Quiet, heavy steps in the night underneath the half-filled moon in the blackened sky echo dauntingly through the small residential street in the southern sector of the city. Streetlights line the paved path, guiding the way for these heavy footsteps that are making its way through this area of the southern suburbs, and such footsteps belong to a certain tall, blonde-haired man wearing a pair of worn jeans with its fair share of rips and tears and a red leather jacket that cannot be soon forgotten when seen due to how much it stands out and how infrequently passersby are seen with such a flashy article of clothing.
Clearing his throat moderately, Shirazumi Rio, with his hands in the pockets of his red leather jacket, is thoroughly and carefully scanning the houses that he passes. His sharp, almost demonic red eyes shine no light on their own, so the only times when they can be seen are when he passes underneath another streetlight, the artificial light from which illuminates the ocular organs of the tall, knife-wielding man for a moment at time before they repeatedly disappear under the shroud of darkness.
"...where is this place fuckin' supposed to be..." he mutters to himself irritably.
"Not here, that's for sure."
Having had his rhetorical question answered unexpectedly, Shirazumi Rio stops dead in his tracks, just outside of the light cone of the most recent streetlight that he's passed to make himself engulfed in darkness as such one last time. In contrast, to his left across the small street, directly underneath a streetlight of his own with his back leaning lightly against it, stands a certain high school freshman clothed in his usual school uniform but with a light black hoodie and a cap blocking the light from blinding his own eyes from the streetlight over his head.
After a few seconds of pause, the man in the red leather jacket slowly twists his lips in a way that is both nefarious and disgusting at the same time.
"...heh. I was wondering how long it would take you to track me down. I've gotta say, I'm pretty fuckin' disappointed, kid, for how much of a hotshot you came off as to me the last few times we've met."
"And I've gotta say that I'm even more disappointed in your acting ability. Or maybe you just plain suck at lying," Uesugi Fuutarou spits back; the two men have not yet exchanged glances even though they are starting to exchange words of hostility. "You say that you've been waiting for me to find you, yet you're the one who's been crawling around the city and eating your own customers as fast as you can. What's the rush? Got stuff to do? Places to be? Drugs to finish, perhaps? I'm no business expert or consultant, but even I know that eating your own client base probably isn't the best way to run a business, much less a drug ring."
"Hey, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell me how to run my own business. Besides, I run a totally legitimate business, thank you very much," Rio laughs dryly. "Unless you wanna find out yourself firsthand what happens to people who try to get in the way of it?"
"Admittedly I'd rather not get involved in something like that," Fuutarou admits. "But sometimes I don't have a choice in the things I have to do."
"Of course you have a choice! Everyone does, that's the beauty about this world," Rio laughs this time. "It just all comes down to whether or not you're able to deal with the consequences. And let me tell ya, kid, in this world, ain't a lot of people who're capable of dealing with the consequences of their own actions."
"Is that supposed to be a way to legitimize your cannibalism? Don't tell me that your business slogan for selling drugs is something along those lines? That it's okay to inject your veins with Heisei as long as you're okay with the consequences?"
"You know, I never really thought about it that way, but let me tell you, I'm a simple guy, and I like it when I get to do stuff simple. You and I might actually think the same when it comes to some things."
"Naturally. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so that must mean that the heroes and villains of this world, should they exist, are more similar than is commonly known."
As he speaks, Fuutarou stops leaning against the streetlight pole.
"Unfortunately for you, though, I don't particularly feel like finding out what those similarities are."
"Hey, what a coincidence, 'cause I sure don't fuckin' want to either!"
Without warning, Shirazumi Rio draws his large knife with alarming speed and jams it into the air to his left to plant a ranged knife strike to initiate his attack. Expecting an opening attack of this sort, Fuutarou lunges forward to avoid the attack and simultaneously flicks a four of clubs in Rio's direction, having had his hand ready in his storage rune in anticipation of this fight. The card flies true, aimed right for Rio's left eye, but the man in the leather jacket smacks it right out of the air, the card glancing off the back of his hand and lodging itself with a sharp cling! into the wall behind Rio. The act of parrying Fuutarou's own ranged attack, however, gives the young mage time to close the distance between the two, and just as Rio lowers his blocking hand to assess the situation, Uesugi is already up in his face, his own knife at the ready and clutched tightly in his right hand.
"Hahaha - !"
Already beginning to laugh with mad glee fueled by bloodlust, Shirazumi Rio begins to exchange blows with his opponent, and the two men fill the street with the threatening, hair-raising sounds of steel on steel.
"C'mon, kid! Bust out that fuckin' spear! Get that hammer out or whatever the fuck that was! You know you wanna do it!" Rio cackles madly at the young mage in the middle of his monstrous swings, the power of which Fuutarou feels all too well every single time that their knives connect. "Why you gotta hold yourself back, huh? I thought you were like me! Us, the boys runnin' around at night doin' shit with knives 'n shit, you know what I mean? But then I see you out here bustin' that crap out on my ass the last few times we've met, and now you tryin'a throw it back? I'm fuckin' insulted, really! What, you think you can beat me at my own game? We both know you ain't better than me when it comes to knowin' how to handle a knife! That's why you had to bust out that spear 'n that hammer! So that means you're just tryin'a hold yourself back now, huh? You think I ain't some hot shit, now, huh?"
As Rio rants on and on, he amplifies the power in his strikes many times over, and Fuutarou can all too easily tell that this is the most serious his opponent has been thus far, and he suspects that all the people he's been cannibalizing has something to do with it.
"Eating people to power yourself up, huh? Must be nice, having an easy way out of bad situations!" he calls back after putting some distance between him and Rio to take a brief break from the constant action of the past several minutes, only to have Rio laugh even harder back at him.
"You think it's so easy, huh? How about you give this shit a try if that's what you really think?" the cannibal mage roars with laughter. "Does dislocating your jaw multiple times over eatin' people sound fun to you? Does havin' the taste 'a blood be the only thing you taste for a week straight sound like fun to you? If it does, then be my fuckin' guest, you little shit, 'cause I sure do! And I can't fuckin' get enough of it, ahahahahahaaaaa!"
"I'll pass, thanks!"
Yelling over his nemesis's maniacal laughter, Uesugi Fuutarou puts his knife in between his teeth to devote both arms and hands to throwing his playing card projectiles. With both hands at his disposal like this and his full attention and focus put into attacking from range, Fuutarou's rate of fire increases frighteningly, and he almost floods the local airspace between him and his target with cards, littering the wall behind him with playing cards like the spines of a porcupine as Rio, quickly recognizing the danger that this previously unseen combat style out of Fuutarou poses to him, takes off immediately. Even before he can get moving, though, Fuutarou already pelts him with multiple playing cards on the side of his arm, with a card stuck in the back of Rio's right hand that was meant for the side of his head instead.
Having already had a few cards hit him and having more steadily pelt him as he runs, Rio wisely keeps as small of a profile as he can to present to his enemy to outlast this barrage of cards, since given the nature of his ammunition, Fuutarou is bound to run out of cards sooner or later. As expected, Fuutarou is only able to keep up his storm of cards for a few moments at best, and as soon as the hail of cards shows signs of letting up, Rio pounces from atop a vending machine as quickly as he can, giving Fuutarou almost no time to react; he barely has the time to switch to the knife being held by his teeth to retaliate.
However, the young mage chooses not to switch to his blade, for he has kept his last two playing cards in both hands. When Rio is just about plunge his large knife down through Fuutarou's skull, Uesugi blocks the hit - with a flat side of one of his playing cards, as though it were a knife on its own. Having expected the knife to just go right through the card, Rio displays a very rare face of genuine surprise, but it is soon replaced by a face contorted with pain as the card in Fuutarou's other hand slashes right up and over his face with one of its magically sharpened corners, blood flying appropriately behind Rio.
Uncharacteristically, Rio reels harshly, immediately dropping his knife and clutching at his face where he's been slashed, and Fuutarou, not questioning why his opponent is acting this way, capitalizes on his newfound advantage and plants the sole of his right shoe into Rio's face next, kicking him onto his back on the street and swiftly kicking the knife that is not his behind him, well out of Rio's reach. Once his enemy is disarmed as such, Fuutarou, equipped with both the luxuries of time and accuracy, aims his last two cards down at Rio and launches them down at his gut. Rio recoils with the pain of the cards digging through his clothes and skin to pierce his intestines, his body retching momentarily before repeating it again, even more harshly this time, as Fuutarou follows up by stomping one of the cards even deeper into Rio's gut, almost completely embedding the card into his flesh. Finally, the sharp steel of Fuutarou's knife stops just short of Rio's face with the young mage standing over the cannibal mage, his foot still on the latter's profusely bleeding abdomen.
"Why have you been going around eating people in the city?" Fuutarou begins to interrogate his enemy. His voice is quiet and solemn but ruthless and clear; this is the type of voice that you would expect someone like a veteran soldier or police interrogator to have, not a fifteen-year-old high school freshman. "What are you trying to achieve? You know damn well as a mage pulling that kind of shit off's going to make the Mage's Association come after you to cancel your ass faster than you can get your customers hooked on Heisei. So what's your deal here?"
Beginning to snicker through the pain and the blood, Shirazumi Rio leers defiantly back up at his oppressor. Now that the action is settled for now, Fuutarou can clearly review the damage he's dealt: his uppercut card slash has hit the jackpot and placed a deep, disabling cut up through Rio's left eye, destroying it for good. Blood is also steadily creeping up through the slits in his stomach, more so from the one that Fuutarou has his foot on even now.
"Are you fuckin' stupid, you fuckin' piece 'a shit?" Rio hoots back, managing to completely disregard the pulsing pain in his ruined left eye. "You think people're just gonna conveniently tell you what'cha wanna hear? You think it's that easy?"
"The only things easy about what I'm doing are how easy it was for me to put your ass in the asphalt and how easy I'm gonna let you off depending on how you respond. Must be nice being this fucking braindead and not knowing your damn place when someone's got a knife to your face," Fuutarou hisses back, and to reinforce his words, his right foot suddenly presses down with impunity over the gut wound the young mage is currently standing on, and Rio recoils sharply accordingly. "I believe in second chances but I'm not fucking repeating myself again, Shirazumi: why are you eating people you've sold your drugs to?"
"He doesn't have to tell you shit, jackass! Get your ass away from him, now!"
Having been focusing all his attention onto his enemy at his feet, Fuutarou darts his eyes up quickly to scan his surroundings that he hasn't been paying attention to as a result, though he keeps his neck steady so that he's still facing down at the incapacitated Rio in case he tries anything funny. A small group of suspiciously clothed young men are running towards him down the small street on which he and Rio have been fighting briefly, and one of them has his hand out aimed towards him, a hand that glows shortly with magical blue light. Fuutarou recognizes this spell as a basic magic missile, and just as he expects, a small, fast magical projectile fires from the enemy mage's hand like a baseball at him, but he merely slaps the projectile downwards as though it were a mere tennis ball and pegs Rio with it right in the face. While the magic projectile doesn't quite strike him where his left eye is, or was, the impact is undoubtedly strong enough to make it almost as bad, and Rio grunts sharply with pain again as he grumbles, "Fucking useless shitters..."
While Rio is groaning with pain, Fuutarou glances back up to take a look at these new bad guys he'll have to deal with. The one who's just fired the magic projectile at him, now freaking out quietly that his shot ended up hitting his boss in the face, is somewhat familiar - a boy who looks his own age with slicked-back brown hair and stereotypical delinquent-looking eyes, though Fuutarou himself isn't in much of a position to be calling anyone else delinquent-like.
"Reinforcements? Well, I suppose you can't be a third-rate generic movie villain without a fourth-rate gang," Fuutarou croaks sarcastically.
"You call them a fourth rate gang, but I ain't ever heard of a mage who's willing to go up against more than three or four of 'em at a time," Rio chuckles back up to his tormentor. "You think that's the last of 'em now, don't'cha?"
Heeding Rio's words for his own safety, Fuutarou silently initiates a quick scanning spell to survey his immediate vicinity. Even though this spell is nowhere near as strong as the usual scanning spells he uses to survey the cityscape, it still covers a big enough area around him to show him just how focused he's been in his fight against Rio tonight: roughly an additional two dozen moving signatures are inbound on his position. They aren't particularly fast, but that's precisely the problem: Rio must have specifically called for his underlings to come support him in a premeditated fashion, which would mean that they were already on their way for some time, depending on where they're coming from. As much as he would rather not acknowledge Rio's words, Fuutarou recognizes the truth in them: against a handful of trash-tier amateur mages, he can hold his own. But not against several dozen, even if not all of them are actually mages.
"Call 'em fourth-rate all ya want. You ain't wrong about 'em, I'll give ya that," Rio breathes, still retaining the disturbing cackle in his voice. "But throw enough trash at a problem and you can sometimes solve it just by burying it, right? That's what I'm gonna do to ya if you don't do as I say."
"Oh? You think you can tell me what to do right now? Your boys can't do shit if I decide to push this knife halfway through your fucking throat," Fuutarou murmurs dangerously down at his opponent.
"Maybe not. But you kill me here, and my boys'll start torchin' this entire suburb. This block, the next one over, and the next...it's gonna be a giant fuckin' bonfire that you can see even from downtown," Rio chortles back. "It's gonna smell like fuckin' burnt human skin, lemme tell ya what; only thing I'll feel bad about is the fact that I ain't gonna be alive to see it and smell those delicious ashes. What, you think you're a big enough hero to stop all of 'em from turnin' this place into hell? I'd love to see you fucking try, you scrawny pencil-arm-lookin' asswipe."
"Sure, I'll bite - but you won't be alive to see it!"
Even while sentencing his enemy to death, Fuutarou thrusts his knife swiftly and strongly into the grizzled flesh of Shirazumi Rio, piercing his windpipe and spine cleanly. Not taking any chances that Rio was merely bluffing at him with his final words, Fuutarou immediately yanks out his murder weapon, adjusts his grip on it midair by grabbing hold of the weapon by its blade in between his thumb and index finger, and hurls it at one of the gangsters before him - but he makes sure to not aim at the boy he finds familiar. Said boy with the slicked-back brown hair stares as Fuutarou's knife whizzes past him with dizzying speed and causes him to hear a chunky, audible thuck as the blade slaps into the face of another man standing next to him, with the subsequent crumple of a dead body following soon after.
"Whoa, whoa, what the - "
Just as the men who've arrived to assist their boss see one of theirs fall with a knife planted in his face, only now realizing what kind of lethal danger they've gotten themselves into, Fuutarou flash-steps into their midst right behind another one of them, puts his hands firmly on both sides of his head, and twists his neck with sudden, swift motion to immediately drop their numbers by one again. Having no more playing cards at his disposal as he's expended them all in attacking the late Shirazumi Rio, Fuutarou must settle matters with his own two fists, something he feels will bite him in the ass later. He'll have to store more decks of playing cards in his storage rune for future encounters.
With four more men standing before him, including the boy he finds familiar, Fuutarou proceeds to dismantle them in swift succession, one by one. He grabs the nearest living target and lands three magically powered punches in his gut to rupture his liver and intestines before shoving him into the path of another man charging at him, and he whips to his side to backhand the boy with the slicked-back hair right in his chin, also dropping him instantly as his legs give out and force him to crash to the ground where he stands. The last enemy, another enemy mage, tries to conjure up a fireball in his hand - it would seem Shirazumi was not bluffing after all if his underlings know enough magic to be able to cast fireballs like this - to throw at him. However, his control over his own magic is lacking, and Fuutarou has all the time in the world to lunge at him, swipe his right arm down at his legs to catch him by the back of his left knee, and sweep him off his feet with a strong, fluid motion. He stomps on the wrist of the hand trying to conjure the fire magic with his bloody right shoe to break it, simultaneously stooping down to yank his knife out of the first casualty's face while listening to the short shriek of the man whose wrist he's just broken, the flames in his hand sputtering out pathetically like a gas stove that's run out of fuel. By this point the last uninjured gangster has managed to shove his wounded comrade off him to get back up, only to look up and find Fuutarou's bloodied knife already flying down to meet his scalp, and through it the cold, remorseless steel pierces, cutting into the frontal lobe of his brain and deep into its center to destroy it along with his life.
This leaves just the familiar boy, who clearly looks freaked out at everything that's happening around him, and even more so when he realizes that his comrades are being brutally ripped apart. He can only gape in terror as Fuutarou turns to him, takes two steps towards him, and clocks him on the side of the head to knock him out effortlessly, letting him drop to the ground where he's been standing.
Pulling out his blade one more time and not even looking at the corpse as it crumples next to the first casualty who is still groaning weakly at his own devastating internal wounds, Fuutarou turns around sharply. An unmarked white Suzuki 660 minitruck is stopping in the middle of the small street, understandable since there isn't much parking space on the sides of the street to speak of. While its entrance certainly looks comical, the sight of almost eight more men hopping out or off it is certainly not, or not as much as it would be if the young mage didn't have to deal with them himself. Now that this fresh wave of enemy reinforcements have arrived, he can't help but wonder how the hell Shirazumi managed to recruit this many men to his cause. What's going on here? Did Shirazumi's drugs really sell that well that he could be able to afford both hiring all these men and continue developing his own personal strain of Heisei? Fuutarou has his doubts, but right now he can't come up with his own answer to this.
"Wait a minute, that's Boss! Fuck, he's dead!" Fuutarou hears one of them cry out. "Shit, boys, you know what to do - mages, light this bitch up!"
Preparing to flash-step his way back into another fray, the young high school mage clenches his teeth behind his pursed lips from the tension of anticipating another bloody brawl, but before he can release his magical energy for his accelerated movement, he spies one of the enemy mages jerk his head backwards unnaturally. Because of the headlights of the minitruck, Fuutarou can't quite distinguish exactly what's going on, so he relies on his hearing to gather information, and he hears a confused garble of shouting in confusion and pain, along with occasional sharp crackles of static of electricity and multiple bodies slapping the asphalt of the small street on which they're fighting.
There is a strong magical signature tearing through the mass of weaker magical signatures in the direction that Fuutarou is looking. And it's a familiar one...yet unfamiliar at the same time.
Another pair of headlights shines into view, indicating a second vehicle presumably filled with the reinforcements that Shirazumi called before his death, and so Fuutarou pounces on this final set of reinforcing enemies, gripping his bloody knife reeking of murder and bloodlust tightly in his right hand as he leaps into the air with a powerful burst off the asphalt to plunge the short blade down through the face of the first man who leaps out of the truck bed of this second minitruck. Even while the blood flies from the man's face that has been carved open like a pumpkin, Fuutarou mauls half of the enemies exiting the truck like it's a clown car before the mysteriously familiar and unfamiliar magic signature behind him darts into his fray, slamming another gangster into the wall on the other side of the second minitruck and crushing a third of his skull against the wall before letting go of his lifeless corpse that plummets to the ground at the foot of the wall.
"What the - ?! Guys, what's going on - "
Confusion and chaos are sown for a few frenzied moments as the men who've come to assist their deceased boss are torn asunder, one by one, in lightning-fast succession until there is nothing left of their lives, only their mutilated bodies and corpses littered about like trash at a rundown garbage collection center. With a particularly vicious squelch, Fuutarou withdraws his knife blade from the back of his final kill's head and returns to gripping it tightly as he stands up tall once more in the dead of the night, the moon shining as much of its brilliance as it can through the nighttime clouds hurrying across the sky underneath.
"...good evening to you too, Ichika," he says calmly and quietly, slowly turning to the familiar girl now rounding the front of the second minitruck after dropping her own final kill onto the side of the street behind her against the base of the nearby wall. The moonlight strikes her face to illuminate it perfectly as she shows herself to the young mage - perhaps due to coincidence, perhaps due to fate - and Fuutarou, for the first time, can behold this mysterious version of Nakano Ichika clearly for himself.
Without a doubt, this is a perfect clone of the firstborn quintuplet. All physical features about her - height, weight, proportions, even the health of her skin and the fragrance of her hair - are all identical. Even her presence matches that of the original Ichika's, but that is where the subtle, almost malicious differences begin. There is something tacked onto this presence of Ichika that Fuutarou is able to sense magically, something...almost like a parasite, a leech that has bitten on and refuses to let go, that infects this presence and tips him off to the fact that something is different about this Ichika. And of course, as the moonlight strikes true, Fuutarou gazes upon her face, which is an exact replica of the real Ichika's, save for the eye that dwells in her left socket - the enigmatic golden eye that burns with its own light, its fuel either vengeance or hatred, or...maybe a little bit of both.
"Aye. Good evenin' to you as well," Ichika Alter replies smoothly, even offering a small, quaint smile of greeting back at the young mage, who finds it sudden and unexpected, but not unwelcome. "I take it I found you at a good time?"
"Nothing I couldn't handle on my own. But, I will say that you've saved me some time and potentially a lot of trouble."
"I see. Good enough for me, then."
Quietly dissipating his bloody knife and making a mental note to clean the blade off later when he's alone, Fuutarou takes a quick look around to make sure that they will not be disturbed further.
"So what brings you out tonight?" he asks with his professional voice. "It's been a while since the last time you've shown yourself."
"Oh, nothin' much. I sensed some shit going down here, so I showed up to get in on at least some of the action. Honestly, you're pretty lucky I ended up on your side of things...could'a easily been the other way around," Ichika smiles dangerously, and her golden left eye seems to glow with it.
Fuutarou is about to reply to continue the conversation, but he and Ichika Alter suddenly hear a sharp hissing sound, almost like steam whistling from a vent but in a deeper pitch. The two of them turn towards the source of this curious sound, and they watch the corpse of Shirazumi Rio disintegrate before their eyes, like a solid losing its shape and melting into a viscous smudge-like liquid.
"Shit, you're telling me he knows how to make clones of himself, too?" Fuutarou rolls his eyes incredulously.
"We're talking about a guy who literally fucking eats other human beings as a source of sustenance. Why wouldn't he have the ability to do something like this?" the alternate Ichika chuckles darkly.
"Hey, don't stand there sounding like that was the most obvious shit on Earth. Now this means that I can't be sure if the next time I meet Shirazumi, it's gonna be the real one. Or I suppose any of the times that I've run into him before, for that matter."
But Ichika Alter shakes her head. "I don't think you need to worry 'bout that much. This clone is pretty trash quality."
Fuutarou slowly turns back to her. "...and how can you tell?"
"Eh, you don't need to worry, I can just tell."
Giving her a suspicious look, Fuutarou turns his gaze back to the melting corpse of Shirazumi Rio's clone. By now, his flesh and bones, even his clothes, are a horribly indistinguishable pile of melting, rotting sludge in the middle of the street, and it's continuing to disintegrate even further. The ghastly sight aside, Fuutarou wonders to himself how someone like Ichika can accurately gauge the magical quality of a clone like this, or even gauge it at all. He himself has never run into a clone user, though he's heard stories here and there of such mages, so it's understandable that he can't quite appraise this clone of Rio's, but for someone like Ichika to do so and with a mere glance? Could it be her Mystic Eye that's responsible for such a power?
"So what you're saying is that Shirazumi can't just spam clones," the young mage deduces.
"I mean, did you really expect for a fucking cannibal to have the skill to make actually good clones?"
"Again, you and sounding like you know shit."
"I know quite a bit 'a shit, for your fucking information, Uesugi. That's all you need to know."
Fuutarou gives Ichika Alter another piercing gaze, almost as if he's glaring at her, especially with his own eyes and face that lend him a facade and atmosphere not unlike those of the men he's slain tonight.
"On the night we first met, you told me that you're Nakano Ichika," he says, turning to her to face her fully. "How much of that is the truth?"
"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," Ichika Alter laughs shortly.
"Is it? Then explain to me why the Ichika I know has her Mystic Eye in her right eye while you have yours in your left. How's that supposed to work, I wonder?"
Ichika Alter shrugs widely. "Shit if I know. I was just born with this."
"You say that, but you could tell right away that the clone over there's of poor magical quality, something that even I can't tell since this is my first time dealing with a clone user like Shirazumi, apparently. Why's that?"
"Here's a better question: why do you wanna fucking know?" The girl with the glowing left eye takes an aggressive step towards the young mage. Her amused smile still lingers, but now it has an undeniably malicious edge to it. "I give you some time outta my night to give you a hand here, and you repay me by askin' a whole lotta annoying-ass questions. Unless you still haven't gotten enough of an adrenaline rush yet tonight? Is that it?"
Fuutarou shakes his head. "Nah, I'm good, this was enough fighting for tonight. Besides, Ichika'll get pissed at you if she finds out you've started messing with me, too."
Ichika Alter's malicious smile melts off her own face for a split second, and before she can restore it, Fuutarou gets two eyefuls of this.
"Hmph, fuckin' pussy. You wanna know more about me, don't'cha? What if fightin' me can get you those answers?"
"I won't deny that possibility, but my interest in doing so is irrelevant when you're the one who wants it more, so why give you that satisfaction when my chances of getting what I want are laughably low?" Fuutarou folds his own arms back at Alter. "Or are you telling me that you just really want to fight me for some reason?"
"We're both mages. I'm more surprised that you're not more antagonistic towards me than anything else. You control this city, yet you're lettin' someone like me run around however much I fuckin' want? What, is it 'cause I'm one of your students that you're not willing to fight me? Got a big soft spot for me and girls, now, don't'cha?"
"Says the one who runs around however fucking much she wants and yet has never taken the opportunity to ambush me or attack me when I least expect it," Fuutarou scoffs back. "Seeing you fight just a little bit ago, it's clear to me that you're no slouch in fighting yourself, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you pose a serious threat to me as an enemy mage. So you had so many chances to have me dead if you really wanted to for all this time. Why didn't you take any of them?"
"Another question that could be answered if you decide to have a go at me. If you ever feel like ending it all, just lemme know."
With one last sinister, rather deep laugh, Ichika Alter disappears right as Fuutarou blinks, leaving absolutely no trace of herself behind; it's as though Fuutarou were conversing with a figment of his imagination this whole time. The young mage merely narrows his eyes and pulls out his phone to ring up his cleaner service and alert them to a new cleanup site here in the southern suburbs of the city.
Once he's made his call to the cleaners, Fuutarou cautiously approaches the corpse of the cannibal mage, or what it's become by now, which is a simple puddle of multi-colored liquid that's rapidly losing its hues as it decays into a small pool of black residual magical energy. Now he knows that Shirazumi Rio is a clone user, but according to Ichika Alter, he's not a very good one, and that it's not likely that his previous encounters with Shirazumi involved his clones. Could Rio's actions as of late in eating the people who purchase his drugs be responsible for his clones? And in what way exactly: is he using clones to cover himself as he travels around the city to hunt down his client base, or is he eating his customers in order to create these clones?
And if the latter is true, why is he creating clones of himself in the first place? He'll have to research more about this topic as well, but from his understanding of magical clones, Fuutarou believes that clones are a very inefficient magic in terms of magical energy economy; a mage engaged in the act of cloning themself is expending far more magical energy than what most mages would consider a reasonable cost for the intended result, since a mage must devote the energy and skill to creating an exact copy of themself that is capable of doing everything they are, even if clones are not meant to be as strong as the original. This is a small reason why investing into homunculi is far more widespread than cloning, even if homunculi production itself is also quite time-consuming and energy-intensive as well, because at least creating homunculi doesn't necessarily involve having to use a mage's own energy, as the resources for homunculi production can be acquired elsewhere.
And even if Ichika Alter said that this clone was of poor quality, Fuutarou begs to differ: this clone had all the abilities and mannerisms of the real Shirazumi Rio, and when they were fighting, Fuutarou himself could not tell a difference between this fight tonight and all the other bouts he's had with him in the past. So either Rio has been deploying clones against him this whole time and Fuutarou has just failed to notice every single time, or Rio is much, much more competent at creating clones of himself than what Ichika Alter gives him credit for. It could also be that Alter is just wrong, too, but Fuutarou doesn't know enough about her yet to really judge her magical ability.
Speaking of Ichika Alter, while she didn't tell him anything concrete, Fuutarou was able to glean a few more details about her during his brief conversation with her just now. She wasn't able to give him a clear answer as to why she and the real Ichika have their Mystic Eyes in different eyes, which is the biggest sign to Fuutarou that Ichika Alter is not in fact the real Ichika. Perhaps an argument could be made that Ichika is capable of switching her Mystic Eye from one eye to the other, or that she's merely casting a spell on herself that allows her to change her appearance to others and give the illusion that her Mystic Eye is switching places, but Fuutarou highly doubts that; someone like Ichika who simply is nowhere near as practiced of a mage as he is wouldn't be able to do something like that, not that he's trying to toot his own horn here.
In fact, the bigger nail in the coffin is the reaction this Ichika had when Fuutarou told her that the real Ichika wouldn't be pleased with her intended aggression towards him. Not only was she shocked enough to drop her usual expression, but she didn't deny any of what Fuutarou said to her either. So really there can be no doubt that this Ichika Alter is in fact not the Ichika he knows on the regular.
But he already figured this to be the case ever since Ichika Alter showed herself to him; what intrigues him more are the words she's spoken to him tonight, since tonight's the most amount of interaction he's had with her so far. For whatever reason, she really wants him to fight her, but she isn't willing to be the one to start the fight. Is the real Ichika holding her back? Or does she have a legitimate reason to not attack him? Maybe she needs him to continue his responsibilities as this city's mage because she's taking advantage of them somehow? What would she take advantage of, though?
The teleporters. Easily the most valuable service Fuutarou provides are those, if he had to appraise his own magical responsibilities and work effort. Ichika Alter could be using the teleporters for herself without him knowing. He doesn't understand how that would be possible since he would know if his teleporters are being used by anyone other than himself, but this would appear to be his strongest hypothesis, even if it also fails to answer why Ichika Alter has a vested interest in having the teleporters active and maintained - to get around the city quickly, obviously, but for what purpose?
Furthermore, some of the things she said to him makes Fuutarou wonder if this more aggressive form of Ichika has known him for quite some time. Things like, "I know quite a bit 'a shit" and "if you ever feel like ending it all" are things that would subtly imply that Ichika Alter knows more about him than he's aware of, and Fuutarou has a hunch that the wording she's used isn't just a coincidence; she's trying to maintain an air of mystery with how she's acting towards him, after all, so it would be appropriate if she's giving him heavily shrouded messages that have double meanings and all that sort of stuff.
If this is true, then the young mage knows he'll have a bit of a difficult time stomaching the fact that there's been another mage like him roaming the city with him for these months or years or however long Ichika Alter has existed. Honestly, he's moderately tempted to accept Ichika Alter's offer to have him fight her so that he can get some more answers out of her about her true identity, her history, and the true nature of her relationship with the real Ichika.
But these questions about Ichika's alter ego can wait; now that Shirazumi Rio is now a confirmed clone user, Fuutarou needs to approach this situation differently, and he must get back to work - and not to mention, there's that one boy his age who was with the reinforcements Shirazumi's clone called in to wreak havoc on this block of the suburbs, or at least tried to. Taking one last disgruntled look down at the blackening pool of residual magic liquid at his feet, the high school mage turns to fetch the unconscious body of his schoolmate and leaps out of view of the street to return to the partially moonlit night of the city.
Ten hours later, shortly past noon, Nakano Yotsuba and Nakano Itsuki are walking together through the city streets, having eaten lunch and walking back home with milk teas and fancy paper bags in their hands branded with "KINOKUNIYA BOOKSTORES".
"I think I will try their Garlic & Rosemary Rotisserie Chicken entree the next time we come back," Itsuki tells her older sister, unable to help herself but to smack her lips a little just thinking about her next meal at Dekkadance, her favorite restaurant and the locale at which the two quints have just eaten lunch.
"Wait, we just ate and you're already thinking about what you'll have next?!" the fourth quint exclaims, though the notion itself is something she's quite used to by now. "Itsuki, you understand that this is why we always make fun of you for eating so much?"
"B-But I cannot help it! Good food is good food!" Itsuki yelps defensively back at her sister.
"No, like, I get that, I really do - "
"It is completely normal for one to think about what their next meal will be at a restaurant that they enjoy very much! We have all done it at one point or another, have we not?"
"Yeah, we have, but like, not when we just left the place five minutes ago...! And definitely not while licking our lips like we could go for another lunch!"
Pouting with disappointment, Itsuki grumbles back to her sister. "Out of everyone else, I believed that you would have my side on this matter because you are the most active physically among the five of us and thus would need to eat more than the rest of us. I suppose I was mistaken."
"Don't make it sound like I'm somehow to blame for all this, though!"
The two sisters break out into a round of giggles just as quickly as they've begun to argue somewhat.
"By the way, what did you buy at Kinokuniya? I was checking out some stuff at the souvenir store across the street while you were there," Yotsuba asks, nodding down at the bag in Itsuki's hand.
"Oh, the books? I bought some extra supplementary materials for school," Itsuki answers. "I figured while Uesugi-kun is on hiatus for the time being, I would study some more on my own."
"Wait, did you finish your summer homework first, though?"
"Of course. It would not make sense to buy these supplementary books before finishing my own schoolwork."
"Ahaha..." Yotsuba scratches the side of her head with her hand holding her milk tea. "I, uh...still need to finish mine..."
"We only have one more month of summer break left, Yotsuba. I know that is a long time to us, but it will be gone just like that if you do not pay attention."
"I know, I know...say, you wouldn't let me take a peek at your homework, would you...?"
"No, Yotsuba. It is not proper for you to simply copy my homework. We are past that age now."
"Awww..." The fourth quint ends up giggling some more anyway. "Remember all the times I asked to copy your homework, though? Those were fun."
"Fun for you, maybe. But remember, that meant that both of our homeworks received equally as poor scores when our teachers graded them. There was even a point in time when one of our teachers noticed this and called us in to talk to us to find out what was going on, and we were barely able to convince her that it was because we frequently did our homework together, which was certainly not the case!"
"Honestly, I can't believe we managed to convince her, too, seeing how the two of us are the worst at lying out of the five of us."
"Perhaps so, but that does not mean that we are totally incapable of it," Itsuki remarks. "For example, for next trimester, you will not be running off to join more clubs or sports teams at school, now, will you? Lest we should we have another situation during our finals week."
"No, no, I'm not going to do that again, really! I saw how much inconvenience I've caused for Uesugi-san, so I really don't want to do that again." Yotsuba sighs heftily. "On top of that, he's already had more than one talk with me warning me not to do stuff like that. I should've listened to him then, but now that I've seen what can happen, I definitely have to now."
"I see. So everything with the track team is taken care of, I presume?"
"Yeah, I thanked the team and the track team captain and everything. I know that some people on the team don't like the fact that I needed to leave, but...uh, they kinda saw for themselves the reason why, so..."
"I have also been keeping an eye out for your track teammates to see if they would harass Uesugi-kun over that incident, but it seems that he really did 'convince' them to stay put about the matter. While I would rather not think about what kinds of methods he may have used to accomplish that, I am just glad that this situation was resolved peacefully, at the very least..."
Yotsuba gazes up at the bright early afternoon sky at a low angle.
"...speaking of Uesugi-san, have you talked to him recently?" the fourth quint asks innocently, and as soon as she talks about their tutor this way, Itsuki heart drops a little, remembering their conversation on that one summer night not that long ago.
"Um...yes, yes I have," Itsuki tells the truth, unable to bring herself to give her own sister a blatant lie, but she still doesn't want to disclose the exact details regarding the last time Fuutarou visited their home. "It was just a short conversation; he could not stick around to talk for long because he is very busy lately."
"Heh, I guess that's just Uesugi-san in a nutshell, always being busy and whatnot."
"Aha, y-yes, indeed..." Itsuki glances shortly to her right at her sister. "Why...do you ask?"
"I was just curious as to how your relationship with him's been progressing," Yotsuba answers swiftly with a pleasant smile. "But...I guess it can't really make that much progress with him not being around anywhere near as much as he used to before summer break, right."
Itsuki can't help but give an awkward chuckle. "I-I suppose so...I am very new to this...this whole relationship thing myself, so...I have no idea how to gauge my so-called 'progress'..."
"But at least you know that Uesugi-san is aware of the fact that you like him, right? I'm not some kind of relationship guru myself either, but I'd imagine it'll be a lot easier for you to make progress with him! Like, for example, the next time you see him, you could, uh, I don't know, show him your homework so that he knows you're the first one to finish our summer homework!"
"As much as I am aware that I do nothing but study most of the time outside of school, I do not think showing him my completed homework is supposed to help me out in a relationship sense!" Itsuki whines a little. "And besides, Miku has also finished her summer homework, so I am hardly the only one who has done such a thing."
"Oh yeah, that's right, Miku likes him too, doesn't she..." Yotsuba takes a mighty slurp of her milk tea. "You've got some competition going on, Itsuki-kun!"
"Please do not suddenly begin talking as though you are my mentor in this field." The fifth quint sighs heavily. "And you just reminded me that I am also hardly the only one who has made her feelings known to Uesugi-kun."
Yotsuba taps the edge of her milk tea cup cover with her index finger. "There's gotta be a way for you to deepen your relationship with Uesugi-san...something that can work for both of you..."
"Um, Yotsuba, I do not mean to be rude, but...why all of a sudden this interest in...er, if I may be crass...trying to hook me up with him?" Itsuki protests lightly, though she doesn't mean to come off as protesting. "I, um, I do appreciate the gesture, but..."
"Because I want to see you be happy with him!" Yotsuba smiles just as brightly as before, though its brightness seems to be dulled by the greater brightness of the afternoon sun overhead. "Why else?"
Why else, Itsuki repeats to herself in her mind. There are so many things she feels are wrong with what Yotsuba is doing right now that it's hard for her to decide where to begin, but Itsuki manages to settle on one point to present to her sister.
"What about Miku, though? Do you not think that what you are doing right now is unfair to her?" Itsuki tries to argue. "If both Miku and I have feelings for Uesugi-kun and you decide to help me in my own relationship with him while Miku receives no such help from anyone else, then...that would be unfair for her, no?"
"Well, I...I wouldn't...think of it like that..." Seeing her younger sister's point, Yotsuba nervously gropes for something she can say back. "Like, let's put it this way, if Miku came up to me and asked me to help her in some way to get her closer to Uesugi-san, then...then I wouldn't refuse her. I'd help her too."
"Oh, I see...but knowing Miku, I am not sure if she is the type to really ask anyone else for help..."
"Er, yeah, you're...you're right, yeah. Maybe I should offer my matchmaking services to her too...?"
"And just exactly how many years of matchmaking experience might you have!"
"Six minutes and forty seconds, hahaha!"
"Exactly!"
The two sisters share a brief but therapeutic laugh together.
"The way I see it is that I want you guys to be happy with Uesugi-san," Yotsuba explains once they're both done laughing. "I've seen how much we've come to enjoy having him around, whether it be because he's tutoring us or just hanging out with us. I know that right now you and Miku are in a bit of an awkward situation where both of you like him. But in my opinion, there shouldn't have to be any confrontation between you two over him. We're sisters, right? And we've already had a really bad breakup with you and Nino not that long ago, and I think I speak for you when I say that you don't want a repeat of that incident with Miku this time. So for the time being, I want the two of you to enjoy your time with him as much as possible, and I'll do whatever I can to help the two of you deepen your relationships with him so that you can hopefully get to the day when he decides to commit to one of you."
Everything Yotsuba is saying right now is definitely in-character for her to say, so Itsuki knows that she is being truthful about her statements right now. But, as she only knows, there is one obvious, glaring problem amidst Yotsuba's words of kindness and altruism.
"...but what about you, Yotsuba?" Itsuki asks softly. "How will you feel when you see one of us perhaps one day...become Uesugi-san's significant other? Does that not mean anything to you...?"
Another smile is offered to the fifth quint by her elder sibling, but this time the smile is much, much weaker.
"I told you before, didn't I? Please don't worry about me," Yotsuba says calmly.
As much as Itsuki wants to continue contesting this issue, Itsuki can't convince herself to do so as she does not wish to make Yotsuba begin feeling uncomfortable. Besides, they're still out in public, so maybe talking about this particular contentious topic out here is not the best idea. The fourth quint suddenly points slightly to their left, and Itsuki follows the point.
"By the way, look, isn't that the hospital?"
Sure enough, their route walking back home from Kinokuniya happens to take them by the city hospital, and they are beginning to pass by the hospital grounds.
"Since we're here, wanna stop by and pay Dad a visit?" Yotsuba suggests optimistically.
"Father...? But you know how he is like...he will probably be busy with either a patient or a meeting. How many times have we visited him at work, only to be turned away the lady at the front desk who told us that he was busy?"
"Well, today could be different! Maybe he's actually got some time to kill!"
"You always say that whenever we try to visit Father while he is at work, Yotsuba..."
"Oh, c'mon, don't be like that. You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take, after all!"
"Is that something you heard from your sports clubs or something...?"
"Sure was! Our basketball team captain from our third year of middle school told us that!"
"Is that so..."
Almost reluctantly trotting behind Yotsuba as the elder of the two quints confidently leads her younger sister and strolls into the main hospital lobby and reception room, Itsuki slowly surveys the hospital. It has been quite a while since she has been back here, or any of the quints for that matter, though their father had notified them recently that they all need to check into the hospital in about half a year so that they can receive some vaccines for their health records. Come to think of it, Itsuki remembers their tutor informing them that he himself works at the hospital as well as their father's assistant at times; could he be working at the hospital right now too? He's never told them any details about his work schedule here at the hospital, though...
"Wait a minute...that's Uesugi-san!"
Almost unable to believe her ears, Itsuki snaps her eyes up to look in the direction that Yotsuba's looking, and sure enough, the two quints, having just entered the main waiting lobby of the hospital, spy across the large room a familiar face.
"Nakiri-san, please!"
It is the face of their tutor, still wearing his usual plain school uniform but with a doctor's coat over it, sticking his head out of a small office at the front of the lobby and calling out a name from a clipboard, with the corresponding patient getting up from her seat in the lobby to be admitted for a checkup of sorts.
"W-Wait a minute, Yotsuba, w-were we not here to see Father? We...we do not need to be disturbing Uesugi-kun while he is in the middle of work," Itsuki says quickly, lowering her voice to a hush as the girls are inside the hospital at the moment.
"Normally I'd agree, but Itsuki, look - there aren't that many people here," Yotsuba points out to the lobby, and sure enough, Itsuki can clearly see for herself the tiny number of patients left waiting for a checkup with the current doctor on duty, which would appear to be Uesugi. "We can stop by and say hi to him at least, right?"
Itsuki desperately wants to refuse and urge Yotsuba to leave their tutor alone, but her unwillingness to let Yotsuba's offer for help go to waste combined with her own growing curiosity and desire to meet their tutor while he is in his true element make it impossible for her to say no, so she just follows her older sister as the two of them take seats in the largely empty lobby.
"...we really should not be sitting here for no reason...is this not considered loitering...?" Itsuki whispers to Yotsuba.
"I mean, technically it is, yeah, but Dad will explain the situation if he needs to. Dad's the head physician of the hospital, remember?"
"I do, yes, but..."
"Oh, let me go use the bathroom real quick, actually, I drank my milk tea a little too fast..."
Yotsuba doesn't even let Itsuki have a chance to call after her with how fast she zooms out of the lobby in search of a bathroom, leaving the fifth quintuplet awkwardly sitting alone in the main lobby of the hospital. She's now at a complete loss as to what to do or think in this kind of a situation, so Itsuki helplessly remains seated, hoping that Yotsuba will come back fast enough so that the two of them can meet Uesugi, not just Itsuki by herself.
Unfortunately for her, though, it would seem that her luck has plummeted for the day, for the next time the door to the small office opens, letting out its most recent checkup patient, Uesugi Fuutarou, still clothed in his plain doctor's clothes and holding his clipboard from before, swiftly scans the hospital lobby and rests his eyes on the fifth quintuplet, who also locks eyes with him for a split second before turning away sharply in embarrassment. And as if that weren't enough, Itsuki slowly turns back in Fuutarou's direction, only to realize that he is now making his way over to her, and by this point Itsuki almost loses all composure and starts shaking her head rapidly at her approaching tutor and classmate.
"U-U-Uesugi-kun, d-don't - do not mind me, I-I-I, uh, I mean, w-we - we stopped by the hospital t-to say hello to our father, and - "
"Well, bad timing for that, since he's at a meeting. In fact, it's why I'm here right now taking patients because he was supposed to take this shift this afternoon, but an emergency meeting came up so now I'm here. But more importantly..."
Itsuki watches as Fuutarou produces his phone from his pocket and pulls up a text to show her.
"Yotsuba just texted me saying that you stopped by for a date with me once I'm off work. Is that right?"
For a second, Itsuki forgets how to breathe.
"...a...a d-date...?"