MikoMisa Games

Mikoto awoke not with a jolt, nor with the vertiginous dread of a nightmare’s lingering grasp, but with the slow, deliberate flutter of weary eyes. She could not recall what she had been dreaming of, only that it had left her with a peculiar emptiness, a hollow echo in the chambers of her mind. Her first thought, inexplicably, was whether she had died. But why? The thought itself felt foreign, an intrusion upon the fragile veil of consciousness.

She lay still, staring at the mattress and its holding slots above her, until the familiar pressure of an arm draped over her chest stirred her. A presence both comforting and unexpected.

Misaki?

The thought came unbidden, a whisper of hope before cruel reality intervened. Mikoto turned, only to be met with the silken strands of silver hair, the tranquil face of Index nestled against her, quietly murmuring in her sleep. Confusion settled over her like a thick fog. Her mind was blank.

And then—

Like an avalanche, memory crashed down upon her. A bottleneck of recollection, overwhelming, suffocating, as if she had tried to swallow too much at once and was now choking on the past. A gasp tore from her throat as she shot upright, the world spinning, her breath shallow and rapid. It was real. Every agonizing second of it. The game. The explosion. The gunshot.

A cold sweat broke across her skin as she pushed dampened strands of hair from her face. She looked down at her arms, expecting to see the charred remnants of what had been left of her, but there was nothing. No peeling flesh, no burned sinew. Only the blood and grime-stained fabric of her white tee, the tattered remains of her sweats. The pain had receded, yet the horror remained.

Index had healed her. She could see it in the telltale exhaustion upon the Sister’s sleeping face.

How much time had passed?

Judging by the slow stirrings of others, the shifting of bodies from their slumber, morning had long since arrived.

“Looks like you made it after all,” Kazari’s voice broke through the fog, her usual cheer infected with a quiet wariness. She leaned over the bed, peering at Mikoto with an unreadable expression.

“Uh…” Mikoto had no words. Her heart pounded wildly, her chest constricting. An unshakable dread coiled around her ribs like an anaconda. She moved without thought, sitting up too quickly, nearly pulling Index onto the floor in the process. A wave of dizziness overcame her, the room blurring at its edges, her hands trembling as she braced herself against the bedpost.

“It looks like she’s in shock,” Ayu said, exhaustion evident in the dark hollows beneath her eyes, her clothes torn and threadbare.

“It’ll wear off. Her mind’s just playing catch up,” Kazari yawned, stretching.

“What the hell happened?” Mikoto rasped, the words barely leaving her lips before she collapsed onto her hands and knees, breathless.

“You were in bad shape, Misaka-san,” Ayu said, crouching beside her, her voice gentle yet firm. “Index healed you, but… her magic isn’t limitless here. It drained her completely. We weren’t sure you’d pull through.”

“Your pulse was weak all night,” Ayu added, patting her back as she coughed.

“I… I see.” Mikoto swallowed. She dragged herself to sit against the bedframe, feeling as though she might shatter at the slightest pressure.

“Last night was crazy,” Ayu continued, sighing. “We lost over half. It came down to one vote.”

Mikoto blinked. “Are you saying I could’ve changed the outcome?”

“In the case of a tie, we’d have voted again. People probably would’ve torn each other apart,” Kazari muttered, adjusting her shoe.

Mikoto’s mind spiraled. If she had been awake—if Misaki had lived—they would be free. It would be over. And god—

It was her fault.

If she had let someone else take the explosion, if she had been stronger, if she had done something, anything—

No. She stopped herself before the thoughts could fester further. There was no certainty in what could have been. And yet…

“Who was the tiebreaker?” she asked, her voice quieter now.

“The crossdresser,” Index mumbled, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Crossdresser?” Mikoto frowned, momentarily lost.

“She means that unhinged blonde femboy,” Ayu said, gesturing toward Dark Matter, who was nonchalantly stretching nearby.

Of course. Kakine was still here. Of all people, he had survived. With a power like his, Mikoto knew—she knew—they would face each other before the end. If this continued, if the game persisted, it would come down to the strongest. The remaining Level 5s. She could trick Mugino, perhaps. Outmaneuver Kakine if she was clever enough. But—

No.

She wouldn’t let it get that far. Too many had died already. After Misaki, she wouldn’t allow another loss. Not for something as empty as wealth. She had to act. She had to do something.

“What’s on your mind?” Ayu asked, watching Mikoto as she forced herself to stand.

“I think it’s time to make some changes,” she said, stretching, rolling her shoulders, preparing herself for the day ahead.

Kazari, from her perch on the bed, watched her carefully. A silent judgment, a veiled emotion lurking behind her gaze. It was enough to send an eerie shiver through Index, who sat up uneasily.

“Hey, Index,” Mikoto exhaled as she cracked her neck loudly, glancing back at the still-groggy girl. “Do you still have those razor blades from the other night?”

Index stiffened. “I might.”

“Great, how many do you have?” Mikoto turned to Index, expectant.

The nun, however, remained silent, her lips pursed in defiance.

Mikoto’s expression faltered, eyes narrowing as an uneasy feeling crawled up her spine. Her mouth slowly hung agape, realization dawning upon her. “Oi, how many did you take?” she asked, her intonation sharpening.

Index tilted her nose upward with an air of stubborn superiority. “One,” she said, still refusing to meet Mikoto’s gaze.

Mikoto’s brow twitched. She knew that face—knew it too well. “Index,” she said, crawling across the bed on all fours, her presence looming as she reached out and poked the tip of Index’s nose.“How many?”

For a moment, neither spoke. The world seemed to slow as they both stared at Mikoto’s outstretched finger.

Then, in an instant—chomp.

“Ghh—dammit! Why!?” Mikoto yelped, jerking back and clutching her wounded digit.

Index huffed, crossing her arms as if she'd won some grand debate. “You should know better than to get into a Sister’s personal space,” she said primly.

Mikoto, still nursing her finger, shot her an incredulous glare. “You quit or retired or something!” she barked. “And you’re one to talk!”

Before their argument could escalate, Shinobu’s voice cut in from the adjacent bed. “Why do you need razor blades?”

Mikoto turned to see the girl standing there, arms folded, gaze skeptical.

A sly grin pulled at the corner of her mouth.“I have a plan.”

Shinobu stared at her for a long, unreadable moment before, without a word, turning away.

“No!” Index suddenly yelled, but it was too late.

With one smooth motion, Shinobu reached for the wall, tearing away a section of wallpaper. Behind it—hidden within a crude, hand-carved hole in the bricks—was a stash.

Mikoto’s breath hitched. Kazari took a step back, a look of sheer disgust flashing across her face. What the fuck?

The hole revealed a carefully stocked cache: bottles of soda, bags of chips, packs of razor blades, bottles of shampoo and conditioner, bars of soap—every amenity a person could want in a place like this.

It all made sense now. Mikoto’s eyes flicked to Index’s unnaturally glossy hair. Then to Shinobu’s.

“What a load of shit,” she muttered under her breath.

Ayu, visibly shaking, was the first to break the silence. “Shhh! What if we get caught with all that contraband!?” she whispered harshly.

Mikoto exhaled, pinching the bridge of her nose. “That’s neither here nor there now.”

Kazari cocked her head slightly, eyeing the stash with thinly veiled exasperation.

Shinobu, meanwhile, wordlessly tossed Mikoto two packs of razor blades. She caught them with ease. Perfect. Something properly metallic. The zippers on their uniforms had been useless, but this—this was careless on their captors’ part.

Mikoto’s smirk deepened.

“What are you going to do?” Kazari asked, squinting as Mikoto tore open the packages.

Mikoto didn’t answer right away. “Whatever it takes.” As Mikoto unpacked the blades, their dull plastic casings peeled away beneath her fingers, she felt the weight of inevitability settle upon her shoulders like a stormcloud too full to withhold its burden. The razors, glinting dully in the sterile light, were crude tools—but tools nonetheless. She pocketed them with an air of finality, the act like tucking away fragments of fate itself. “By the way, still got that hair pin?”

Kazari nodded and pulled it out of her thorny crown, holding it in the air.

“If you don’t mind?” Mikoto reached out.

Kazari hesitated, her eye twitching ever so slightly, but she placed it into Mikoto’s hand, who gave her a reassuring smile in return.

Mikoto turned, her gaze landing upon Index, who lounged atop the bed like a queen too stubborn to relinquish her throne. “Up,” Mikoto said, her voice as soft as silk yet threaded with iron.

Index exhaled annoyed, turning her head as if Mikoto had demanded the impossible. With great reluctance, she slithered off the bed, her movements slow, deliberate, a cat easing itself onto uncertain ground.

Mikoto centered herself upon its surface like a priestess upon a sacred altar. She exhaled deeply, pressing her hands together in an inverted triangle, the weight of her own power coalescing at her fingertips. Silence reigned for but a breath before the air itself revolted—her fingers shuddered as veins of electricity leapt between them, first delicate, like the trembling tendrils of a newborn flame, then surging, twisting into jagged rivers of light. The atmosphere pulsed with something unseen yet felt so… —a charge that slithered through the skin, raised hairs, and whispered of impending calamity.

The scent of scorched ozone thickened as the very molecules in the air began to sunder apart, their bonds severed by forces beyond normal human reckoning. The charged ions convulsed around her, a luminous veil heralding the arrival of something unnatural, something that did not belong in the grasp of mere mortals.

From across the room, two figures stirred—Mugino’s hawkish eyes narrowed, and Kakine’s lips curled in distaste.

A jagged spear of lightning struck the floor before them with a deafening crack, its aftershock sending loose dust swirling in aimless pirouettes.

“What the hell does she think she’s up to?” Kakine muttered, his arms folding across his chest. There was venom in his voice, a slow-dripping poison, a contempt that festered beneath the surface.

Mugino barely spared him a glance, her gaze fixed on the maelstrom in human form before her. “She’ll be a problem.”

“Then we’ll deal with her,” Kakine said, his voice lackadaisical, his eyes half-lidded with the insufferable confidence of a man who thought himself beyond consequence. He rolled his shoulders, dismissing the spectacle as a mere inconvenience. “Come on. We’ve got a game to win.”

And with that, they turned away.

Seria, however, could not.

Her eyes lingered upon the electric haze encircling Mikoto’s form, a nimbus of barely restrained destruction. A deep, primal unease spiraled in her stomach, the same dread one feels when standing beneath blackened thunderheads, the air too thick, too still, just before the heavens fracture apart and cast down ruin.

Kinuho, seated across the room, did not share in their awe. She sat, stiff-backed, arms wrapped around her midsection as if to contain something delicate within her. Her breath came shallow, her mind clouded with ghosts. They were dwindling. The bodies of their friends lay scattered in memory, names etched into the past with the finality of gravestones. Juufuku—gone. Awatsuki—gone. Konori—gone. The weight of their absence pressed against her ribs, and with it, a dull, throbbing pain of its own: the untimely cruelty of menstruation, a biological indignity layered atop an ocean of grief. How could all the power in the world over water save her from drowning in her own period blood?

She clenched her jaw. It was unbecoming to mourn when survival demanded steel.

Mikoto stepped through the doorway, leaving behind the charged remains of the hallway room and entered a space that felt altogether too curated, too deliberate in its design. It was modest in size compared to the yawning warehouses that had caged them before, but no less insidious.

The far wall bore twenty doors, each one identical in shape and size, yet marked with strange, archaic symbols carved deep into their panels. The blue walls were trimmed with polished wood, the craftsmanship eerily meticulous. Beneath her feet stretched a vast Moroccan carpet, its intricate patterns weaving a silent riddle of its past. And scattered across its surface—keys. Dozens of them, standing upright as if suspended by invisible wires, each adorned with an emblem mirroring those upon the doors.

Then, the voice. That soulless, mechanical droning.

“Welcome to the fifth game.”

Mikoto closed her eyes briefly, as if to suppress the irritation clawing its way up the ladder that was her spine. How many times had she heard this tone now? Surely, this would be the last.

“Each door has a corresponding key. There are limited doors and correct keys. Players will find the right one to unlock a door and exit. Only one player may exit through each door. Players that break this rule will be eliminated. Players that fail to make it through will be eliminated.”

Eliminated.

The word was a shallow euphemism, one that did little to mask the grisly reality it veiled.

The droning echoes of a machine that knew nothing of suffering—fell upon Mikoto’s ears like the whisper of wind against a tombstone. Meaningless. Detached. The voice above spoke of rules, of consequences, of an absurd, Sisyphean struggle. But to her, all of it had long since lost its substance. She had moved beyond fear, beyond hesitation, beyond the frailty of human doubt. The abyss had stared into her, and she had stared back—unblinking, unyielding, unafraid.

A movement to her left.

A masked guard brushed against her, their touch fleeting yet deliberate. Mikoto stiffened, her eyes snapping to the faceless mask, black and featureless save for the pale white triangle that adorned it. A breath passed between them, and in that breath, something was wrong.

She could not say what, only that this one was different.

Every other guard she had encountered moved with the mechanical precision of a machine, a choreography too perfect, too rehearsed. But this one—there was something in the way they walked, something almost human. There was an erratic twitch in their step, a hesitancy that should not exist.

And the scent.

Faint, nearly imperceptible, but there. Something… familiar.

What was it?

Mikoto lingered a moment longer before pulling away, her eyes sweeping across the room. No vantage points, no slits in the walls, no gleaming barrels waiting to spit death from the shadows. The paintings—Renaissance, perhaps? She was no scholar of the arts, nor did she care to be, but they were positioned too conveniently. A possibility.

Extending her electrostatic field, she felt for anomalies, disruptions in the solidness of the walls. Nothing.

The alarm buzzed, a shrill herald of chaos, and the room erupted. Bodies lurched, scrambling for salvation in the form of small, indifferent keys, yet no hands moved with grace—only desperation.

Kakine struck first, his cruelty swift and indiscriminate. He shoved Kinuho aside as though she were a paper doll caught in a gust, then drove something through her foot with a deliberate and methodical malice. Her scream curdled in the air, a note of agony lost in the cacophony of survival.

Mugino, ever the monster, loosed a warning shot—a searing lance of emerald light that cut the air before Saten’s path, a silent promise that there would be no second chance.

And Index—poor, foolish, blundering Index—toppled over the rug, her limbs flailing like a marionette with its strings abruptly severed. The dust of her failure settled before she could even rise.

Then—

Mikoto froze.

A flicker of familiarity amidst the anarchy, a face from another life.

No—impossible.

And yet.

Kessai Kiyoshi.

Or was it? The contours of her features, the tremor in her hands, the way she shrank beneath the weight of the world—it was all the same. The hesitant, mouse-like demeanor. The same expression of quiet, resigned fragility. And yet, something was off, subtly wrong, as though memory itself had been fractured and reassembled imperfectly.

But she had no time to dwell.

Kessai had found a key, but fate was never kind. Kakine, who had already secured his own prize, shot her through the chest with something unseen and cruel, and she stumbled, her breath escaping in a choked gasp. Blood trickled in slow, deliberate streams, as though reluctant to abandon her flesh, as though it, too, mourned her suffering.

Mikoto’s fingers twitched.

Electricity swelled, unfurling in tendrils of crackling, volatile light. The frenzy spiraled further into entropy, and she felt herself watching from the eye of the storm. Twelve seconds. The world had begun to slow.

Little serpents of lightning slithered across the floor, fanged and hungry. She reached into her pocket.

Mugino stiffened. Her keen senses prickled, her eyes widening with realization. The air had changed. The atmosphere grew dense with something raw, something unrestrained.

This was not the Mikoto they had observed of late.

She was someone else.

Nine seconds.

The chestnut-haired Railgun stood, still as death, her hands unfurling to reveal four gleaming razor blades in each palm. Eight seconds, and the guards had noticed.

They had already been tracking her energy signature the moment she entered the room, had already determined her to be a threat—but now, something monstrous loomed before them, something beyond their calculations, beyond their control. There was no restraint in her aura, no tempered fury—only the storm, unbridled and apocalyptic, waiting to be unleashed.

Seven seconds.

Two of them raised their weapons, their movements reflexive, their fear palpable. But their hesitation was in vain—Mikoto’s will had already begun reshaping reality. The very atomic structures of their rifles twisted in dissent, the metal writhing and groaning as it folded in upon itself. The barrels contorted like snakes caught in death throes, rendering the weapons useless before they could even be fired.

Six seconds.

A pulse of static surged through her right eye, dancing across her vision in erratic waves, radiating outward like ripples in a storm-touched lake. A flick of her wrist, and the razors leapt from her grasp, suspended in the air like the final notes of an unfinished sonata.

Five seconds.

The blades did not fall.

Instead, they became bullets—no, something worse.

With a snap of her wrist, each fragment of metal was swallowed by an unseen force, imbued with a kinetic energy beyond what Mikoto believed in herself. The air around them distorted, trembling as if the fabric of existence itself were recoiling.

Four seconds.

The first blade, charged to the point of near-incandescence, split the air with a violent scream of orange and blue. It struck the middle door—not because Mikoto had aimed for it, but because she no longer cared.

Three seconds.

She could feel them in the other room—AIM fields pulsating like distant, dying stars. She made sure the bullets would not hit them.

Two more blades found their marks, carving through the skulls of two guards before they could so much as draw breath. The force of impact was absolute—there was no resistance, no delay. They did not even have the mercy of screaming. One moment they stood; the next, they slumped, lifeless dolls.

Two seconds.

The final three razors struck the walls with terrifying force, tearing through their facades, exposing something beyond—perhaps a passage, perhaps nothing. It didn’t matter.

One second.

The storm had begun.

And Mikoto stood at its center as its seemingly tranquil eye, waiting for it to swallow them all.

The devastation seemed unending. Wall after wall crumbled into choking dust, each collapse echoing the pointlessness of this endless, unrelenting torment. It was all a cycle—ten rooms, ten rounds, ten repetitions of a game designed by cowards, by hands unseen yet ever-present. Mikoto’s wrath had become a force of nature, indiscriminate and all-consuming, an electrical storm given flesh and fury. She had slain thirty of the forty guards stationed here, and still, the dust refused to settle, hanging in the air like the ghosts of the fallen, whispering dirges to a world that would never mourn them.

She was a ravenous wraith in that dust, flitting unseen, propelled by hatred—not the blind, searing kind, but something older, heavier. The kind of hatred that festers in the bones of those who have known justice and watched it die, that settles into the marrow of those who have been stripped of every dignity they once held dear. Her hand was her sword, swift and unyielding, as she drove her fist into one of the masked soldiers. The impact was deafening. The very air recoiling from her wrath as the soldier's body was obliterated, an eruption of molten fragments embedding themselves into the flesh of those who had thought themselves her captors.

Mikoto caught one of them by the collar, dragging them close, eager to see the face of another tormentor—another obstacle to be erased. But the moment her gaze met theirs, she faltered. Her breath caught, her heart clenched, and the crackling storm around her fluctuated with hesitation.

A clone.

No.

No. No. No.

The electricity around her tightened, coiling inward like a wounded animal, suffocating itself. Her eye twitched. Her fingers curled into a trembling fist. What the fuck was this? What perverse, blasphemous trick had they devised this time? Mikoto had long since burned away the last of her innocence, but still, this? This was beyond cruelty.

Her rage surged beyond reason, beyond anything she had ever known. If she was still not yet a Level 5, it no longer mattered—because the power that radiated from her was something else entirely. Something past the point of classification. A sonic boom shattered through the room as she tore forward, moving with a speed that left only devastation in her wake. Each pink-suited soldier fell before they had the chance to react, their ridiculous AIM-disrupting masks torn away by hands that moved faster than thought. But every time she saw a face, every time the dust parted enough for her to witness the truth, she was met with the same horror.

Clones.

Clones.

All of them.

Her stomach churned violently, acid rising in her throat as she fought against gravity, as she fought against the very air that seemed to cling to her like a thousand accusing hands.

The last soldier folded before her. Then her head snapped to the right. They put their hands up in the air, their arms shaking. She reached for the mask with mechanical precision, her mind detached, floating somewhere far away. But when she yanked it free, she did not see her own face staring back at her.

Blonde hair spilled from beneath the helmet.

The blood drained from her face.

Misaki.

For the first time, Mikoto stumbled. She dropped her to the floor, her mind scrambling to make sense of the impossible. Was this real? Was this a ghost back to haunt her? Did they clone her little honey bee?

And in that single moment of hesitation, searing agony tore through her.

The burning sensation bloomed across her arm, and before she could process it, she was staggering forward. Behind her, Mugino stood, her breath ragged, her brown hair a tangled mess from Mikoto’s devastation, her jacket long gone, her eyes burning with rage and awe.

“You don’t want this,” Mikoto warned, and when she spoke, the very air trembled. Electricity crackled outward in violent bursts, scorching the walls, the ceiling, the very foundation of this wretched place.

Mugino gulped, her grip tightening around nothing, her voice barely above a whisper. “What the hell kinda drug did you take?”

“There is no draught more bitter, no poison more consuming, than the grief of a soul that has already lost the world,” Mikoto whispered, Her voice bled the remnants of a thousand unspoken wounds, jagged and raw. With a tempest’s fury, she threw herself into the fray, her form a streak of lightning across the decimated battlefield. The air trembled at her wake; arcs of electricity licked the ruined walls, and the very ground recoiled from her wrath. Twisting, whirling, she was a wraith of retribution, her limbs striking with the certainty of a blade guided by Maxwell himself.

Mugino barely had time to register the shift before Mikoto’s foot collided with her jaw. The impact sent her hurtling across the room, crashing to the ground in a graceless heap.

Mikoto barely had time to breathe before something moved in her periphery. Kakine.

Too late.

A burning gasp, sharp and wet. The taste of iron flooded Mikoto’s tongue as the weight of an unseen wound forced her to her knees. What had he done? A hollow gurgle clawed its way from her throat, and the world wavered between lucidity and shadowed oblivion.

“Die, you stupid bitch,” Kakine’s voice was a jagged whisper, toxic and gleeful, as metal shards slithered into existence around him, poised like the fangs of some slumbering wyrm now roused to murder.

Yet before his malediction could be fulfilled, a collision of bodies disrupted his spell—a sudden, violent shove. A slender form, reckless in defiance.

Index.

The fool had thrown herself into the inferno.

“Transvestite!” she howled, her words as crude as the chaos around them. But her heroism was met with cruelty, Kakine’s fingers finding the fragile column of her throat, squeezing, as if seeking to snuff out both breath and insolence in one merciless grip.

But fate was not yet done playing its game of barbarous jest.

From the bowels of destruction, another shadow emerged—Shinobu. Silent as a serpent, swift as the guillotine’s kiss. Her strike was unerring, a sweep of practiced precision, toppling the tyrant from his throne of fleeting dominance.

Mikoto, her breath still laden with the weight of fresh agony, found her fingers moving of their own accord. A shape took form—three points, a silent invocation to the storm.

And then, the heavens answered.

The chamber was consumed in an apocalyptic radiance, white as the mourning shroud of a forgotten god. A choir of anguish rang through the air, a discordant symphony of desolation as bodies convulsed beneath the wrath of the storm. She shocked him with as much energy as she could muster in the moment, about 500 million volts. The room lit up in a bright white light blinding everyone.

The ruin of the fifth game smoldered in embers, a dying constellation upon the battlefield’s broken canvas. The air, thick with ozone and the copper-slick scent of blood, latched in Mikoto’s punctured lungs as if to reinforce the sensation. She could feel her ribcage shudder with each breath, each inhale drawing the sting of charred metal and scorched earth deeper into every cell.

Index and Shinobu lay thrown about nearby, their bodies seized by the aftermath of her storm—collateral damage in a war that had long since abandoned the pretense of fairness. Their nerves sang with residual agony, their forms twitching beneath the unseen fingers of her unrelenting voltage. But the blonde man—wreathed in the ghostly afterglow of her wrath—still stood. His body thrashed, yet he did not fall. Smoke rose from his flesh in pale tendrils, whispering of pain, but his eyes, drooping and gleaming with stubborn resolve, remained open.

Mikoto’s lips twitched, crimson dripping from their parted seams. The wound in her lungs gurgled with a pleading cry as she swallowed back the urge to wretch. She barely had time to process the defiance before another wave of Meltdowner’s virulent fury struck her. It carved through the air, a beam of pure, unbridled malice, and found purchase in her ribs. It did not skewer her—it ravaged her, sent white-hot pain ricocheting through her nerves.

She wanted to laugh—wanted to say it knocked a kink loose in her shoulder, as if pain could be an amusing inconvenience rather than a gnawing beast tearing at her sinew. But she couldn’t. It hurt to breathe, let alone speak.

Through the haze of misery, she felt it—a pull, a whisper in the air. The metal Kakine had seeded into the battlefield vibrated at the edge of her awareness, an orchestra of raw potential singing for a conductor. She reached out, willed it to shape itself into her palm.

A sword took form—a jagged, barely coherent thing, its edges restless, flickering, never still. It was a storm trapped in steel, the particles bound not by the will of the earth but by the rage of the heavens commanded by the Railgun. Electricity crawled across its surface like golden insects, fangs flashing in the dark. It was crude, imperfect—but so was she.

Adrenaline surged, drowning pain beneath its ruthless tide. She launched forward, lightning curling around her like an unruly convolution, scalding the ground beneath each step. The fires that had already begun devouring the ruins grew greedy, their tongues licking hungrily at the charged air. Above her, the storm crowned her brow—a diadem of raw power tethered to her blade, a halo of divine electrical power.

Mugino saw the strike coming but could not stop it. The blade, frying in its crackling ferocity, drove through her abdomen. She gasped—more in disbelief than in pain—as blood flecked her lips and cascaded in dark rivulets onto Mikoto’s outstretched hand. Their gazes met, locked in an unspoken dialogue of contempt and understanding, of shared ruin.

Mikoto twisted the blade deeper.

Mugino shuddered, the shade of a snarl curling at the edges of her mouth before she fell to her knees, hands pressed weakly to the wound that gaped like a second mouth on her body.

The moment should have tasted of victory, but the air shifted again.

Mikoto held her breath, sensing the coming storm that bore no name, no mercy.

Dark Matter.

He moved without sound, his long blonde hair trailing like the silk of a funeral shroud. He did not rush. He did not hesitate. He simply was—an inevitability given form, a phantom birthed from the fracture in reality itself. She had heard whispers, murmurings of the Imaginary Numbers District’s destruction, swallowed up in the same breath as Aleister Crowley and all his “possibilities”. But how could such a thing be? Could they have truly done so without extinguishing every AIM diffusion field? No, something deeper must be at play here. If that were the case, then how could Dark Matter still be weaving its unseen fibers? Perhaps the truth lay not in an end, but in a trauma—a crack in reality itself.

Electricity cracked at the edge of Mikoto’s vision. She gripped her blade, steadied herself. His presence warped the world—space twisted at his approach, as if the laws of existence themselves recoiled from his touch.

Time slowed.

Whether her perception had heightened to an inhuman, relativistic degree, or reality had chosen to stretch in deference to the moment, she could not tell. But she saw him—each step, each atomic shift of his stance, the way the air itself bent at his will.

And then—

A ripple in the void.

It happened faster than thought, faster than the eye could register—an event compressed into the infinitesimal gap between heartbeats. In that fleeting instant, Kakine had rewritten the air itself, transmuting it into a visage of death: dimethylmercury, a toxin so insidious that even the barest trace upon skin would spell a fate measured in seconds, not minutes. It was invisible, odorless, undetectable by human senses—a whisper of entropy that would rot her from the inside out.

She had milliseconds—less than that. But instinct had never needed permission.

The air ionized at her command, the gas’s dispersion faltering as she carved a barrier between life and death. But the moment she neutralized it, another wave came. There was no end, only a relentless tide. Kakine was not attacking—he was flooding the battlefield, turning the atmosphere itself into a noose, ever-tightening.

Mikoto’s eyes narrowed.

She felt the shift, the minute displacement in electron density as molecular bonds snapped and reformed around her. Instinct sharpened to calculation, and in the space of a blink, she charged her body, flooding the air with a surge of ionization. A localized electrostatic succession rippled outward, disrupting the gas’s dispersion before it could reach her lungs, its structure dissolving under the relentless push of repelling forces.

Yet where there was nothing, more was conjured. The void left in the wake of her counteraction became the womb of another assault, as if the fabric of reality itself conspired to choke her in metallic poison. Kakine’s influence did not cease—it adapted, expanding, seeking the inevitability of equilibrium.

Mikoto was unshaken. She did not need to win in an instant; she needed only time—fractions of a second strung together like beads on a wire, enough for her body to bridge instinct with intent.

She amplified the repulsive field around her, a sheath of negative charge radiating from her skin, a constant deflection of molecular invaders. The effect was not absolute—she bled ground with every passing microsecond, her body shifting, repositioning in imperceptible increments—but it was enough.

With each moment bought, she seized control of the battle at a finer scale, reaching into the microscopic realm where polarity dictated fate. For every molecule Kakine willed into existence, she countered—an electrical artist reorienting charge distributions, flipping dipoles, repelling toxic breath back to its creator.

It was not merely resistance; it was redirection. A battle of electromagnetic dominion waged at the atomic level.

And then she saw it—the growing density of displaced mercury molecules compacting around Kakine, their uncontrolled reaccumulation forming colloidal clusters, an unstable lattice teetering at the edge of collapse.

The battlefield had become her domain.

In that moment, Kakine realized his own miscalculation.

Death had crept close—too close. He dispelled the molecules in a single desperate act, unweaving the poison from existence before it could turn against him. But Mikoto was already there, within striking range, her makeshift sword a conduit of focused ruin, a lightning-wreathed fulcrum poised to part flesh and fate alike.

Panic flared in his expression.

In the fraction of time left to him, he reached for his last, most desperate defenses. With a thought, he willed disruption upon her, attempting to undo her abilities at their foundation—to fault the latticework of atomic cohesion that governed her fields, to rend her control to dust.

But there was no time.

Instead, he turned to the only salvation left: he sought to halt her movement, to siphon the kinetic energy from her strike, converting it into potential energy—a temporal stillness, a paradox of motion. At the same time, he reached beyond, grasping at the edges of his power to tear open a void, to swallow her momentum into nothingness.

It was a gamble at his current power level.

And it failed.

The blade thrust forward.

The moment it broke his flesh, the battle was no longer his to shape. No matter how much energy he siphoned away, no matter how many joules he sought to neutralize, the force compounded—cascading, overwhelming, stacking upon itself like a runaway reaction.

His vision blurred.

He tried—desperately—to supplement oxygen to his brain, to recalibrate his cellular structures, to delay the inevitable. But whether he died in those final instants or whether Misaki’s psychometry reached into his mind and dulled the last vestiges of his will, no one could say.

What remained was certainty.

The soldiers were closing in from all sides, faceless specters of order amid the wreckage of chaos. And through the thickening smoke, Misaki limped toward Mikoto, her breaths ragged, her body protesting every step.

Mikoto exhaled with a sharp twang in her shredded lungs, and the air around her shuddered. The smoke whisked away from her form, repelled by an unseen force, as though even nature hesitated to touch her now.

She was not in control. Not entirely.

Something had broken open within her—a wall in her mind shattered, a threshold crossed, a door flung wide open to a power deeper, older, more relentless than she had ever allowed herself to wield. It surged through her, unbidden, an echo of a past self she had long buried—a girl who had once believed in nothing but strength, in domination, in the cold certainty that power was its own justification. Her skin flashed white for just a moment, as if echoing when she shifted phases.

For the first time in so long, that sweet honey-blonde girl had surfaced again.

“Miko!”

Misaki’s voice cut through the haze.

A hand on her shoulder. A spark leapt—tiny, reflexive, a silent objection from the storm still roiling beneath Mikoto’s skin.

Misaki recoiled, fingers singed.

Mikoto blinked. The world tilted, the static in her mind crackling, clearing, fading into something almost human.

“…Misa…ki?”

Her voice was raw, unfamiliar to her own ears.

The remnants of her blade, its energy spent, its purpose fulfilled, crumbled into dust in her hands.

For a moment, the chaos of the battlefield faded into nothingness, as though the universe itself had stilled to allow them this moment.

Mikoto stared into Misaki’s eyes, searching for something—proof that she was real, that this wasn’t some cruel trick of exhaustion and grief. But the warmth of Misaki’s body was undeniable as she wrapped her arms around her, pressing herself closer, as if she could merge them into one.

“I was worried about you,” Misaki whispered, her voice trembling, betraying the tears she refused to shed. Her grip tightened, fingers clutching at the fabric of Mikoto’s scorched shirt, afraid she might slip away again.

Mikoto’s breath caught. “H-how?” she stammered, hesitant as she returned the embrace, her hands ghosting over Misaki’s back, afraid that touching too firmly would cause her to dissipate like a spirit into the mist of longing desire. For one agonizing moment, she feared she was holding the haunted visage of the girl she should have saved.

Misaki exhaled softly, her breath warm against Mikoto’s ear. “They missed my vital spots and marked my coffin for organ harvesting. It didn’t take much effort to turn the situation in my favor when I arrived.”

Mikoto shuddered. The implications crashed over her, but Misaki was here, alive, breathing against her skin. Relief flooded her senses, and she allowed herself to sink into the embrace, the scent of Misaki’s hair grounding her, the rhythmic beat of her heart a testament to her survival.

But just as Mikoto was about to lose herself in the sensation—

Gunfire tore through the moment.

Distant screams echoed down the corridor, cutting through the haze of smoke and blood.

Misaki pulled back slightly, her hands sliding up to cup Mikoto’s face. Her thumb traced along her cheek with the delicacy of someone holding a fragile, precious gift from the gods.

“What on earth made you do this?” Misaki cooed, her voice a mixture of amusement and quiet reproach, her fingers never stopped their gentle motion.

Mikoto swallowed hard, her cheeks tinged pink. “Well… I wasn’t going to let them hurt anyone else—”

“Yet that didn’t seem to stop you from decapitating Teitoku,” a ragged voice interposed.

Mugino staggered forward, barely keeping herself upright. Dark circles hollowed her eyes, and blood dripped from her split lip.

Mikoto’s expression hardened in an instant. “He was a threat,” she hissed, eyes narrowing. “Just like you.”

Mugino sighed sharply, nearly collapsing but catching herself at the last moment as she clutched the wound Mikoto gave her. “So we were,” she admitted, her tone neither remorseful nor defensive. “But now it looks like they’re opening fire on just anyone.”

“Have you come to your senses yet?” Misaki asked, turning to her with a look of thinly veiled disappointment.

“I’ll take whatever opportunity the moment grants me,” Mugino muttered, jamming a finger into one of her wounds and using her power to cauterize it with a hiss of pain.

Mikoto barely acknowledged her. Her focus had already shifted to the advancing figures beyond the smoke—silhouettes moving with mechanical precision.

“Three Level 5s should be enough to take them down,” she said, her aura crackling with anticipation. “But something doesn’t feel right.”

“They’re clones,” Misaki said simply.

Mugino flinched. “What?”

Mikoto began to grind her teeth. “Do you know why?”

Misaki frowned. “The Misaka Network was hijacked, but I couldn’t figure out how or why. They had a mental block, and… there’s something very strange about this place. Its construction feels counter-intuitive to Mental Out.” She grabbed Mikoto’s arm to steady herself, her grip firm despite the exhaustion in her frame.

Mikoto glanced down, concern evident in her gaze. “How’s your leg?”

“I’ve blocked out most of the pain,” Misaki said, her usual playfulness dulled at the edges by fatigue. “The doctor they hired patched me up a little.” She mustered a wry smile as her stare flitted forward—just in time to see a clone soldier strike Ruiko across the back of the head with her rifle.

Mikoto’s expression darkened.

“Index might be a bit exhausted, but…” She planted her feet shoulder-width apart, electricity flickering in and out of existence around her, as if the air itself was unsure whether to yield or rebel. “I think we’ll have to deal with my flesh and blood first.”

Misaki smirked. “If you two can just knock off those pesky little masks, I can neutralize them~.” She turned to Mikoto with a wink, her enervation momentarily masked by confidence.

Mikoto exhaled softly in spite of the growing pain in her lungs, glancing at her longing. “I’m going to take them all down in one continuous stream. Can you stand without me?”

Misaki smiled, a quiet understanding passing between them. “I’ll manage.”

Mugino rolled her eyes. “Get a room,” she mumbled under her breath.

Then, in the blink of an eye, Mikoto was gone.

The battlefield became her playground.

One clone’s mask shattered, then another’s was ripped away—broken, smashed, discarded like fragile glass. 40 in five seconds. And in the very moment their faces were exposed, Misaki reached into their minds, weaving her power through them like a lullaby of oblivion. One by one, their consciousnesses dulled, their bodies rendered inert, the only sign of life the star imprint lingering in their dull, vacant eyes. Frankly, aside from returning fire, there wasn’t much of a difference in their behavior at all. From one puppeteer to another.

Silence fell, save for the crackle of residual electricity still dancing along Mikoto’s fingertips.

Mugino sighed, dragging a hand through her disheveled hair. “Alright, Queen Bee,” she drawled, glancing at Misaki, “how many of these lobotomized Railguns are running around?”

Misaki didn’t answer immediately. Instead, her gaze lingered on Mikoto—on the way her chest rose and fell, on the soft, electric glow still haloing her silhouette.

For the first time in a long time, Misaki found herself staring not at Tokiwadai’s Ace, not at Academy City’s most unpredictable Level 5, not at the girl burdened with power too vast to bear alone.

Just Mikoto.

“Well?”

“I’d say about 40 more triangles, maybe 10 squares, and at least 200 circles,” Misaki said as she snapped out of her reverie, casting her eyes back at Shizuri.

“What the hell do those stupid shapes even mean?” Mugino Shizuri scoffed, nudging a shattered mask fragment with her boot.

Misaki exhaled, rubbing her temple. “Triangles are mid-levels—Misakas meant to supervise and execute us. Kind of like nurse practitioners I guess. The circles are grunts, barely sentient, assigned to menial tasks like clearing bodies and handing out rations.” She wobbled slightly, but steadied herself, biting back the pain. “The squares… I think they’re managers. I’ve seen them, but not often. They report to someone, but I’m still unsure who.”

She hesitated, thoughts flickering through the corridors of her mind. A polygonal mask seated in a control room. X-marked masks in suits of varying colors—sub-managers, perhaps? And then there were the VIPs. The memory of them made her stomach churn. Wealthy men and scientists she recognized, seated in comfort, watching them all suffer like some twisted spectacle. Laughing. Feasting. Taking prostitutes between rounds of carnage.

Even now, the names clung to her like the stench of blood—Aogami Pierce, Tsuchimikado Motoharu. Men they had trusted, at least once. Misaki’s hands curled into fists. Was every man in Academy City just another morally bankrupt monster? And then, of course, there was Aleister Crowley. Alive. A cruel irony that, despite her intellect, left her head pounding.

A mechanical hum crepitated to life above them. The intercom buzzed.

“Players who attack staff personnel will be eliminated.”

The monotonous voice of a clone.

Then, the sibilation of gas.

Mikoto’s breath caught as thick white plumes poured from every crevice, flooding the room in winding tendrils. She snapped to attention, a surge of electricity buzzing from her skin, expanding into a high-voltage electrostatic field. The opposing charge repelled the gas, forcing it outward—but she could already feel the pressure mounting. Too much. If she compressed it any further, she might just cause an explosion.

“We need to get everyone out of here!” Mikoto shouted, sweat beading at her temple.

“On it,” Misaki said, taking hold of every conscious mind in the vicinity.

Like clockwork, survivors rose in eerily coordinated lines, filing toward the exit.

Shizuri sighed, flicking dust from her sleeve. “You’re really not leaving me much to do.”

“Then go secure the halls,” Misaki said, barely glancing at her as she limped forward.

With a lazy shrug, Shizuri disappeared into the rubble.

“Is that everyone you’ve got lined up to leave?” Mikoto called out, her voice carrying over the lingering static charge in the air. The gas slid downward, undulating like a wisp of smoke, as though the air itself had sighed. Her muscles ached from exertion, but she pushed the fatigue aside. There was no time for weakness.

Misaki, still unsteady on her feet, exhaled through her nose and focused. “Yeah… I can’t feel anyone else.” She forced herself forward, each step pressing her wounded leg against its limit. “Can you?”

Mikoto took a sweeping glance at the room, her sharp eyes darting over the wreckage. “No. I don’t think so.” But she hesitated, mentally counting. The weight of uncertainty chewed at her. “What do you have?”

Misaki closed her eyes, concentrating. “17 of us and 46 Misakas.”

Mikoto exhaled a bit of blood from her lungs. “I count six player corpses around us.” A grim tally. “That means we’re missing three.”

Misaki stilled. The thought wasn’t loud, but it was there—an echo of desperation, a mind barely clinging to consciousness. Her breath stagnated. Someone was still alive.

She turned abruptly, her body fighting the movement as she hobbled toward the sound. A sharp pang shot up her leg, but she gritted her teeth and pushed through. Then she saw her—Kinuho, half-buried beneath a slab of stone, her breaths shallow and uneven.

“Damn it.” Misaki crouched, ignoring the needlelike sting in her own knee as she reached for her. “You’re alright,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if Kinuho could even hear her. The girl’s eyes fluttered, unfocused, her lips barely parting as if to speak, but no words came.

Misaki shifted, looping an arm under her shoulder and hoisting her up as gently as her battered body allowed. Her own wounds screamed at her, but she swallowed the pain. Kinuho was heavier than she expected—or maybe Misaki was simply weaker than she wanted to admit.

“If you hold your breath, I can get us out of here in a flash,” Mikoto said from behind her, urgency in her voice. A bead of sweat rolled down her chin.

Misaki steadied herself, adjusting Kinuho’s weight against her side. “We’re still missing two people.” Her golden eyes darted across the ruined battlefield, searching. And then she saw it—a barely perceptible form, half-concealed beneath layers of shattered debris.

“There!” She pointed across the room, her pulse quickening.

Mikoto followed her gaze. Beneath a jagged pile of cement, Ruiko lay motionless. Blood matted her dark hair, a stark contrast against her pale skin.

Mikoto’s stomach clenched. The last time she’d seen Ruiko, she had been fighting—desperate, fierce, alive. Now, she was still. Too still.

“I got it.” Mikoto clicked her teeth, sparks flickering between her fingertips as she let down the electrostatic field.

The gas surged in immediately, thick plumes of it racing to claim the space she’d been holding at bay. Mikoto didn’t hesitate. She propelled herself forward in a lightning-fast burst, the force kicking up dust and debris around her.

Her hand gripped Ruiko’s wrist, and in the same motion, she pulled Misaki and Kinuho close, wrapping them in a protective arc as she used her momentum to blast them toward the exit.

It was a crude maneuver—sloppy, unrefined—but it worked. They crashed through the doorway in a tangle of limbs, skidding onto the cold floor of the hallway beyond.

Misaki barely registered the pain in her leg before she felt herself falling. But before she could hit the ground, strong arms caught her, supporting her against a warm, solid frame.

Mikoto.

She caught Misaki’s fall, cradling her instinctively. Their breaths tangled. Heartbeats thundering between them.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Misaki’s breath was caught in her throat, and Mikoto’s arms, firm but trembling from exertion, remained locked around her waist.

Their faces were close—too close. Misaki could feel Mikoto’s breath against her cheek, warm and quickened, could see the slight flush dusting her skin.

But then, the gas started pouring into the hallway, jolting them both back to reality.

“I can push it that way,” Mikoto said hastily, redirecting the toxic cloud into an adjacent hall.

A pained groan pulled them from the moment.

“Ugh…” Kinuho stirred, her fingers weakly grasping at the air.

Misaki’s focus snapped back. She knelt beside her, black-gloved hand reaching to check her pulse. “Are you alright?”

“I…” Kinuho tried, her voice rasping.

“You don’t have to talk,” Misaki soothed, brushing damp strands of hair from her forehead. Her fingers glided against something wet. Blood.

“I couldn’t save Awa-chan,” Kinuho whispered, and then the tears came—silent, raw, slipping down her dirt-streaked cheeks.

Misaki's chest felt heavy. “Hey.” Her voice was soft, reassuring. “Maaya Awatsuki is just fine.” She offered a small, knowing smile, willing Kinuho to believe her.

Kinuho blinked up at her, confusion twirling in her tear-filled eyes. “H-how? I saw her—”

“Take my word for now, alright?” Misaki said softly, squeezing her hand.

Mikoto, still clutching Ruiko’s unconscious form, sighed. “Where do we go from here?” She scanned the wreckage, as if the answer might be hidden somewhere among the ruins. “I wonder…”

Misaki glanced upward, her expression unreadable. “The control room’s somewhere above us.”

Mikoto followed her gaze, taking in the sheer scale of what lay ahead. “And everyone else?”

“Back to the home room,” Misaki said simply, motioning toward the spiral stairwell at the far end of the hallway.

Mikoto sighed, shifting Ruiko’s weight in her arms. “We might need some help.”

“You mean for my leg?” Misaki asked dryly.

Mikoto nodded.

“I don’t think Index will be able to help us much.”

Mikoto frowned. “Why?”

“She’s tapped out,” Misaki admitted, rubbing at her temples.

“Will they be okay in there?”

“They have Meltdowner,” Misaki nearly scoffed at the thought. “I think she’ll keep them safe.”

Mikoto turned to Kinuho. “Do you think you could carry this one back with you?” She tilted her head toward Ruiko.

Kinuho hesitated before nodding, extending her arms to take her.

“Do you know where to go?” Mikoto called as she neared the stairwell.

Kinuho stopped, her face scrunching in hesitation. Then, she shook her head, an anxious grimace pulling at her lips.

Misaki smirked. “I’ll impart the directions onto your brain.”

And with a simple wave of her hand, Kinuho’s eyes widened briefly in recognition before she nodded and took off down the hallway.

Silence settled between Mikoto and Misaki as they remained behind.

“So,” Mikoto began, her voice softer than usual, looking at Misaki.

“So,” Misaki echoed, exhaling gently as she gazed into Mikoto’s eyes—those round, coffee-colored eyes that, despite everything they had been through, still held their unwavering spark.

“What am I going to do with you?” Mikoto joked with a small giggle escaping her lips as a front of warmth crept up her face.

“I was going to ask you the same thing~,” Misaki teased, smiling as she tilted her head.

Silence fell between them, but it wasn’t awkward or tense. It was a rare, fleeting moment of peace. The kind where the world slowed, where every breath, every tiny movement, felt impossibly significant.

Mikoto’s eyes surveyed over Misaki’s face, noting how even after everything—the exhaustion, the chaos, the lack of a proper shower—her golden curls still managed to frame her face perfectly, fluffy and soft, like they belonged in a dream. Her lashes, despite the dirt smudged on her skin, still fluttered delicately. And then there were her lips—plump, warm, inviting.

Misaki, on the other hand, found herself drawn to the way Mikoto’s stubborn determination reflected in her fiery amber eyes. From there, she was entirely enamored by Mikoto’s cheeks. Slightly flushed from exertion, smooth and oh-so-pinchable. Her deep chocolate hair had bits of dust tangled in it, but she somehow made disheveled look effortlessly adorable. And that little smile, the one she probably wasn’t even aware of—it was dangerous; the way her lips parted slightly as if caught in a moment of indecision.

And then, Misaki’s smile shifted. A slow, teasing thing.

Mikoto blinked and suddenly remembered she had something to say, forcing herself to look away before she did something reckless.“Well, any idea what we should be expecting?” she asked, breaking the trance as she shifted her weight and looked up, though her heart still pounded in her chest.

Misaki hummed. “Trouble.” She paused, wishing Mikoto would turn her eyes back. “I managed to send an SOS transmission to Hokaze a few hours ago—help should be on the way… and we might need it,” Misaki admitted, rubbing her tired eyes. “Aleister Crowley’s here.”

“Huh?” Mikoto twisted her head abruptly. “I thought he was…?”

“Yeah, me too. I don’t know, but I’d recognize that face anywhere.” Misaki inhaled deeply, briefly recalling the eerie, ever-calculating eyes of the man before shaking the thought away. She tried to project his image into Mikoto’s mind, but—fizz—all she got in return was a little shock.

“Ah… sorry. I—” Mikoto rubbed the back of her head, letting out a nervous laugh. She felt the residual tingle of the sparks between them, but it wasn’t just from her electricity—it was a warmth that made her stomach flutter.

Misaki, standing mere centimeters away, smiled—sweet and knowing. “You overcame the block,” she said softly, her voice carrying the warmness of a summer breeze. “It’s good to have you back.”

Mikoto looked at her then, really looked at her, and felt something deep inside her chest tighten in a way she wasn’t used to. “Yeah… you too,” she murmured, her voice softer than she intended.

Misaki’s golden eyes twinkled with amusement as she tilted her head. Mikoto suddenly cleared her throat. “You know…”

“Hm~?” Misaki quirked an eyebrow, stepping just a little closer.

“You look really good in pink,” Mikoto admitted, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. She averted her gaze immediately, a traitorous heat crawling up her neck.

Misaki’s lips curled into an amused smirk. “Is that right~?” she purred, wrapping her arms around Mikoto’s neck in one fluid motion, pulling them so close that their noses nearly brushed.

Mikoto stiffened, her breath stalling. Misaki smelled faintly of honey and something floral—maybe vanilla. It was subtle but intoxicating, and it made Mikoto’s already overclocked brain completely short-circuit.

Her heart pounded wildly as her gaze flitted to Misaki’s lips—soft, plump, delicately curved into the perfect “m” shape. The way her bottom lip glistened slightly under the dim light made Mikoto gulp. She could feel the heat radiating between them, the anticipation stretching out like an eternity.

Misaki leaned in ever so slightly, her breath warm against Mikoto’s lips. “You’re staring~,” she teased in a whisper, but there was a faint pink dusting her own cheeks.

Mikoto swallowed hard. “I—uh—”

And then Misaki closed the distance.

The moment their lips met, it was like the world melted away.

Mikoto felt an instant rush—an electric, tingling warmth that spread from her chest to the very tips of her fingers. Misaki’s lips were soft, impossibly soft, and moved against hers with a perfect, gentle pressure. It was slow, almost hesitant at first, as if savoring the moment, but then Misaki tilted her head slightly, deepening the kiss, and Mikoto felt her knees go weak.

Her hands, almost instinctively, slid from Misaki’s waist to her hips, fingers wrapping slightly at the perfect mix of firmness and softness. She wasn’t sure if she was holding on for dear life or if she just wanted to be closer, but either way, she couldn’t bring herself to let go.

Misaki, however, was in complete control. Her lips moved skillfully, teasingly, pressing just enough to make Mikoto’s breath stutter. Then, just as Mikoto thought her heart couldn’t handle more, Misaki playfully nipped at her bottom lip, pulling it lightly before letting it go.

A small, involuntary whimper escaped from Mikoto’s throat, and she immediately felt her face explode in heat.

Misaki pulled back slightly, her lips still tantalizingly close, her golden eyes half-lidded and impossibly smug. “For good luck,” she murmured, her voice carrying a hint of breathlessness.

Mikoto was utterly ruined. She stood there, panting slightly, her lips tingling, her brain completely fried. “O-of course,” she stammered, her voice an octave higher than usual.

Misaki giggled, reaching up to brush a strand of coffee hair from Mikoto’s face before placing a feather-light peck on her cheek.

Mikoto, still struggling to form a coherent thought, fanned herself dramatically. “That was… uhm…”

Misaki smirked. “What, bee got your tongue?”

Mikoto groaned, covering her burning face with her hands. “I hate you,” she muttered into her palms.

Misaki simply laughed, her own cheeks a light shade of strawberry as she cleared her throat. “Now, uhm… The best way up is…”

Mikoto, still dazed, just nodded, but all she could think about was the way Misaki’s lips had felt against hers—and how badly she wanted to kiss her again.

“Up,” Mikoto said, composing herself as she flicked a shard of metal into the air. It hovered for the briefest moment, catching the light like a frozen comet, before she sent it spiraling skyward with a burst of electromagnetism.

A hole bloomed through the ceiling, a perfect wound carved by sheer will. Molten edges dripped, their heat bending the air in shimmering distortions. A gust of displaced wind followed, rushing down through the void like a breath from another world. The murmurs of distant figures scattered, the whispers of unseen spectators drawn to the chaos.

She extended her hand to Misaki, the faintest ghost of a smile on her lips. An unspoken promise. Misaki took it without hesitation, fingers tightening around Mikoto’s, their warmth grounding her before the storm ahead. And then they moved—Mikoto’s muscles coiling like a spring, the two of them launching upward. Floor by floor, her shoes found fleeting purchase, bouncing between molten steel and fractured concrete, ascending toward whatever cruel joke fate had arranged for them.

The ninth floor yawned open, revealing itself with a cruel sense of inevitability. The control room loomed like the heart of a dying beast, its walls a lurid black that clashed against the unnatural sterility of the blinking consoles. Computers—bloated, antiquated things—hunched in the dim light, their screens vomiting lines of green text as if carrying secrets from a forgotten era—The 1980s. The soldiers guarding them were featureless behind their masks, plastic effigies of obedience clad in geometric insignia—all squares.

They raised their weapons, but the bullets never came. A symphony of miniature detonations rattled the air, their magazines cooking off at their sides, the scent of burning metal mixing with the ozone bite of Mikoto’s power. She had no need for theatrics—just a well-placed flicker of microwaves to starve their guns of compliance.

A slow, measured clap cut through the silence.

“I must admit,” a voice purred from behind them, modulated yet unmistakably feminine, threaded with something both delighted and derisive.

Mikoto turned, and there she was—a figure draped in contradiction. A sharp-cut black blazer, an undone white blouse whispering the suggestion of elegance undone, slouching trousers that refused definition. And then the mask—an oni’s sneer, angular and cruel, painted in the burning hues of red and gold.

“You still haven’t figured it out, have you?” The voice tilted its head as if appraising her like an incomplete equation.

Misaki felt a sick lurch in her stomach. The mask—it was not quite the one she had glimpsed in stolen memories, not quite the face that had stood at the apex of the clone network’s whispers. And yet… something inside her screamed that they were the same.

“Why don’t you take that ridiculous thing off and get to the point,” Mikoto’s voice came low with quiet fury. Her eyes, sharp as tempered steel, narrowed at the demon before her.

A chuckle. A hand lifting, deliberate, almost indulgent.

And then the mask fell away.

Mikoto’s breath caught in her throat. The world tilted on its axis, a dizzying vertigo crashing over her like a rogue wave. Misaki felt it too—her own heartbeat stuttering in recognition, in the sheer impossibility of what stood before them.

Long, delicate hair framed a face once known for warmth, for shy smiles and sunlit laughter. But the expression she wore now was a grotesque imitation of those days—her lips curling into a smirk too angular, her brows knitted into something both triumphant and twisted. And then there was the crown, large morose thorns biting into her forehead, yet not a drop of blood was shed. An unnatural thing for an unnatural sight.

“Uiharu… Kazari,” Mikoto whispered, her voice brittle with disbelief. “You escaped. You—this is some kind of—some kind of trick, right? You stole a uniform, just like Misaki did?” There was a desperation in the way she spoke, a plea masquerading as an accusation.

Kazari’s eyes gleamed, dark and endless. “How unfortunate for you.” Her gaze flicked to Misaki. “You should have looked deeper.”

Misaki’s mouth felt dry. “No… no way…” The words barely escaping her lips. Her pupils had constricted to pinpoints.

“Oh, but yes,” Kazari crooned, taking a languorous step forward. “You disappoint me, Misaki. The so-called Queen of Tokiwadai, the great mind reader, reduced to skimming the surface? You had all the pieces, yet you refused to see the picture they formed. I might have expected as much from a younger you…”

Mikoto was shaking, not from fear but something far worse—betrayal, jagged and raw, like glass buried beneath her skin.

“But now,” Kazari continued, her voice an intimate whisper, sharp as a blade. “Much like the Railgun, you live in the shallow, muted glory of your girl child’s shadow.” Her eye twitched, the grin on her face warping like melting wax. “To think my calculations would be so completely perfect in figuring you out.” A breathy chuckle rippled through her before she turned her attention back to Mikoto. “I even predicted you’d blow a fuse and start a rebellion. My only miscalculation was in just how much potential you still had access to. I mean, really—I figured after the second game, you’d have tried something and been put down like the dirty dog you are. But…” She let the silence hang between them, tasting the moment. “Truth be told, I would have spared you. Kept you around.”

A slow, deliberate pop of her knuckles punctuated the air. “To think, we failed in removing your power when you tried to escape from Academy City. Poor, poor Mikoto.” Her tongue flicked across her lips, savoring the taste of inevitability. “Rest assured, either way, there will be retribution.”

“Why?” she forced out. “Why would you—why would youdo this?”

Kazari laughed, a bright, bell-like sound that rang hollow in the dim room. “Why?” She cocked her head, genuinely amused by the question. “Why would I seek power?” Her voice softened into something almost wistful. “Mikoto, surely even you can appreciate the irony.”

“Why would you make people suffer like this? Exploiting them at every step?” Mikoto’s voice cracked, something between disbelief and revulsion. “That’s not the Uiharu I know!”

“And what do you know of me?” Kazari scoffed. “What is an empress without subjects to entertain her?” She bared her teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “What is a god without loyal followers to do her bidding?”

Misaki swallowed, her hands balling into fists. A single bead of sweat trailed down Misaki’s spine, a slow and unbearable crawl. The air was thickening, pressing in, suffocating. She tugged at her collar, her fingers trembling as she reached into Kazari’s mind—only to be thrown back by something vast, something dark. The sheer force of it turned her stomach inside out, like the feeling of a vertical drop on a rollercoaster.

“Exploiting people like this—hurting them—it isn’t you!” Mikoto’s voice rose, almost cracking under the weight of the moment. “It isn’t—”

“You still refuse to accept my godhood?” Kazari waved a lazy finger at her, mocking. “Then keep your own god. In fact, this might be a good time to pray to him.”

“For you beheld Satan, as he fell from Heaven like lightning,” Mikoto jeered, her frown deep-set, her eye twitching with barely restrained fury.

Kazari sighed, almost disappointed.

“Quoting American movies now, like you’re cultured or something?” Mikoto mocked.

“On the contrary, my drug-addled loser of a friend,” Kazari bit her lip, voice like silk stretched too thin. “I was going to say, he’s not here to save you anymore.”

“Give me a break,” Mikoto said with a scowl, a ribbon of electricity surging in the air overhead.

“Maybe if you still had that silly whistle.” Kazari looked directly at Misaki.

Misaki flinched, then cringed in order. What a sanctimonious—

Mikoto’s expression changed. The tension in the air shifted. It was subtle, but undeniable. A hurricane had been raging inside her, and now the eye of the storm had arrived. “I don’t know who you are,” she said, voice low, measured.

“Had you ever?” Kazari arched a brow, her grin unfaltering. “It seems to me you always took poor, shy Uiharu’s temperament for granted.”

“Beast,” Misaki said abruptly. “You’re nothing but a beast.”

Kazari inhaled crisply through her nose, eyes wide with amusement. “Strong words from the woman who’s done nothing but use others—who would kill without hesitation if it meant achieving her goals. Such petty, modest goals. So fitting for the woman who aspires to be a lowly queen consort.” She took a step forward.

“I can admit my follies,” Misaki’s voice was tight, a grimace forming. “But I did what I had to do at the time—”

Kazari, matter-of-factly, did not care. “My dear friend, if you are not my knight, then you are my pawn.”

Her eyes found Mikoto’s, two pinpricks of light amidst the looming storm.

“It’s over, Kazari,” Mikoto said, lightning crackling in the air around her. But the heat had drained from her voice. The anger simmered, but something else lay beneath it. A weariness?

Kazari scoffed, rolling her neck. “Dear my Railgun, I did not quote a movie just to quote it.” She exhaled, stretching her arms out as if basking in unseen radiance. “I meant every word. I am on the verge of becoming a god. You may kneel now and accept your fate.”

She tilted her head, the grin returning in full. “Or suffer the consequences.”

Mikoto did not kneel.

A metal shard flicked into the air, glinting like a star before vanishing in a blinding arc of orange. The blast swallowed the space between them, the room bathed in violent, blinding light.

Kazari blinked.

The beam twisted midair, wrenched from its trajectory, and spiraled upwards—tearing through the ceiling, cutting through steel and stone like paper, streaking into the night like a signal flare swallowed by the abyss.

Mikoto gasped. “How did you—?”

Kazari scoffed, sighing in a breathy huff as if the weight of Mikoto’s disbelief was beneath even her scorn. She lifted her hands, palms up, fingers splayed—an almost mocking gesture of surrender that only served to accentuate her arrogance. “Did you think for even a moment that I was still that pathetic child?” she asked, her voice rich with amusement, yet laced with something far more venomous.

Misaki swallowed hard. The air was thick—cloying, oppressive, clamping onto her skin like a second layer of flesh. Sweat slicked her back, her thin cotton shirt clinging as if it, too, was suffocating under the atmosphere Kazari had created.

“Her power…” Misaki forced out, her throat suddenly dry. “She manipulates momentum.” Her words were a whisper of revelation, but they felt like pebbles cast against an ocean of unknown depths. “I saw that much when I looked into her mind—at a surface level.”

Kazari laughed. Not a polite chuckle nor an unhinged cackle, but a sound like silverware scraping against fine china, delicate yet grating. “And a surface level it truly was,” she said, voice dripping with indulgence. “There is so much, much more to what I can do.” She leaned in just slightly, her gaze a piercing needle threading its way into the very marrow of their bones.

Mikoto tensed. Every muscle in her body coiled like the crackling wires of a detonator primed to explode. “If it’s a fight you want—”

Kazari clicked her tongue, cutting her off with the ease of a mother scolding an errant child. “Oh, my dear Railgun, how predictable.” She sighed, shaking her head, then straightened, her presence radiating something almost celestial—an empress surveying her kingdom. “On the contrary,” she continued, her words rolling lazily off her tongue, each syllable sharpened to a point. “Our VIPs would rather be entertained. And what is entertainment if not a game?”

Mikoto’s head dipped slightly, shadows swallowing the lower half of her face. Her bangs veiled her eyes, but the tension in her stance said more than words could.

Kazari’s lips twisted, satisfaction practically humming in the space between them. She lifted her fist and snapped it forward, the sound reverberating like the first crack of a lightning storm before the downpour. “You and I, womano-a-mano. A final, winner-takes-all round.” Her grin widened, her teeth glinting like a wolf’s beneath the moonlight. “If you win, I’ll let you all go.”

The words barely had time to settle before Mikoto vanished. In a blink, she was there—breathing in Kazari’s air, her presence like a blade at the throat.

“Your VIPs,” she spat, her voice low, simmering, the first whisper of a coming inferno. “Monsters and ghosts… like Aleister Crowley?”

Kazari chuckled, her amusement genuine, indulgent. “Ah, yes,” she said, pivoting slowly, as if relishing the reveal. “Then you’re familiar with his clone, I take it.”

Misaki stiffened. “His… clone?” The words tumbled out before she could stop them, an unconscious, instinctive repetition of something too absurd to grasp.

Kazari’s smile turned razor-thin. “Tell me,” she mused, glancing over her shoulder, her voice thick with false innocence, “who do you think orchestrated the original’s death?” She let the question hang, the weight of it settling like a shroud before she continued, her delivery dropping to something almost conspiratorial. “And who do you think would have the ability, then, to seize his DNA—” she turned slightly, just enough for the dim light to catch in her eyes, turning them into molten scarlet abodes of Hell “—and create a certain type of replica… as the Imaginary Numbers District shattered into an incoherent quantum soup?”

Mikoto’s gut twisted in that way it always did when staring into something too vast, too terrible to comprehend.

Kazari tilted her head. “Come now,” she said, her voice a coaxing melody laced with arsenic. “The two of you—follow me if you wish to stay alive.”

With a dreamy wave of her hand, the steel doors groaned open, the darkness beyond them yawning like the mouth of some slumbering god, waiting to swallow them whole.

Mikoto staggered forward, every breath a raw, searing rotten anguish. Her lungs felt as though they had turned to molten lead inside her chest, her ribs barely holding them in place. She pressed a shaking hand against the wound, but it did little to stop the pain clawing its way up her throat. She was suffocating—slowly, brutally. The damage from Dark Matter wasn’t something her body could simply shrug off.

Behind her, Misaki navigated the fractured battlefield with careful, deliberate steps. The crater Mikoto had blasted into the floor was still smoldering at the edges, heat warping the air above it. She skirted the ruined ground, her legs trembling, her breath shaky. It wasn’t just exhaustion—it was her knee and the makeshift brace the doctor fitted on her. She had to be extra careful with her movements.

She was afraid.

By the time she reached Mikoto, the chestnut-haired girl had nearly collapsed onto the ground, blood rising in slow, choking dribbles past her lips. Misaki’s hand found her shoulder, fingers pressing in just enough to steady her. The contact was hesitant, almost unsure.

For once, Misaki had no idea what to say.

Her voice—so often a weapon, a tool, a means of control—failed her entirely.

Because how was she supposed to help the one person who had always helped her?

The weight of unspoken guilt settled into her stomach, an ache that no amount of rationalization could dull.

Kazari’s words. Seria’s words. The accusations she had buried under layers of excuses and self-assurance.

That everything she had ever done was selfish. That her so-called loyalty, her unwavering devotion, had never been anything more than infatuation—infatuation she dared not name as love any longer.

Even after all these years, even after all they had shared, she had never apologized for that specifically.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the words escaping before she could stop them.

Mikoto’s breath hitched. “F-for w-what?” Her voice was barely more than a strangled gasp.

Misaki lowered her forehead against Mikoto’s shoulder, squeezing her eyes shut. “For all the times I never said it.”

Mikoto forced herself to swallow the blood pooling at the back of her throat, the acrid taste mingling with the raw burn of her breath. Each inhale was an act of rebellion against the agony seizing her chest, and yet she still managed a smirk, though faint, though weary.

“I don’t think there was much else you could’ve done against that freak,” she rasped, the words scraping out like a dulled blade.

Misaki exhaled, her golden eyes dull with fatigue, yet still burning with something nameless—something sharp-edged and bitter. “There was,” she murmured after a pause, as though confessing a sin she had only now come to understand. “I could have used the blood around us, reshaped it, turned it into knives, pierced his throat while he was looking elsewhere… but I hesitated.”

Mikoto’s head lolled slightly, her lips curling into something not quite amusement, not quite sorrow. “I want to deliver you to the stars, Shokuhou Misaki.”

Misaki blinked, her breath catching for the briefest moment. “What?” The color rising to her cheeks was involuntary, and it irritated her.

“I’ve always adored you in your pure white gloves,” Mikoto continued, laughing softly—no, giggling, a sound too light for the weight pressing down on them. It came at a cost. The effort sent a jagged tremor through her frame, and she clenched her teeth against the renewed sting in her throat.

Misaki arched an eyebrow, as if to ground herself. “…Is—Are you referencing—” The words tumbled uncertainly from her lips before realization dawned, bright but fleeting.

“Have you heard that one?” Mikoto asked, voice distant, nostalgic. “It’s a really pretty song.”

“Nakayama… Miho?” Misaki let the name settle between them, like a long-forgotten relic pulled from memory’s depths. A small, tired smile ghosted across her lips. “Now who’s listening to stuff her mom would?”

“Hey,” Mikoto choked out a laugh, breathless but defiant, “she still puts out new stuff.” But the movement cost her. The pain struck back with vengeance, seizing her lungs in an iron grip, and she doubled over, her whole body wracked with pain and strain.

Misaki lunged forward instinctively, hands gripping Mikoto’s arms, holding her upright despite the weakness in her own limbs. “You can’t face her like this,” she said, voice steadier than she felt.

“There isn’t much of a choice,” Mikoto whispered, the last of her strength accumulating into the words.

Misaki hesitated. She never hesitated so much. Was she even the same person? “I could block out your pain,” she offered at last, her voice low, uncertain. “If you’ll let me.”

Mikoto turned her head just enough to meet her eyes, and even in the dim, artificial light, there was something luminous in those brown eyes—a kind of gratitude, a kind of exhaustion, a kind of something Misaki wanted to reach out and grab.

“That would help,” Mikoto admitted, “and I think I’ll need it after I—”

She never finished.

Her whole body riled, her back arching violently as she screamed—a raw, ragged thing that tore through the room, an animal cry of suffering so absolute it left Misaki frozen. A thin, sickly cloud wrenched itself from Mikoto’s mouth, vaporized metal forced out from within her, exorcised by the very force of her ability. It poured from her lungs, from her body, spilling out in a grotesque, unnatural purge.

Misaki gasped, a cold dread sinking into her chest. “Why didn’t you let me do it first?” she asked, the edges of her vision blurring.

Mikoto shook violently, fingers clawing at the blood-slick floor beneath them, more and more dripping in rhythmic, maddening little taps. “I… n-need… ed… to. Feel this,” she forced out between heaving gasps. “If… I didn’t… The pain… It guided. Me. Serious. Injury… no pain.”

Misaki swallowed thickly, hands tightening around Mikoto’s arms. “Let me in.”

She pulled Mikoto against her, pressing their bodies close as she wrapped her arms around her, her fingers trailing up her midsection, over her shoulders, resting finally at her neck. She buried her face in her hair, inhaling the scent of burnt wires tinged by chlorine. The scent of her.

Mikoto did not resist. She simply breathed—or tried to.

And then, she let Misaki inside, who hummed with a sweet warble to sooth the one she wanted to protect

The connection was instant, unspoken. Misaki did not pry, did not force her way into the deep corridors of Mikoto’s mind, but she felt it all the same. The overwhelming warmth. The unshaken fondness toward her. The way her presence alone could soothe even this unbearable suffering.

It made her chest flutter with longing.

In one practiced breath, Misaki severed the pain from Mikoto’s nerves.

Mikoto gasped in a sharp, shuddering movement. The agony vanished, the fire quelled in an instant. She knew she was still wounded, still teetering on the brink, but at that moment, she felt weightless. She ran a trembling hand over Misaki’s, tracing the fingers draped around her collarbone, then turned her head, nuzzling against her in a silent, instinctive motion.

“I wish there was something more I could do for you,” the honey bee murmured, voice barely more than a breath.

Misaki’s eyes fluttered shut, as if savoring the moment before it was stolen away. She let her fingers press ever so slightly against Mikoto’s skin, taking in the impossible warmth radiating from her—the warmth of a storm, crackling with restless energy, fleeting and brilliant.

“You already have,” the live wire whispered in return.

They remained there, still yet not frozen, as if the world itself had paused to allow them this brief eternity. Neither could say which of them had moved first, nor did it matter.

But reality was a cruel thing, indifferent to stolen moments.

A flicker of breath, the whisper of movement—then, at once, the weight of the world came crashing back upon them. The unspoken urgency that had lingered at the edges of their consciousness now loomed over them with brutal clarity.

They had no more time.

Uiharu Kazari was still out there. And if they did not move, she would kill again.