Haru disliked Shirai Kuroko.
She was rude, she was callous, she was (quite fittingly) judgmental, she was pompous, she had this weird speaking mannerism that drove him crazy, and most importantly, this doggone author was trying to fill up the word count quota by placing "she was"in front of every single comma! Absolutely outrageous.
Haru was currently situated in front of the dark alleyways within the city, being forced to find an object without even knowing its appearance. How did it come down to this?
Earlier that day...
"It's not 'I door the open', its 'I opened the door'. English is SVO, unlike Japanese, which is SOV."
"Gaah, why does English have to be this confusing...!"
It was 7 o'clock in the morning. The unfortunate student and his roommate were currently sitting outside on a public lunch table. Haru was comfortably sipping on his milkshake while Touma was currently locked within a struggle against his arch enemy: schoolwork. Yes, the monster who faced against a Saint, Electromaster, Ars Magna, and much more, was useless against his most formidable adversary.
"It's not 'alot', it's 'a lot'." Haru made some markings on Touma's paper. "Also, the word 'definitely' is misspelled often, so watch out for that."
It was August 31st, the last day of summer vacation before the second semester began. Students around the district were currently divided into two categories: those who were frantically finishing their work, or those who wished to relax before the school began. Tou-man belonged to the former, much to his chagrin.
"Unless you had your memory magically erased sometime this summer," Haru sighed, "there is no way you just simply 'forgot' about your work up until today."
"Eh-heh-heh-heh..." Touma nervously chuckled as he continued on with his work—little did Haru know, that was exactly what happened. And he couldn't let anybody else know about that little fact. Such misfortune...
"But I will say one thing; other schools certainly didn't give this much homework during summer breaks. This is almost ridiculous. Is this a thing within Academy City?" Haru began to examine the workbooks with a stern look. "I would be almost too lazy to do all these..."
As Touma began to weep comically in exhaustion over his school work, Haru began to languidly check over the status of online forums within his phone. Nothing major seemed to be going on, despite the reports of increased security surveillance submitted by other fellow hackers on the webpage... sighing in boredom, Haru slipped his phone back within his pockets.
"Ahh, I can't take this!" Touma stood up, gripping his head with his hands. "I'm going for a walk to see if any of my friends are willing to help me on this... such, such misfortune!"
"Good idea." Haru leaned back. "Not like you will finish your work at any time soon, at any rate."
His spirit crushed by Haru's merciless prediction, Touma slouched away from the table.
"You guys are a bit slow, you know?" Haru quietly muttered, having been looking all over online for any signs of space-related activities. "At the speed you are moving in, someone else might take the remaining debris..."
"That Uiharu..." Kuroko complained while flipping through the Judgment records, "Assigning me all this hard work of tracking information down. How tedious."
As a Judgment worker, Shirai Kuroko had the responsibility of doing any physical investigation they needed to do. And that sometimes included finding and hunting down criminals. Unfortunately, today was a slow day, and only she was left to do the legwork.
Well, until she spotted him leisurely sitting on a table outside a shop, anyway.
A devious idea popping into her mind, she quickly walked toward him, grabbing something within her bag.
"There you are!" she cried out, approaching him. "I've been looking for you. Here." on the table, she placed a Judgment armband.
Haru turned around the moment he heard her and became a bit confused at this sudden development.
Hmm, she looks familiar... but when did I see her?
"...Ah, you are that bird from Judgment, or whatever." Haru finally recognized her after a few moments. He looked down toward the armband. "...What is this?"
"Your honorary Judgment armband. With this, you will temporarily be able to do Judgment work officially." Kuroko gave a smirk. "So, get to work."
"What am I, your slave?" Haru snorted. "I have more important things to do than to clean up trash on the streets, either literally or figuratively."
"Ah, but you still have illegal status within this City!" Kuroko began to giggle evilly while her hair began to obscure her eyes. "You better help me with this, or else!"
"... Seriously?" using his high level intellect—which was enough to do calculations for each and every individual faster-than-light traveling particles on the fly using pre-memorized particle motion equations—Haru desperately tried to find a way out of doing grunt work for the Judgment, but unfortunately, while the solutions he came up with would solve his immediate problems, there still was the issue with his illegal residence.
"...Tch," Haru mumbled as he rose up from the table, veins popping on his head. "Fine, what shall I do for my ouju-sama?" Haru drawled. "Clean the streets? Roll out the red carpet? Carry you around?"
"Well, that won't be necessary. A citizen reported a missing lady handbag and is quite anxious to get it back. Your current job is to search through the streets of the Academy City to find and retrieve this missing item. This is the description of the item in question." Shirai held out the paper from her pockets.
"Really now, is this what I've become? Being a lost item retriever for who knows what?" grumbling, Haru snatched the paper out of her hands after taking the Judgment Armband.
"Once you find the item, report to the Judgement district of 117 branch."
"Yeah yeah," Haru waved the details aside. "Don't get me wrong, if I don't find this item soon, I won't bother spelunking for it."
… And the rest is history.
Really, how low did he fall? Here he was, being forced to look for an unimportant macguffin because a middle schooler loli lesbian psycho yandere was blackmailing him.
Mumbling indiscernibly Haru was looking over the broken down parts of the city carelessly, trying to devise a way for him to get out of this mess with the least amount of difficulty.
And then, he noticed something.
Within one of the buildings, through the window one would be able to see a silhouette of a man lying down within a room. Normally, Haru would brush off this detail, but the said building was completely deserted and derelict. Unless he was homeless, there was no reason anyone would be within this building.
Intrigued, Haru ventured within. While breaking down the door with some swift kicks, he seriously hoped that he had a good reason for breaking and entering, and at the same time, he seriously hoped that nothing was wrong, either.
An unexpected scene was before him. A young man, with dark brown hair, with expensive looking clothing lay on the ground before him, gagged and blindfolded, his hands and feet tied.
He had this certain regal look, someone who looked like a portrait that came to life; looking cool and elegant. He exuded the sense of aristocracy, and Haru would not have been surprised if he was related to influential people within the Academy City.
But, there was one glaring aspect within this picture that drowned out every other detail. On his right arm it looked as though someone tore off his skin very neatly, from elbow down to the palm, although the fingers themselves were spared. It was a very ugly sight.
After standing there stunned for several seconds Haru hurried to the lying body. Forming a small dagger with tachyon particles he began to slice off the bindings; within seconds he was gently lifting him up, checking him for signs of life.
No pulse. He was most likely dead. Grimacing, he gently placed the lifeless body back on the ground. Who had done this? Was ripping off a part of one's skin enough to kill them? What should he do next?
But right then and there something miraculous happened.
Almost as if someone breathed life right back into the corpse, as if someone changed filters within a camera, the entire color of the body slowly changed. The skin tone of the young man lying before him was restored from being cold gray into a healthy shade of peach. Haru stood there, shocked at this transformation.
The figure lying on the ground slowly lifted himself off the ground, opening his eyes to check his surroundings.
"I have to hurry!"
In a stark contrast to a lifeless carcass that he was before, the victim jumped into action.
"I need to tell her about the danger! No time to explain!"
He ran past the gobsmacked Haru and went out of the abandoned building. Footsteps echoed outside as he madly dashed toward a random direction. Haru, sensing urgency in his words quickly followed.
"Hey!" Haru yelled out while catching up with him, "Who is in danger?"
"Someone is looking to hurt Misaka-san!" the victim yelled back, becoming more agitated by the second, "I have to go warn her!"
Surely he can't be serious.
"You know, you have a gigantic open wound on your arm!" Haru protested. "And with all this breeze from running, it must feel painful! She can handle herself! Get yourself to a hospital first!"
"By then it will be too late! This guy is dangerous!" Ignoring his advice, the wounded teen kept on dashing around, searching for the electromaster.
"Che..." clicking his tongue, Haru pulled out his Gekota Phone while taking care not to trip in the process. Having the emergency number in his quick dial... this was embarrassing.
"Hello, ambulance?" Haru inquired into the phone, "We need immediate medical treatment here..."