And as the world comes apart around her, Misaka Mikoto abruptly finds herself somewhere else.

It's a city. It smells kind of like pee and it's misty and there is a homeless guy in a sleeping bag over here and a rat burrowing into a discarded half-burrito over there and a subway station entrance across the street.

That could describe a lot of cities, really, though she's basically certain it's not Tokyo or Academy City and probably not anywhere in Japan. There's not enough water around her for proper flight, but these buildings have more than enough metal in them for her to push off and get some height to orient on her surroundings, which should be a bit less flashy anyway. She'll push herself a couple of meters above the surrounding buildings to see if she can find any landmarks she recognizes or failing that someone awake she can ask where she is.

Some people, once she's high enough to be seen from down the street a ways, watch her a bit, though more like she's a busker than like she's doing something amazing.

The Bay Bridge is over there.

Okay, she's pretty sure that's an American city? West coast too, given that her internal compass says that's the direction she can see the ocean in. Which means it's going to be a long trip back, and the fight is almost certainly going to be over by then; even in an Academy City jet the trip would take hours, and if she has to hijack an American model crossing the pacific is a good 7 hours minimum. That's a long time even if they managed to find some way to turn it around again, and if they didn't it's probably measured in minutes.

... Hijacking a US military plane would be faster, but even if they're pissed off at GREMLIN too after Hawaii that might be more heat than even she can easily get out of, and she's not sure how bad things have gone in her absence. She'll start roof-hopping to the bay so she can get some height and look for an airport, and see if there's any handy internet connections she can tap into to see what kind of news coverage on the attack survived whatever Olthinus did to take her out, just in case they have relevant updates.

There is plenty of wifi to be had, and the airport appears to be thataway, south of her.

Good, then she can do a quick search and... find nothing? The date is wrong, too, including a dozen different sources she checks. It's not impossible that someone managed to set it up so all the incoming information for a city is from an archived copy, but she can't imagine why, or how their manipulations wouldn't be incredibly noticeable to even a brief glance. Broadening her search terms comes up blank on Academy City in general, which she knows is wrong for the time period they're claiming; it would have been less famous prior to the big breakthroughs with Level 5s between then and now, but there's no way she wouldn't be able to trivially find information on an American network. That means it's a magical effect - almost certainly why Olthinus sent her here of all places - and she'll probably have some kind of difficulties getting out of the effect radius, though she hasn't the slightest idea what.

Upon reaching the ocean, Misaka burns more of her flagging reserves to electrolyze the water into hydrogen and oxygen, then ignite them into wings to propel her through the sky. With how much mist there is in the air, that ought to be enough fuel to get her most of the way to the airport before she has to touch down again.

... It's not just the internet, looking at it from above. All the technology she sees is well out of date. Misaka is getting a bad feeling about this, and doesn't want to pick a fight with whatever's causing it running on empty. She'll take a break to catch a breather on a roof once her wings run out.

The roof of this random Kaiser hospital is a fine place for a magical girl to rest.

Great, she'll pick that one, and even remember to be careful with her magnetic field so she doesn't damage any of the equipment inside.

...It's going to be a few minutes, actually, she was running a lot more on adrenaline than she thought.

There's another girl in the distance, hopping through the air on force platforms made of blue light.

That's a high level 3 ability, probably level 4, which means it's almost certainly not an esper since you only see ones that strong in Academy City. And if they're a magician, either that's someone working with Olthinus, in which case she'll probably need to fight them to get out, or it's not and she could use the assistance from someone who knows what they're doing with magic. She'll pick herself up and start roof-hopping on an intercept path.

...And palm a coin while she's at it, actually.

Blue Force Platforms girl descends to street level, changes her clothes from her matching-blue ballgown to jeans and a sweater in a shimmer of blue light, and walks into a restaurant.

Probably either not hostile or not forewarned of her, then, which is encouraging. She can drop from roof level to go in after her with only a slight delay for catching up. Is Jeans and Sweater girl visible from the doorway?

She is joining a pack of other teenagers at a big table!

Normally, she might be a bit embarrassed about breaking social conventions but she's kind of in a hurry at the moment. She'll... powerwalk a bit, to the table, and then interrupt; she can make up for it later. Luckily this is one of the countries where she speaks the language; this would be way worse if she ended up a few hundred miles south and had to try to get by using French and Italian in place of Spanish.

"Excuse me, I need to talk to you about something."

There's a bit of static still, but she's trying to keep the sparking to a minimum; this isn't meant to be a threat.

"Um? I don't know you," says the magical girl.