Quotes: To Aruverse Rewrite Project

In Memoriam

Riddle me this. A handsome teenage boy and a pretty teenage girl are standing together on a bridge....They're staring into each other's eyes, faces slightly flushed. What does the girl say to the boy? Is it:

A) "The stars are so beautiful tonight..."

B) "I love you...so much."

C) Trick question; she just starts making out with him.

D) "Say...Do you know what a railgun is?"

The answer, obviously, is D
Touma Kamijou, opening words.

Superpowers, immortal kid teachers, quantum hypercomputers, cyborg cops, space-launch loops, and middle-schoolers with robot armies...I head home that night secure in my knowledge that this city can't possibly get any weirder.

Tomorrow morning, a girl named Index Librorum Prohibitorum will fall out of the sky onto my apartment balcony, tell me that magic is real, and proceed to eat all of my food.

See what I mean about my luck?
Touma Kamijou, "Daily Life, in a Thousand Parallel Worlds"

I am very, very hungry. The relationship of magic use with human metabolism is poorly studied. I briefly consider the possibility that my particular hunger right now is due to my using more magic than I have in years, until another loud growl from my stomach obliterates most of my capacity for rational thought. When my higher brain functions come back online, I find myself in a McDonalds, of all places. To my relief, it's much the same as the other McDonalds I have been in across the world: air that feels laden with vaporized grease, smelling of things that were once a potato but stopped being so long ago; dismally small patties of vat-grown cow meat sizzling loudly on the fryer; and a menu in obnoxiously loud colors offering dozens of variations on a simple combination of the two.

I smile a bit, and place my order. There really is nothing quite like it.
Index Librorum Prohibitorum, "Free; Run"

Any holy ground is generally an excellent way to protect oneself from most magic...However, churches have the disadvantage of being static; hiding out in one is unlikely to remain safe for too long, especially with Christianity's limited presence within Japan.

Unless, of course, one devises a way to take the church along with them.

In the Catholic tradition, from which the Anglican Church originally derived most of its customs, a church has four essential components: the crucifix showing the image of Jesus Christ; the baptismal font, in which we are washed of our sins and reborn in His glory; the altar upon which bread and wine become His body and blood; and the tabernacle in which the transubstantiated Eucharist is kept.

I remove the crucifix, the water bottle, the McDonalds tray, and the music box from my backpack and arrange them around me. Then I begin to pray.
Index Librorum Prohibitorum, "Free; Run"

I usually shy away from the whole superhero thing. Kuroko's been trying to recruit me for Judgement almost since I've known her, but it's never been for me. I mean, I'll help someone out if I see them in trouble, but I've always felt like as soon as you start looking for people to save, you start wondering why you aren't dedicating more of your time to doing so, start wondering why you aren't helping out as much as possible, and before you know it you're putting on a mask and spandex and calling yourself Captain Electron. My future includes the phrases "Misaka Mikoto, PhD." and "high-energy particle physics", thank you very much, and despite what the American comics tell you, people don't generally have time to be both. (Not to mention that I don't even want to think about what I'd look like in spandex.)
Mikoto Misaka, "Defused"

I spot the bombers' van, with ACPD patrol cars in hot pursuit. It's careening down the streets of Academy City with little regard for things like speed limits, traffic laws, or even which side of the street it's on, and the police are having some trouble catching up with it as a result.

The police have limits. I don't.

I dig an arcade token out of my pocket as I draw level with the van, and begin to direct the flow of electricity along my arm. Too unstable to do the little flip right here; I just hold it out on my finger, which I point at the van. Electricity crackles across my skin, and my earplugs seal, ready for the imminent sonic boom.

It's now or never. I aim for the van's rear left wheel, and fire.
Mikoto Misaka, "Defused"

The camera feed zooms out as she catches up with the escape van, and almost immediately starts getting snowy as a lot of electricity starts arcing around her. Is she going to...?

Holy shit, she is. A line of bright white light crosses the screen, and for a moment it's the only thing visible as the static gets bad enough to obscure everything else. When it finally clears up, the car is now on its side, missing its rear left tire and then some, next to a pretty decent-size crater in the road. The camera zooms in on the Railgun, still balanced on the lines, and she just smiles and gives a thumbs up...

I can only stare. So that's the power of a Level 5 in action.

Ruiko Saten, "Defused"