"Take care of yourself, Nakano-kun. You've been putting in lots of hours recently and I appreciate that, but make sure that it doesn't catch up to you, alright? Especially since you're still a minor and all."
"Thanks, but I'm looking after myself so far. Same schedule next week?"
"Sure thing; the more work we can get done, especially before the summer festival in town next week, the better. Have a good rest of your night."
Nakano Ichika, dressed in her usual school uniform comprised of a black cardigan, white dress shirt, and green pleated skirt, takes a look up at the sky, which has fallen dark. Another long day at work has come and gone, and it is time to make her way back home. So she pulls out her smartphone to give a taxi company a call to send out a cab, hoping that tonight won't be another one of those nights when she's forced to wait an hour for the cab she's called to show up to take her back home.
"Workin' hard as ever."
Just as Ichika lowers her phone from her ear after finishing her call, she glances to her right to find her identical body double stepping up next to her, seemingly out of nowhere as usual.
"You bet'cha," the real Ichika sighs lightly, pulling up Twitter on her phone to catch up on her mentions and notifications. "The absolute breadwinner of the family, other than Dad himself, of course."
"Not that you make all that much from this job in the first place, but I guess we all gotta start somewhere, right?"
"Started from the bottom, and now we're here, that kind of vibe, yeah."
"Except we're still kinda mid, all things considered."
"Mid is better than rock bottom, if that's what you're saying."
"Yeah, but hey, at least when you're at rock bottom, you know for a fact that things ain't gettin' any worse."
Ichika says nothing to this, busying herself with tapping away at her phone with both hands and thumbs for a few moments before changing the subject herself.
"Not every night you meet up with me after I'm done with work. Aren't you supposed to be roaming around the city and stuff?"
"Surprisingly not a lot to do tonight, guess it's one of the more chill nights today. So I figured I'd kill some time here with you instead." Ichika's sentient clone looks on, watching the real quintuplet sigh again, more lightly this time. "What, don't want me here, do ya? Not that I blame ya."
"Well, it's more that it's always awkward whenever we talk outside like this."
"Bitch, how many times I gotta fuckin' tell ya, no one can see me if I don't want 'em to. You ain't gotta worry 'bout that shit, chill for fuckin' once."
"No, I get it, I do. It's just that it's gonna be a little weird for me if someone happens to walk by and sees me clearly talking to someone who isn't there for them."
"Well, fuck, pretend like you're on your phone or somethin'. I see people run around talkin' to people on speaker phone these days."
"Okay, that might work during the day when there're other people and cars around, but in the middle of the night when you'd think you should be able to hear someone on speaker phone? And it doesn't help that there's not really much wind blowing tonight."
"Then fuckin' look around for yourself if people lookin' at'cha talkin' to my invisible ass bothers ya so goddamn much. You see anyone else around right now? 'Cause to me, we're the only two bitches on the whole damn block."
"Nah, I believe you."
"Really just gonna trust me like that? That easy?"
"Yeah, sure, why not."
It's the clone's turn to sigh loudly, rolling her eyes for good measure as Ichika continues to check social media, namely keeping up with the timelines of her friends at school and work.
"Why're you workin' so damn much lately, anyway?" Ichika's clone complains somewhat. "Like, what's the occasion? Urgent projects? Nah, can't be, 'cause if that were the case, then they'd be the ones callin' your ass in, not the other way around."
This gets the first quintuplet to finally look up from her phone. "...isn't it obvious?"
"Not really, if I have to fuckin' ask you to find out."
"So that I can spend time with everyone at the summer festival next week...?" Scoffing almost in disbelief, Ichika shakes her head while going back to her phone.
For her part, the clone scoffs back a little harder, making sure to add a somewhat mocking tone in there to differentiate her reaction. "Yeah, fuckin' right."
"You don't believe me when I say that I want to spend time with my sisters?"
"Nah, that part I don't really care about you lying about or not. I'm talkin' more in the sense that your job could very well call your ass back in for work next week anyway, in the middle of the festival. It's happened before way too many damn times to count out anymore - you plan to go out with friends during the weekend, only for your manager to call you in sayin' they got somethin' urgent for you to handle, so you end up cancelin' whatever plans you had with friends and goin' back in for work. You think this time's gonna be any different?"
Ichika merely shrugs back. "I mean, I can't help that. And obviously I know that there's always gonna be a chance that they still call me in anyway while the festival's going on. So I'm getting my hours in now to minimize the chances that it happens this time."
"For some reason I highly doubt they care about that. You're still a pawn to them, Ichika, they don't care about your schedule or personal life or whatever the fuck. I warned you about this before - there's a good chance that they see you workin' your ass off, and so they wanna take advantage of that and work your dumb bitch ass down to the bone 'til ya either break or they extract everythin' they can outta ya. I heard your manager mention the festival next week to you. If you think he gives two shits about that, lemme break it to ya first: he doesn't."
"I mean, as long as he gives a shit about it, then that's all fine by me," Ichika retorts swiftly.
"Yeah, no, I think my money's on less than a shit. Zero seems most likely."
"Yeah? We'll see."
The two Ichika's spend the rest of their time waiting for the nighttime taxi in silence until it finally arrives. And when Ichika climbs in, she stalls briefly at the door so that her invisible double can slip in first before shutting the door behind her.
"Good evening, ma'am. Where we headed to tonight?" the driver, a young man who doesn't look to be beyond college age, asks as the first quintuplet clicks on her seat belt.
"The Pentagon high-rise, please."
"Understood."
Finally able to relax a little bit, Nakano Ichika lets her gaze quickly drift out the window to watch the city begin soaring past her. While it wasn't exactly one of the main reasons why she's been working so much these days, Ichika has always greatly enjoyed nighttime car rides, especially ones that take her through the city or, best of all, down the highways. Having always been a fan of the night vibes of downtown ever since she was young, Ichika finds herself easily mesmerized by the passing lights and buildings of the city, and add in the constant drone of vehicle engines and a type of breeze, either in the form of air conditioning or a partially rolled-down window, and the quintuplet gets an experience that can't be replicated by any other means that she's privy to. And given the recent stresses of piling on work hours along with study hours, Ichika finds herself almost passing out entirely to this immensely therapeutic experience. She very well could, too, as her clone is with her tonight and could wake her up when they arrive.
And so she does. For an unknown amount of time, Ichika dozes off with her head resting against the window - until she is indeed woken up, as she thought, by her clone. But it's not how she thought she'd be awoken.
Wake the fuck up, Ichika, we got trouble.
Just as the ominous words speaking directly to her mind are warning her, the first quintuplet senses right away that the comfy vibes of the taxi are now gone. Rather than snap her eyes open in alarm, Ichika plays it cool and relies on her non-visual senses to analyze the situation. Given the hum of the taxi engine and the consistent micro-shaking of the vehicle, they are still in transit, same as when she first fell asleep, so the quint then opens her eyes slowly. She is indeed still inside the taxi cab, and the driver is still facing forward and commandeering the vehicle, but the scenery has changed to something she isn't familiar with on this particular route, which is the first sign of trouble as all taxis she's taken from work to home have consistently all taken the same path.
It's the driver, isn't it, Ichika replies back as she pretends to remain asleep.
Yep. While you were out cold, I saw him constantly lookin' back at'cha through the rear-view mirror, and then he pulled out his phone and started makin' calls, sayin' shit like 'Bro, you won't believe me, but I got one of the quintuplet girls, get me in touch with Shirazumi or whoever' and stuff like that.
Then I assume he's now taking us to one of their hideouts.
Too bad you won't get shit for being the lucky winner.
Not that I'd want to win anything out of this...
While pretending to stay sleeping, Ichika contemplates what to do.
What should we do? she asks her clone. Attack this guy and run for it? Or let him take us to wherever he's taking us and beat the shit outta his boys?
Smart thing to do is to get the hell out now. You'll give Uesugi another aneurysm if he finds out you've let yourself get kidnapped to one of Shirazumi's hideouts, assuming you care.
I actually do, believe it or not. Though, a lot of it has to do with the fact that my sisters'll go absolutely livid if they find out.
Ironic, given how they're the ones who end up botherin' him the most with stupid shit.
Heh, finally someone who gets me.
No one better, that's for sure.
That aside, we still haven't figured out what we'll -
"Yo, I'm almost there. Get everyone ready to get this bitch in."
Too late. Time to get a lil' violent, if you don't mind.
And since when have I ever minded?
Just askin', considerin' you've gotten tilted at me before 'cause I didn't ask about somethin' stupid.
Right...
Mentally bracing for a fight, Ichika chooses to get up right as the taxi is beginning to slow down as they are reaching their unknown destination.
"Oooh, I drifted off there, sorry about that," she yawns hugely, acting as if she'd been asleep for longer than she really has been. "Where are we, sir?"
"Oh, uh - w-we're almost there, just a minute out," the driver nervously responds in stark contrast to his professional demeanor back when Ichika first got into the taxi.
"Almost there...but sir, this...doesn't seem to be the Pentagon, where are we exactly?" the first quintuplet remarks, looking out the window to get a good look at their surroundings.
The driver doesn't answer, so Ichika turns to him from her seat to add additional pressure on him, and in doing so she can clearly see the panic in him grow by the second on his face.
"...sir? Where are we going?" the first quintuplet asks slowly but unambiguously, and this turns out to be the last straw for the suspicious driver. He quickly pulls out a stun gun from his pocket, turns it on, and points it in Ichika's direction, and the high schooler reels quickly at the sight and cracks of electricity coming from the taser.
"Shut up, already! Don't talk if you don't wanna get hurt, otherwise I'm pullin' the fuck over and makin' you shut the fuck up, or worse depending on how much more you keep blabbing!" the taxi driver demands violently. "God-fucking-damn it, why the fuck couldn't you just'a stayed asleep, you dumb bitch!"
Do as he says. I wanna find out where we're goin' so I can trash the place, Ichika's clone communicates to her real self. And for the record, he'll be the first one to die.
Heh, suit yourself.
So the quintuplet and her undetected double remain silent for the rest of the journey, which doesn't last for much longer as the taxi cab pulls into a sloped driveway leading into an underground parking structure. Judging by the largely abandoned and lightless urban environment that they've been driving through ever since she woke up from her unplanned nap, Ichika surmises that they're somewhere in the west sector of the city again. She could check their exact location with her smartphone's GPS functionality, but she figures it's best not to attract more attention from the now-hostile driver for the sake of getting to their destination without any unnecessary delays.
The suspicious taxi driver parks the cab in a particularly deep section of the abandoned underground carport, where, as the vehicle brakes to a halt and the driver kills the engine, Ichika can take a look at where she's been kidnapped to: a hideout of some kind, and clearly not the good kind if the dried bloodstains scattered about on the ground, walls, and even ceiling are anything to go by. Various pieces of worn and decrepit furniture are strewn almost randomly across the carport floor: couches and even bed frames and mattresses, tables, chairs, and a few desks, all of which look like they've been salvaged or pilfered from dumps or the streets and brought here to accommodate any of the residents of this hideout at any of their whims. Notably, though, the few desks that are present are noticeably tidied up and of at least acceptable work quality, as they appear surprisingly much like regular ones: stacks of papers, files, cabinets, laptops, and even a full computer setup for one of the desks. An old gasoline-powered generator is noisily generating electricity for the entire hideout and its overly intricate system of lights hung anywhere that they can fit, a half-equipped kitchen sits unoccupied for the moment near where the taxi cab has parked, and portable latrines along with a terribly faded and corroded garbage dumpster are pushed up against the wall on the far side of the hideout floor.
"Aight, get out," the driver barks back at Ichika, who complies and opens the unlocked door to step outside, hesitating on shutting the door for long enough for her clone to sneak out, yet undetected still, and the quintuplet gets a better look - and unfortunately smell - of the place. The offensive combination of decaying trash, unattended portables, and dilapidated dust and wear of the underground car park itself swiftly makes itself known to Ichika, who coughs a few times as her body tries its best to adjust to this grungy environment that somehow has the capacity to support the sustainment to any degree of human life. And as the driver calls out to his fellow gang members, Ichika glances sideways at her double.
So what's the plan now?
Your call. You wanna talk to 'em first a little, or you just want me to paint the walls red?
Let me talk to them first...see if I can get anything out of them, or see if there's anyone important here that we can gather some information from.
A'ight, floor's yours, then.
Ichika looks back up to find the taxi driver approaching her, this time accompanied by a few men all noticeably taller than him. The guy in front, dressed for some reason in a Hawaiian shirt and white dress pants, smirks down at Ichika as he pulls off his Ray Bans to get a better look at her. To be fair, some of the floodlights further away can be pretty blinding at the wrong angles, though that would beg the question of why these people thought setting floodlights pointed directly at the people in this hideout was a good idea.
"Damn, the shit they were sayin' that the girls we needed to look for were absolute bombshells turned out to be true, huh?" he creepily remarks, and Ichika can almost feel his eyes roll up and down her body, though it's nothing she's not used to at this point. "I kinda wanna say fuck Shirazumi and take this bitch for myself."
"And kiss our contract money goodbye? Hell if we're lettin' you do that," another one of the men brought up to Ichika, with a more stereotypical dirty wifebeater and large basketball shorts on, growls at the man with the Ray Bans. "If you wanna fuck her so bad, get it over with so we can move her where Shirazumi-san wants us to."
"Um - can I leave now? I can't be gone for too long, otherwise the company's gonna start asking me questions on - " the suspicious taxi driver tries to tell his fellow gangbangers, but he gets cut off by the Hawaiian shirt thug.
"You ain't leavin', you little fuck, we told you that you need to move some shit for us to another hideout. So you're waitin' your ass here 'til I'm done with her," he barks at the younger driver. "If it'll make you feel better, you can have a turn after I'm done with her."
The man in the Hawaiian shirt turns to find Ichika glaring back at him with both eyes widened - and her right eye flashed a bright, blinding gold, brighter than even the floodlights towards the rear of the hideout.
"Only after I'm done with you - if at all," she hisses.
The activation of her Mystic Eye brings all four men down to their knees, instantly immobilized from making eye contact with her golden eye, and the first quintuplet slowly crosses her arms, now her turn to look down on these pieces of appropriate rubbish called human beings. Just for good measure, Ichika takes a step towards the thug who openly talked about raping her first and subsequently plants her shoe directly onto his face, kicking him hard backwards onto the grimy garage floor.
"Wha - she's - she's a mage!? We weren't briefed on this!" the more reserved thug in the wifebeater says sharply in alarm, having watched one of their own get kicked in the face with completely no resistance put up whatsoever. "What did you do to us?!"
"That doesn't matter. What matters is what you're going to tell me before I decide what to do with you," the eldest quintuplet says quietly to the men kneeling before her. "Now, tell me, first things first - this is a hideout, clearly, you even mentioned it yourselves. I assume it's for contraband drugs, right?"
To answer this, the tax driver who kidnapped Ichika here is the one to answer. "Y-Yeah, it is, along with p-people we need to kidnap..."
"You little piece of shit! Is your fucking mouth a goddamn toilet or something? The fuck are you telling her shit like that so easily?!" the guy whose face got kicked snarls over at the youngest thug posing as a taxi driver.
"N-N-No, wait, that - I just - I couldn't control it! I didn't mean to say anything but I - "
"And how many others have you brought here already before me? How about you answer," Ichika points at the man in the wifebeater and basketball shorts.
"A total of e-eight people, before you, that is," he is forced to answer. "Oh fu - he's not kidding, man, she's forcing me to answer somehow..."
"You fucking bitch...!" the Hawaiian shirt gangster grovels on the ground so that he can face Ichika more properly. "I'm sooooooo gonna fuck your brains out once I figure out how to - "
Ichika turns to the taxi driver, who watches himself reach into his pocket, grab the taser still in there, and toss it to her, which Ichika catches, turns on, and consequently stabs the profane thug with, violently filling the largely abandoned carport with the hysterical shrieks and garbled screams of a grown man being subjected to twenty-five thousand volts of electricity. After about five full seconds of electrocution therapy, Ichika gets up and gives him a bit of a love tap in the form of another swift kick to the man's gut, at the very top of his pelvis region.
"Say more dumb shit like that and I'll aim lower next time," the quintuplet coldly hisses again down at the profane gangster, who continues to suffer severe muscle spasms as a result of his brief torture while also simultaneously curling up in a somewhat fetal position from Ichika's hard kick to his stomach while she turns back to the thug in the wifebeater. "So about those eight people before me - what happened to them?"
"We...did some experiments on them that Shirazumi-san...instructed us to," he answers reluctantly, clearly trying his best to resist the influence of Ichika's Mystic Eye but ultimately failing to.
"And what were this experiments about, exactly? What did you do to them?"
"Drug...therapy clinics, as...Shirazumi-san liked to call them. It's just forcing those people we kidnapped to take drugs. We'd...observe and record what happened to them. Some of them died soon after. The ones who survived were usually too fucked up by them, so we killed them and disposed of them too."
Lines up with what Uesugi's been finding, Ichika's clone notes from nearby.
"And why? Why have you been using the people you've kidnapped as guinea pigs for whatever drug therapies these are? What exactly are these drugs you're forcing them to take?" Ichika continues to interrogate.
"The drugs we're using - they're a kind of drug our boss, Shirazumi-san, wants to perfect and sell on the black market eventually; it's called Heisei," the thug in the wifebeater and basketball shorts continues, still against his will. "We don't know the specifics, only he and a few others he trusts do, possibly just him, even, we're just doing what he tells us to do. He thinks the only way to get the perfect version of the drug he wants is to keep testing on humans 'til we get it right."
"And how close is he to getting there?"
"We don't know."
"Then how long have you been doing this?"
"Good part of the last two years."
"And how much progress do you think you've made?"
"No idea, I already told you that only Shirazumi knows, probably. You'd have to ask him, if you ever come across him."
"And why does this Shirazumi guy want me specifically, anyway? Me and my sisters, that is?"
"Again, I don't know."
How about you ask that third guy a question, the one who hasn't talked yet, Ichika's undetectable double suggests as she points down to the fourth thug who's collapsed onto his side ever since Ichika's Mystic Eye immobilized them some time ago and has remained completely silent. Taking her suggestion, Ichika then turns to this last man who hasn't uttered a word yet, a young man who can't be much older than high school age and wears a cap on his head whose visor hides eyes from Ichika's view, at least from this angle.
"You, do you know the whereabouts of this Shirazumi guy?" the quintuplet demands.
But to Ichika's silent alarm, the boy with the cap doesn't answer her. Instead, he remains lying quietly on the ground, seemingly unresponsive.
...something wrong with your Mystic Eye? her double asks quietly as well.
I don't know. He should be responding with something but he's not...
So Ichika tries again: "Where is Shirazumi? Answer me!"
Without warning, the young gangster bounces up from the ground swiftly with almost superhuman ability, reaching into his pocket and quickly launching a large KA-BAR knife straight at Ichika - directly aimed at her right golden eye. The speed at which this knife is thrown is far too fast for Ichika's own reflexes to respond to, and so just before the knife's point is able to reach and pierce her Mystic Eye, its handle gets grabbed in midair by a perfect duplicate of Ichika who is suddenly now visible to the men on the ground.
"What the - "
The first few words of the young gangster, now visibly shocked at this sudden turn of events, get cut short when he suddenly recoils backwards as if he's been struck in the forehead by something and collapses backwards, clutching his head and groaning loudly. Lowering her right arm, the clone of Ichika slips the KA-BAR knife into the real Ichika's hand amidst gasps of surprise from the other men at the sudden sight of a second Ichika. But then, the thug in the wifebeater suddenly exclaims,
"Hey, that worked, we're free! Get 'em!"
Realizing their newfound freedom from Ichika's influence, the gangsters all quickly jump up to their feet, with the one in the cap following last as he's dealing with the pain of whatever hit him in the head just now, and the frontmost man in the Hawaiian shirt seizes his chance to charge straight for the real Ichika. In his frenzied, roaring haste, however, he completely disregards her body double - who then slams her left fist into his gut, the same place where the real Ichika kicked him a little earlier, and then buries her right fist in a savage hook that lands on the left side of his chin, sending him straight down to the ground.
Her work isn't done yet, though. The boy in the cap recovers enough by this point that he turns and runs back to the nearest desk, where Ichika's clone looks and spies a handgun laying there. So she reacts swiftly and snatches the stun gun from Ichika's other hand to hurl precisely at the back of his head, which successfully smacks him there and puts him down, this time for good, before he can reach the desk for the firearm.
The man in the basketball shorts himself charges at the girls, and Ichika's clone again steps in to defend the real one by slipping in and launching the burly man into the air off his feet with an uppercut so powerful that a painful crack of the guy's lower jaw breaking rips through the carport in spite of the noisy generator in the background. And for good measure, Ichika's clone combos another strong axe kick to slam her opponent's body hard against the ground, damn near giving him a concussion with how hard the back of his head smashes against the cold, grimy concrete.
While the basketball shorts thug feebly groans, with one hand behind his head and the other on his jaw to nurse his wounds where he can while still lying on the floor, the clone swiftly snaps her gaze to her left to the taxi driver, who's since gotten back up to his feet and inhales sharply on reflex when he sees Ichika's double glare at him with a deadly smirk; it doesn't take long before he's unable to help himself and let out a short shriek before turning and stumbling in a frenzied, frightened effort to reach the his vehicle, but one of his stumbles causes him to trip over his own foot and fall flat on the ground anyway. So Ichika's double has no trouble at all simply tailing him and planting her foot down firmly on the middle of his back to pin him there, forcing a sudden deluge of pleads and tears out of him.
"N-Nooooo! No, no, no, please, p-please, don't k-kill me, don't kill me, please! I didn't - I didn't do anything wrong - "
The fake Ichika merely reaches down, knocks his taxi driver's hat off his head so that she can better grasp his skull, and smacks his face against the floor to get him to shut up.
"Didn't do anything wrong, huh. So mind explainin' the whole taser thing for me?" she asks him, in a nonchalant and even bored manner.
"Th-That - that - I - I didn't actually do it, though, did I - !?" he tries to reason out of panic.
"Oh, right. Just like how that other fucker wasn't actually gonna rape that other me over there, right? That how this shit works?"
"I-I'm different! I don't a-actually do any of those things! I-I-I just had that s-stun gun on me for s-self defense! These guys don't l-like me all that much either! Y-You heard how that dude was treatin' me, right!?"
"I mean, if you think self defense lets you threaten someone with a stun gun while you're kidnapping them in a fuckin' taxi, then sure, whatever, man."
So she proceeds to drag the young taxi driver, kicking and screaming for mercy and for his own life, over to the taxi cab that brought them here to this abandoned underground car lot, and slams his face against the window of the driver side door in the face of his hysterical screaming until she's cracked and broken the window altogether from doing so, with blood and broken glass spilled all over the ground, the door, and the driver's seat of the taxi.
The real Ichika, for her part, is watching her clone smash the suspicious taxi driver's face against the window of his own taxi when suddenly, the Hawaiian shirt guy who was laying on the floor recovering from his electrocution seizes Ichika's lack of attention at her surroundings and lunges at her, and this time with no one else nearby to stop him, he successfully grabs her and tumbles with her down to the dirty floor as he's still not fully recovered.
"You fucking bitch - you could'a made this easy on yourself. Once I'm done with you, I'm gonna fucking rip your arms and legs off and make you watch as I - "
Ichika doesn't bother waiting to listen to the rest of the madman's sickening monologue - as the gangster turns her body over to reach for her cardigan and shirt, the quintuplet in turn lunges back up at him with the KA-BAR knife her clone slipped her, which she'd managed to conceal since she'd been dragged down face-down with the knife managing to remain out of view in front, and manages to stab him in the gut with it. The unfamiliar sensation of a knife plunging into and ripping through human flesh reverberates through the knife and into Ichika's hands - it's a disgusting, horrid feeling, as she's only ever cut meat meant for consumption in the kitchen with her sisters before, but with the kind of words that she's gotten from this guy, plus the adrenaline of the situation getting in full swing in her veins, Ichika manages to remain unfettered by this. Grunting loudly with pain, the man tries to reach down and wrangle the KA-BAR away from the high schooler, but Ichika, thinking quickly, leans up and spits right in the guy's face, managing to hit his eyes directly since his Ray Bans aren't there on his face to keep his eyes shielded. This provides a sufficient amount of distraction to cause him to reach up to his eyes in an effort to quickly wipe away the spit, freeing Ichika's hands to do whatever else it wants with her bladed weapon - and the quintuplet chooses to go for the throat, literally. Aiming quickly at the gap between his arms, Ichika pushes the knife towards his neck, and the fresh, sharp blade has no trouble piercing his Adam's apple and clawing its way through the tendons and muscle to perforate his throat.
Choking and gagging, the thug collapses on his side, grasping his throat now that he's managed to get Ichika's spit out of his eyes, but in one final effort, perhaps because he knows that he will not survive this injury, the guy lunges one last time for the quintuplet, who is treated to an even more unsettling sight of a man who, on the verge of imminent death, has nothing else to lose and thus will do anything it takes to get what he wants - and the crazed, frenzied eyes that only such a person could ever sport. More surprisingly, however, is the fact that Ichika, as if on a dime, reacts and viciously buries the KA-BAR knife into the man's forehead, stabbing him through the cranium with such force that the hilt of the blade slaps against his forehead, and Ichika crashes his chin down against the ground for one last time, panting heavily with her hand still on the handle of the knife whose blade is still embedded deep in the dead man's pierced brain.
"How's your first kill feel?"
The quintuplet, still panting and trying to catch her breath with her heart pounding in her chest, glances up to find her clone, having headed over to her after dealing with the taxi cab driver, smirking down at her and the man she's just murdered. Ichika merely shakes her head.
"...disgusting," she mutters. "Fuck this guy, he deserves it, but..."
"Still can't shake that feeling of disgust, right?" the clone merely chuckles, as if reveling at Ichika's gutted senses.
"Did you feel this way? I guess you got used to it fast, given how many people you've killed."
"Believe it or not, yeah, I did. The difference is that I actually liked it."
Snorting quietly, Ichika shakes her head again and looks away from her double. "...yeah, figures."
"Best you get used to that feeling now. Just like how you get up on a stage in front of lots of people for the first time and you get those jitters, stage fright or whatever, you just gotta keep doin' it to get rid of 'em. Killin' people's the same; the more you kill, the more you get used to it, 'til eventually killin' people doesn't bother you anymore."
"Personally, though, I wouldn't recommend going through that process."
Both Ichika's look up at the sudden new voice to find a familiar high school boy approaching them in his black cap and half-kilt worn over his usual school uniform, surveying the scene as he walks up to them.
"How'd you find us here, exactly?" Ichika's body double smirks back at Fuutarou, though with much less sinister aggression than before.
"I'd been tipped off to this location. Apparently I could find someone who has direct connections to Shirazumi, or something of that nature," he explains quietly and concisely. "I certainly didn't expect to find the two of you here. What the fuck did you drag Ichika into?"
"She didn't drag me into this. I was kidnapped here, or at least they tried," Ichika says suddenly while still seated on the grimy floor of the abandoned underground parking lot. "The cab I called to take me home from work tonight ended up taking me here instead 'cause the driver was part of Shirazumi's gang, I guess. So we had to fight our way out."
"And for the record, I don't drag her into my fights if I can help it. I know you don't have the highest opinion of me, but I don't go that far," the clone adds, with her smirk completely gone by now.
"But you will go so far as to encourage her to keep killing so that she gets used to the feeling."
"Hey, I never actually told her to go do it. I was just sayin' that's what you can expect, that's all."
"Uh huh. So what was the whole 'best you get used to that feeling now' part supposed to mean, then?"
"I mean, you never know when she'll get into another situation like this where she's gotta take matters into her own hands and spill some blood on her own. You can't get fucked up by the feeling of killin' people who you know are total shitheads, that's some virgin isekai hero shit."
"Or maybe you can quit messing with Ichika's magical signature so that I can start tracking her properly when she goes to work so that when some shit like this happens, I can get here faster and make sure she doesn't end up in a position where she has to kill someone."
The clone smirks yet again, putting her right hand on her hip. "Figured it out, huh? Took ya long enough."
"I figured it out pretty fast after I met you. I just never brought it up because I took the gamble to trust you that you'd look after Ichika for me so that I'd only have to keep an eye out for the other four. That, and I didn't know much about you, if anything at all, so I figured it'd be best to let some time pass and see if we ran into each other more often, which would give me a better idea of who you are and what you're capable of. Now, I'm not so sure if I want to keep doing that." Fuutarou gestures out to the rest of the bloody scene.
"Then take a fuckin' hint, bro. If you're so fuckin' smart, maybe ya ought'a also figured out the reason why I keep scramblin' your detection over the city," the fake Ichika suddenly growls at the high school tutor, who simply narrows his eyes back at her.
"Sorry, but I'm not as smart as you think, clearly. You'll need to spell it out very clearly for me to get it," he retorts back.
"Shitty gaslighting you got there, maybe if I get you a propane tank from back there it'll help power your trash magical circuits a bit more."
"Better than someone who has none at all."
Fuutarou watches as the fake Ichika's own eyebrows furrow deeply in a sudden surge of anger.
"Yeah? How 'bout I show you what that someone can do to you, then?"
"That's enough, you two."
The suddenly sharp climb in tension between the two finally compels the real Ichika to get up from the ground and the man she's killed and stand in between her own clone and her tutor to finally rejoin the conversation.
"Just go do what you need to. We can get home ourselves," Ichika tells her classmate, waving her hand a little towards him.
"This is part of my job, I'm afraid. And besides, how exactly are you getting home? You probably don't know exactly where we are, but we're at least half an hour away by car. Unless you've somehow figured out teleportation magic and know where one of my portals are?"
"Is that a challenge? 'Cause I'm willing to put money down that I can find it within that time," the clone remarks behind the real Ichika.
"Oh, and I forgot to mention the part where you need administrative access to use one of them in the first place. In other words, me," Fuutarou adds coldly in response.
The first quintuplet, understanding that Fuutarou, much less herself, isn't going anywhere unless they talk first, sighs with a mixture of exasperation and irritation and turns to him. "Fine, if you want to talk about something, let's get it over with. I'm tired and could use a damn shower right about now, so I wanna go home. I already told you why and how we got here, so what else do you want to know?"
Fuutarou raises his hand with two fingers. "Two things: what your part-time job is, and who exactly that other Ichika is. But I get the feeling that you'd rather not answer either of those things, so I don't expect you to give me those answers."
Ichika shakes her head in confirmation. "Yeah, I can't...answer those things right this moment. Maybe soon, but...I don't know how soon."
"Then at least tell me this: do you trust that other Ichika to continue protecting you like this? Because personally, I see this shit and don't feel confident in her ability to do so."
"As if you do a better fuckin' job, cocksucker."
"Big words coming from someone who only needs to worry about guarding one girl instead of four or five. And you still almost got Ichika ki - "
"Fuutarou! Please, just stop!"
Ichika's weighted plea silences the two of them, though it's still not enough to stop her double from smirking quietly and throwing a middle finger back at the young mage, who ignores it and focuses his attention on the first quintuplet.
"Yes, I trust her. It's hard to explain, and...well, as you can see, I'm not in the best position mentally to try to explain it. Just know that...she's been with me for a long time, and that this isn't the first time I've gotten into trouble like this, even before we met you earlier this year. She swears a lot and comes off as an asshole most of the time, I know, but...just...bear with her."
"...alright, I'll take your word for it. What about your part-time, then? Is there a reason why you can't tell me what it is?"
"It's really important to me, that's...that's all. I...don't have some kind of deep reason to keep it a secret, it's just...important to me for personal reasons. Like, my own sisters don't even know what it is, and I'd like for them to be the first ones to know if I can help it when I do decide to reveal what it is, so..."
Sighing in turn, Fuutarou rubs his head through his cap in clear annoyance, but he relents. "...fine, I won't bother asking you again, then. Just one more thing before we move on, though..."
Stepping past his student and reaching down, the boy grabs hold of the KA-BAR knife still stuck in the Hawaiian shirt thug's forehead and swiftly yanks it out, causing Ichika to cringe a little upon seeing it.
"I think I've told your sisters this before - I might've even told you this before too at some point. But one of the reasons why I don't want to teach you or your sisters magecraft or why I don't recommend a life like this in general is because at some point, you do need to take lives. Without getting too spiritual, killing another human being changes you; it's a pretty unique experience and not in a good way. You're feeling that right now, judging by the way you look."
Noticing Fuutarou gesture back at her when he says this, Ichika looks away uncomfortably.
"What about you, then? Didn't you go through the same thing?" the other Ichika points out rather callously.
"I did, in fact. It fucked me up bad, and I needed a long time to adjust. So in case you couldn't tell, I'm speaking from experience." Fuutarou faces Ichika again. "Anyway, when you kill your first human and get over that experience, that unlocks for you the ability to kill another human. Each time you kill, the less of an impact it has on you, until you get to the point where you can kill someone with no qualms about it. Obviously there are cases where people can deal with it better than others, like soldiers who fight in wars or those who have their reasons to kill, but you're not one of them. And you don't know how you'll react to being in that position until you're actually there, and if possible, you shouldn't ever get near that point. So leave the killing to her as much as you can."
"But I - I killed him out of self-defense!" the quintuplet blurts out. "That shouldn't count! I was just defending myself!"
At this, Fuutarou just slowly gazes down at the dead man next to his feet, whose blood creeps ever so slowly towards his shoes.
"It's not that I don't believe you," he says quietly, "but that doesn't change the fact that this guy's still dead, whether he deserved to die or not. Self-defense, aggression, whichever the case."
"Then...then what? Are you going to tell Dad that I killed someone? Are you going to report me to the police or whatever because of this? What's the point of you preaching to me about all this?"
"No, I'm not going to tell your dad this, because nothing good's gonna come out of that. And I'm not going to report you the police either, that's even worse. The point of me telling you this is because I don't want you to develop a habit of killing people as a means to solving your problems, because eventually, you kill enough people, other people will come and kill you, too. You're already on the path to becoming a mage, something that you know is not what I want, and worse, you already know how to use your Mystic Eye, at least to some degree. You have someone with you here who's already very used to killing people too. And now that you've finally felt what it's like to kill someone yourself, you're already on a path that I don't want you to take, a path that I've been on for the past nine years."
Fuutarou briefly inspects the bloody KA-BAR knife in his hands.
"...but if you've been on this path for so long, then...not that I plan on doing the same, but if you can survive, then surely I can too. Or, at least, there's nothing that says I can't handle my own if I end up becoming the same thing as you," Ichika responds.
Shrugging a little, the young mage tosses the knife down onto the back of the man whose life the quintuplet has ended. "There isn't, no. But do you really want to find out if you can?"
Ichika, starting to get genuinely angry at all this preacher talk, takes a threatening step of her own towards her tutor.
"Look, enough of your tutoring act, you've done enough of that at home already all year so I don't need this crap now of all times! I'm not like my sisters who can't do things on their own and get into a whole bunch of trouble when they try! If things like this happen, if I end up having to kill a couple more people to keep myself safe, then so be it! I can handle myself, okay!? Now fuck off already!"
To her surprise, Fuutarou just tilts his head a little, clearly knowing that anything else he'll say will have no impact on the quintuplet, and so he turns to head towards the desks.
"Then give me some time to search this area. Turns out you killed the guy I was looking for, so I'll see if there's anything I can take outta here. Oh, looks like this guy's still alive, just knocked out..."
"I told you, we can handle ourselves," Ichika calls after him.
"So what? You're just gonna leave? Like I said, we're thirty minutes out by car, and you've got blood all over you. You really plan on just pulling up to your place when you're already late getting back home and your sisters look at you and see that you're a mess?"
Finally realizing that she can't go back home without his help, Ichika reluctantly resigns herself to somewhat bitterly watching him search the desks and put his hand over the young man with his own cap who got knocked out by the stun gun that the fake Ichika chucked at him. While he's busy with that, the fake Ichika quietly leans down and picks up the bloody KA-BAR to wipe the blood off onto the Hawaiian shirt that it's been resting on.
"...you're going to keep that?" the real Ichika mutters.
"Souvenir. I'll take good care of it...'cause who knows, I might need it later, haha."