Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kakine Teitoku, ranked second of the Level 5s, had what he thought was a cold.

It had started something like a tickle in the back of his throat last Tuesday and over the course of five days had evolved into a full blown cough.

It was irritating. He hadn’t been sick since, well, as far as he could remember. Maybe back when he was very young and before his ability had evolved into being.

He was at the hospital because someone had asked to see him. Normally Teitoku would’ve ignored such requests, but the identity of the patient who had made the request had piqued his interest.

He expected to feel triumphant or vindictive, staring down at the body of his great enemy laid exposed and bare. Instead, he felt nothing. Accelerator’s snow-white hair blended neatly into the color of the bed and the walls. He had always reminded Teitoku of a bird, thin and airy and light-boned.

Someone, it seemed, had shot this bird out of the sky.

There was no gore. It had happened softly and so quickly that the last Teitoku remembered Accelerator, it had been two, no three, no it was two, two weeks ago, and the first ranked of the Level 5s had sneered at him, as if looking down at him from a high point above, and issued the verbal equivalent of a spitting in the face.

“Look at you,” Teitoku marveled. Who was the one standing above the other now? To be so high up in the first place meant only you fell harder and faster when they kicked the ladder out from underneath your legs.

Accelerator might’ve glared at him. It was hard to tell. Those red eyes had lost much of their anger and vitality. They were dull and fixed on distant nothings.

“Why did you want to see me?” Teitoku asked.

Accelerator did not respond with strength or vitriol. He could not have. The oxygen mask fixed to his face prevented that. But through it, his dry and cracked lips were seen to have parted, and the tips of his fingers twitched, ever so slightly, indicating the question had been heard, and Teitoku, against his better judgment, leaned in.

In Teitoku's ear, Accelerator spoke the name of the boy he had been before he’d become a monster and before the monster had become him.

Teitoku did not realize nor understand. To him, the words had just been a garbled mess of syllables, a dying person’s nonsense. As Teitoku leaned back, bemused, he considered pulling the plug of the machine in the wall to revel in the sight of Accelerator choking to death, drowning in his own lungs, lips turning blue. Wouldn’t that have been humiliating? he thought. But in the end, he decided against it. It would have actually been a mercy. And besides, in all the ways that mattered, it was already over. Accelerator really had left his last meaningful moment with him. 

A mass of nurses and doctors rushed into the room as he left. As Teitoku walked out of the hospital, he was seized by a sudden bout of coughing. When he looked down at the palm of his hand, it was flecked with blood. 

Accelerator died three days later.

Teitoku didn’t get to enjoy being at the top for long. Gokusai Kaibi found his body slumped against the wall of a dirty alleyway, hand curled on empty air.

Kaibi thought the expression on Teitoku’s face made him look a little bitterly satisfied, as if he knew, somehow, all that was to come. His expression might have said something like, At least I wasn’t the first or finally, I beat you in something.

Misaka Mikoto stared at the sink basin miserably. It looked splattered with petals of dark rose.

After a while of staring at it, so long she knew her eyes couldn’t possibly be deceiving her, she turned on the faucet and rinsed the petals away. 

So, she was dying, huh?

The news of the first and second ranks’ deaths had spread through the city like wildfire. When it happened, Mikoto had been sitting in class, and there had been an announcement over the PA system, requesting that she go to the student office. There, she found a couple delegates from the Academy City Board and scientists waiting for her.

Mikoto didn’t trust scientists by habit. After they had explained the circumstances of the number one and number two’s deaths, she still didn’t trust them, although that might have been because she was too busy in shock, reeling over the implications. Deep down, she could understand their… concerns. One Level 5’s death might have been a freak accident. Two might have been a coincidence, however unlikely. Three and it would have been a definite pattern.

Shortly after that meeting, Mikoto picked up a cough.

Some of her friends expressed concern for her, hearing the unsettling rumors floating through the city, but she laughed it off. Then she had started coughing up blood. And there was nothing left to deny. To herself, at least, she accepted it—to her friends, she kept going on as if nothing was wrong.

“This means,” Shokuhou Misaki said, in the same casual breezy manner she loved to speak with so often, “that I am very possibly dying, too.”

“Don’t say that.” Mikoto spoke it as a harsh order, but the underlying tremble and shortness in her voice ruined the effect. She knew it to be the truth, too.

Misaki reached for Mikoto’s hands and gently twined their fingers together. “What are we still waiting for, Misaka-san?” she said. “Do you want to continue to run from this? From us?”

“No,” Mikoto breathed, sighed, and made the beginning of a sad song. “No, I suppose not.”

They kissed on the rooftop, they kissed in the hallways, they kissed in front of the astonished eyes of their classmates and friends. They held hands shyly, were tender when they felt like it, did all those cliche and cringeworthy things people in movies were always doing and were not self-conscious of it. They lived like they were living in a Hollywood movie. Dying had given them the rare courage to be open and honest and reveal the real feelings hidden in their hearts. Fear of embarrassment, fear of judgment, they all seemed insignificant next to the looming feeling of ‘I wish there was more time’ and ‘so in the end we can only make do with whatever we have’. The old habits of hiding what troubled her, Mikoto kept, but the old habits of hiding what gave her joy, she did away with.

In the long and complicated history of two people who claimed to hate each other, they found love. Inevitably, Misaki’s symptoms started to manifest.

“It does look like roses,” Misaki said, about the blood. She continued, thoughtfully, “Isn’t it strange that we both thought of that? Isn’t it strange, that in a whole wide world, two people can have the exact same thought, at the exact same moment in time, about something so small…”

Mikoto said nothing.

“Sure,” Misaki closed her eyes. She sank down, slowly, down, down, down, and squeezed Mikoto’s hand. “Let’s stay like this for a little longer.”

Mikoto said nothing. 

She would say nothing again forever.

In time, Misaki’s own breathing quieted, became content. 

The sad song ended.

Chapter Text

After the seventh ranked Level 5 died, there was a period of uneasy peace. Perhaps the illness that killed the seven Level 5s (because what else could it have been but an illness, the coughing, the sudden deterioration, the extinguishing of life) was an affliction that only affected those special, highest ranked espers. Extensive post-mortems of the bodies revealed nothing on the pathology of the disease. Perhaps, some people whispered, it was a punishment from God, against those who dared to reach so far into what was unnatural.

Just when people were starting to relax and allowing themselves to breathe easy, the first Level 4 died.

Then the second. Then the third. Then the fourth and the fifth and more and more ad nauseam. They kept dying, spread across every district in the city with no discrimination of who was struck down, it soon became apparent that no Level 4 would be spared. And after the last Level 4 died, what then? Would the Level 3s begin to fall sick, too? The Level 2s?

There were riots. Public morale crumbled. Nobody knew what was going on. A few people made a fortune selling sham cures. There began a hysterical mass exodus from the city, as if that would be the great salvation from this pestilence they found themselves facing with, but the governments around the world who had once so coveted Academy City’s miracles and secrets now shunned them out of fear, and a strict quarantine zone was quickly established. The Level 5s who could’ve broken through the military perimeter with ease were already gone. The few Level 4 espers who made it outside were reported to have died from the illness anyway. 

Someone started the idea that the researchers were to blame, that perhaps it was them, somehow, causing the illness in conducting a sick sort of experiment, and so there was a movement, and in no time at all, the researchers were culled. The remaining adult non-espers of the city who could flee from the city, fearing similar, irrational retribution, all fled.

And the illness persisted. The Level 4s continued to die.

A feeling of doom and despair crept through the city.

Still, day after day, Shirai Kuroko put on her Judgment armband and went out on patrol.

Even as the foundation of everything she knew crumbled to dust around her, she kept steadily working. There were always people in need of help and work to be done. If her heart was full of grief and pain, who could tell, for her mind was strong. Her conviction was unshakeable. In a world full of rot and darkness, you might have called her a pillar of truth and justice. Perhaps that sickness which they said was given by God would have spared her out of pure respect for her virtue. 

Kuroko teleported onto the rooftop of the apartment building and found an oddly familiar face waiting for her. The building, she knew, was rigged full of explosives and even more people who served as vulnerable hostages. Musujime Awaki, sitting on the ledge of the roof, seemed far too happy to see her.

“Took you long enough,” Awaki said as she stood up.

“Do you think this is funny?” Kuroko said.

“The world’s gone to shit and this was the best way to get your attention. I wanted to see you one last time.” Then, Awaki said, “Shirai-san. I’m dying.”

When the coughing seized her, Awaki didn’t cover her mouth like others before her had. Her teeth were red with blood when she straightened and smiled, because Kuroko did not say that fatalistic diatribe that everyone is dying and living is only the process of dying in slow motion. Awaki said, perhaps the person in all the past and present and future of the city to say it with the most honesty and most straightforwardness, “I don’t want to die. I’m not ready to die. There’s still so much I want to live for. It feels like my life’s just started to turn around and for what? For this?”

“That doesn’t mean you get to take all these people with you,” Kuroko said.

“So impassive,” Awaki laughed. There was a note of despondency in her voice. Kuroko had missed the point. On purpose? “Does nothing get through that one-minded skull of yours?”

“Their lives matter,” Kuroko said, immediately.

“I didn’t say they didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to…”

“Then what were you trying to say?” Kuroko challenged.

There was a moment of silence. They stared at each other. “Sure then, alright,” Awaki said, eventually. “Sure. I mean. We both know everyone is going to die anyway. I’m saving these people from a slow and painful death this way. It’s a, how would some people say it? It’s a mercy.”

Without missing a beat, Kuroko replied, “That doesn’t make the time they have left any less precious. You don’t have the right to make that decision for other people.”

“So here you are, spending your last weeks, days, possibly hours, opposite me. Protecting strangers who couldn’t care less about you.”

“Yes.”

“How… I mean, seriously. How truly good of you.”

Kuroko’s was a good speech. A different heart would have been swayed. As for Awaki, she just kept standing there and smiling her wretched bloody smile. So what if I had just wanted to talk to someone and find a dear confidant in you? What if I wanted you to see that this is a cry for help? I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. But if you insist on making us into that kind of story, then I’m prepared to be the villain to your hero until the end.

But please do know there isn’t an ending where the heroes win, much less one with ‘happily ever after.’

“Sorry, Shirai-san. Then because… I really don’t want you to remember me so pathetically, like this.”

And the first crack appeared on Kuroko’s face, the manifestation of raw, anguished human emotion, of regret, perhaps, and she threw out her hand, shouting, “Wait, Musujime! I—!”

The explosion ripped apart the block.

On the other side of the city, a short while later, Hokaze Junko set down her tea cup, watching the gray ash fall from the sky. Kouzaku Mitori mirrored her motion. Kongou Mitsuko, who felt a little left out in this peculiar group of three, took another sip of tea.

“Pardon me, Hokaze-san,” Mitsuko said. “But is it supposed to take this long?”

“Just a little longer, I imagine,” Junko replied cheerfully. “It won’t be long now.”

“Mm,” Mitori said. Her eyes fluttered as she began to nod off, then suddenly her chin jerked and she was awake again. “Sorry? Where were we?”

They played cards for a while and drank their tea and made jokes, and there was a relaxation and good humor about them that was rare for a group of should-have-been strangers, especially in the situation where the world they knew was ending around them if that was what was happening, or maybe because it was because the world they knew seemed to be ending that their humor was so good. It was all one big joke.

Junko had been close to Misaki, everyone knew, and Kongou thought she should offer up some consolation to Junko like she had to Kuroko about Mikoto. Kuroko had looked at her strangely when Mitsuko had said she was sorry for her loss, with the eyes of a person who was seeing and thinking and hearing nothing. Junko looked at her with much of the same expression now, too.

“I’ll be seeing her soon enough,” Junko said.

“What?” Mitori interjected with a snort. “Don’t tell me you believe in all that afterlife crap?”

“You don’t?” Mitsuko said, astonished. 

“I don’t believe there’s nothing,” Mitori said. She waved her hands. “But heaven? Hell? No way. Either way, I’m going somewhere far, far under.”

They debated the subject for a while because it had never seemed more salient and topical than it was at the moment. Mitsuko had been afraid that Junko would get upset, but in fact it turned out Junko was so assured of herself, so blindly confident in her position, unassailable to all rationality and logic, that the more she refused to acknowledge Mitori’s points, the more Mitori was the one who began to grow upset. Mitori began to speak faster and louder and angrier, but then, towards the end, as the tea began to affect her more and more, slower and quieter and with hurt, until finally, she was crying, breathless, heaving sobs, tears rolling down her cheeks, and everything was spilling out of her.

“What am I doing,” Mitori was saying, between gasps and slurs, tripping on every other word of her speech, “w-why am I here, I-I-I-I should be… Dolly…” 

And Mitsuko wanted to console her as well, but her tongue was already heavy in her mouth, her limbs were heavy as stone, immovable, and soon, she could no longer keep her eyes open. Junko had not spoken in some time, but If Mitsuko was able to look, she was sure she would see a serene, peaceful expression. On the round table, the last of the tea cooled slowly in its kettle, next to the forgotten playing cards.

As Mitsuko’s consciousness started to disappear, piece by piece, she was thinking about her father. Before this, she had called him and said goodbye, but she was trying to remember if there was anything she had forgotten to say. She wondered if her parents would have another child when she was gone. If they did, she wished they would grow up happy and healthy, as she had, that they would have a wonderful childhood, wanting for absolutely nothing.

She was thinking about all the plane rides she had taken as a child before they had had the chance to become mundane, her hands pressed to the glass, mouth open in a delighted ‘o’, staring at the ground far below her: how she would have loved to see such a sight one last time.

Chapter Text

So actually, Konori Mii felt pretty good about herself. Right at the beginning, when it was just the Level 5s and everyone had been in a nervous, general sort of denial, the former Judgment chief officer had gone to the local convenience store, complete with her life-savings, and purchased their entire stock of Musashino milk and chocolate chip ice cream. As a result, while everyone else around her was crying and panicking and having mental breakdowns a la everything, and even later moreso, when the supply chain began to break down, she was still riding high.

Holed up in her apartment, the news of the first Level 3s falling sick came trickling in. She calmly took a swig of her milk and switched the TV channel. After a few minutes, bored, she switched the channel again.

“Hey!” Yanagisako Aomi, Mii’s roommate, complained loudly. “I was watching that!”

“Whose ice cream are you eating?” Mii rolled her eyes. “I’m not in the mood for a kids’ show. Tough.”

“Konori-senpai,” Miyami Shaei requested, politely, from where he was squished in the middle of the couch between them. “Could you please switch the channel back?”

Heart softening immediately, Mii acquiesced. Shaei was a nice kid. He had shown up at the Judgment branch office one day, looking for Kuroko (except this was after Kuroko had already gone, after, those long heavy days, when Uiharu Kazari spent all her hours sitting at the desk staring blankly at the computer screen saying nothing). He was lucky that he had come when he did, because it was soon after that Mii stopped showing up at the Judgment branch office at all. What would have been the point? she thought. No job or work, no matter how noble the goal, was worth wasting your life over. Mii was determined to spend her last days as comfortably and lazily as possible, which meant watching TV and eating gratuitous amounts of ice cream and drinking milk in her pajamas.

On the one hand, Mii wasn’t completely sure Shaei understood the implications of what was going on, given how young he was at ten years old. On the other hand, he seemed very mature and well-spoken for his age. Perhaps he was just good at accepting it. It was so sad, Mii thought, it was really too sad, he was just a kid. Then, she had the vague thought, oh, wait, I’m just sixteen. I’m a kid, too. Technically, we’re all kids. And she started to grow morose.

Hating the sudden cloud of heaviness that had descended over her, not wanting to disturb the mood of Aomi and Shaei, who were glued to the TV set, Mii excused herself to the bathroom. She took off her glasses and cleaned them, then splashed water over her face. She coughed a little, just a little, and there was no blood, because it was still early for her. Otherwise, like Mikoto had, months before, she might have found herself staring at a dark blossom of rose staining the otherwise clean and white sink basin.

Why do we waste so much of our time on work and trying to make our life meaningful? In the end, we’re all going to die anyway. What’s so bad about kicking back and just enjoying yourself while you can? Just living and getting by day by day is hard enough as it is. Why do we have to fight so hard to prove ourselves? Who are we proving ourselves to? What’s so bad about a life of mediocrity and having never accomplished a single thing? Mii’s reflection did not have any answers for her, and Mii was glad. 

She went back to the living room with a new carton of milk and tub of ice cream, and as she settled down into the couch, she reached over and ruffled Shaei’s hair. He reached up and touched his head, then looked at her with a quizzical expression, What was that for?

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I just felt like it.”

They watched reruns from sunrise to sundown and for days after and did not feel bad for it.

Ekaterina was big even for a fully grown ball python, and Awatsuki Maaya and Wannai Kinuho were starting to struggle to find food for it.

There weren’t many pet stores open anymore, as trade with the world outside of the city had essentially come to a standstill. Indeed, save for the bare essentials, there really weren’t many stores open at all. Normal life as they had once known it was over. Some people still went to school, but Kinuho and Maaya chose not to. Their school in particular, due to the nearing-complete demolition of its demographic, was all but gone, anyway.

“It says they can go up to six months without eating,” Maaya said, squinting at her phone. “So worst case…”

“That’s animal abuse,” Kinuho said. “We promised Kongou-san we would take care of her.”

The transition between calling Ekaterina ‘it’ versus ‘her’ had come sometime in the past two weeks. At first, the two of them had definitely only taken care of the reptile out of respect for their former friend and done the bare minimum that was required of them, but as time passed, they found that Ekaterina grew on them more and more, until they began to consider it as if it was their own pet. There was something surprisingly doglike about the python. Ekaterina loved physical affection and seemed to have a preternatural sense for unhappy moods. Not to mention, doing their best to take care of the python served as a good distraction. It was nice to have a problem to focus on, a problem that could be solved, and to feel like they were doing something useful.

Maaya had been only joking about the six months thing, Kinuho knew. Still, the question remained: what were they going to do about its food?

“She could eat you first,” Maaya suggested. “I bet you’d be delicious. Doesn’t she look absolutely delicious, hm girl?” Draped across Maaya’s lap, Ekaterina’s forked tongue slipped out in a low hiss of agreement, a sound which only grew louder when Maaya slipped a hand under its chin to give it a few scritches.

Underneath her kind and gentle demeanor, Maaya had a surprisingly dark streak of humor. Kinuho, for her part, had no problems playing the role of the straight man. Kinuho, the one doing research on her phone now, said, “It turns out humans are actually quite bad for a snake’s diet. Eggs, poultry, or red meat should suffice as long as they’re unprocessed.”

“In that case, it’s settled,” Maaya said. “Of course, we wouldn’t want to give you an upset stomach, would we, girl?”

Those food items, although still difficult to procure, Maaya and Kinuho had a much easier time of finding. But it wasn’t a permanent solution. After all, when the two of them were dead, who would take care of Ekaterina? Ekaterina could live up to 30 years in captivity. The python had a long, fruitful life ahead of it. Maaya and Kinuho, unfortunately, did not.

It turned out there were some animal rights and humane shelter organizations outside of the city who were more than happy to get in touch when Maaya and Kinuho reached out. They made the arrangements to secretly smuggle Ekaterina out of the city and to go to a loving owner—it would have been nice if they could have met the person and vet them themselves, but with the circumstances what they were, they just had to accept it. Actually, the organizations said, there’s a greater problem at large you could help us out with. Although owning pets was something that had been discouraged in the city, there existed still hundreds of thousands of dogs, cats, and other domesticated creatures that would suffer horribly in the aftermath of their owners’ disappearances. Right now the situation was still alright, but when the city’s human population was inevitably cut more dramatically in the future, well.

Maaya and Kinuho were more than happy to oblige, although Kinuho also felt a few moral qualms about the matter.

“I think it’s sad that some people care more about the welfare of animals than other people,” Kinuho said. It turned out it was far, far easier to get an animal out of the city than any of the esper inhabitants. 

“It’s because human beings can be horrible and cruel and evil,” Maaya said. “Animals are less complicated to care about.”

Kinuho could understand where Maaya was coming from—it was a perspective that was seductive. Outside the problem of the illness, how disgustingly easy it was to give up on the human race and write off the whole messed up, entangled thing as a loss… Kinuho didn’t know if it was right for people to feel this way about other people, nor was she in the business of telling people how they were supposed to feel. All she knew was that when it came down to it, helping animals could not have been a bad thing, and it was better to try to do a for-sure good thing than to do nothing at all.

They decided to set up a makeshift organization of their own and went around recruiting volunteers for help checking up and gathering the animals of the city. In this way Kinuho and Maaya eventually found themselves knocking on the door to the apartment shared by Mii and Aomi.

“I want to go with you to help,” Shaei said. Anyone could see the boy loved his dog dearly, and vice versa, with the slow way it was wagging its tail, the low pitched whine that came from its throat at the idea of separation.

“I’ll go, too,” decided Mii, but as she finished her words in the doorway, she started coughing, hard and long coughs, that soon had her doubled over and unable to breathe.

“I think you should rest,” Kinuho said, not unkindly.

“I’ve rested enough,” Mii said, with a newfound glint to her eyes. 

In the end, they were able to round up and save many animals, and even after Kinuho and Maaya had died, people who were inspired by them continued to work and help out for this common shared purpose, until the last dog and cat and parakeet and snake and hamster and what have you was out of the city and on their way to finding new owners. Later in the far future, when historians were going over the whole, interesting debacle of the city, some would point to this event as proof of the resilience of the human spirit, how under crisis, it’s sometimes the most unexpected and ordinary people who prove themselves.

Chapter Text

As beings who had come into being expecting their deaths, psychologically speaking, the Misaka Sisters were the most mentally prepared for the real prospect of it.

As beings who had also defied their deaths at the last possible second with the greatest impossibility, the Misaka Sisters were also, counter-intuitively, the most hopeful.

They were formidable scientists of their own right, and many of them already spread across the globe, with immense calculating abilities and resources at their disposal. Where others had given up on discerning the means and mechanisms of the illness, the Misaka Sisters did not. In fact, they were so bold as to set themselves to the task of discovering a cure.

Not only were they the scientists, they were also the test subjects and patients, and the doctors. They confirmed the illness only affected espers, and it affected espers in a strict reverse order. That is, among the espers of the same level, it was the strongest espers who always died first, or those with greater personal realities and AIM diffusion fields. Why this happened though, no matter what experiments they did, they could not determine. Seemingly for no reason, patients would develop a cough which would progress into hemoptysis then acute respiratory failure. If patients were hooked on ventilators and kept alive that way, soon, they would suffer from sudden systemic organ failure with no hope of resuscitation.

They tried every possible kind of medicine known to man. They tried existing pharmaceuticals, developing their own pharmaceuticals, they tried recreational drugs, homeopathic remedies, medieval remedies. They took the claim that the illness was something from God seriously and began to dutifully appeal to God with all the seriousness of scientists, systematically and methodically and completely.

Let it be known that the Misaka Sisters were not without faith. Even as they themselves started to die off one by one, they remained faithful. After all, as we said, they were the most hopeful, too, and in certain ways, hope and faith are just the same words applied in different contexts.

There was, of course, doubt among these proselytes of religion, as there always is when there is religion. One particular Misaka Sister, 18823, was especially shaken by the death of the Prototype, who Mitori and Misaki and others had known as Dolly.

Dolly had been a Level 3, and she had passed relatively early in the line of Misaka Sisters who had been judged as Level 3. Only in around thirty percent of suicides do they leave a note, and while Junko and Mitsuko had not, Mitori had not been so cruel, and in fact, besides leaving a long and detailed and loving note better described as a letter, she had also left behind a gift. (We will forgive Misaki, who did not leave anything behind for Dolly, because people who are in love are also nearly always blinded by it, preoccupied by it to the detriment of all other relationships. For this reason we will forgive Mikoto, too. Let them have their happiness with each other, a romance to the end.)

Misaka 18823, who had been the researcher charged with taking care of Dolly as she deteriorated, had witnessed the intense cheer and optimism that gripped Dolly. Where the other Misaka Sisters had always been more reserved, Dolly was open and wore her heart on her sleeve, and she wore it with smiles and easy affection. 

More than once, Misaka 18823 had questioned Dolly if she was lying or being dishonest about her apparent happiness, but each time, Dolly had denied it. It seemed to Misaka 18823 that Dolly had to be lying about something. How could Dolly talk about Mitori so often and with only fondness? Day after day, she would tell stories about ‘Mi-Chan’, she would read the letter, she would shake that glass, lava-lamp like container full of gray-metallic liquid, watching globules and particles rise and fall, the creation and destruction of meaningless shapes, with child-like wonder.

Eventually, Misaka 18823 came to the conclusion that there is a difference between happiness and positivity. Dolly died with a content, peaceful smile. In the years to come, the paper of the letter would yellow and wither away.

There is also, Misaka 18823 decided, a difference between being hopeful and being stupid.

God was not real. God was not going to save anyone. Some of the Sisters went searching for that boy with the miracle in his right hand, because if anyone walking on the good salted Earth could be God or a vassal of God it had to be him, and because he was the one who had saved them the first time around, but no one could find him. Misaka 18823 had the wholly original thought of fuck God, God was dead.

Misaka 18823 had been one of the Sisters who had volunteered for the trial of recreational drugs, and she found herself going back to it. There was once a girl who decided she was going to spend her last days of life doing nothing but watching television and drinking milk and eating ice cream, and this was actually one of the lesser self-destructive coping habits picked up by the occupants of the city.

Addiction is not as easy a habit to kick, though.

Misaka 18823 was shunned and excluded from the network. Maybe what happened to her was a moral failing, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe her dangerous, radical thinking was infectious—better safe than sorry, right? Better not risk it and to just cut it off, isolate it. Nobody else enjoyed the hypocrisy or the irony. In either situation, Misaka 18823 spent her last days alone.

She was not in a dirty alleyway, with scattered needles all around her. There were plenty of empty dorms and apartments in the city. She was quite comfortable in a bedroom, the heating turned on high, absentmindedly dozing, coming into consciousness in and out. It was a very comfortable, some might even describe it as spiritual, experience. She was also higher than a kite.

In one of her last bouts of lucidity, Misaka 18823 was seeing an image: a very specific image. It was the image of an angel. The angel had white hair and eyes colored like rubies and very beautiful wings. He seemed to be shining with pure light, and he was holding his hand out to her, a gesture of ‘come here’, his whole expression one of consolation and comfort. And in that moment, seeing this angel, Misaka 18823 believed. She believed more than anyone else had ever believed, even more than Junko had, and she repented her insolence, deep in her heart.

Even if God isn’t real, who cares. Even if it’s unscientific and irrational and stupid, if it gives a person peace and comfort, who cares.

Last Order was the last one to be created, and so she was the last one to die, too. It also happened that when it happened, she went alone. But she did not feel alone. In her last months she found herself often thinking about that person who shared the same visage as the angel with white hair that Misaka 18823 had seen, who in fact, all the Misaka Sisters had seen in their last moments as they had died. Actually, the image was nothing more than the manifestation and strength of Last Order’s longing and missing for that certain person made real and powerful and tangible, so strong that it passed through to everyone.

It seemed to Last Order the most horrible and awful thing was that no one would remember Accelerator as she remembered him, that in history, he would only ever be seen first as a monster then as patient zero. She was the first person he had told his name to. Teitoku was the second. And she wanted everyone to know his name. She wanted to remember it forever, for it to exist in the world forever, even after she was dead. That was what he deserved.

But nothing lasts forever, and memories are only ever retained in the minds of the living, a trick of biology.

Chapter Text

There was a period in her life when Kazari thought she had everything figured out.

Awaki had lamented that she was dying just when her life seemed to start turning around. As for Kazari, hers was a life which had already turned around. She had everything she could have ever hoped for and dreamt of once upon a time. A job she loved, friends who cared deeply and strongly for her, a purpose for herself. Many people deeply respected her.

Then it truly had, as Awaki had also lamented, gone to shit.

Maybe it was the fact that it had all come out of nowhere and there was no way in any shape or form she could have been prepared for it, and it was also something that no amount of preparation would have been able to salvage nyway. Mikoto was gone. Kuroko was gone. Kazari had fallen into a deep, depressive funk which seemed impossible to pull herself out of. She had lent her skills to Maayu and Kinuho when they had reached out, asking for help, and without her considerable skills, they never would have been able to track down and locate all the animals that they did. And while this had given her a brief feeling of self-actualization, that feeling hardly lasted.

Soon, the depression was back, and deeper and darker than ever before.

Everything felt colorless and meaningless.

There was knocking on the door. Kazari, after some deliberation, went over and opened it.

It is a misconception that people who are depressed sit around and do nothing all day. At least this was a misconception for Kazari. Kazari had always enjoyed reading books, and with no school and a plethora of free-time, she began to work through long reading lists which had just once occupied fantasies of ‘this would be nice’.

She read the classics, the literary novels, the science fiction and fantasy, the chick-lit, the light novels. She read foreign authors, from the 20th and 19th century, and from even earlier. For a while, she even devoted herself to reading philosophy, starting from the classics of classics—translations of ancient Greek and Roman authors. She liked Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, for instance, which talked briefly about Stoicism and its virtues: the virtues of living by virtue, that is. (The Romans did love that word, virtue. Say any word enough times and it all begins to sound like garbage.)

It was Saten Ruiko at the door, and she had brought by more books and also food.

It was mostly canned goods and non-perishables. Canned mackerel was one of the items in the plastic bags. Ruiko set about busying herself with making a late lunch while Kazari carefully looked over the books Ruiko had brought her.

“You stole these from the library,” was what Kazari eventually said.

“Well, it hardly matters, does it?” Ruiko said. “I found most of the ones you asked for there.”

“I don’t know, Saten-san,” Kazari sighed. “I don’t like it. It doesn’t feel right. What would Misaka-san or Shirai-san say?”

“Let’s go return them together then, after we finish eating,” Ruiko said.

Mikoto would have appreciated the sentiment behind the gesture. Kuroko, too, although she would have also spent some time dressing Ruiko down with a lecture. Ruiko was a good friend. Kazari knew what Ruiko was doing, and she knew she should deeply appreciate her for it. Ruiko was, at this point, the only friend Kazari had left. And yet why was it that it seemed she was unable to muster her gratitude and appreciation the way she wanted to? Why was it that all she could think about was how dark and gray everything was, that all she could focus on in every moment was this giant feeling of emptiness inside of her?

Is it better to be alone by yourself or to be alone in a crowd? Even with the people we love and care so much about, sometimes we just want to push them away, or sometimes, even when they’re there, it really feels as if they’re not there at all. Just ghosts that are liable to disappear at any moment. Their touch is transient and unwarm.

There had never been enough land in the city to make graves, and now that the Level 1s were dying, the crematoriums had finally started to go into steady business. Kazari and Ruiko walked the same old sidewalk as they had always walked, down the same streets. It was eerie how similar and unchanged the city looked, except for in the background, the emissions of dark plumes from smokestacks.

There were no librarians at the library, only steady accumulations of dust on books which had once serviced students who had needed them. Kazari and Ruiko played a game where they tried to figure out where Ruiko had taken the books and to put them back in the exact same spot. Surprisingly, Ruiko was even worse than Kazari was at it. It was true, though, Kazari had always had a great memory and spatial awareness. She remembered many people and things no one else would. Unlike Last Order, who had held Accelerator in the highest esteem in her memory, in Kazari’s mind, it was far more egalitarian. She remembered a girl with peculiarly thick eyebrows, for example, and a boy with a dirty mop of hair who had once broken her arm (did anyone think of him anymore? did anyone? did anyone?) and a girl stuck in juvenile hall with funny shaped teeth, rotted away, a girl who by principle had disliked people who did the right thing.

Ruiko said something—Kazari wasn’t sure what, except that it was funny, unexpected—and then they were both laughing, belly-ache laughs, so hard that they had started to cry.

Kazari felt better. Not by much, but she did feel better. She decided that today was a good day. Well, what more could she ask for anymore but a few good days every now and again.

They went to the arcade and played until they ran out of coins, until all the screens flashed GAME OVER, INSERT COIN TO CONTINUE, but there was no way of continuing anymore. They won a frog plushie. Ruiko said she would take it to the memorial later, then a moment later, changed her mind, and told Kazari she should keep it.

Then they walked some more, going nowhere, with no destination in mind, taking their time, and there was silence, the silence that comes from the comfort of not having to say anything but still feeling perfectly understood.

“Thank you for being my friend,” Kazari said.

“No problem,” Ruiko said. “I love you.”

I love you.

No, really, I do.

Memory is just a trick of biology, but if you can only remember one thing, please remember that.

Chapter Text

At last it started. The beginning of the end.

The first Level 0.

A Level 0 was a Level 0 was a Level 0 was still an esper. And the rules of the game, as shown by the Misaka Sisters, demanded that all espers would die.

Up until then the city had at least retained some facsimile of life to it. Level 0s had made up some sixty percent of the student base, after all. Sixty percent of eighty percent of two point three million is one point one million, plus four thousand for significant digits.

Quote: a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic. End quote.

Quote: you can’t just skip the boring parts. Of course I can skip the boring parts. End quote.

They all died.

There’s not much else to say. They all died. Doesn’t it sound so funny, so matter-of-fact and nonchalant and stupid, just like that? They all died. There was no miracle. No one survived. Not Accelerator nor Teitoku nor Mikoto nor Misaki nor Kuroko nor Awaki nor Junko nor Mitori nor Mitsuko nor Mii nor Aomi nor Shaei nor Kinuho nor Maaya nor the Sisters nor Dolly nor Last Order nor Kazari nor everyone else in the history of the city, whoever you ever knew the name of and whoever you didn’t know the name of, everyone you can possibly think of.

It was the end of an era, the end of espers, of the city of science, of what some people would eventually call pseudo-science, or more dramatically, some kind of special sin, or something like that. (Turns out God and religion would stick around far longer than espers did. Figures.)  The smokestacks of the crematoriums chuffed happily until there was no longer anyone to man them.

In the final years there were two people who clung to life the longest and most stubbornly. One was Kamijou Touma, one was Saten Ruiko.

Ruiko had a good idea of why Touma was still alive. It was because he was special. As for herself, she really had no idea, she just knew that for some reason, it wasn't her time yet. At one point she had the horrific thought, what if we’re supposed to get together and have children? What if this is like that story of how the Earth is repopulated from two, Adam and Eve, Pyrrha and Deucalion? Fortunately or unfortunately, that never happened, and she and Touma only ever talked to each other distantly and politely, when they ran across each other in the great skeletal structures of decaying buildings and streets which you could no longer mistake as eerily similar to what they had once been. 

She asked him, once, about what he thought about everything that had happened. He scratched the back of his head with his right hand and grinned sheepishly, although it was a hollow and melancholic expression.

“I failed, I guess,” he said. But Ruiko thought he was being too hard on himself. If only all the real problems of life could be neatly and cleanly punched away. It didn’t matter what he had been up to when everything had been going on. It was already in the past, too late, and she felt no ill will toward him. In fact, she only wished that he could forgive himself.

One day, she woke up and looked out the window and saw the sun, and she knew that she was the last person in the city alive.

She felt relieved, because it meant her time was coming soon, too. It had been very lonely.

When she bent over a few days later, coughing like her life depended on it, she was faintly thrilled to see the blood covering her palm when she peeled it away from her mouth.

A girl started following her around soon after, a blonde girl with blue eyes who had died long long before anyone else had.

“You’re not real,” Ruiko said.

“You’re the last person who’s left,” Frenda Seivelun shrugged. “Anything you imagine, anything you want, it’s real. No one else would ever know, anyway.”

“Hm…” Ruiko said. She considered it.

She imagined an alternate reality where everyone was alive and happy. It didn’t have to be a special place like this city had been. Maybe it was just an ordinary one where they were all ordinary students, going about their lives in ordinary ways.

She imagined a cloud, nice and fat and dark, that it might appear and cover the sun, which was shining so cheerily and happily above her, just like it would shine for the next five billion years, the light which was hitting and hurting her eyes, the sky so peerlessly and beautifully blue: could all the beautiful things that ever existed just disappear for a moment? All over the world, Ruiko imagined it raining. It would have been nice if it rained for them, if just for a little while.

When Ruiko eventually closed her eyes, she couldn’t tell where the wetness on her cheeks had come from. She imagined she was simply going to sleep. One day, she’d wake up again.

The city, hushed, the cradle of countless children.