I'm so sorry
I have no excuse for the huge wait for this chapter other than I jumped fandoms like eight times before coming back because Railgun S is airing now and I'm having a lot of feelings about stupid esper kids

ok that's enough bad excuses chapter 5 let's go let's get this show on the road

Chapter 5: In Which Accelerator Has A Genuinely Disgusting Day And It Is Probably Not Misaka's Fault At All But He's Blaming Her Anyway

(Accelerator)

The morning after Yomikawa accidentally foils his interrogation, Accelerator is awakened by his phone ringing in three angry texts from Misaka Mikoto. It's already almost noon, so he figures he ought to be up by now anyway, and he peruses the texts. What he's able to gather is this: post-Yomikawa, Misaka returned to interrogate the goons; the person who had Kamijou kidnapped did it to get Accelerator and Misaka's attention; and the piece de resistance: the person who kidnapped him is the 6th strongest Level Five.

Accelerator thinks this is probably a load of bullshit, and goes to eat breakfast.

Lunch. It's lunchtime by this point.

Accelerator reconsiders the texts over canned coffee and a convenience store sandwich. Clearly, the part about wanting his and Misaka Mikoto's attention is true, because that is exactly what happened. The problem with it is how. It implies that the culprit is aware of the fact that Kamijou Touma means something significant to both of them. It implies that the culprit either knows both himself and Misaka, or knows something about them, and wants something from them.

The part he can't believe is the 6th strongest Level Five part. That sounds like bullshit on a shish kebab, if he's being perfectly frank. The 6th is elusive, and Accelerator's never met them, whoever they are. He's at least run into all five of the others; he fought Kakine and Misaka; he's now visited Shokuhou's bedroom, for god's sake; he's at least spoken to Mugino a few times; and Sogiita Gunha tried to fight him once out of sheer boredom and that ended quite badly for both Accelerator, Gunha, two pedestrians, four lampposts, and a public park in its entirety.

Accelerator hasn't so much as heard the 6th's name, and that's what makes it implausible that the culprit is them. Whoever they are.

So he texts Misaka Mikoto: Go dig up whatever info you can on #6, leaves Last Order in Worst's care with a threat of death if he comes back to find out she's so much as frowned in his absence, and sets off to go beat some information out of whoever he can.

...

Target number one is Tsuchimikado Motoharu; he knows more than the rest of GROUP about the city, and he knows more about the city than pretty much all the people living in it. As a double-agent for the magic side acting as a double-agent for the science side of the battle, it's essentially his job to know everything.

The problem is that Tsuchimikado is also very, very stupid sometimes.

Accelerator calls him up, and they meet at a nondescript café in a quieter neighborhood. The café's normal patrons eye them suspiciously, and Accelerator flips some of them the bird as he and Tsuchimikado sit down at the table in the back.

Accelerator explains, "This, first of all, has jack shit to do with Kamijou, so cool your jets."

"Gotcha."

"I need you to tell me anything you can about the 6th Level Five."

"Why d'you want me to tell you 'bout her?"

Mental note: #6 is female.

"Because as the strongest, it's my business. I've been hearing rumors."

"What rumors?"

"You've probably been hearing them too," Accelerator bluffs, feigning annoyance. "Same stupid stuff. I don't believe it."

"What, the stuff about her and the system scan?" Tsuchimikado says.

"Yeah," Accelerator says (mental note: what about her and the system scan?) and shrugs. "Seems weird to me."

"Seems weird to everyone," Tsuchimikado says. "It's probably fake, some kind of urban legend kinda thing. Seven mysteries of Academy City sorta bullshit."

"Where'd you hear the rumor in the first place?" Accelerator asks. "Doubt it's the same place I got it."

"Oh, from her classmates," Tsuchimikado says. "Other Nagatenjouki kids."

Mental note: Nagetenjouki student; high schooler.

"Huh," says Accelerator. "Maybe the punks were from there. Don't remember." He gets up to leave. Luckily, thanks to GROUP, he's technically enrolled at Nagatenjouki. He can get in with no hassle, so long as he can get his hands on a uniform.

"You ain't even gonna say goodbye?" Tsuchimikado jokes after him as he leaves.

Accelerator doesn't even turn around.

...

He gets a Nagatenjouki uniform with hardly any difficulty (sneaking into the school, breaking into the storage room and stealing one). That said, it's still a private school and he still can't just traipse around unnoticed.

Good thing he doesn't want to fucking traipse around unnoticed. The uniform is just to keep the teachers out of his hair. He nabs the first kid he sees walking by himself and drags him by the sleeve into an empty hallway.

"The 6th strongest Level Five is a student here, right?" he demands.

"Uh."

"I feel like this oughta be common fucking knowledge. Misaka Mikoto's entire damn school doesn't just know she's there, the practically worship her. Shokuhou too. So you must be aware if you've got a Level Five esper at your school, right?" Accelerator says.

"Maybe?" says the kid. "I mean, I hear the rumors but…"

"Rumors?"

"That she exists," says the kid, and Accelerator gives the fuck up and goes to find someone else.

Twelve unsuspecting interrogation subjects later, and this is what Accelerator's learned about the 6th strongest Level Five:

She may or may not exist. She may or may not be a ghost. She may or may not have dropped out of Nagatenjouki a year ago. She could possibly be smart enough to be doing an independent study, which would explain why she's never in any classes. She may or may not be invisible, but Accelerator doubts Academy City would've poured all their resources into making an invisible kid into a Level Five. That's a waste of resources and compared to the other Level Fives, not nearly as destructive or horrifying enough to warrant Academy City's attention.

The 6th may or may not be a hikikomori, an otaku who never leaves her room and draws doujin all day, a vampire, dead, on a foreign exchange in America, in a situation similar to Accelerator and Musujime wherein she's simply enrolled legally in the school but actually does some kind of nightmare job for the city. She might be nineteen, she might be fourteen, nobody seems to know. Who she is, what kind of esper, not even what she looks like, not so much as her goddamn name.

The system scan rumor, though, Accelerator has heard quite enough of. The rumor is that the 6th Level Five, whoever she actually turns out to be, has been botching the system scan on purpose. That she actually isn't the 6th strongest, but in fact is much stronger and has been purposefully underperforming on the scans to remain out of the public eye. And apparently now she's gearing up to blow the whole city away with her super-oh-so-amazing scores and rocket herself right up to the position of Academy City's number one, stronger than even Accelerator himself.

The kids who told Accelerator this one ran away very, very fast afterwards.

Accelerator, frankly, thinks this sounds like a load of bull. But he has one remaining lead to follow, and that lead is the art room. Apparently the 6th Level Five has some drawings hanging in the art room. Everyone knows they're hers, apparently, so Accelerator goes to the art room and gets the first kid he sees to show him which ones they are.

The drawings look like someone chewed up a box of markers and spit them back out all over the paper. Accelerator doesn't understand how this is even considered art. It looks like someone blew up a rainbow.

He plucks the closest one to him off the wall and flips it over in search of a signature.

In messy handwriting, on the back, it reads Kitaba Kurumi.

Accelerator takes the drawing over to the teacher's desk and asks, "Who's Kitaba Kurumi?"

...

"We need to talk," Accelerator says to Misaka over the phone.

"What, did you find something out?" she asks. "Because I've been pretty much busting my butt to hack into the city and find out anything I can about the 6th and all I can get is her school picture and her name."

"I got her name," Accelerator says. "It's Kitaba, right?"

"Right. What did you need to talk about?"

"Can you access her system scan data?"

"I can't. Don't even know what her powers are."

"Me either. And until we do, we're not discussing her over the phone. If you can't get her data, either she's removed it herself or the city's got even stronger firewalls around it, so they've probably tapped this conversation already."

"You're joking."

"Unfortunately, no."

"Is this what you deal with, like, all the time?"

"Yep."

"Gross."

"Meet me where we first met in an hour. You remember where that is, right?"

"How could I ever forget?" Misaka grumbles.

"Good. Bring weapons."

"Excuse me?" says Misaka, but Accelerator hangs up. He's not talking to her for any longer than he absolutely has to.

...

Accelerator waits in the railyard for Misaka to show up. He hopes she gets hit by a bus on her way over or something. He doesn't want to see her, really. Not that he thinks she's much competition, no! Misaka Mikoto's got nothing on him. If Kamijou wanted her, he'd have gone for her already. That's just how things work. Guy likes girl, guy goes after girl, and if she likes him back then they end up like Hamazura and his girlfriend. No, Misaka Mikoto is not a threat. She's annoying. What if Kamijou's just waiting for her to graduate middle school so it's not creepy anymore, or something? What if he can't see through the tsun and notice the dere? What if he actually doesn't notice that Misaka Mikoto likes him and has been putting off asking her out because-

Okay, maybe she's a little bit of a threat.

But not much.

And Accelerator's gonna be damned if he lets her save him. No. That's for him to do. He and Misaka will find the 6th, and while Misaka's busy fighting her, Accelerator will rescue Kamijou. White knight in shining fucking armor, or whatever. He'll save his hero. As best as a villain possibly can, he'll save Kamijou Touma. He owes him that much, at the very, very least.

(What he's really worried about, deep in the back part of his mind that he never lets see the light of day, he is afraid to be hated for this. He's fine with being feared as the strongest, in fact he prefers that. If people are scared of him because of what he's done, that's all the better. They won't get hurt by being near him. If they hate him because he's done horrible things, that's just fine. But he doesn't think he could take it if Kamijou hated him for… for the whole… y'know, the whole crush-on-Kamijou thing. The gay thing. He doesn't mind being hated for what he's done; he probably deserves that. But if he's hated for something he can't even control –because who can control who they like? –he doesn't think he could actually handle that. And it scares him.)

(A lot.)

Misaka shows up, with a bag of coins. Accelerator supposes these are supposed to pass as weapons and shrugs. He's got two handguns and a taser in his jacket. He feels prepared. Frankly, if they're dealing with the 6th, she's probably not going to be too difficult for the pair of them to take down.

Presuming, that is, that her rumors aren't true.

Accelerator explains the system scan rumors to Misaka, who listens to the story the entire way through before cracking the fuck up.

"That's actually ridiculous," Misaka laughs. "Why would anyone want to botch the system scan? Why would you want people to think you weren't as powerful as you actually are?" Accelerator shrugs. "Moreover," she says, breathing deep to stop the giggles, "You'd have to have hella good control to actually fake out the system scan. I mean, I don't know if I could do it."

"That's because you have no finesse," Accelerator says. "I could, if I wanted."

"Well, you're a freak," Misaka says bluntly. Accelerator considers emptying a round or two into her face, and then realizes she'll just electromagnetically stop the bullets. And it's just not worth it to waste good bullets simply for stress relief.

Woe is Accelerator.

"So where are we even gonna find this Kitaba Kurumi girl anyway?" Misaka asks. She shifts around uncomfortably. It occurs to Accelerator that meeting up at the location where she witnessed him brutally murder a carbon copy of her probably wasn't the most polite thing he could've done, and he brushes it off because he's still not happy about the competition. Not, he reminds himself, that she's a threat.

Because she's not.

"You got access to her school files, right?" Misaka nods and pulls them up on her cell phone. "Show me a pic of her."

"Here." Misaka hands him her phone, and he peruses her profile.

Kitaba Kurumi. Age eighteen. She looks like an average, nondescript girl in a Nagatenjouki uniform. Short black hair, light eyes. She even looks sort of happy. Average grades, average everything. Her system scan scores have been at the exact same number for the past three years, and that's only suspicious in that they've been literally the exact same number on the scale, without even a decimal's variation. Accelerator could've passed this kid on the streets and not even given her a second thought. Kitaba Kurumi is a perfectly normal girl.

"I asked Kuroko to use her Judgment resources to find her, but so far no dice," Misaka explains, taking her phone back.

"Can you get Shokuhou to do some sort of… I don't know, some kind of mind-sweep of the city to look for her?"

"Do you think Shokuhou Misaki and I are like, butt-buddies or something?" Misaka scoffs.

"Butt-buddies?"

"As if. I kind of hate her, actually. She freaks me out."

"Great, that makes two of us."

"Ew, did we just agree on something?"

"Fuck, we did. Let's not keep it up."

"Agreed."

"Don't do that."

"Do you think," Misaka asks, "that she's actually messing up the system scan and she's actually stronger than 6th?" She plays absentmindedly with the hem of her skirt. She's nervous, being around him, Accelerator notices.

"Maybe. If she's really stronger than 6th she's certainly capable of it. I'd have to know what her powers are first though. It's not listed on her profile, which is strange." Accelerator sits down on the wheel of a toppled train car. "For a Level Five, there's a surprising lack of information on her. I didn't even know her name until today, and I make it a point to at least know the names of anyone who's a potential threat to my existence."

"I don't know anything about her either," says Misaka, sitting down on the front wheel of the same car, fifteen feet away. "Why does she want us?"

"Hell if I know. Power crazy, maybe."

"If she was power crazy, why would she be pretending she was weaker?"
"Good point."

"This is frustrating."

"No shit."

At that moment, Misaka's phone ribbits. Accelerator side-eyes her as she gets up and answers it ("Hello? Oh, Kuroko. Hang on"), wandering off a few feet to chat in slightly more private circumstances. She returns a few minutes later, tucking her phone back into her pocket, and says, "Kuroko has a lead for us."

"On Kitaba?"

"No, on the Queen of England," Misaka snaps. "Of course, on Kitaba!"

"Great, let's get moving. Where is she?"

"Where might she be, you mean," Misaka says. "Follow me."

...

"This is a love hotel," Accelerator spits. "What the flying fuck are we doing at a love hotel."

And indeed they are. Academy City may well be 80% students, but a fair amount of those students are legally of age, and certainly some of them are college students, and then there's the other 20%. It stands to reason that even Academy City has a red light district, although this is the first time Accelerator's set foot within it. The fact of the matter is that he didn't know it was here. It hadn't even occurred to him. And yet, here he stands, with the towering neon atrocity of the Sweet Darling Hotel looming over him, in all five floors of its terrifying closed-curtains glory. The bricks have been painted pink, the windows all have velvety fabric drawn across them on the inside. The doormat reads Welcum.

Accelerator thinks he might scream.

"Apparently she was last seen going in here," Misaka explains. She's gone completely rigid, and is fiddling with a coin from her railgun-firing stash. She is looking everywhere except at Accelerator, and judging by the stores on the rest of the street, probably getting an eyeful for it. Accelerator had taken one look in the window of the shop next door and decided there were some things he could go through life never, ever knowing about and be easily ten times more comfortable with the universe.

"Great. Are we going to stand here all night and wait for her to come back out?" Accelerator says. He would rather not spend all night standing across the street from the Sweet Darling Hotel. He would rather be in literally any other part of the city. He would rather be locked in a single-stall public bathroom with Tsuchimikado.

"No, we're going in," Misaka says, shakingly.

"What."

"We're gonna go in and get her."

Accelerator's jaw drops. They're going in. To the love hotel? He is going to have to go into a love hotel with Misaka Mikoto? God forbid they even let them in, for Christ's sake, they're fourteen and sixteen years old- A love hotel with Misaka Mikoto are you fuckin' joking?

Eventually, after a long moment of spluttering, Accelerator finally says, "And what, just… interrupt her in the middle of… whatever it is she's getting up to in there and drag her out naked?"

"I suppose I forgot to mention she was seen going in alone," Misaka says, and Accelerator visibly deflates in relief. But only a little.

"Why would you go to a love hotel by yourself?"

"Maybe she's meeting someone?" Misaka wonders. "In any case, if we don't hurry, she's gonna leave or something."

"I'd like to leave," Accelerator mutters under his breath. "How are we sneaking in?"

"Front door," says Misaka.

"What," says Accelerator. She grabs him by the sleeve and looks him dead in the eye.

"Just so you know," she says, "I hate you, I do not want to do this, and I am going to punch you in the throat when we're finished, okay?"

"What," repeats Accelerator, anger beginning to bubble in the back of his mind.

Misaka drags him across the street and through the door of the love hotel. Accelerator suddenly feels a great amount of empathy for cats getting dropped in buckets of water, or men in the makeup department with their wives. He watches the door close behind them and he wonders if it hurts to die of shame.

"One room, please," Misaka grits out, still clutching angrily to Accelerator's jacket sleeve, and Accelerator decides that yes, indeed it does hurt to die of shame. It hurts a lot, and Misaka Mikoto is going to feel this hurt tenfold as soon as they're out of sight of someone who could report him to Anti-Skill.

The next two minutes happen in a blur of dim lighting, pink carpets, atrocious wallpaper, and badly soundproofed walls. At the end of what Accelerator does his best to block out entirely, he and Misaka are handed a key and shunted into a grossly cushy pink room, and the door is shut behind them.

Accelerator, still somewhat in shock, sits down on the bed and tries very hard not to activate his choker and raze the entire neighborhood to the ground.

Misaka walks right up to him and, true to her word, punches him in the throat.

After a bout of coughing, and once he's gotten over the intense dismay due to being in a love hotel with Misaka Mikoto, Accelerator says "So what the fuck actually is the plan, genius?"

"We're going to knock on all the doors pretending to be the staff, and ask if Kitaba Kurumi is there, because her time's expired and she needs to pay more or we'll kick her out of the hotel."

"You're fucking joking."

"It's the best I could come up with on the spot."

"You're an idiot."

"Okay," Misaka snaps, "You come up with something better, lover boy."

"If you call me that again I'll cry."

"That's actually an incentive," says Misaka.

"Last time I cried, they were tears of blood," Accelerator explains. "And it was horrible for everyone involved."

"Ew."

"Yeah."

"Have you come up with a better plan?"

"No."

"Great. Get up, we're going soliciting."

So I guess it goes without saying that there's gonna be an OC in the next chapter. I'm trying very hard to make her reasonable, at least minorly likeable, and non-canon-intrusive. She is not shipped with anyone. I am not pairing her with any canon characters. She exists as the antagonist of this story and as far as I'm concerned, that's all she needs to be.

Anyway. I'm probably gonna cross-post this story onto Archive of our Own at some point in the next few weeks, so if y'all see it show up there then know it's me doing it and it's supposed to be there.

Reviews are fed into the quantum transducer and used to generate plot devices.