"Academy City? (...) That place is Freak Central!"
— Zeke Dunbar
A Certain Electric Deliveryman is a crossover between inFamous and A Certain Scientific Railgun that takes place between the two inFamous games, and sometime before the World War III arc of Index.
After receiving an invitation delivered via air drop, Cole accepts a twofold job in Academy City. They want to examine his Healing Factor for medical purposes, and spend some time doing Work Experience teaching Misaka Mikoto the ropes of being a courier.
Written by Jon Berry, also of Seven Days Survivor and A New Jedi in an Old Republic fame. Completed.The discussion thread for the completed story can be found here
while the FFN version can be found here. The author has hinted that he has plans for a sequel, but refuses to talk about it due to having other projects.
Tropes:
- Almighty Janitor: Cole, full stop. Power equivalent to a Level 5 esper, and he's just a lowly courier. Of course, he was a courier before he became a Conduit, and the little break he took in Academy City was the first time in weeks he was able to do his actual job.
- Ancestral Weapon: The Amp in the epilogue becomes this for Misaka. It works with her Railgun.
- Bad Future: Crowley knows that Kessler is from one, and helps point Cole in the right direction to help avert it.
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Word of God has implied that it was so bad that The Beast killed Touma, in addition to everything else thrown its way.
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- Big Bad Friend: Played with. Crowley could be seen as the Big Bad of RailDex, but he is honestly helping Cole deal with his problems, and is quite upfront about his motivations to do so. He also portrays Kessler as one to himself, pointing out that the First Sons were vital to founding Academy City, before being evicted due trying to force development of Level Upper and applying it to the Ray Sphere.
- Bittersweet Ending: The epilogue occurs after inFamous 2, with Zeke's arrival in Academy City after Cole's death.
- Courier: Cole is one, naturally, and his official job is to teach this to Misaka. They both recognize that this is false, and the real job is training. They still do it, though, as Cole is a professional.
- Crapsack World: It's not as obvious, but the United States is portrayed as this, enough that knowledge about Academy City is mostly hearsay, and the idea of Espers was dismissed as fantasy before Conduits like Cole appeared.
- Healing Factor: Heaven Canceller gets to test Cole's on training dummies. He believes he may be able to replicate the effect sometime in the future.
- Hive Mind: Misaka and Cole get into one of these near the end. The Sisters point this out.
- Le Parkour: Cole shows the basics of freerunning to Misaka during their day together. Misaka implies that it's a minor problem for Judgement, while Cole points out she shouldn't be doing it as she doesn't have the training or the body type.
- Magic A Is Magic A: Despite multiple similarities, and after a Flip-Flop of God, Espers are not the same as Conduits, and both are different from actual Mages. Imagine Breaker still works on them all, and is used near the end to break up the Hive Mind.
- Thanks to this, the detonation of the Ray Field Inhibitor at the end of inFamous 2 does not affect Espers or Magicians. Conduits in Academy City do die, as Zeke learns later.
- Mentor Archetype: Cole serves in this capacity to Mikoto, helping her think outside the box in regards to her powers and a few lessons in humility and honest work.
- My Card: This is Serious Business in Japan, which confuses Cole. Misaka has to explain why to him.
- Oh, Crap!: Cole and Harms' response when they watch a smuggled video of the Espers in Academy City. And they're being trained.
- Misaka has one of these when she realizes just how much Cole was not telling her about the events in Empire City.
- Projected Man: Crowley appears as one of these to Cole, which Cole immediately figures out. He explains it as a security precaution - not everyone has a Healing Factor.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Superintendent Crowley presents himself as this to Cole.
- Sequel Hook: Zeke agrees to work for Anti-Skill in exchange for protection from prosecution in the United States as a terrorist. He has the working RFI, having not buried it with Cole as he told Anti-Skill. Mikoto inherits Cole's Amp, and is growing even stronger, learning to use his powers over time.
- Shout-Out: Zeke's fake passport to get into Academy City gives his name as Alex Mercer.
- Technician Versus Performer: Kuroko rejects the idea that Misaka stopped a mugging with this logic. In her view, Misaka would have been a Performer, while the unknown Esper (implied to be Cole) was acting as a Technician. Inverted when it comes to their actual ways of using their abilities, as Cole relies mostly on intuition to use his powers while Mikoto utilizes scientific understanding of the properties of her powers through her esper training.
- Translator Microbes: Not quite an Invoked Trope, but Cole is given a set of prototype earpieces that translate Japanese into English. Fortunately for him, most of the people he talks to already know English.
