A soft metal clank rolls from beneath Uesugi Fuutarou's right shoe as he steps on a small, rusted metal grate to take a look over the edge of an old abandoned building in a factory complex located in the eastern district of the city. It is the dead of night, specifically around one in the morning, and the young mage spots his alleged targets - a pair of men standing guard at an inconspicuous door leading into an even bigger building in this complex. The eastern district of the city is home to both residential and rural areas and has been this way for some time, and so this factory complex once manufactured farming tools, parts for farming machinery, and tools for both residential and farming needs. However, with population shifts over the years towards the center of the city where the downtown areas are located, the factory complex here had to be put out of business due to the lack of workers to replace the ones who'd moved downtown. What's strange is the fact that unlike many other buildings and infrastructure throughout the city that were abandoned from the population shifts, this particular factory lot has yet to be demolished and developed into something else.

Strange to many, but not to Fuutarou: he's known for a long time that this particular factory complex, which he and his father have since affectionately dubbed the "Rat Factory" due to the sheer numbers of gangsters, thugs, and other sorts of unsavory types of people who would frequent it ever since it became abandoned, is home to activity that such people would freely engage in. Land is a precious resource anywhere in the world, and Japan is one country that understands this especially well; an entire factory lot like this not being demo'd and used to build something else, like a school, hospital, warehouse, or at least a few more farms? And not just for a year or two, but a whole decade at least? That's bound to raise some eyebrows, but it's like people forgot all about this place. Given the number of people he'd tracked there, the location of the site, and its massive size relative to other gang hideouts throughout the city, Fuutarou highly suspects that there is illicit contraband smuggling taking place here on a scale only seldomly matched by other sites like this in other parts of the city, and the profits the gang or gangs involved here are making are most likely being used to pay off the district administration so that they look the other way, and whatever's left over goes straight back into keeping the trade going or into the gang's pockets.

Up until now, Fuutarou didn't pay much attention to this place himself, admittedly: while most likely a location of frequent drug trafficking and criminal activity, the Rat Factory never drew attention to itself with headline-making incidents like gang fights, drug busts, or the like; it's simply too far out of the way to visit frequently for the city police, and it's probably such a profitable place for all the gangbangers throughout the city that there's likely an unwritten agreement among them to treat the Rat Factory as a neutral zone, which makes sense considering the Rat Factory isn't the only such place that the city's underworld that's considered a neutral area. Fuutarou himself is usually too busy putting out smaller and more urgent fires throughout the rest of the city, whose downtown, southern, and western districts are the zones demand his attention the most.

But tonight is different - with the intel that he's managed to extract from the old phone that Maeda supplied him the other day, Uesugi has learned of and marked the locations of five different major hubs of drug trafficking that Shirazumi Rio's gang uses to move their contraband around the city. These are different from the smaller caches of drugs and contraband that he and the city police have been busting independently of each other, where there are only a handful of gangsters at most attending them and do not pose much of a threat themselves, at least not to Fuutarou. These are heavily occupied points of interest filled with more hardcore gangbangers and criminals a few levels up from your average bottom-rung thug hired off the street, intensely more malicious people who likely have a heavy stake or investment into the drugs or the drug trafficking business that they are involved in, the kind of bad guys the city police are in no way willing to confront simply because the threat that these gangsters pose is well above most of their pay grades. All the drug busts that the city police has conducted, with all the newspapers preaching about how the latest drug bust was bigger and more sensational than the last - those have all been small scale stockpiles that haven't really dented the drug trade here in the city all that much, all things considered. Not that Fuutarou himself has had any bigger successes, but tonight, if all goes well, that will change.

The young mage's objective tonight is one of Shirazumi's lieutenants, or someone who works with him closely to administrate his gang's drug trafficking. After digging through the intel that Maeda's phone had on it, Fuutarou has determined that while the vast majority of Shirazumi's closely associated underlings do a good job of randomizing their appearances throughout the city, there is one exception - a surprisingly normal-looking guy in his late twenties named Tanigo who looks like he could be the CEO of a small company and apparently likes attending idol concerts in his spare time...quite the strange combination of characteristics. His preferences for entertainment aside, he alone appears to consistently show up at the Rat Factory, so Fuutarou is hoping he can catch this Tanigo guy in the area. Now that he's ascertained that the Rat Factory is a major drug hub for Shirazumi's gang, he's not leaving without at least sending a message to the gangs here that this place is no longer a safe place to traffic drugs in and out of; the whole detaining and interrogating the Tanigo guy is a bonus, but it would be one hell of a sweet bonus if he were to get it.

A small Isuzu truck is rumbling into view off in the distance; as the eastern district is mainly known for its farmlands, Fuutarou can easily see the vehicle approaching the factory from far away, and he waits for the truck to stop in front of the main factory building where the two men he observed earlier were standing guard and are now moving to assist the occupants of the vehicle offload crates and boxes onto a medley of loading equipment like small wagons, carts, and even a smaller utility vehicle, the kind you'd see driving around at low speeds inside a large wholesale warehouse. The young mage takes this opportunity while the guards are distracted with their work to approach; he doesn't intend on going on a murdering spree - he can justify killing a few bad guys at a time, but slaughtering an entire factory's worth of people is going to be a bit much, since it's going to be more difficult for his clean-up crews to discretely dispose of this many bodies. But at the same time, he doesn't intend on taking the stealthy route tonight, either; this place is too important for the gangsters here to try to torch it just to deny Fuutarou of getting his hands on some juicy evidence, and certainly the people in charge will instruct the goons here to defend this place with their lives.

That being said, what Fuutarou would still like to do is be smart with his initial engagements; if he can take out a few disconnected stragglers like these without alerting the entire site at large, then he'll take it. And that's what he does - as soon as he reaches the men offloading the cargo from the small truck with the help of his Presence Concealment spell, the young mage strikes the back of the head of the closest gangster to him to knock him cleanly out, causing him to sprawl forward and topple off the boxes he was carrying that have since spilled onto the ground in front of him. Not realizing that their buddy's been attacked, one of the other gangsters groans around the side of the truck while rounding the corner to see what's going on,

"Ah shit, dude, did you drop that shit agai - "

He won't finish his thought for the night since Fuutarou immediately seizes him, drags him around two-hundred and seventy degrees, and slams him face-first into the side of the truck's deployed loading ramp, knocking him out with a much more painful technique that he'll be feeling when he wakes up in the morning. The other two thugs, quickly realizing that something's happening, also round the corner of the truck, and the first one who does gets a solid straight right to the nose that breaks it. As he reels backwards and falls to the ground clutching his now-broken nose, the fourth and final enemy tries to throw a punch of his own at Fuutarou, who parries it by merely shoving the fist away before sinking his own left fist as a hook into his opponent's side, then one into the right side of his chin. The gangster's legs give out from the direct strike on his chin, but before he can hit the ground on his butt, Fuutarou grabs hold of his collar, then his face to smash it into the side of the truck with a loud and dull metallic thunk to then let him crumple to the ground, unconscious.

The young tutor would like to search the boxes as per his usual habits, but he fights the urge and instead scans the side of the factory building for any security cameras. There is one, but it's an older security camera model, and it doesn't even seem to be functioning, so unless there are any enemies nearby who have heard the commotion he's made, Fuutarou is clear to infiltrate the building. Just to be safe, the young mage casts a surveillance spell to monitor the activity inside the factory building out to a certain distance - only to detect hurried footsteps, quite a few of which are now galloping in his direction towards what he presumes is the factory entrance next to him. He did intend on not going stealthy, after all.

So Fuutarou kicks things into high gear by literally bashing the front door of the factory off its hinges with a magically powered front kick that launches the door inwards, slamming into the frontmost gangster out of a group of six headed his way to investigate the loud banging and thuds outside. Thanks to the domino-effect of the door getting launched into their party, the six bad guys get thrown to the floor like pins in a bowling alley, with the guy in front who bore the brunt of the impact very obviously knocked the hell out with a major concussion and possibly a few broken ribs. As the others try to pry themselves free of the mess, Fuutarou walks in, grabs the door he's just kicked off its hinges, and swings it around a few times, batting the pair of thugs who've managed to get up first against each of the opposing walls and leaving them either quiet and unmoving or groaning miserably while clutching his arm that's now bleeding from a bad compound fracture. Tossing the bent door behind him, Fuutarou immediately kicks a knife that one of the two remaining thugs manages to pull out from his back pocket out of his hand and swings the same foot down on his head with a fluid axe kick to silence his jaw against the floor before reaching down and yanking the final gangster out from underneath the body of the first guy and holding him up into the air.

"I'm looking for a guy known as Tanigo; you know him?" he asks quietly, with the only thing quiet about his words being the volume of his voice.

The gangster in his hands, struggling in trying to pry Fuutarou's hands off his shirt, snarls back, "Fuck you, bitch, I ain't tellin' you shit!"

So Fuutarou swiftly changes his grip on the guy to a one handed death grip around his throat that immediately cuts off the bad guy's air flow so fast that he doesn't have the time to get a proper breath in before he starts getting choked out.

"Tanigo, you braindead bastard, is he here? Otherwise I'm about to make you braindead."

The verbal threat combined with the physical one of suffering permanent brain damage due to a lack of air is more than enough to convince the thug to cooperate, who then begins to nod frantically so that Fuutarou can loosen his grip just enough to let him have some air and consequently some ability to speak.

"O-Okay, okay - yeah, he's - he's here - you can find him - all the way in the back - there's an office - you can't miss it - "

As a reward for his cooperation, Fuutarou pivots and hurls him through the gaping section in the factory lobby entrance where the door used to be, and the bad guy sails straight into the open rear of the truck outside; the resulting slam that slaps him against the side of the truck bed also causes the rickety sliding door to fall down and consequently trap him inside.

Per the instructions he's just been given, the young mage casts another surveillance rune to help him discern the layout of the factory rooms, only to sense more enemies inbound on his position, coming to check out what's going on, as well as a general site-wide movement of personnel, likely because they've figured out at this point that they're coming under attack. With this many people headed his way, likely with weapons as well, Fuutarou primes his storage runes as he strides into the next room, kicking open the door and breaking the doorknob off in the process to enter what used to be the shower rooms of the factory.

"There he is, get his ass!" one of the men headed his way through these showers shouts out from the rear, and as eight men in total, excluding the one shouting orders in the back, all charge for Fuutarou at once, the young mage catches a glimpse of their squad leader of sorts reach behind him to grab a walkie-talkie - which makes Fuutarou realize that there's a chance that these guys might go so far as to call Shirazumi himself to arrive on the scene to deal with him, which would make sense given the importance of this drug trafficking site.

Immediately, the young tutor slips past the throng of men charging at him, flash-stepping and barely making it through a rapidly shrinking break in their ranks to slam his palm against the face of the thug in charge of the others, crushing the back of his head against the flaking wall directly behind him. Suffering a severe concussion on top of a heavily fractured skull, the squad leader crumples at Fuutarou's feet; had his head been slammed with any stronger force, the back of his head would have simply been pasted against the wall instead.

And before the body of the squad leader hits the floor, Fuutarou pivots his waist to the right sharply and lets fly a single playing card that strikes one gangster square in the chest, where one of the card's corners punches lightly through the frontal muscles of his heart. Knowing that he can't be too trigger-happy with his playing cards, the mage pumps magical energy into his feet and legs to give those limbs the power they need to transport him throughout the narrow confines of the old, dingy, and musty showers to pummel the rest of his enemies here. As the second guy groans weakly on the floor after realizing that the card he's been hit with has nicked his heart, Fuutarou sends another thug flying back out the way from whence he'd come, through the opening left behind by the door that he kicked off its hinges to enter the showers. A fourth man attempts to tackle him from behind, but Fuutarou simply sidesteps and flattens himself against the wall to cause the fourth thug to lunge and accidentally body-slam the guy on the floor, who lets out a particularly wretched scream as the card in his chest gets pushed in even further. The fifth and sixth men, having flanked the lunger, quickly move in to try to corner Fuutarou up against the wall, and one of them has pulled out a knife of his own with the other one holding an old police baton.

The high schooler moves faster than either of the men confronting him can react to, planting his right elbow into the nose of the one with the knife as he is armed with the more dangerous weapon. Shocked at how fast Fuutarou has moved since he didn't see him flash-step past his friends to bash their squad leader's head against the wall, the gangster with the police baton barely has time to turn to see what happened to his buddy before Fuutarou smashes his chin with a strong left hook. While his body flops to the ground, the mage snatches the baton out of his hand as his grip loosens to equip himself with it as a nonlethal option, perfect for the situation.

"C'mon, guys, it's just one guy, just kill him already if he's giving you that much - "

One of the last two men in the room standing is shouting words of supposed encouragement to his comrades while Fuutarou clobbers the other upside the head with his newly acquired baton, and once he's done with that one, Fuutarou rounds the corner of one row of shower stalls to find the last guy with his back against the wall underneath one of the decrepit showerheads, peeking out around the other corner. For his trouble, the mage walks up behind him quickly and puts his foot in his back with a front kick, launching him into the wall before them and flattening him against it before his body comes crashing back down.

The showers cleared, Fuutarou makes his way through a few more rooms that are thankfully unoccupied, using his sensors to navigate through the unfamiliar factory building and clearing out any opposition he runs into along the way. It takes him the better part of fifteen minutes, which feels like both an eternity and a flash between the search for the office that Tanigo is apparently residing in and the fights with gangsters he's run into, but he eventually finds a back corridor that have a few doors, presumably leading into the offices that he's been instructed to find, seeing that he can't seem to go any further into the back of the factory building than this. So he throws out another scanning rune to confirm, and sure enough, there are a few people within the middle room, whose door is already left slightly ajar, even.

"Holy fuck, these newbies we put on patrol for tonight are ass," Fuutarou hears one of the men inside complain in a large, gruff voice. "Nobody's fucking picking up their shit, what's gotten into 'em?"

"Probably shouldn't'a let those crackheads inside operations," another man jokes more lightheartedly. "You know how some of 'em are; they only joined to get high."

"I mean, that's exactly what I did, I made sure to tell the boys to not let any newbies inside ops. So why aren't they pickin' up their damn radios? Should we cut their pay if this shit keeps up?"

"Sure, but they're just gonna go off to another gang to get paid there."

"As if - basically every other gang in the city doesn't give a rat's ass about their grunts. It's like we're the only one where the grunts get paid something. If I had things my way I wouldn't pay 'em either, it's a fucking waste of money, seeing how most of 'em are either druggies or just parasocial nutjobs who wanna beat the shit outta somethin'. Don't you think so too, boss?"

A third voice simply chuckles but says nothing intelligible.

"Fair enough; they get paid in drugs and violence, so the logic checks out there," the second voice concedes amicably.

"Good to know we're both on the same page for once. Gimme a second, I'm gonna go out there and find those rat bastards myself 'n beat the shit outta one of 'em to make an example..."

The first voice draws closer to the door, and rather than trying to find a way to hide, since that would be rather difficult to do in this long, exposed corridor, Fuutarou simply moves directly in front of the door so that when it opens fully, a tall, grizzled man with visible scars and a wifebeater stares down at him.

"...who the fuck are you? And what the fuck are you doin' back here?" he growls down at the young mage, who clears his throat before asking,

"Excuse me. Do you know if Tanigo-san is in? I'd like to speak with him, if possible."

At the mention of "Tanigo", the tall man's expression immediately darkens, and he says nothing more as he swiftly reaches for Fuutarou. Expecting a response, however, the tutor swings the baton he's been hiding behind his back that is by now moderately bent from all the times he's swung it against other gangsters in the factory up against the chin of the man before him. The baton edge strikes the chin as aimed, but clearly tougher than the average grunt that Fuutarou's been running into, the guard weathers the hit but stumbles backwards to regain his footing. The other guard jumps into action, pulling out a handgun from a holster on his right hip, but Fuutarou hurls a card in his direction with such force that it slices both the handgun and the hand holding it in half before stabbing the second guard in the gut. The first guard roars in frustration and lunges at Fuutarou again, who, after getting a better grip on his battle-damaged baton, prods the end of the baton into his gut to double him over, then slams the shaft against the back of his head to send him to the floor for good. Doing so finally breaks the baton so that Fuutarou is only left with the handlebar, which he promptly discards on the floor to his side as he enters the room.

While the second guard whose hand has been cut in half at an angle remains seated on the floor against the wall, holding his wound to put pressure on it and slow the bleeding, Fuutarou enters the room proper, stepping over the first unconscious guard to stand before the third occupant of the room, seated in a swivel chair behind a small wooden desk that looks just as old and decrepit as the factory they're in.

"You're Tanigo, then?" Fuutarou asks in a quiet but firm voice, and the seated man, who looks much younger than he apparently is, nods curtly like a professional.

"I've been told to keep an eye out for you in case you ever decided to sweep this location. It seems tonight would be that night, huh?" Tanigo remarks calmly.

Fuutarou narrows his eyes down at his target. He immediately infers from what Tanigo's just said that they not only expected him to show up here at some point, but they also most likely intentionally kept this place running as one of their major drug hubs specifically for the purpose of baiting him into it.

"If you expected me to stop by at some point, then I would've expected a bit of a warmer welcome. Y'know, some snacks, drinks...I mean, I'll take some fistfights, that's fine too, but you could've done a better job letting me into the place and be comfortable, you know?" the young mage sarcastically grins back at the factory boss.

"Like setting up extensive traps all over the damn place? You're telling us to practically broadcast to you that this place is dangerous so that you can come in as prepared as possible?" It's Tanigo's turn to chuckle. "Damn, no wonder why I fucking hate kids like you. Always thinking that you're hot shit for being the fucking smartasses that you are."

"And that's why I hate adults like you, always so butthurt and sensitive about how us kids are smarter than you so we always get under your skin," Fuutarou taunts back. "For the record, even if you had booby-trapped the whole place, the way you see me now is the exact same way I would've showed up here either way. Now answer me - how much Heisei are you cooking up here? And much more potent has it gotten since six months ago?"

Tanigo merely gives his self-assumed interrogator an amused and incredulous grin. "And you think I'm going to tell you - why?"

"Because either you can tell me now and you can walk away with your life, or I can fucking kill you and get the information I want anyway myself. To me, it's only a matter of time and effort, but for you, it's a whole different matter entirely. So what's it gonna be?"

"Neither."

A sudden gust of air smacks Fuutarou in the face; having not sensed it at all, he is caught almost completely off-guard and reels backwards, almost tripping over the body of the unconscious first guard in the process. The force of that hit would have ordinarily knocked him out cleanly, and it is only thanks to his layers of magic armor spells that take the brunt of the magical damage that he is still standing. Still, he has little time to regain himself, as he is struck once again by another invisible projectile of some kind that hits him in his left side, knocking him to the ground and causing him to push off the floor with his hands to break his fall and transition as smoothly as he can back up his feet to assess the situation, only to quickly raise his arms up over his face to barely block a third such projectile from punching him in the face a second time.

"How bad's the bleeding?" Fuutarou hears Tanigo ask the wounded guard.

"Pretty bad, I kinda lost half my fuckin' hand here," the guard groans with a pained sigh. "And I'm not exactly sure if a tourniquet works on something like this..."

"It doesn't. Have one of your boys wrap it as tight as they can and get 'em to drive you up to the hospital downtown; their emergency services don't ask any questions and accept anyone with a serious injury like what you've got. Get goin', I'll take care of this little bitch myself."

As the young mage bounces back up to his feet and lets the guard pass by without a word, Tanigo doesn't waste another second. More invisible punches hit Fuutarou in the thighs and gut where his arms do not protect, and as he shifts his arms down in an attempt to cover his lower body, they leave his upper half open for attack, which Tanigo swiftly exploits by striking the intruder with whatever he's using like an uppercut, throwing Fuutarou's body airborne for a second before rushing forward, grabbing him by the ankles, and hurling him through the dilapidated windows across from his office overlooking the main operations facility down below, or what used to be the factory's main manufacturing area.

Shouts of alarm ring out when the men working down in operations hear the breaking of glass above them, and Fuutarou manages to flip upright and land safely on his feet on an old rickety table that he simply plunges through and smashes in half with his speed, scattering its contents in all directions around him. Looking up at the hole in the wall that he's left from getting thrown through it, he spies Tanigo peering through for a moment before leaping out of it himself. Now that he's been hit by quite a few of these invisible attacks, Fuutarou thinks he knows what he's getting hit by: ordinary magic missiles, or simple aggregations of magic energy - the basic of basic combat magics that mages can perform. But usually such a simple magic can be easily detected and evaded; they are a beginner-level magecraft, after all. So for Fuutarou to be caught off guard by these due to their sheer concealment alone - if these are indeed nothing but basic magic energy projectiles that Tanigo is throwing at him, then this is a level of magecraft mastery that he's seldom seen before, even if it is merely one of a novice magic. For his target to turn out to be another mage...tonight's gotten a little more interesting.

But then again, if Shirazumi is employing other mages like this one in his inner circle, why hasn't he been deploying them more liberally around the city to get things done? This thought quickly passes through Fuutarou's mind, but he doesn't have the time to dwell on it as he watches his most dangerous opponent so far tonight drop down to the large and spacious operations floor himself.

Having landed down on the operations floor, Tanigo slowly approaches the high school mage. "I like to think of myself as one of the more decent guys around here. You saw earlier I let one of my own guards take one of his men to treat that hand of his that you cut in half, and since I don't like discriminating, I'll give you one last chance to stop resisting."

"What, you're not even gonna give me the option to leave quietly?" Fuutarou jokes back.

"I mean, you kind of mowed your way through about, I don't know, a couple dozen of my boys on your way to find me? I can't exactly overlook that. They might just be grunts that no one gives a shit about, but they still do their jobs, and I can't ignore that either. So it's my turn to ask you, kid: what's it gonna be?"

With an aggressive grin now stretching across his face, the high school mage spikes a card out from each of his storage runes to nestle them in between his knuckles, one in each hand.

"I'll take neither, too."

Now concentrating on sensing the imminent magic missiles headed his way, Fuutarou, having silently recast his magical armor spells to repair and replace the ones damaged or broken by the previous attacks, assumes a defensive stance with his body and card weapons. And sure enough, the magic missiles swoop in almost completely undetectable, only giving themselves away when they are right about to strike their opponent simply because of their proximity to the target. So for the first handful of these attacks, Fuutarou must weather them physically, but now that he has a much better idea of what he's up against, he's able to resist them much more effectively while still managing to keep an eye on Tanigo, who maintains his calm, somewhat cheeky smile that reminds Fuutarou of the ones he makes himself sometimes as he charges straight in at his enemy.

Fuutarou quickly flicks one of his cards at the incoming Tanigo, who keeps charging anyway because the card that's flung at him gets knocked out of its trajectory well before it can reach him, presumably by another one of his magic missiles. The young mage lets fly the other one for it to have the same thing happen to it, and by that point Tanigo is within striking distance and swings his right fist at him in a controlled but powerful straight aimed directly at Fuutarou's face. The high schooler tilts his head down to dodge it and prepares to counterattack, but a sudden strike smacks him in the gut out of nowhere to stop him. It doesn't damage him much - hell, it doesn't even hurt that much, akin to getting slapped in the stomach or something, but it does briefly knock the wind out of him, and it opens him up just enough so that Tanigo can follow up his straight right with an even stronger left uppercut square on Fuutarou's chest and a solid right punch to his left cheek, throwing him to the floor and sending him rolling over his side for a good ten meters or so.

Regaining his senses while he's still rolling on the floor, Fuutarou rolls up to his feet, grimacing at the fierce punch he's just taken; meanwhile, some of the grunts down here in operations who are spectating the battle approach Fuutarou slowly from behind, maybe in an attempt to box him back into the center of the operations floor, but when they get close enough, Fuutarou suddenly swings around, seizes the closest enemy by his neck with just his left hand, and hurls him towards another thug to domino them both to the ground, and for the third grunt, he flash-steps right in front of him and plants his fist into his face so hard that he launches the guy through the far wall that's about another fifteen meters away. A nice little reminder to show the grunts that they'd best stay out of his and Tanigo's way if they value their lives, and the grunts see this very clearly and back off accordingly.

Having delivered this nonverbal message to their not-so-innocent bystanders, Fuutarou turns back to Tanigo again, who's wearing a look of amusement at what the high school boy's just done to some of his grunts, but he says nothing. Instead, for the first time in their bout, Fuutarou senses a minute trace of magical energy headed his way, and he's barely able to hold up his arms like a boxer to protect his vitals from getting hit by his enemy's magic missiles, even dropping down to one knee to minimize his profile and give the invisible ranged attacks less of a target to hit.

But when the young mage looks up through his defensive stance, he gets a brief glimpse of Tanigo standing where he was seemingly warping out of view directly in front of him, this time with a raised right foot to stomp it right into his face through the small gap in his arms. Barely reacting in time, Fuutarou lunges to the right and rolls back up to his feet, and this time the factory boss does not relent: he tracks the intruder and lunges at him with another downwards punch, but the high schooler reaches up, grabs the incoming fist, and pulls Tanigo down to quickly lift up his leg, put his foot against his opponent's waist, and launch him into the air backwards in a hasty somersault throw.

Getting up as he hears the thud of Tanigo's body against the hard dirty factory floor, Fuutarou pivots with power and hurls another card at his enemy with the force of a professional baseball pitcher, which, amplified by his mana, rockets the card directly at his target, who sees it inbound and manages to knock it off course with another magic missile but only just. The mastery that this Tanigo guy has over his magic missiles is certainly a sight to behold - it is as though he can create them with his mind with no need for magic incantations or even any limb movements.

Fuutarou narrows his eyes at his opponent who quickly leaps back up to his feet. So far from what he's observed, it appears that Tanigo can only launch his attacks based on what he can see. Generally this is true of normal magic missile attacks, if what he's read out of the magic theory books he's managed to get his hands on is true, as it's best for a mage to maintain a visual contact on their target so that they can guide their magic missiles if need be. But magic missiles don't need visual contact - mages can simply fire them off blind if they have to, then correct their course midflight if they choose to make them more accurate. For someone with such a level of mastery over these magic missiles, he's either forgotten this very basic trait of his own technique or he's intentionally not using it to make this a more even fight, at least in his mind.

So the high school mage knuckles another full set of cards in both hands and launches them one fistful after another in Tanigo's direction, and the enemy mage parries all of them with individual magic missiles shooting down the cards. However, Fuutarou observes that while Tanigo can shoot down the first few cards accurately, the follow-up cards are progressively more difficult for him to deal with, and for the last card, he even opted to sidestep it rather than slap it away with one of his invisible projectiles, so Fuutarou draws another pair of cards, one in each hand, now armed with a solid strategy to deal with his enemy.

For his part, Tanigo, seeing his high school rival for the night pull out another pair of cards, seems to sense that Fuutarou is beginning to figure out his tricks, for the smile is now gone from his face and Fuutarou senses a torrent of magic missiles rushing his way. But rather than assuming another defensive stance, Fuutarou begins to concentrate, pumping magical energy directly into head to magically enhance his senses, both physical and magical. His eyelids widen, the pupils in his eyes constrict noticeably, and Fuutarou starts to feel the world around him seem to progress slower than usual - just in time for him to slash apart all of the incoming magic missiles with the two cards in between in fingers and neutralize them before any one of them can hit him.

As surprised as he is by this almost inhuman feat of slicing down all of the magic missiles he's launched at him, Tanigo does not let himself waste time by showing surprise and instead fires off even more magic missiles - so many that now, he throws his right arm forward before him so that he can guide the sheer volume of magic projectiles he's throwing at his target. But now that he's concentrating on his magic, he's dropped his physical guard - which Fuutarou swiftly exploits by blasting off the ground where he's standing and slamming into his opponent with a brutal shoulder charge. Tanigo, reacting at the last second only because he has similar reflexes thanks to his own ability to flash-step, braces for impact since he knows he's too late to get out of the way.

Grunting sharply, the factory mage rolls backwards and regains his footing only to look up and find the situation from just a few minutes before reversed, where now Fuutarou is the one barreling down on him with a vicious fist about to cave his face in, and he raises both arms to block the incoming punch before attempting to counterattack swiftly to take back control of the fight. But with his senses and reflexes temporarily enhanced, Fuutarou smacks Tanigo's right arm out of the way with his left arm, seizes hold of his face with the same arm, pivots on his right foot, and throws Tanigo's body up and over his own into the floor behind him at an angle. The sheer force with which he hurls the factory boss shakes the floor, and Tanigo himself goes skidding across the musty factory floor diagonally; several of the spectating grunts still in the operations room have to jump or even dive out of the way to avoid getting bowling pinned by their own boss as he goes sailing past them.

Even before he can come to a stop on his own, right about the spot where the two of them entered operations from the overhanging floor of Tanigo's office, Fuutarou flashsteps ahead of his opponent and stomps his foot squarely on Tanigo's chest, forcing a violent cough out of him. As he opens his eyes to assess his situation, a pair of cards stabs into the floor on either side of his head, mere centimeters away from his temples, and the factory boss squeezes his eyes shut on reaction before opening them a second time, still with Fuutarou's foot on his chest. Chuckling shortly, he slowly raises his hands while prone in surrender.

"Seems like I'm still not quite a match for an actual mage," he sighs amicably enough. "Should've gotten into magecraft a lot earlier, it seems like."

"Personally I wouldn't recommend it, but in this case, just judging from our fight, I'd agree," Fuutarou glances down at his subdued enemy, with a single playing card in between his fingers. "I've never seen someone master the art of the magic missile to this ridiculous of a degree, I'll give you that."

"I'll admit, I thought I had a good thing going at the beginning since you didn't know how to deal with it. Your adaptation mid-combat is impressive - is that what a natural-born killer's like?"

The high school mage merely smirks. "You're confusing 'natural-born killer' with just 'really damn motivated'. They used to call me Vergil back when I was studying overseas, but that's besides the point, which is that you're gonna tell me where Shirazumi is."

Tanigo merely laughs. "Me? Tell you where Shirazumi is? Sorry to disappoint, but that guy does his own thing all the damn time. Me 'n the boys might work for him, but for the most part we just do our own thing; he just kind of shows up whenever he wants and gets us all together whenever he wants. If that's what you've come all the way out here to ask, I gotta say, you've wasted your time, even if you've come here to kill me."

The young mage shakes his head. "You're not what I'm after. This whole damn factory's what I'm after."

At this, Tanigo just laughs harder. "So I was just the side bitch, then, huh? I guess that makes sense - you would be after the drugs. Well, let me save you some time since you seem like a busy guy like me - you're not gonna find what you're looking for here. You're looking for Heisei, aren't you? Yeah, you're not finding shit."

Fuutarou takes a second, glaring down at the hostile mage while digesting the information he's gotten. It's true - the only Heisei samples he's seen so far in all of the drug busts that he's done were found in small quantities; the largest samples of which that he's recovered was all the way back when he saved the quintuplets the first time from that abandoned warehouse, and since then, he's only ever found more samples from people who've overdosed on the stuff and died as a result. So as much as he was hoping he'd find more samples here, it makes sense that not even a big drug trafficking and manufacturing hub like this one wouldn't carry the stuff. This most likely means that the vast majority of Heisei that exists is under Shirazumi's personal control, and that what little amounts he's been releasing into the public are to test its effects.

"How much do you know of Shirazumi's Heisei project?" Fuutarou tries another question, but Tanigo just shakes his head again, as much as he can with two playing cards on either side of his face.

"No dice on that one either, kid. Shirazumi keeps his shit personal. At least, to my knowledge - I will say that I'm not exactly a high-ranking gangbanger in these parts; that's why I'm stuck out here in the damn boondocks overseeing the shitshow here. You're better off hunting down another guy and beating the answers outta him."

"And I don't suppose you'll give me a pointer to where I should start?"

"Are you gonna kill me if I don't answer that?"

"No. Like I said, you're not why I'm here, and I don't have a reason to kill you here and now. I could've gone through this entire factory killing everyone in my way, but I deliberately held back from doing that tonight - so the same goes for you too."

"So what, you want the Noble Peace Prize for that?" Chuckling one last time for the night, Tanigo sighs in amusement. "But I respect the hustle - and it's not every day that I get to fight another mage, especially one who won't instantly cut my head off. So I got a favor you can do for me - just let me pull out my phone."

The factory boss slowly dips his hand into his pocket and withdraws his phone, holding it up methodically so that Fuutarou can clearly see that he isn't doing anything suspicious or malicious, then thumbs through it with the same hand to then hold the phone up at Fuutarou, who immediately holds out a hand to cover the screen briefly to check for any spells traps, especially visual ones, before pulling it aside to check its contents: a photo of bald guy with shades clearly having a good time at a strip club somewhere with a bottle of beer in the air.

"This guy's like me, he's in charge of another big drug hideout like this one. But unlike me, I know for a fact that he's got some personal ties to Shirazumi 'cause I've seen the two of them hang out before. He might know a thing or two about what you're looking for. Let me get you his location..."

Tanigo pulls down his phone to swipe in the device's electronic map, and after searching for more spells and finding none, Fuutarou takes mental note of the location.

"...smack in the middle of downtown, huh?" the young mage mutters.

"That's all I'm willing to give; I'm not about to sell out the rest of the boys, just that fucker 'cause I got some beef with him, so if I can't beat his shit in, the next best thing I got is to have someone else outside the gang do it for me - for free, even." Tanigo slowly reaches into his other pocket to pull out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his rear pocket - Fuutarou briefly wonders how in the world all these things are still intact and functional after their fight, only to realize that protective spells are a thing and that this Tanigo guy can probably use simple spells like that too. "I imagine you're not gonna just spend the rest of the night with your foot on my chest wondering what you're gonna do next?"

"No, I'm not, but I will take my damn time because I feel like it."

Tanigo shrugs. "Fair enough. Just let me know when you're done..."

Armed with this newly acquired intel, Fuutarou now finds himself reconsidering his next courses of action. His original goal was to destroy this hub, but now that he's declared his intention to not kill Tanigo and that he's given him actionable intel, he's now thinking of keeping his hub going. His success with having Maeda act as a mole within the gang is egging him to try it again, just with a much more involved member of Shirazumi's gang - and this Tanigo guy might be his best shot, given his disposition so far. Despite the risks, it's at least worth a try. So he turns to the grunts still watching them in the operations floor and barks at them collectively:

"All of you, clear out! Get the fuck outta here unless you want one of these in your heads! C'mon, move!"

Hastily complying, the gangsters and thugs file out of the operations floor until Fuutarou confirms that only he and Tanigo remain.

"So originally my plan was to trash this place," the mage reveals to his smoking opponent, who's blowing smoke off to the side and tapping the ashes of his cigarette onto the floor next to him. "But now I feel like doing something different, and you're gonna help me with it."

"I assume I don't have a say in the matter?"

"You do; it's just that if you have something to say about it that I don't like, I'll just kill you like I should have."

Tanigo lets off another amused chuckle.

Now planning on writing more frequently, so expect more chapters.