A Certain Misfortunate Spider

Chapter 20 - Foreboding

A few hours before Kamijou saved a bunch of thugs from a murderous orange girl...

"It's... an ability..." Saten muttered to herself. After using the Level Upper, and giving it to her Akemi, Mako and Muu, they began ton develop powers themselves.

Akemi apparently developed telekinesis; before she could barely lift up a small paper cup to a few inches, but now she could lift Muu off the ground.

Saten ignored that and looked at her fingers.

Small sparks of yellow electricity danced around her fingers, with one small spark bursting to life before fading, and a larger, seemingly stronger bolt erupting from her palm and striking a nearby pole.

The discharge of the bolt caused the pole to instantly light up before it powered down.

"Woah, Saten-san, you can shoot lightning out your fingers? That's so cool," Mako, her braid pig-tailed friend went over to check out her power.

"That's pretty cool Saten, you could probably give the Railgun a run for her money," Akemi jested.

Saten only giggled. "I highly doubt that, although... something like this ... is just enough. Yeah, it's just enough."

Akemi smiled at her friend's glee, unaware that an angry single-fanged demon went up behind her and started placing her in a chokehold, with Mako taking her eyes off Saten and going over to help the helpless Akemi take Demon King Muu off her.

'At last, finally,' Saten was filled with so much joy.

'I finally became an Esper!"

-

Present Time, 2 days after Kamijou saved Kuroko...

"Oh god I'm so tired... Ow!" Kuroko Shirai groaned, fatigued by the battle which had taken place only a few minutes ago. Three days had passed since her battle with the dealers back in District 7's Rundowns, strips of abandoned, dilapidated buildings which were popular spots for ne'er-do-wells to continue their illegal activities. Had it not for the Red Man appearing as he had things would've been a lot worse.

On a particular afternoon in July 24th she had went to a supposed meeting spot of Level Upper deals, and encountered a gang of them within 20 minutes of investigation. Unluckily for her, one of the espers within said group alerted the others to her presence, which had resulted in an all-out brawl.

It seemed that, as she continued her Level Upper buybusts the last remaining groups have increased their numbers, bolstered their forces, in the hopes of making sure Judgement wouldn't go snoop around in their business.

And that was their mistake, as Kuroko wasn't one to crack under danger.

As expected the young officer engaged in combat against the gang, a battle which had taken much of Kuroko's stamina, and caused her to take a couple hits in from the rest. But eventually with some help she managed to defeat the entire gang.

"Every day you've been taking in a lot of scrapes from every battle."

"It's a necessity Uiharu. More and more people are using Level Upper. And because their powers aren't shown in the Bank they use them to commit crimes. The more people use it the greater the panic this'll ensue when the side effects get revealed to the public."

"There's no telling with how far this is spreading. Considering how Level Upper's effects are similar to Testament but on a greater scale... just what's going on here?"

"Well. Wondering and making guesses about everything won't get anything done. We must make sure to get every single piece of information about the Level Upper, find out a way to save those comatose from it, and arrest the creator of this twisted device."