A Certain Unexplainable Dragon Slayer

2 Stories

The night of August 30 was a relatively normal one for the top ranked Esper in Academy City. The albino high school age boy was making a routine trip to the convenience store to restock on his supply of canned coffee. As per usual, he bought up a majority of the store's supply of his preferred brand of black coffee. He liked it best that way.

After making his purchase and leaving the store, he started down his normal route back to his apartment. As he walked down the moonlit streets of Academy City, Accelerator ran into another regular occurrence for him, or rather the occurrence ran into him. As he was minding his own business, a random stranger he had never met before charged at his rear with a metal baseball bat. And as per usual, this stranger posed no threat, his feeble attack easily blocked by Accelerator's Automatic Reflection, the most basic application of his Vector Manipulation. Thus, the stranger was left sprawling on the ground, clutching the wrist that was holding the reflected bat.

Not too long after, Accelerator was confronted by even more strangers, all of them wearing an expression on their face that said they thought they were hot stuff. This was the one the that changed with Accelerator's usual routine, these confrontations were becoming more frequent. Seeing as this batch of idiots would be no better chance than the last one, the Level 5 simply stood there and took their attacks, patiently waiting for the inevitable moment that they were all left on the ground with broken bones and dislocated joints. That moment came to pass within five seconds of the group's arrival. Afterwards, Accelerator simply continued walking, pretending nothing of significance had just happened.

The source of this change in the albino's daily routine was obvious. It all came back to the shutting down of Project Level 6 Shift. After he lost to a Level 0 in a fight, the experiment was shut down due to the contradiction with the basic premise, that Accelerator was the strongest Esper in Academy City. Soon enough, word got out about his defeat and the Academy City rumor mill took it from there, spreading storied about how the weakest Level 0 defeated the strongest Level 5. Suddenly, everyone in Academy City thought they had a chance at beating the First Ranked Level 5 and taking the title of top dog for themselves, leading to the increase in pointless challenges Accelerator was facing.

However, there was a crucial detail that the rumor left out, a detail Accelerator knew all too well. The Level 0 that beat him was not a normal Level 0. He was the exception to the rule. That Level 0 was Y/n Kamijou, the only person in Academy City with the means to beat him in a fight. He was the only person who had that mysterious power that could bypass Accelerator's Ability the only person with even a minuscule chance of winning that fight. And yet, because of that lack of information, idiots all around Academy City thought they had a chance at victory.

Now, Accelerator was left with pretty much nothing. Because of that defeat, he lost whatever reputation of unparalleled strength he had managed to build up prior to the start of Project Level 6 Shift. With the end of said project, he lost his chance to gain the reputation of invincibility. 

As Accelerator continued his way down the streets of Academy City, he passed by a certain high-end apartment building in District 7. From one of the apartments up on the tenth floor, the screams of a family feud could be heard, along with the incredibly painful sound of a paper fan smacking against human flesh. The screams of the unfortunate soul being attacked were so loud that Accelerator could hear them from several blocks away at ground level.

"Glad I can reflect that," the Level 5 mused to himself as he projected a simple vector barrier to block out sound waves.

Continuing down his regular path with his noise blocking barrier up, Accelerator was completely oblivious to the fact that he had another person trying to interact with him. However, it was not another challenger trying to get his attention. If anything, the figure following him was the least similar to anyone who has ever approached him in the past. The figure was short, about half of Accelerator's standing height, and was covered from head to toe in a tattered blanket. It took several minutes for the Level 5 to even realize that the figure was following him thanks to the noise blocking barrier.