2,160Hey everyone, I'm back with another "A Certain" fanfic. This one is going to be a little more long term, following how the story might have proceeded if Touma and Mikoto's stories were a bit more connected. Took me a while to get the beginning I wanted as well as a nice sounding title, but it's finally here. I must give thanks to zerochitentoppakai and their story "A Certain Scientific Imagine Breaker" for providing some inspiration. If you've read that story, then one scene this chapter may seem very familiar. I tried to make it my own with my own character interactions, but please bare with me if it's a bit too similar. I assure you, every chapter afterwards will be my own work. With that, on to the disclaimer.
Disclaimer: All characters and plotlines of the "A Certain" franchise are credited to Kazuma Kamachi.
Chapter 1: The True Hero
It was the day after the Graviton Bomb incident. Mikoto Misaka was leaning on the side of a certain broken vending machine that she frequented. With her were her friends Kuroko Shirai, Kazari Uiharu, and Ruiko Saten. The girls just stood there, not really doing anything in particular. The only reason they were there was because Mikoto said there was something, or rather someone, important she needed them to meet.
"Sissy," Kuroko asked, "why exactly are we here?"
"It's just something I think you all need to know about," Mikoto answered simply.
"So why are we waiting here?" Uiharu pushed.
"There's someone that's missing from this meeting."
"Is that so," Saten said with a sly grin, "Whoever they are, they must be important."
"You could say that," Mikoto responded, her eyes focused on her feet.
'I don't deserve the credit. My Railgun wouldn't have made it in time back there,' Mikoto thought to herself, thinking back to the incident the other day, 'It wasn't me who saved Uiharu and that little girl, it was him.'
As if on cue, Mikoto heard a certain someone humming a tune to himself as he walked towards the group from the other side of the vending machine. Figuring it was time, Mikoto pushed herself off of the vending machine and came out from behind it to meet this person face to face. In front of her was none other than the mysterious high school boy that couldn't help but play the hero. The only person to ever survive her electricity. The boy with the mysterious ability.
"Eh, an ambush?" the boy whispered with a hint of fear.
"You angry?" Mikoto asked, leaning against the front of the vending machine, her friends coming out from behind the machine as well to see what was going on.
"Huh?" everyone else asked in confusion.
"Everyone seems to think I'm the one that saved those guys from the Graviton explosion," Mikoto explained, further confusing her friends, "If you come forward you'll be a hero."
"Wait, what are you talking about, Misaka?" Uiharu asked in confusion.
"I'm saying this guy is the one that saved us when the explosion went off," Mikoto explained, jabbing a thumb as said boy.
"Sissy, you can't be serious," Kuroko cried in outrage, "I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but this gentleman doesn't seem like he could have stopped that explosion."
"You saw the crime scene," Mikoto argued, "Can you really think of any way my ability could have created an area where the explosion didn't even affect it? There was no iron sand for me you form a shield and it wouldn't have been very sturdy. My railgun definitely wouldn't have such an effect on the explosion."
"How do you even know this guy?" Saten asked.
"I've challenged him to a few fights before," Mikoto explained, ignoring Kuroko's disappointed glare, "Nothing I do with my ability seems to affect him. He just does something with his right hand and my ability fails."
The girls could barely believe what they were hearing. Before their very eyes, Mikoto was admitting to having been outdone. The boy in front of them had somehow managed to best her abilities as a Level 5 Esper and apparently do things she couldn't. Theoretically, the only two people who could do that were the Number 1 and 2, and this boy certainly didn't match that description. The girls tried to come up with an answer, but were interrupted by the boy.
"Why do guys care so much?" the boy asked.
"Huh?" all the girls said in response.
"Everybody got out of it alright. I don't really see a problem, do you?" the boy reasoned as he began to walk away, "So what difference does it make who really saved them?"
As the boy walked away, the girls could only look on as he continued to hum the tune he was humming before being interrupted. The girls remained silent for a moment before Mikoto quickly spun around on her toes to face the vending machine.
"Stop acting so cool!" she yelled as she kicked the vending machine, knocking a can out, "Why does he always have to play the hero! And why does he only do it in front of me! It's driving me crazy!"
In her anger, Mikoto continued to repeatedly kick the machine, much to her friends' displeasure. A majority of her kicks were not as severe as the first one. For the most part, she was mostly stomping on the front of the machine. However, the last kick was another roundhouse kick, which was enough to force a second can out of the machine.
By some miracle, the force of the second can falling out was enough to knock the first can out of the retrieval slot in the machine. The can then rolled away from the machine before stopping right under the boy's foot as he took a step. Oblivious to this turn of events, the boy stepped on the can, causing him to lose his balance and fall flat on his back.
"Rotten luck," the boy lamented as he picked himself off the ground.
As he said his iconic catchphrase, he's danger sense began to go off. For some reason, he knew that some other form of misfortune was coming his way shortly. Turning around, he noticed a red-faced Mikoto glaring at him, sparks flying around her bangs. When he spoke, the boy made his presence known to the third ranked Level 5, who was throwing a tantrum regarding his normal behavior. Realizing he was still there, Mikoto flooded with anger and embarrassment at the face that he just heard he call him 'cool'. At this point, her emotions were too out of control for her to properly keep her ability in check.
"Now, now, let's not do something we might regret, Zapper," the boy attempted negotiate, backing away and holding up his right to avoid whatever electric punishment he may face.
"I told you, my name is Mikoto Misaka!" Mikoto screamed as she let out a huge bolt of electricity right at the boy whom she could never beat.
Acting on reflex, the boy jumped back and let his right hand take the blunt of the attack. The moment the electricity hit his hand, the sound of shattering glass was heard and the electricity disappeared, like it was never there to begin with. As soon as he was sure that the attack had been blocked, the boy turned around and ran away faster then what most people thought was humanly possible. He had no intention of staying after that last outburst.
Needless to say, everyone else present was shocked, literally and figuratively. While the electricity was gone, the after effects were still felt as the girls' hairs were standing on ends. Somehow, the boy that just ran off had managed to block Mikoto's attack with little effort and was still able to run away. Even more shocking was the fact that Mikoto put so much strength behind her attack. Normally, she hit people with warning shocks when they annoyed her. Here, she fired an attack that could critically injure someone if it hit directly. It was as if she was confident that that boy would be just fine, adding more proof that she spoke the truth about him, not that they needed any more proof at this point.
"Who was that guy?" Saten asked
"Not sure, never got his name," Mikoto shrugged, trying to calm down.
"You complain about him not calling you by name, but you never bothered to ask for his? I expect more from you, Sissy," Kuroko said in a disappointed tone, trying to ignore the face he acted so familiar with Mikoto, even using a nickname.
"Hey, what's that?" Uiharu pointed out as she approached the spot that the boy was standing at earlier.
The item in question appeared to be a brown wallet, most likely belonging to the boy that ran off. It seemed he was unlucky enough to drop it after falling on the ground. Checking the contents of the wallet, Uiharu found a student ID with the boy's photo.
"Touma Kamijou," Uiharu read out loud.
"Well, at least we know his name," Saten remarked.
"Still, it a pretty odd name," Kuroko mussed.
"What do you mean?" Mikoto questioned.
"His name can be interpreted a few ways," Kuroko explained, "'Kamijou' can be read as 'He who is above God' and 'Touma' can be read as 'Invisible Demon'. Take his name as a whole and you get 'He who purifies God and exorcises the Devil'."
"Pretty scary when you put it that way," Saten commented.
"Yeah, like a mysterious hero that strikes fear into the hearts of the wicked," Uiharu added.
"You really need to stop created such outlandish fantasies," Kuroko advised her partner.
"I don't know about striking fear, but he sure does like to play the hero and is a pretty big mystery," Mikoto remarked.
"Likes to play the hero, huh?" Uiharu said to herself before breaking into a grin and running off with the wallet.
"Uiharu, where are you going?" Saten cried out.
"I need to speak with Konori! I'll see you guys later!" Uiharu yelled back, not slowing down her pace.
"I wonder what that was about," Kuroko confessed.
"I don't know, but I have a bad feeling about it," Mikoto said with a slight shiver.
The following day, Touma was sitting down in his usual class with the fully grown but still extremely small Komoe. The day had started off normal enough. His only real issue at this point was that he had not faced too much misfortune that morning, the worst that happened was discovering his wallet was missing. Now, one might think this was a good thing, however, Touma knew that if he didn't face a large number of small unlucky events, he would face a huge unlucky event.
His suspicions were proven true when one of his other teachers, Yomikawa, entered the classroom with two female students, one his age with short hair and glasses and another being a middle schooler with a flower headband. On each of the girl's right arms was a green armband, signifying that they were members of Judgement on duty. However, upon closer inspection, Touma recognized the girl with the headband as one of the girls with Mikoto the other day.
"Rotten luck," Touma whispered under his breath.
"Is Touma Kamijou present today?" Yomikawa asked her fellow teacher.
"Kamijou is here, yes," Komoe responded.
"Can he please come up here?" Yomikawa asked the class.
The entire class all turned to face Touma's direction, expecting him to do something. Resigning to his fate, Touma got up from his seat and walked to the front to join the guests. The students' eyes never left him, even when he got to the front to speak with the Judgement Officers and teachers.
"Is there anything I can help you with?" Touma asked, trying to get to the point.
"My name is Mii Konori, chief of the 177th Branch of Judgement. The girl next to me is Kazari Uiharu, a Judgement Officer working under my branch," the girl now known as Konori said as she gestured to Uiharu, "She has informed me that you were present during the Graviton Bombing in Seventh Mist and helped her find cover when the bomb went off, saving her life. Is this true?"
Touma nodded in response, although technically he provided cover. The class began to whisper among themselves upon hearing this news. They all heard about the attack, but no one knew Touma was involved. Among the whispers, comments about Touma acting like a hero again and picking up girls could be heard. Touma decided to ignore whatever comments he heard.
"We wanted thank you personally and ask something of you," Uiharu spoke up as she and Konori bowed, "Please join Judgement. Your assistance would be very much appreciated."
At that moment, the classroom erupted into chaos. Students were jumping out of their seats making various comments. Many of the girls were congratulating Touma for his apparent act of heroism and encouraged him to join. On the other hand, the boys were all cursing him out, most because he had both a beautiful high school girl and a cute middle school girl bowing their heads to him like he was some kind of king. The latter type of comment was especially strong from his friends Peirce Aogami and Motoharu Tsuchimikado, considering the former boy was a pervert and masochist and the latter was a lolicon and siscon. However, the strongest remark about the current situation came from none other than Seiri Fukiyose, the single girl that seemed to be immune to the alleged Kami Disease, an infection that made all forms of females gravitate towards the unlucky Kamijou.
"Take the job, Kamijou!" Seiri said sternly.
"Why should I?" Touma yelled back in exasperation, "All Judgement does is go around cleaning and directing traffic when the automatic systems go down! I don't have the time to do all of that!"
"To be fair, that's not all Judgement does," Yomikawa stepped in, "They also help citizens with general problems and they assist Anti-Skill with law enforcement. Essentially, it's just community service."
"Which is exactly why you should join! Make yourself useful for once and contribute for society!" Fukiyose added.
"Besides Kamijou, you do all this kind of stuff during your free time anyway," Komoe pointed out.
"Don't we know it!" Tsuchimikado yelled.
"I saw him help a young boy get his kite out of a tree yesterday." Aogami remarked.
"Before the bomb went off, I saw him guiding a little girl through Seventh Mist," a girl added, "She was even calling him big brother."
"Okay! Fine! You're all twisting my arm!" Touma yelled, having heard enough.
"Thank you very much!" Uiharu and Konori said with another bow.
"By the way, you dropped this in the park yesterday when you tripped," Uiharu added as she presented Touma with his wallet.
'Of course I did. Rotten luck,' Touma thought to himself as he reclaimed his wallet.
"Since I'm in Anti-Skill, I can help you get your paperwork in order," Yomikawa explained, "Met me after class and we can get taken care of. We can even bypass the normal training you would have to go through since I know how physically fit you are. I am your physical education teacher. Komoe has also told me you're more of a hands-on learner, so protocol will be covered on the field. If all goes well, you will be enlisted by tomorrow."
"Just my luck," Touma lamented as his class cheered for their new Judgement officer.
Clearly, Touma was going to be having a rough time.
The next day, Touma found himself in front of the office building for the 177th branch of Judgement. True to Yomikawa's words, he was to be officially a member of Judgement starting today. He was already given his armband and was currently wearing it on his right arm. That armband was a symbol of his new obligation. Although Touma didn't want to join, he knew there was no harm in it. He always enjoyed helping people, this was a way to let him reach out to more people than he ever could before.
Taking a deep breath, Touma walked into the building, ready for whatever it had to throw at him. Or at least he hoped he was ready for anything. He followed the signs to the second floor when he found a single door marked with a sign indicating it was the Judgement office. He knocked on the door twice before the door opened, revealing Konori standing behind the door. Just behind her were the four girls Touma met in the park, Uiharu, Saten, Kuroko, and Mikoto. Uiharu and Saten gave him a warm smile. Kuroko did the same but there were clear undertones of skepticism. Mikoto, however, was glaring daggers at him and sparking slightly. The girls were sitting on a set of couches at a coffee table in the middle of the sizable yet cozy office.
"Welcome to Judgement, Kamijou," Konori greeted with a smile, "Please come in. We have much to discuss."
I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed writing this. Please, tell me what you think in a review. If this gets enough support, I might make this a higher priority project.