After hitch hiking with several more cars and taking one bus, the entire group was able to make it back to the airport. Mikoto drew a lot of stares with her ragged clothing and extroardinary injuries. One woman in the airport even took the liberty of asking if she should call 911.
In any case, the airport had it's own general store with a variety of first aid kits. Mikoto could hear some of the employees whispering among themselves as she and Lucy looked for large bandages. Apparently, they thought she might be a girl running away from an abusive family or something. She couldn't blame them, the massive scar across her back was clearly visible through her torn shirt, and thanks to Dark Matter, it was now bleeding slightly again.
Lucy and Elli fixed Mikoto up in the bathrooms while Nicole, Natsu, and Happy went to buy some new clothes for her at another store.
"How do you feel?" Lucy asked Mikoto after she had been bandaged and put on a new pair of shorts and a dark blue shirt with a yellow lightning bolt on it.
"Like I got beat up by a tree and not a skyscraper." said Mikoto. "Yeah..I feel loads better."
"So what now?" asked Nicole. "We need to get to Taiwan. And from what it looks like, the earliest flight available right now is from China Airlines."
"All I need is 30 minutes, an access point to the internet, and a laptop or something and I'll have some tickets up...oh, and I'm making us new names and passports." said Mikoto. "I'm not gonna try to explain why Bruce Wayne is flying economy class."
As it turned out though, Mikoto was able to get some nice First Class tickets. She decided to name everyone after their Edolas counterparts, except for Nicole who got the name Ezra Mavros (That was the name of her original concept character.) Happy and Elli didn't need tickets or passports as they were pretending to be stuffed animals.
That flight, Mikoto thought she felt a little bit of what it felt like to be Natsu and Nicole. She was so nervous, that she felt like she might be sick. The wounds on her back twinged a little, as if there were still beetles crawling around...eating at it.
Half the time, she kept on expecting Teitoku to suddenly appear, or for Diablo to rise out of the plane's floor with an army of demonic horrors behind him.
Finally, Mikoto couldn't take it anymore, she needed to stretch her legs. She got up from her seat, entrusting Lucy to look after Elli, and walked down the aisle, feeling like a dead girl walking.
That's when without meaning to, she accidentally walked straight into another girl without meaning to. The two of them fell onto their bottoms.
"Ow...oh, I'm sorry.." Mikoto began before suddenly going. "EHHH!?"
The other girl was wearing a winter sweater, some jeans and a scarf. But her most noticeable features, was that besides the high tech military goggles she was wearing, she looked exaclty like Mikoto, right down to the hairstyle.
"Misaka did not mean to bump you, says Misaka apologetically." The girl said as she stood up and bowed. "Please forgive Misaka's rudeness."
Mikoto stood up and rubbed her head awkwardly. "Erm, hey, don't you recognize me?"
"Ah yes." said the MISAKA sister. "You are Big Sister, Misaka is MISAKA no.10599, But you can call Misaka Aiko as that is the name Misaka has chosen. We have not met yet I believe."
"Right.." said Mikoto. "Erm, what are you doing here?"
"Misaka is on vacation!" said the clone doing a cutsie pose with a peace sign while her face remained expressionless. "Misaka has worked at the library in Academy City for a while, and because Misaka has accumulated so many hours, they declared that Misaka must go on vacation, says Misaka as she remembers her workplace thoroughly."1
"Vacation eh?" said Mikoto with a sigh. "Man, I wish that was the reason I was on this flight."
"Misaka doesn't understand, says Misaka with some slight confusion, is Big Sister on some sort of business trip?"
"Well.." said Mikoto. "I guess you could say it's business.." If you could call walking to your inevitable doom business, was the continuing the thought.
"In that case." said Aiko Misaka. "Does Big Sister have a place to stay in Taipei? Misaka asks."
"No." said Mikoto. "But it's nothing really, we don't plan to stay really long-" Before Mikoto could finish her sentence, Aiko pushed 4 slips of paper into her hands.
"Th-these are reservations to a luxury hotel!" said Mikoto. "H-how could you afford these!?"
"Misaka won them in a lottery." said Aiko. "Misaka had extra, so Misaka thought you could use them."
"Thank you!" said Mikoto. Well now that was one less thing to worry about. At least, that was until Mikoto picked up an odd scent.
Mikoto sniffed the air. "Does something smell...off to you?"
"Misaka is not sure what you mean." said Aiko. "Does Big Sister feel alright?"
"Yeah.." said Mikoto. "Sure, it's probably nothing."
Mikoto returned to her seat and tried to ease her troubled mind. She watched several movies. After watching Spirited Away 13 times over, she began to feel like the main character of the movie. Lost in a world she couldn't seem to get used to.3
Mikoto had nearly spent all her life in Academy City, and the past year she had spent mostly in Fiore. Both places compared to the rest of this world were outlandish and strange...magic, supernatural powers, clones, god-like enemies...after so much time spent around that, Mikoto couldn't help but feel extremely strange when she saw the outside world for the first time in a long while. No cleaning drones, high tech automatic buses, or espers. No magic sparks flying into the air from time to time, or a rambunctious happy guild welcoming you back from various jobs. The lack of strange had pretty much become strange.
As Mikoto thought of this, she suddenly realized something weird. This flight, according to the time on the screen in front of her, it was already 15 minutes since they should have landed, yet no announcement had come about an extended flight or plans to land shortly.
Currently the cabin was dark and the windows were closed as people were sleeping. Mikoto slid open her window as she was on a window seat. Elli stirred drowsily as the sliding sound was heard and Mikoto peered out the window.
At first all Mikoto saw were clouds and the city of Taipei spread out below them..then a black fanged scaley head appeared inches from the window, growling and drooling angrily.
Mikoto yelped as the baby 6 ft long Etherial Wyrm crawled up the wing of the plane, followed by others. Lucy and Elli woke with a start as the plane began to shake violently.
"Wh-what's going on!?" Lucy exclaimed.
Mikoto peered frantically out the window of the plane again as she saw that the airline was struggling towards an airport runway. So that's what had been going on..the crew probably didn't want to cause a mass panic, so they kept the announcements silent until they could land...smart move, but that didn't change the fact that a nasty assortment of Dravis's minions would be waiting to eat everyone on board once they landed.
Mikoto needed a plan, and fast.
"Lucy.." Mikoto said desperately. "Those things are after us..Dravis must be tracking us somehow."
Lucy nodded. "What'll we do?"
"Lead them off the scent." said Mikoto. "We're going to have to jump off the plane before it lands..."
"But me and Happy can only carry so much!" said Elli.
"I said jump, not fly." said Mikoto. "I-I might be able to cushion our fall if I use my wings. But the landing will be rough, especially from this hieght. And there's a chance some adult wyrms might appear and intercept us in mid air..either way, those wyrms won't attack the people on this plane as long as they don't smell us on it..they're after us, and only us.
Lucy gulped. "Okay..but, are you sure we can't just find a parachute or something?"1
"No time." said Mikoto gritting her teeth. "We have to go now. You get Natsu, I'll get Nicole."
Lucy and Mikoto got out of their seats and woke up Happy. Happy and Elli helped the other two lift Natsu and Nicole out of their seats.
"Nicole.." said Mikoto. "I know you're feeling really sick right now, but I need you to use your powers to phase us out of the plane..if we open the door, it'll be too dangerous for the other passengers."
Nicole nodded, her face still looking purple out of motion sickness. "I'll try."
Mikoto felt her body turn light as Nicole grabbed the others in her arms. The Ghost Dragon magic passed through everyone like a cold whisper and instantly Mikoto felt herself go right through the belly of the plane.
In an instant, Mikoto and everyone else was tumbling through powerful wind towards the city covered landscape below. The clouds were too far above and the sea too far away for Mikoto to ionize some moisture for flight..which meant she had to do the next best thing...
Mikoto activated her wings as Elli flew down and grabbed Mikoto's back. Mikoto reached her hands out and grabbed Nicole and Lucy's arms who were both grabbing onto Natsu. Happy had already grabbed onto Natsu's back, and like Elli was using his flight power with all his might to slow the fall.
As the ground began to look closer and closer, Mikoto closed her eyes and concentrated, immediately her wings grew even more massive and morphed into six massive tendrils surrounded by purplish twisting spatial energy. Spatial Thunder Dragon mode.
"Come on.." said Mikoto. "Come on!!"
Immediately, a large electric spark blasted out beneath the group and a swirling portal formed. A second later, the group found themselves 2000 feet closer to the ground, falling straight into a cobblestone road as Mikoto's tendrils dissapeared.
Everyone groaned as they got up and rubbed their aching body parts. Mikoto looked up to see a large building not too far away with two sets of massive stairs and an octagonal looking traditional Asian roof.
"Guys." said Mikoto. "I think we're at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial."
"The what?" groaned Natsu as he rubbed his head.
"It's a memorial dedicated to the formal president of the Republic of China." said Nicole. "I read about it once when I was studying the history of this world..just out of curiosity of course."
Luckily, it seemed that the memorial and the surrounding large courtyard like area was low on tourism right now, so nobody really noticed them fall through an electrically charged portal.
"So I guess we're here now." said Lucy. "Any idea about where to go?"
Mikoto thought hard. The map had shown the Gate of Phasmaticana to be surrounded in clouds..the sky perhaps?
"I think we need to find the highest point in this entire city." said Mikoto. "We might be able to get some answers there."
"Aye!" said Happy. "But where would the highest point be?"
Mikoto thought long and hard. "I think..that would have to be the tallest building in the city..Taipei 101, I think it used to be the tallest building in the world." Mikoto pointed slightly upwards in the distance. "You see? It's over there."
Like a prominent needle in the distance, the sky scraper gleamed. It had the appearence of multiple glass Chinese Takeout boxes stacked on top of each other.
Lucy gaped. "There's no building in Fiore that's even near that tall, not even the palace in Crocus!"
"The bottom is even larger." said Mikoto. "I hear it's got a ginormous food court, mall, several book stores, everything. Touma went there on vacation with his parents once..he invited me, but I had a really bad fever."
"Oh yeah." said Natsu remembering. "You stayed at Lucy's place all week in bed..you looked terrible."
"Moving past that." said Mikoto with a shiver. "I think the top is open to visitors, but the tickets are expensive..we don't have much money left."
"Hmm." said Natsu. "What if you worked there?"
Mikoto stared at Natsu. "I know that look..what are you thinking?"
Natsu grinned devilishly. "Hey..what do ya say we find ourselves a new career?"1
R.I.F.T. Trivia
1. The store where Mikoto buys much of her Gekota merchandise now also sells Fairy Tail Exceed related products as well, such as super large stuffed Happy dolls, and pink Elli lunchboxes, as well as little Panther Lilly and Charle chibi figures.1
2. Taiwan's most popular anime is One Piece. If you go there, you'll find nearly every single anime and manga product consisting of something related to One Piece. However in this universe, where One Piece actually did happen at some point in the magic world's time line, the most popular fad here is Adventure Time. (Trust me, if you travel to Taipei, you'll either see Sanji or Jake The Dog everywhere.)2
3. Accelerator is secretly in love with Nicole Mavros, only having recently confirming his feelings to himself. He buries these feeling deep down though, not feeling particularly interested in romance at the moment. These feelings confuse him slightly, as he barely ever speaks with Nicole.
4. Kazari Uiharu has a major crush on Laxus Dreyar. She knows it's not meant to be, as Laxus is much older then her, but she has occasional fantisies now and then.1
5. While there are normal Dragon Slayers called 1st generation, and lacrima merged versions called 2nd generation, plus those who learned the magic and were merged with lacrima called 3rd generation. The Dragon Borns are known as the Zero Generation, the original Dragon Slayers.
6. Mikaris Misaka, Mikoto's Edolas counterpart, now likes to fantasize about herself joining the Earthland Fairy Tail. She has dreams about this on many happy nights, sometimes waking up and becoming gloomy when she realizes it was just a dream.