“Damn it… I’m so hungry…”
Misaka Mikoto pressed a hand against her complaining stomach as she dragged herself through the streets of New York.
She had been wandering aimlessly for nearly an hour.
Somehow, she had gone from the towering skyscrapers and dusty streets of Manhattan to an area that looked completely different.
Most of the buildings here were red-brick row houses.
Trees lined both sides of the streets, and the neighborhood was considerably quieter than downtown, filled with the atmosphere of ordinary residential life.
“Is this… Queens?”
Misaka looked at the word “Queens” on a street sign and murmured to herself.
It was already late in the evening.
Since the safety of Queens couldn’t compare with that of the wealthier neighborhoods, only a few pedestrians were still on the streets, hurrying home.
The place reminded her of some of Academy City’s residential districts, though the architecture was completely different.
The peaceful atmosphere allowed her tense nerves to relax slightly.
Unfortunately, her stomach’s protests were growing louder by the minute.
Right now, all she could think about was a steaming bowl of pork cutlet rice—or, honestly, even a piece of fried chicken from a convenience store would do.
Just as hunger was making her dizzy, a shout from a nearby street corner instantly put her on alert.
“Give me the car keys! Hurry up, old man!”
A man wearing a hoodie and a face mask was pointing a black handgun at an elderly man with graying hair.
The old man looked somewhat frail, but his eyes remained calm.
He gripped his car keys tightly and didn’t immediately give in.
“Young man, you don’t have to do this. We can talk.”
“Shut up! I don’t want to hear it!”
The robber was clearly agitated.
He stepped forward and pressed the muzzle against the old man’s chest.
“Last chance. Give me the keys!”
The elderly man was Ben Parker.
He had come here that evening intending to pick up his nephew Peter, who was both a source of pride and a constant source of headaches.
Peter had told him he was at the library doing research, but Ben had always felt that something had been weighing heavily on the boy’s mind lately.
What he didn’t know was that Peter Parker had recently been bitten by a radioactive spider and had gained superhuman abilities.
At this very moment, Peter wasn’t at the library.
He was on his way there.
Peter had been having a particularly unlucky day.
He had originally planned to use his newfound abilities to win the prize money from an underground wrestling match, hoping to buy the family a new car and ease some of Uncle Ben’s financial burden.
He had easily won the match.
Unfortunately, the promoter hadn’t honored his promise.
Instead of paying Peter the prize money he was owed, the man had tossed him a measly hundred dollars and told him to get lost.
Still, Peter had gotten a little revenge afterward.
He had personally witnessed the promoter being robbed.
And instead of stopping the thief, Peter simply stood there and watched as the robber ran right past him and disappeared into an elevator.
When the furious promoter demanded to know why Peter hadn’t stopped the thief, Peter had casually replied:
“I wasn’t obligated to.”
Although doing so had made Peter feel pretty good at the time, he had no idea that allowing that robber to escape would set off a butterfly effect.
Back to Misaka.
The moment she saw someone being robbed, her spirits immediately lifted.
Her eyes locked onto the two men.
A gunpoint robbery in broad daylight?
Was public safety in America really this terrible?
The sense of justice within her, along with that stubborn refusal to back down, immediately ignited.
Without the slightest hesitation, her right hand slipped into the pocket of her school uniform.
Her fingertips touched the cold, familiar metal of the arcade token.
“I’m counting to three!”
The robber had lost his patience.
His finger settled onto the trigger.
“One! Two… three!”
Ben Parker could feel the cold breath of death.
Yet he still refused to let go of the keys.
He wasn’t thinking about himself.
He was thinking about May and Peter.
What would happen to them if something happened to him?
Now!
In the thousandth of a second before the robber pulled the trigger, Misaka moved as fast as lightning.
She flicked the coin with her thumb.
In an instant, a blue-white arc of electricity flashed across her bangs, while a tremendous current surged down her arm and gathered at her fingertips.
“Bzzzt—!”
A barely audible hum.
The next moment, a beam of light tore through the darkness.
Traveling too fast for the naked eye to follow, it struck the gun in the robber’s hand with pinpoint accuracy.
Bang!
It wasn’t the sound of a gunshot.
It was the sound of metal instantly twisting, melting, and vaporizing under an immense amount of kinetic energy.
The handgun in the robber’s hand—and the entire hand gripping it—was obliterated in an instant, scattering metallic fragments and a mist of blood through the air.
For a moment, time seemed to freeze.
Ben Parker saw nothing but a flash of orange light and heard a sharp, piercing crack.
He instinctively closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the robber’s weapon was gone.
In its place was the robber himself, clutching his mangled wrist and screaming in agony.
“AAAAAAAH! My hand! My hand!!!”
Overcome by pain and terror, the robber’s eyes rolled back as he collapsed onto the pavement.
He writhed and screamed in agony while the arcade token rolled to a stop nearby.
Ben Parker was completely stunned.
He stared blankly at the surreal scene before him, his mind utterly empty.
What had just happened?
Had God intervened?
He followed the direction from which the beam had come.
Far down the street, he could vaguely make out a petite figure standing at the corner.
It appeared to be a girl wearing a school uniform, frozen in a strange throwing stance.
Before he could get a better look, the figure was already sprinting toward him.
“Sir! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
The girl’s clear, anxious voice pulled Ben back to reality.
He lowered his head and saw a pretty girl with short chestnut-brown hair looking at him with concern.
She wore a dark-brown Western-style school uniform he had never seen before.
There was still a trace of childishness in her features, but her brown eyes contained a determination far beyond what one would expect from someone her age.
It was her?
This seemingly underage girl saved me?
Ben opened his mouth.
It took him several seconds to find his voice.
He pointed at the robber screaming on the ground, then at Misaka.
His voice was filled with disbelief.
“Th-that just now… that was… you?”
“Yes. It was me.”
Misaka didn’t dodge the question or show the slightest hesitation.
She simply nodded.
Her gaze passed over Ben and landed on the robber writhing on the pavement.
Then she noticed the arcade token lying beside him.
Misaka strode straight past the screaming robber, picked up her token, blew the dust off it, and slipped it back into her pocket.
She frowned slightly.
Everything below the robber’s right wrist had been completely obliterated.
The edges of the wound were unnaturally blackened and partially melted, while the air still carried the faint smell of scorched protein and a lingering trace of ozone.
Maybe I hit him a little too hard.
But then again, that guy had been about to shoot someone dead.
At worst, this was self-defense in an emergency.
And she had been acting to protect an innocent person.
With that thought, the small amount of guilt in her heart quickly disappeared.
She looked away from the robber and turned back to the shaken old man in front of her.
There was a hint of apology on her face, and her voice softened.
“Um… are you really okay, sir? Things happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to think. I hope I didn’t scare you.”
“I’m… I’m fine, kid. You saved me…”
Ben’s mind was still buzzing.
He looked at the petite girl who seemed almost delicate, then at the robber who had been disabled with a single attack.
The enormous contrast between the two left him struggling to find the right words.
He took a deep breath and clenched his fist.
“Thank you. Really, thank you so much! If it weren’t for you…”
“It was nothing.”
Misaka waved her hand dismissively.
To her, teaching a piece of scum like this a lesson was as natural as breathing.
Besides, that little display had released quite a bit of the frustration she’d accumulated since being transported to this world.
She felt considerably refreshed.
Just then, sirens sounded in the distance.
The sharp wail grew louder as it approached, tearing through the nighttime quiet of Queens.
A few seconds later, a police cruiser with flashing red-and-blue lights screeched to a halt at the street corner.