This was just an idea I had that came out of my dissatisfaction with the conclusion to the Daihaseisai arc. More recently it was inspired by Cun and Skarlashka, who recently wrote some very interesting pieces on Mikoto post NT15, which I highly recommend you go read. For now though, read this.

"Gah! Damn it!"

The road beneath Touma's feet erupted in a shower of shredded asphalt, pelting him like a shotgun blast. He shielded his face from the barrage and winced as a hundred shallow cuts were carved out of his arms.

"You've gotta show more guts than that!" his unexpected ally shouted before punching a flying section of wall into dust. A gleeful smile was plastered on his face. "She's getting stronger! This is great!"

"I can see that!"

Touma ducked a chunk of concrete that could have taken his head off. The hair on the back of his neck raised and he felt the familiar surge of adrenaline in his veins. The other boy let out a whoop of excitement and blasted forward like a rocket, only to be forced back almost immediately by a beam of solid white light that sent him ricocheting off the ruined street.

For all that he was thankful for the assistance, they were making no more headway now than when he'd been fighting alone. If he'd been able to end it with that first strike, then maybe…

Well, he hadn't. Whatever was happening to Misaka, it was strong enough to resist the effects of his right hand. Or at the very least, it was strong enough to regenerate any damage he did manage to do

"Come on, Misaka," he growled through gritted teeth. "What the hell is going on? How the heck am I supposed to help you?"

In place of a response, the glowing girl – barely recognizable now as Misaka Mikoto – turned her empty eyes to his and thunder cracked.

"What a joke."

The void around her shifted. The clawing hands, the clinging darkness, it parted with a pained shriek as something bright flashed in the void.

"Are you really this pathetic? If this is really the best you can manage then it's no wonder so many of your sisters died."

Mikoto's eyes snapped open, panic replaced with a bubbling anger. "Who the hell do you think you are?!"

Brown eyes, full of contempt, stared back at her and Mikoto's ire evaporated in confusion and renewed fear.

It was herself. Not exactly as she was now – in place of her Daihaseisai uniform the girl was wearing a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, hair pulled back in a ponytail and topped with a familiar baseball cap.

"You call yourself Railgun and this is the best you can do when things get serious? I'm ashamed to share your face."

"It's not her fault," another voice said, and Mikoto whirled in place, staring into another familiar face. Sad brown eyes nestled between rosy cheeks and messy brown hair. "This is too hard. We should wait for him to come save us."

"That i-idiot? Well… he's never let us down before. I'm sure he can do it."

This time Mikoto knew what she'd find when she turned, and her stomach dropped. A blushing face and familiar stutter, even if it felt strange to hear it from the outside. The Tokiwadai summer uniform she wore was almost as familiar as the face she'd looked into every morning in the mirror.

"Don't give me that," the first spoke again, venom in her voice. "You can't always assume he'll come to your rescue. And even if he does, what does that make you? Not the mighty Level 5 Electromaster. Just another helpless little girl that needed the big strong man to come save her. How cliché can you get?"

"It's not like that…"

"It is absolutely like that. How is it not?"

"W-What the heck is going on here?"

Mikoto didn't even realize who had spoken until the bickering stopped and three sets of eyes turned to regard her. In the blackness they seemed illuminated as though by starlight, but the sky – if sky it was – was black and empty.

At last the first one spoke, eyes boring into her. "You're dying. Or near enough, anyway." She scoffed. "Pathetic waste of an esper."

"I'm… dying?"

"We won't die! He'll save us! He promised."

It felt so long ago, hidden behind that pillar and listening to a conversation never meant for her ears. The flush of shame at eavesdropping had been overshadowed by the joy she'd felt at his declaration. It had made her feel special in a way her ability never had.

"Maybe he will." A casual shrug. "If he's going to, then he'd better hurry up. Even with us here this little girl isn't going to last very long if she doesn't even try to fight it."

It hurt to think. Her mind was numb, and in the back of it she could still hear voices whispering to her. The more she concentrated on them though the harder they were to reach; wisps of smoke through her grasping fingers.

"I thought we swore we wouldn't be used again." Another new voice, and Mikoto was staring at herself again, dressed in the winter uniform she'd found so uncomfortable. "So much for that."

"That's not our fault though!" Summer was speaking this time. "There's no way we could have known what would happen. That guy was two steps ahead of us the whole time!"

"Is that really it, or is it just an excuse so you don't have to feel responsible for anything?"

"This isn't our fault!" The youngest this time, the face she'd worn when she'd suffered her first betrayal. "We're still just a kid!"

"Bullshit!" First growled. "She's got enough power to blow through a building! No one like that can be called a kid. She just doesn't want to own up to the fact that it's her own weakness that caused this mess."

"I'm not weak!" Mikoto shouted, cutting through the other voices. "I just don't… this wasn't…"

"What? You didn't think this was going to happen?" The tone of Winter's voice sent a chill down Mikoto's spine. "All people do in this city is try to use you. That's all that being a Level 5 has gotten you. Or even before that. Because they knew you had the potential, they stole your DNA and used it to create a slaughter. So you got lucky and the experiment stopped, sisters saved. Well good job. Except ten thousand of them are still dead and no one got so much as a slap on the wrist for it. So no one really cared, and in the end they just stopped because it looked like it wasn't going to work. Did you really think they wouldn't try again? That they wouldn't try to use us or our sisters again?"

The words were like a knife twisting in her gut. The truth was… she hadn't even thought about it. With the experiments officially halted and her sisters safe she'd been content to move on with her life.

"We didn't know…" the youngest all but whimpered.

"Yeah, that's right, we didn't," First said. "We had no idea. Because we didn't even try to figure it out. The only follow up you did was when it was shoved right in your face. And even then you were happy enough to let someone else come to your rescue again." Her eyes narrowed and a dull hum echoed in the void. "So? What do you think would have happened to Kuroko if he hadn't been there? Do you think you could have caught her, even in the middle of all that? Or would she have been another casualty of your inability to think?"

"It wasn't like that!" Summer's voice mimicked her own and she cast a glance at the still-blushing image of herself.

"Yeah!" the youngest said. "It wasn't… it was more like… um…"

"It was like what?" Winter cut in. Her voice lacked the sneer of First's but her eyes glittered like cut diamond. "I don't like to admit it, but the truth is you just didn't want to think about it. Even after what happened you didn't want to face the fact that Academy City wasn't what you thought it was. So you turned your face away, let yourself believe that everything would be okay, that you could go back to how things used to be. But things were never actually that great in the first place, were they? You've been living in a fantasy land ever since you got here."

A cold weight settled in the pit of Mikoto's stomach, and she could feel something grasping at her feet. "That's… not true."

"It… it sort of is though, isn't it?"

Summer was staring straight down into nothingness. "We were living a lie. Saten-san… Kuroko and Uiharu-san… they all knew, more than we did. Level 0s are treated like second-class citizens, and Judgment sees all kinds of seedier things. The worst we'd ever faced was some thugs. Did we really think that was the worst the city had to offer?"

Mikoto flinched at that. The truth was, she had thought that. She'd believed in the altruism of science, that Academy City really was a shining beacon of hope.

"Even if that's true," she muttered, unable to meet the eyes of any of her doppelgangers. "Even if it's true, it's not like I was wrong to want it! It's not… it's not my fault I didn't want to believe people were that awful!"

Four sets of eyes burned into her.

"So you buried your head in the sand and pretended otherwise, like a spoiled child."

"You turned away from the truth and embraced a pretty lie."

"Even if it meant abandoning our sisters? Even if it meant letting our friends get hurt?"

"It's n-not like you even really protected them. We… you were just being selfish."

"Shut up!" Mikoto shouted, and the grasping black hands crept up her legs. "Shut! Up! I know I messed up! I know this is my fault! I should have known, I get it! Kiyama-sensei, Telestina, Kihara… my sisters…. Kuroko and Saten-san. I let that all happen, I know! But what the hell was I supposed to do?!"

"You could have fought!" four voices screamed back, and this time it felt as though they were within her head.

The creeping cold crept further up, clawing at her stomach, but she did nothing to fight it. She felt beaten. Helpless.

"I couldn't… I wasn't strong enough."

"And whose fault is that, huh?" First was glaring at her again, arms crossed over her chest. "Whose fault is it that you didn't have the power to stop anything before it got so messed up that the people we care about got hurt?"

"I…"

"We were going to be the strongest," the youngest said, feet shuffling against the void. "Didn't we say that, when we became an esper? That we'd keep pushing until we hit our limit?" She looked up to Mikoto with wide, pleading eyes that tore at her heart more surely than any blade could have. "What happened?"

"It's, um." Even in this space her mouth felt dry, and the eyes of all four bore into her. "I-I did hit the limit though. Level 5…"

"Oh, is that what it is?" First rolled her eyes. "Level 5, some bullshit label that they probably came up with at a bar after work? Please. You lied to Kuroko, you know. You told her that you're the kind of person that has to climb any obstacle put in front of her. Hell, maybe you even believe that. But it's not the truth, is it?"

"It's not," Summer mumbled, barely audible. "The truth is… the truth is we stopped when it got hard. When we couldn't' see an easy way forward we just… stopped moving."

"Maybe you thought it was enough," Winter chimed in. "And maybe it was, for what you wanted then. But no matter how much you want to you can't claim ignorance now. You've seen real power, and yours is lacking. You couldn't stop Him. You couldn't help Saten-san. You even let Telestina get the best of you with nothing more than some speakers and a recording. Do you honestly think that's enough? That you're strong enough now? Do you need someone to come and tell you that you could be more?"

"This isn't the power we wanted," that small voice said again. "We were going to be the greatest, and protect everyone, just like in the stories. Did you give up?"

"Did you think you could run away from it?"

"Were you content to be saved, again and again? Did you want to be the damsel and not the hero?"

"This isn't who we are! We don't need to be told to seek power! We don't need someone's permission to get stronger! We find it, and we take it, and anyone that stands in our way will be dust!"

Her whole body was numb, the blackness clinging to her like freezing tar. It crept up and coiled around her neck. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't focus. The voices mixed and blended and she wanted to deny them but she couldn't. She couldn't because they were right. She hated weakness. She hated being used. And yet time and again that was what had happened - what she'd allowed to happen.

There was a ringing in her ears that sounded like a thousand voices screaming.

As much as she'd sworn she would do better, as much as she'd promised herself and her friends, she'd lied.

"I… don't want this anymore."

The hands stopped. The sound stopped. The voices stopped. She opened her eyes and found all four of her doppelgangers lined up in front of her.

"Then what will you do?" they asked.

Mikoto took a deep breath. She'd run from too many things. She'd spent too much time hoping to be saved. The only way forward, the only way to be the kind of person she wanted to be, was to act.

She let out a breath and power spread to every extremity, beating back the cold. Something in the darkness shrieked, and was silenced. The hands vanished and the blackness itself tried to recede but she tugged back, her power spear and shackles both. Use her? Make her a puppet? No. She wouldn't allow it. If they were going to give her this power, then she would take it.

She smiled.

"I'll fix it. I'll fix everything."

Four sets of eyes smiled back, then were gone.

Yes. That's what she would do.

And if necessary, the whole world would kneel.

"Just... a bit... more!"

Touma let out a roar, straining against the black egg that had surrounded Misaka. Even now he felt it resisting his power. Still he strained, trying to shatter its resistance. His mounting desperation urged him forward through the growing pain and panic even as the ground beneath his feet buckled and shook.

Something terrible was happening. Every instinct he had told him to run. Unnaturally thick clouds rolled like a storm tossed sea above him and the air was thick with static. Gunha lay unconscious in a pile of rubble behind him, but there was no time to check on him. Whatever was happening, he had to stop it now or something told him there would be no stopping it at all.

"Gaaaah!" With one more savage roar he threw his fist forward with everything he had. The egg seemed to scream in protest even as every muscle in his arm shrieked in agony. Muscle shredded and bone cracked but still he pushed until, at last, something gave.

It took him a moment to realize what it was.

"S-Shit…" Touma fell to his knees, clutching the bloody remains of his right arm. It had been torn away at the shoulder. He gazed balefully at the black egg, the surface as pristine as ever.

'No effect,' he thought through the haze of pain. 'There has… has to be something more I can do!'

As though summoned by his desperation, he felt something bubbling within him. A power unlike anything he'd ever felt before burning to get out. No, wait. It wasn't new, not entirely. He'd felt it once before. But this was so much stronger; there was no way he was going to be able to control it.

"M-Misaka!" he grit out. He had no idea what condition she was in, trapped in there. But what was coming could kill her if he couldn't stop it.

And he knew he wouldn't be able to.

"Misaka!"

A tremendous roar rent the air. Touma fell back even as scaled monstrosities tore from his wound, impossibly huge and charging towards the egg with a cacophony of roars that seemed to split the heavens themselves. They coiled around the egg before teeth the size of his hand began to tear into it, shredding the magic or science or whatever it was that was keeping Misaka imprisoned… and protecting her.

"Stop! Misaka is still in there!"

If the creatures understood they gave no indication, instead tearing into the egg with an increasing frenzy. Any second now they would reach her, and then-

A flash of pure white blinded him even through closed eyes and the monsters evaporated in a chorus of agonized shrieks.

"Am I… back?"

Touma was still reeling from the shock of the blast when the soft, almost melodious voice hit him like a shockwave. The words cleaved into his skull and buried themselves like a burning knife in his brain. He let out a pained scream and fell back. Tears spilled down his cheeks and the world felt suddenly muted.

The pain in his arm was nothing compared to the agony just those words had caused him. His brain felt like it was on fire and something wet trickled from his ears and nose. He staggered to his feet only to fall back down, his balance destroyed.

'What the… what is going on?' It was the only coherent thought he could form. Heat radiated, washing over him like a desert wind, and the whole world was impossibly bright.

Still, staring into the center of that pool of dazzling light, eyes slits, he could see it. Could see her.

Gone were the mutations, additions, anomalies - whatever had been growing from her as they fought. She was wholly herself once more, naked and clad only in light. He might have been embarrassed by her state of undress if he wasn't so in awe.

Her body was still human, but everything else about her screamed of the divine. She radiated a glow that hurt to look upon, and she floated, completely still, in the air. Everything around her seemed frozen even as the sky above raged with lightning that rained down upon the city like burning hail.

In the distance, the windowless building crumbled.

"I'm ready."

She spoke again and this time Touma emptied his stomach onto the ground. He didn't even try to stand. If she spoke again, he was certain she would shatter his bones.

'Is this… Level 6?'

It couldn't be. Even by the standard of the rumors he'd heard of that fabled pinnacle this felt like too much. Looking at her, Touma knew that whatever Misaka had achieved, it was beyond anything the scientists of Academy City had imagined.

Deep within that pool of light, her head turned. He froze as eyes both empty and infinite regarded him.

For the briefest of moments, Misaka Mikoto smiled at him. Then she was gone, taking the storm with her and leaving ruin in her wake.

A/N: Hope this was enjoyable. It's something that struck me as an interesting turn on that sequence of events, and one I haven't seen tackled too much. I like trying to get inside Mikoto's head too. There's more that I could write here, and I just might. I'm not certain though, as this works well as a stand alone piece as well. We'll see where it goes, but it was sure fun to write.

Thank you for reading, as always!