level in this class is 3. Ok, the whole bit about Tree Diagram is moderately interesting, because I wonder if it predicted what they did to me.

A loud explosion disrupts the class, sending some of the students scrambling. I merely yawn. The teacher gets them to calm down, explaining that they're testing Misaka Mikoto's powers, and I just keep tapping my pencil. Yeah she made it from 1 to 5. I went from 0 to 4, same amount of Levels, big deal. She probably didn't go through hell to get it either, but that's not her fault, so I can't blame her for it. Ok, maybe she's a little awesome, but she's definitely not the best thing ever. Class ends shortly after and we all file out.

"How do you stay so calm, Saten-san?" One of my classmates, Aizawa Hanae, is walking next to me. A Level 3 telekinetic or something, I forget. I think she ended up on the ground when the first explosion went off it scared her that much.

I merely shrug. "Eh, dunno." Or maybe because I'm used to sudden screams in the middle of the night? Possibly that. My fight or flight response is seriously messed up.

"Got any plans for tonight?" Oh great, she's looking at me hopefully. Really?

"I'm meeting up with a friend of mine," I reply with a smile. The girl responds by pouting. I shrug and just keep walking. I don't get this fanclub of mine.

But yeah, I have a fanclub, clique, whatever. Apparently word that I could break through into Level 5 at any moment got out, so people decided to flock to me so they can say they were friends with me before I was 5 or something. I don't know how these people work, treating being friends with a Level 5 as a status symbol. I mean, the attention is somewhat nice, but... I have a reason for not liking it. Fuck, if they knew half of went through my head they'd probably be running the opposite direction so fast, it wouldn't be funny. Ok, maybe it would be.

I pause and look around after ducking into an alley for a moment. Seeing none of my classmates around I let out a sigh. Which is followed by a long string of curse words that I'm not going to repeat for you.

See, Dark May? That place fucked with my head something fierce. Some asshole decided to go, "Hey, how would an esper react if we gave them Accelerator's thought patterns?" and then somehow got funding for it. If that weren't enough, they decided to raid orphanages and then use those kids for the subjects, despite how cliche that is. Guess who was in one of those places? Yeah, me. Thank you, fucking asshole parents, for abandoning me like that. I look at the "good luck" charm hanging off my bag. Some good luck it gave me. Now, it's a reminder of exactly who did this to me.

I keep walking along the alleyways in the School Garden. I know all sorts of shortcuts around the City, not just here, so it doesn't take me long to get to the gates out of here. After that, more alleys. I could run if I wanted to, but I'm not in a rush at all. Approaching an open area, I smile.

There she is. Slightly shorter than me, wearing a stereotypical Japanese school uniform and more flowers than your average garden on her head. She seems focused on her phone, allowing me to do one of my favorite things.

See, I'm classified as a "Aero Vector" esper, meaning I can control the vectors of air currents within a specific range of me, just a touch over twenty five meters. Since that's more or less a fancy way of saying "wind", the actual effects can carry on for much further. But for this? This is child's play and in more than one way!

Suddenly the girl's skirt flips, and she wails out before looking around frantically. I step out from the shadows, and she just storms up to me, all flustered. "Saten-saaaaaaaaan! You're supposed to be an proper lady! You're not supposed to flip skirts like that!" That's Uiharu Kazari for ya, perhaps the only friend I have from my old, old life. You know, the one I had before my parents ditched me? Anyway, apparently she got it in her head that all Tokiwadai students are rich, upper crust members of society that drink tea all day outside of school. I say fuck that shit. Hell, I don't think I could do it before Dark May, even. Then again, if it wasn't for that, I would still be a Level 0, and a Level 0 wouldn't be at Tokiwadai.

"I am?" I smile at her.

"Yes. You are a student of Tokiwadai after all!" Told ya. She's trying to live vicariously through me, that's for sure.

I just laugh. "And I'm still a Child Error who happens to be Level 4 and got in via scholarship. You know that." I will admit, part of me wants to see those snobs react to finding out that I'm actually a Child Error. The other part says the last thing I need is word spreading around that I'm not a rich bitch who got there by virtue of the combination of wealth and power.

"I know..." she looks down. "I just wish you'd at least try-" and a gust of wind flips her skirt again. She starts flailing, and I just laugh. She's too cute. This is regular for us, but eh. It's one of the few things that I was able to keep from my old life. She doesn't know exactly what I went through, but she knows I went through a lot when I disappeared for those two and a half years. Thankfully she doesn't press me on it. I mean, I'm not going to live in denial that it happened, and Dark May did change my life in tremendous ways, mostly bad, but that's all past me now. I now have a chance to live my life like everyone else, and I want to take full advantage of it.

"Anyway, what do you want to do today?"

I shrug. "Dunno. Wanna get some crepes in the meantime?" Appealing to Uiharu's sweet tooth is always fun. More so given her luck when she does try to eat sweets.

"Sure!" Didn't someone say the definition of insanity was doing something over and over and expecting different results? I dunno. I mean, I had my bout of insanity in the past, but I've managed to pull myself together again.

Mostly. I keep a lot of my urges restrained, namely the ones that would get me in a lot of trouble.

I look over at Uiharu. Huh, no armband, surprised I didn't notice that before. "Wait, don't you have Judgement duty today?" Maybe she'll get lucky this time.

She smiles at me. "Not till later. I got a couple hours to spare before then, though!"

We make some small talk on the way over to the stand, happy that summer break is almost in session, meaning we can spend some more time together when she's not on duty. I owe her for the last two summers and how. I just wish I could change out of my uniform, but because I go to Tokiwadai, nope, it's uniforms all year round. Uiharu is in mostly the same boat, though, but that's because of her Judgement duty, not because of her school.

Speaking of my school, there's two schoolmates of mine fighting. Or well, one is trying to get in the other's pants, and the other wants nothing of it judging by who it is. Time to bail Misaka out, I guess.

"Hey Shirai-san, Misaka-san!" I wave at my schoolmates as we walk up.

And Misaka smacks Shirai with her bag when the younger girl gets distracted by me. Effective. "Oh! Saten-san! Nice to see ya! And hey... Uiharu Kazari was it?"

Uiharu smiles. "Yes, that's right! Wait, Saten-san, you know Shirai-san and Misaka-san?"

I nod and smile. "Not personally, but..."

Misaka thankfully returns my favor and bails me out. "We do go to the same school after all."

I look over at Shirai, who just got back up. "Not to mention I'm roommates with one of Shirai-san's best friends." The teleporter just glares at me, and I smile wider in response. "So yeah, we've met a few times in the past." The rivalry between Kongou and Shirai is about as intense as Misaka's with Shokuhou. I'm honestly surprised that Kongou didn't go after me given our similar powers.

"Why didn't you tell me?!" And there she goes. I don't get Uiharu's obsession with the whole 'refined proper ladies of wealth' culture, but eh, not my problem. Ok, maybe it is, 'cause she drags me into it all the time. I really don't want to be forced into living in a way I don't want to again, is that so much to ask for? The only problem is I can't bring myself to telling Uiharu that, because it would mostly involve telling her about the Project, and I'll be damned if I bring her into the dark. She gets enough exposure from Judgement as is.

"Because I never felt it was important?" It's really not. I mean yeah, if I knew them better I would, but...

Misaka looks at me. "Say, Saten-san? Where did you go to school before hand?"

I freeze for a moment. No, you're not going to tell them about the shithole. It's better they don't know. "A super secret school!" I answer, winking. Wow, you're fucking lame, Ruiko. Don't use that again.

Everyone looks at me and goes "Right..." in unison.

I sigh. "Actually, it was the Special Developmental Academy, but it just recently closed up."

Uiharu nods. "I heard about that actually, the school went bankrupt." And thank fucking god for it. The less people that have to suffer through that hell the better. I just wish I was the one who ended it.

Shirai looks at me. "Say... wasn't that a special school for Child Errors?"

Fuck, busted. Oh well, no point in hiding it. "Yeah, I'm one. The only reason I'm at Tokiwadai is I got a scholarship." More like 'hush money'. Oh well. I bet Saiai gets paid the same amount, though I do wonder what happened to Umidori, she was still there when I left.

Misaka smiles at me. "Still, you seem to be a hard worker, and I can respect that. Getting into Tokiwadai on scholarship takes some effort, that's for sure."

Heh, hard worker. Well... I had to be. I worked my ass off only to have my powers manifest at the last second. Literally.

I look at the Level 5, curious about something. "Say, Misaka-san, do you have a fanclub or something?"

"Yeah, why?"

I sigh. "I'm starting to pick one up..."

She winces. "Ouch. I just ignore mine."

Uiharu just looks at me, sparkles in her eyes. Oh crap. "You have a fanclub? Where can I join?" Oh no. Oooooh no.

I shake my head. "Please don't. I really don't want one, nor do I want the attention of one."

"Makes sense..." She looks a bit disappointed, but she does seem to understand why.

I look at her and sigh. "Ok, fine. If it's just you." Her expression picks up. "Though I prefer the term 'best friend' over 'fan' anyday." Uiharu just smiles.

We're almost at the counter when something catches my eye. Black shirt... white hair... it's him!

I turn towards the three as Uiharu starts to place her order, still trying to keep an eye on him. "Uhm, excuse me, guys. I just remembered I needed to do something, so I'll see ya later!" I take off and run after him as an explosion rings out. I look behind me and see that a nearby storefront has exploded. Shirai is already moving towards it, so I figure she has it under control. Plus, Uiharu and Misaka are there, too. They don't need my help. I got bigger fish to fry, anyway.

Ducking into the alleyway I saw him go down, I hope that maybe I can catch up with him and show him just what he did to me. I keep on catching glimpses of him at forks, but unless I wanna get reckless, he's somehow managing to elude me. How the fuck can he move that fast? Maybe he noticed he was being followed and sped up.

"Stop running you fucking bastard!" Fuck it. I start altering the the air currents around me to give me a pretty significant tailwind. Cornering is still tricky when I do this, but I'm getting better.

I come around a corner and end up sliding on something and start stumbling. Shit, took that corner too fast! I barely manage to stay upright, and that's with my air currents helping. I've taken spills in the past at full speed, and they suck.

Turning around, I-

What the fuck? I stumble backwards, then slip and fall.

Just what the fuck did he do here?