The evening sun cast a warm golden glow over the streets of Queens, causing the shadows of two people walking home to stretch far across the pavement.
“Hey, you.”
Misaka Mikoto turned her head and looked at the dejected Peter Parker walking beside her.
Ever since that night, the boy had been like this—looking like a puppy that had been caught in the rain.
“Oh… sorry.”
Peter raised his head, his eyes darting away uneasily.
Misaka sighed.
She simply stopped walking, planted both hands on her hips, and spoke in a firm, no-nonsense tone.
“Listen, Peter. Your Uncle Ben is fine. That’s all that matters. You don’t need to keep wearing that end-of-the-world expression. It’s ruining my mood on my first day walking home from school.”
Peter opened his mouth, but in the end, he could only nod.
He couldn’t tell her that if it weren’t for her, Uncle Ben might very well have died because of one selfish thought of his own.
That crushing sense of guilt weighed on his heart like a boulder.
And the more casually the girl in front of him treated everything, the more insignificant and irresponsible he felt by comparison.
The two walked the rest of the way in silence before pushing open the door to the house.
“Aunt May! Uncle Ben! We’re home!”
Peter called out weakly.
“Misaka, Peter, you’re back from school! Go wash your hands and come eat. I made your favorite chicken wraps for dinner!”
Aunt May’s warm voice came from the kitchen, accompanied by the mouthwatering aroma of food.
At the dinner table, warm yellow light fell across everyone’s faces.
Uncle Ben cut into the chicken wrap on his plate before looking up at Misaka with a gentle smile.
“Misaka, how was your first day at Midtown High? Getting used to it? Did anyone give you trouble?”
“It’s all right.”
Misaka’s mouth was stuffed with food, making her answer slightly muffled.
“The classes are much easier than in Japan, and everyone seems pretty friendly.”
She wasn’t exaggerating.
With her academic abilities as one of Tokiwadai Middle School’s top students, the curriculum at Midtown High was practically elementary-level material to her.
She’d even had enough spare attention during class to calculate the optimal firing angle and air resistance for her Railgun.
Hearing her answer, Uncle Ben and Aunt May exchanged glances and smiled in relief.
The reason Misaka could sit here so peacefully, and even attend school like an ordinary student, went back to that night half a month ago…
“Bang!”
That was the last sound Misaka Mikoto remembered.
It was the tremendous clang produced when the foot clad in her bubble socks made intimate contact with that stubborn vending machine in Academy City.
But the next second, the familiar sound of dented metal was gone.
Instead, she heard deafening horns and the chaotic din of countless voices speaking different languages.
Misaka’s eyes flew open.
She stared around in utter bewilderment.
She was standing in the middle of an extraordinarily wide street.
Towering skyscrapers surrounded her, their walls covered with enormous electronic billboards.
The harsh glare of the lights made her eyes sting.
Blond-haired, blue-eyed Caucasians, dark-skinned Black people, and people of every conceivable complexion streamed past her like a tide, everyone moving with a sense of urgency.
This wasn’t Tokyo, Japan.
And it certainly wasn’t the Academy City she knew.
“What the heck…?”
The wind tousled her short chestnut-brown hair.
Misaka used one hand to smooth it down while instinctively reaching into the pocket of her middle-school uniform with the other.
Her fingers found only a cold, hard arcade token.
Her trump card.
The specialized ammunition for her Railgun.
A faint blue-white arc of electricity flashed across the bangs above her forehead before disappearing almost instantly.
It was a precursor to her powers becoming unstable—a sign of extreme agitation.
She could feel the city’s electrical grid.
It was like an endless web stretching in every direction, with countless unfamiliar electrical signals surging wildly through her electromagnetic perception.
The signals were jumbled and chaotic.
And it was seriously irritating.
What had happened?
Had she been kidnapped?
Or was this some kind of prank pulled by one of Academy City’s espers?
While she stood there looking around in confusion, a massive screen mounted on the exterior wall of a shopping mall on the street corner caught her attention.
On the screen, a blonde, blue-eyed female news anchor was reporting in fluent English.
“…Three months have passed since the Battle of New York. Stark Industries announced today that it will take full responsibility for the post-war reconstruction of Manhattan. Public discussion surrounding the superheroes known as the Avengers remains intense…”
The footage changed.
One photograph after another flashed across the screen.
A man in a red-and-blue suit wielding a shield.
A muscular blond man in a red cape holding a war hammer.
And then…
A figure clad in an armored suit of red and gold, flying through the sky.
Misaka’s pupils contracted sharply.
What were these?
Was this some kind of movie trailer?
What shocked her even more was the time and location displayed in the lower-right corner of the screen.
[New York — August 3, 2012, 8:05 P.M.]
“2012…?”
Misaka’s lips trembled.
She could hardly believe her eyes.
She remembered perfectly that the day she’d kicked the vending machine was April 5, 2011!
Not only had the date changed by more than a year, but she had somehow gone from Tokyo all the way to New York!
To confirm her worst suspicion, she hurried into the shopping mall.
She found a store selling Apple products and located a Mac that could access the Internet.
She opened the browser and, with trembling hands, typed the following into the search bar:
“Tokyo, Japan — Academy City.”
[No results found.]
“No way…”
Misaka’s face went pale.
“I really crossed into another world?”
“Is this the Vending Machine God punishing me?”
“I swear I’ll never kick another vending machine again! I’m sorry! ”
Misaka was on the verge of tears.
It felt as though all the strength had been drained from her body.
She slumped helplessly against the chair, both hands grabbing her hair as she tried to use the pain to convince herself that this was nothing more than an absurd nightmare.
This wasn’t her world.
She couldn’t go back.
“Goodbye, Kuroko, Uiharu, Ruiko, Shokuhou and her embarrassingly voluptuous figure, all my friends and little sisters, and…”
“That idiot…”
“No, no! This isn’t the time to think about that!”
Misaka shook her head and forced the image of a certain someone out of her mind.
“You’re an Academy City Level 5 esper, Misaka Mikoto! Are you really going to be afraid of some ordinary world?”
“I have to work hard! I have to fight for myself! I’m going to make a name for myself here in America!”
True to her strong-willed personality, Misaka managed to pull herself together after only a brief moment.
In this unfamiliar world, she was sixteen years old, 161 centimeters tall, completely penniless, without a single acquaintance, and looked like a harmless and adorable middle-school girl.
Her only “possession” was the cold arcade token in her pocket.
“All right, Misaka Mikoto. The battle begins!”
After giving herself a pep talk, Misaka planted both hands on her hips, took a deep breath, and marched out of the shopping mall with renewed determination.
“First things first. Survival basics—find somewhere to sleep.”
She muttered to herself as though issuing herself a mission briefing.
“Hotels, motels… They all cost money.”
“Where’s my money?”
She patted her pocket and pulled out the lonely arcade token, tossing it lightly into the air.
“One arcade token. Great. I probably can’t even buy a can of Coke from that vending machine over there.”
Her eyes instinctively drifted toward the vending machine on the street corner.
Her right foot unconsciously lifted slightly.
“No!”
“Misaka Mikoto! You swore!”
She quickly slapped both cheeks, killing the dangerous thought before it could take root.
“Be civilized. I can’t solve every problem with violence anymore…”
“At least not when it comes to vending machines.”
She set off again, wandering aimlessly through the streets of New York.
Scaffolding and enormous green construction tarps were everywhere.
The arms of massive cranes moved slowly overhead, accompanied by deep, rumbling machinery.
A huge billboard had been torn away halfway, exposing the soot-blackened wall behind it.
Several lengths of rebar jutted toward the sky like the ribs of some enormous monster.
“The news said… ‘post-war reconstruction’?”
“Stark Industries… Sounds like a really rich company.”
“What kind of ‘battle’ could do this much damage to an entire city?”
She looked up at a huge section missing from the side of a building.
The exposed edges of the metal and concrete bore obvious signs of having been melted by extreme heat.
“There’s no way an ordinary bomb could do that.”
“That blond musclehead with the hammer, and that guy in the metal suit…”
“This world seems even more ridiculous than I imagined.”
“All right, so this isn’t a world of ‘ordinary people’ after all. That just made surviving here even harder!”
“Yay…”
“Like hell it did!”
“Grrrrr…”
An extremely inappropriate sound came from her stomach.
The aroma from a hot-dog stand on the sidewalk seemed to grow little hooks and desperately crawl into her nose.
“Damn it… Even my stomach has betrayed me…”
Misaka clutched her stomach, her expression helpless.
“Calm down. Calm down! The most important thing right now is money!”
“Money! Money! And more damn money!”
“How do normal people make money again? Get a job?”
She looked down at the Tokiwadai Middle School uniform she was wearing.
“A minor who looks sixteen, with no identification… Who’s going to hire me?”
“Should I ask for help?”
“‘Hello, Officer. I’m actually a superpowered girl from another dimension. Could you give me some money for food and a place to stay?'”
“Or maybe…”
“‘Hey! Who’s the toughest fighter at your taekwondo school? I’ll take on ten of you at once!'”
“No, no, no!”
“I’m actually here to apply for a job as an instructor! Don’t let my small size fool you. I’m really strong!”
“And then I’d have to make an incredibly arrogant face…”
“Absolutely not! They’ll lock me up in a psychiatric hospital!”
After a couple of impotent fits of rage, Misaka finally accepted reality.
She irritably raked her fingers through her hair.
The bangs above her forehead began flickering with faint electrical sparks once again.