"What's happening? Why did 9981's output spike like that?"
Inside the control room, the researchers stared at their screens in disbelief. This experiment was supposed to be routine. Like the nine thousand eight hundred before it, Misaka 9981 should have been eliminated within minutes. The cleanup team had already been preparing to move in.
Instead, the supposedly dead clone had stood back up.
Not only that. Her power readings had surged far beyond expectations. Instruments showed a sudden electromagnetic discharge equivalent to what the city classified as an advanced esper.
"A mutation?" someone whispered.
The project lead snapped to attention. "Abort the experiment immediately. Do not let Accelerator kill her. Bring her back. Now."
If a clone could jump that far mid-combat, it changed everything. Low-tier espers were barely more dangerous than armed civilians. But an advanced esper was a different story entirely. If that leap could be replicated, it would rewrite the balance of power overnight.
"Sir," another technician reported urgently, "9981 is no longer responding. She's destroyed her onboard monitoring unit. We've lost her signal."
The lead's face drained of color. "Impossible. Pull every nearby camera feed. Find her."
Elsewhere, Rowan moved fast.
He tore through the abandoned building from the fifth floor to the ground in seconds, crushing the tracking hardware embedded in his body with a focused magnetic pulse. A moment later, he vanished from sight, slipping out under concealment just as Accelerator reached the stairwell.
Wings unfurled. Rowan rose above the skyline and hovered, looking out over Academy City's endless grid of lights and steel.
He was certain now. The coin-launching attack, the name, the structure of the city. He had seen this somewhere before. Not in books. In animation. A series he barely remembered.
Details were hazy, but one thing stood out.
This world had rules. Systems. Protagonists.
And if every other world he had touched contained magic in some form, then this one likely did too. It simply hadn't been taught to the clones.
"All right," Rowan murmured. "Then I start with the center of the story."
Misaka Mikoto.
If there was a thread tying this world together, it ran through her. And through her, perhaps, Rowan could uncover how far his new abilities could truly go.
As he flew, his thoughts turned inward, circling a question he'd asked himself more than once.
What was the point of all these incarnations?
Survival was the first answer. As long as one version of him lived, his existence continued. Lose the original body and he could still endure, anchored elsewhere. But the original mattered. Every new split came from it. Lose that, and the chain would eventually end.
The second answer was accumulation. Every incarnation added something. A wizard's bloodline. A beast's reflexes. A body hardened beyond normal limits. Now, a refined form of electromagnetic control. Each one fed the whole.
Third was versatility. Magic from one world strengthened him in another. Knowledge stacked. Abilities crossed boundaries. Every new reality made him harder to corner, harder to kill.
And finally, there was learning. Each body was another mind. Another perspective. Focus five versions of yourself on the same problem, and the answer comes faster.
Which meant the priority was always the same.
Stay alive.
Then take everything this world had to offer.
Right now, raw potential still remained. His electromagnetic control had surged, but it didn't feel finished. Misaka Mikoto herself had reached her peak only after years of structured development. Rowan suspected that with access to the city's research and the original herself, he could push further still.
Perhaps even further than the system intended.
He raised a hand, tracing a precise gesture through the air.
"Locate: Misaka Mikoto."
A faint golden arrow formed, pointing across the city.
Rowan followed it, wings cutting through the night.
No wands existed in this world, which meant gesture-based casting for now. Slower than he liked. He made a mental note to fix that.
"I'll need to talk to Professor Snape about silent casting," he thought dryly. "Eventually."
For now, speed would have to come from somewhere else.
And Academy City was full of shortcuts.