A/N:
Aquahaze675: If I told you that, that would be spoiling the story, no? Thanks for the kind words regardless.
"...what do you mean by that exactly, Miku?"
The ticking of the clock in the background couldn't be heavier. Ichika has always found it strange that the clock in the wall above their television even has a second hand to begin with; thankfully it's not very loud at all under normal circumstances and can easily be ignored, but now, now that her younger sister is gazing back at her on her side of the glass table in the living room and with her Mystic Eyes to boot, the ticking of the clock is much, much louder than the eldest quintuplet remembers it being.
"Please don't play dumb with me, especially not at a time like this," the third quintuplet murmurs calmly, but her expression is only barely managing to keep itself calm for the time being; her eyebrows are furrowing harder little by little, and it won't be long before it turns into a full-on scowl. "I can sense a bit of magic coming from you this very moment. You can't hide it from me any longer."
Slowly realizing that the jig is up, Nakano Ichika leans back against the front of the single couch behind her, taking a deep breath to figure out what she ought to say. It's been a long time since she's last been in a conversation in which she doesn't know what to say right away, so unexpected was this development. Perhaps she ought to have seen this coming - she did sense her sisters start developing their own Mystic Eyes as of late, so it's only natural that their magic senses would grow stronger by the day since then, but it's just the circumstances that have led up until this point that have sidetracked Ichika from being able to see this one headed her way: the fight between Nino and Itsuki earlier today, Miku's normally subdued and passive personality and her tendency to be a wallflower in most situations that involve any kind of pressure, and of course, Ichika's own dealings with those stalkers just before she returned home tonight. She'd love to blame all these events for her lack of preparedness for this one-on-one conversation that she's about to have with her younger sister, but there would be no point in doing that now, would there?
"How long have you been hiding the fact that you're a mage from the rest of us?" Miku initiates again, seeing that her sister isn't willing to talk on her own so soon.
Ichika tips her eyes back up at her fellow quintuplet. Having bought herself some time with her silence to consider her following words carefully, she reasons that her best course of action is to tell the truth, since she can't see any immediate benefit to lying about it to one of her own sisters. Though, she's not exactly comfortable with just revealing everything about her magical life right here and now...
"Since we were little. Back when we were still...identical quintuplets," Ichika answers finally before Miku can pressure her again for a response. "Ever since then...yeah."
"Sounds about right..."
Ichika's eyes narrow somewhat. "...what do you mean by that? It's not like it's been a terribly long time since you first became one yourself, no? At least not to your own knowledge."
Miku slowly brushes her bangs out from in front of her eyes.
"I know it hasn't been that long since I realized I was a mage. Despite that, I can still sense that your magical energy is a lot more matured than mine or N - or anyone else's."
"You don't need to by shy about it; I already know about everyone else."
Miku's lips almost twist into a frown of dissatisfaction, but she stops it from doing so.
"Then back to my original question: why aren't you helping Fuutarou right now? If you've got so much experience as a mage under your belt, what with all the 'part-time jobs' you've been going to for the past year or so, why aren't you giving Fuutarou a hand right now?"
"Oh, that's easy. You know he's the type of guy who won't want help with this kind of thing," Ichika shrugs nonchalantly, taking her bottle of water and unscrewing the cap for a drink. "Even if I were here when he left, I wouldn't have been able to stop him. No one could have...we talked about this before, I think, right? That once he's made up his mind about something, he won't stop until it's done, especially when he thinks he's the one at fault."
Looking away, clearly disgruntled at Ichika's logical answer, Miku somewhat irritably nibbles on her third matcha wafer, forgetting for now that they've got takeout on the way for dinner.
"...don't give me that, Miku. You're the one who's looking to pursue a relationship with him, no? You should've already known that about him. Even Yotsuba probably knows by this point."
"Yes, I know he's like that. But if I were you - " Miku sharply turns to look back at her older sister. " - I would at least do everything I can to help him anyway. Even if he's the kind of person who wants to do things on his own like that, we're the exceptions. If we put enough pressure on him, he'll let us help him too, you know! Remember that time when you said you ran into him at Starbucks, and how you two got into a bit of an argument about how he still wouldn't consider us friends? Well, think about what he said to us after our midterms! He called us his friends anyway, didn't he?"
"Nah, I still don't think that would work. Even if you walked up to him and told him that you were going with him to help look for everyone, I think this is a serious enough situation where he'd want to do this solo. And besides, you were here when he woke up after everyone left, right? Why didn't you ask him to take you with him for tonight?"
"Because - " Miku starts to hang her head dejectedly. " - because - because I'm...I can't do anything. As a mage, that is. All I have are these Mystic Eyes and I don't even know what they do. I don't have years of magical experience like you do."
"Oh? That certainly doesn't stop someone like Yotsuba from going around helping all the people she can come across who needs help in some way, shape or form."
"Because that's Yotsuba, Ichika!"
"But we're quintuplets, aren't we? If one of us can do one thing, the rest of us should also be able to do it, right? So what's stopping you from getting out there and doing what she does?"
"Because I'm not as outgoing or - or helpful as she is! I don't have anywhere near as much stamina as she does, either!" Miku moans softly and presses the cups of her headphones against both sides of her jawline. "We're not all the same, Ichika. Ever since we entered middle school, hell, even before then, now that you've said that you knew about yourself being a mage since you were little, we've been growing apart. We've already passed the point of no return. This whole quintuplets stuff is all just a load of bullshit anyway - all it's ever going to be is a gimmick, and nothing demonstrated that better than what happened earlier toda - "
"Miku, look at me."
Something about her sisters words feel different, as though they are compelling her supernaturally to listen. Miku feels her neck act independently, and she looks back at her sister, whose right eye is now shining a divine golden hue. However, she's not meeting Miku's gaze directly either.
"I agree; normally the whole quintuplet stuff that we sometimes say to each other has gotten old by this point. But I wasn't trying to say that as a joke or as a cheap gimmick this time. The point I wanted to make was that we need to always remember what we are, and that's family."
This is the first time Miku has seen Ichika with her own Mystic Eye active, but she can't help but silently wonder why she only has one such eye while everyone else, herself included, has two as she continues to listen to her oldest sister.
"We all remember Mom telling us to stick together no matter what, don't we? And even if she didn't leave us with those words, we should figure that out on our own regardless, that no matter what happens, we gotta stick together, because at the end of the day, we only have each other. Yes, we've been through some tough shit. Yes, Dad doesn't really show up at home a lot. And yes, we'll have fights like this every now and then, even if this one's the worst one we've all seen among us. But you can't let all that get to you and make you forget about what's important to us. Blood has to be thicker than water, after all."
Miku feels the magical compulsion that's caused her to pay attention to Ichika weaken slowly over time, and she's able to force herself to look away finally.
"You're starting to sound a lot like Nino with that," she replies, almost under her breath with how quietly she says this.
"Haha, I'm aware. Don't worry, I've had my own fair share of Nino going on about that whole 'promise' she's made to us and stuff, but that's besides the point. We'll get over this just like how we've gotten over everything else, Miku. Trust."
"I don't know...this time, things feel different. If it were just like any other time when some of us've had an argument with each other, then I wouldn't really pay it any attention. But this time, magic's involved. And more than that, there's someone outside the family who's just as involved in it as we are. It just can't be that simple this time around."
"Yeah, maybe not. But no one said it was going to go the same as before. This'll likely be the toughest hurdle we as a family have had to cross up until this point. What I'm trying to say is that we'll get over this one too, just like all the other times."
"Okay, but...how are you so sure? How can you say that with so much confidence? Or are you just saying that because you have nothing better to say?"
Ichika sighs a little. "Didn't I just say, Miku? We're family. That's how I know."
"But families can break apart, and people can change. That's what Nino's been stressing over ever since Fuutarou became our, tutor, that we'd change beyond what she's comfortable with."
"Ours won't. I know you girls, Miku. You're all my sisters. You are all good people. It's just that every good person can have their moments of...being not so good. It's our responsibility to do our best to look past those or come to terms with those moments and move on."
A long pause follows Ichika's supportive words for her sister as the two independently but simultaneously wonder to themselves when their takeout will arrive to break up the awkward silence between them. Both of their Mystic Eyes have faded out of sight, so their traditional quintuplet blue eyes have retaken their places in the two sisters' ocular windows.
"...I just wish that I could do something to make sure that things turn out okay," Miku murmurs, finally resting her head against the top of the glass table and trying not to let her stomach begin to growl loudly, though she can feel the initial rumbles of hunger already.
"So that's the path you wanna take, huh? Now that you know that I'm a mage, speaking as one, I wouldn't recommend it at all; going down that path is not worth it in my, uh, unprofessional opinion." Ichika checks her phone for the progress on their delivery, growing rather impatient that their takeout is taking longer than usual to get to their place.
"I mean, by this point I don't think I have a choice now, do I? With everyone's Mystic Eyes activating except for Yotsuba's, it's like...there's no getting around the fact that we're all mages, and that we've always been. And these eyes, these Mystic Eyes - they're supposed to be strong magical abilities, right? I don't know about you, but...but I'm starting to lean more in the way of wanting to put them to use rather than never using them. That feels like I'm trying to hide the fact that I'm a mage, and I...I don't like that."
"Maybe not, but with how magecraft is, there's no shame at all in wanting to hide your magical identity. You can tell that I'm speaking from experience here."
"Yeah, I can see that."
"Heh, I'm sure you can. But I'm not the only one who feels that way; you know that, right?"
"...what do you mean? Who else are you talking about?"
"Fuutarou-kun, you dummy. I'm saying he doesn't want you to become a mage either."
"How do you know?"
"Because he's said before that he doesn't want to teach us about magic. That, and he doesn't want to talk about whatever magic crap he does as his main job outside of tutoring us. If he wanted us to become fully-fledged mages, you would think that he'd start teaching us about magic on top of our schoolwork, right? But he hasn't done that, and he's been adamant about not teaching us anything magic-related. So I'm inclined to believe that he's of the same opinion, that it's not worth getting into magecraft and all that."
Unable to refute anything her sister's said just now, Miku shakes her head still. Whether it's in denial or in helpless acceptance, she isn't quite sure of herself.
"Even still...I still want to help. Even if you say it's not worth it, I don't think it's right for Fuutarou to head out there on his own to fix what should be a problem within our family. He's not even being paid to do that, even if he says it's just part of the job." Miku looks back up at her older sister for the fourth time tonight. "And just how much of a mage are you to be able to say something like 'it's not worth becoming a mage' or whatever? I can believe Fuutarou saying that, and I don't doubt he's said it to us at some point, either. But what about you? Why should I believe you when you've been hiding the fact that you were a mage all this time from us?"
Smiling weakly, Ichika raises a hand up at her sister in verbal self-defense. "It's hard for me to explain at this moment in time; it's not like I was trying to keep all this a secret from you girls. Things just ended up happening this way - I'll be honest, I would've liked to tell everyone in a more organic way than this so that I won't take as much backlash like what I'm getting from you tonight. One day I hope I can explain everything, but I don't know when that time will be."
Miku pouts at Ichika. "Mages always have to be so secretive, huh? I can see the similarities between you and Fuutarou already."
"That so? I'll take that as a complement then, being compared to an actually accomplished mage like Fuutarou-kun," Ichika gives a much-needed chuckle.
"What, you're not a full-blown mage like he is?"
"Me? Oh God no. I'll tell you right now, we probably know about the same amount of magecraft, even if I've known about it for way longer."
"But I bet you're a lot more familiar with your own Mystic Eye and how it works and all that. Am I wrong?"
"No, no, you got me there. If anything, I'm just your regular-ass, average high schooler who wears lip gloss and chugs Starbucks coffee who also happens to have a Mystic Eye and knows how to use it to an extent. But that's all I'll say."
Miku is about to pry further and ask Ichika to explain her Mystic Eye, but then she remembers that Fuutarou already told her about the effects of Ichika's Mystic Eye, so she holds her tongue as she quickly adjusts the conversation.
"I just wish I could do something about this," she mumbles, growing more and more disheartened by the moment.
"Well, if you have the conviction, then I won't stop you. I just hope that you're ready for what you're going to get yourself into, because from what little I know, I don't think you are," Ichika warns in a nonchalant manner.
"You're not going to stop me, Ichika?"
"Mmm, I did say before at the school library that I'm concerned for you and everyone else as the oldest quint, so...I guess normally I would try to dissuade you. But now that you know I'm a mage...I mean, you're not really going to respect anything I say on this matter, are you? I sure don't expect you to."
"...I just wish I had the same drive as you or Yotsuba. Actually, it's not just you two...everyone else has more drive than I do."
"And sitting there just complaining about it won't do you any favors, you know. If you want something and you know for a fact that you want it because it'll make you happier, so long as you're not hurting anyone else along the way, you should go for it, right? If there's one thing that I can tell you with absolute confidence, it's that. Fuutarou-kun isn't going to become your boyfriend because you're sitting here at home pining about him."
"I-I'm not...pining for him...!"
"Oh, it's not? Kinda sounded like it just now," Ichika smirks as the doorbell rings, and she gets up to answer it for their food, leaving Miku in shambles sitting on the carpet at the side of the glass table where she's been for the past several hours.
Narrowing his eyes in Nakano Ichika's direction, Uesugi Fuutarou is on full alert. Something is not right here.
"...Ichika? Aren't you supposed to be at your part-time right now? Actually, it's late, so aren't you supposed to be at home right now?" Fuutarou ventures first in an effort to get a handle on this strange and newfound situation.
"Oh, I'm back home already, alright," Ichika laughs. Her laugh is eerie - it's very clearly Ichika's voice laughing, but it's not the way that she laughs normally. Rather, it's a kind of laugh that Fuutarou has a tough time imagining her making to begin with. Not only that, but her speech is jarringly distinct from how she usually talks. "Ain't got nothin' to worry about there, I don't think. It's just you 'n me here now."
As much as Fuutarou would love to get some answers about this second Ichika who's appeared before him now, he knows he can't waste precious time figuring out this new mystery before him. At least Fuutarou doesn't sense any malicious intent or killing intent coming from this Ichika doppelganger, which is strange enough to say given that she's the eldest of quintuplets. In fact, this Ichika before him isn't registering on any of Fuutarou's magical sensors, and to Fuutarou personally, it almost feels as though she might as well not even exist.
"Nino and Yotsuba are in deep shit right now. Do you know where they've been taken?" he asks directly.
"No," Ichika (?) answers, but it seems like Fuutarou's hail mary of a question that involves her sisters has gotten through to her, for the dryly amused smile that she had on her face quickly loses its place there. "At least, not yet."
Saying nothing, Fuutarou takes a step back to make way for Ichika, who approaches him at first, only for him to realize that it's not him that she's heading towards, but the blood on the pavement over which he was hunched until she showed up. Ichika, taking a knee before it, reaches down and touches the small blood splatters, and with no hesitation, she brings her left hand up to her lips – and swiftly applies the drying blood to the tip of her tongue.
Blood magic – this is the side of magecraft that the young high school mage is not as familiar with, the older and more established half of the magic world. But usually old-school mages would cast spells with blood, over blood, or likewise, not taste them.
But Fuutarou holds his own tongue, as curious as he is to ask about the situation. This is for the better, because clearly this Ichika is not quite the same Ichika that he normally knows, so to him, the Ichika who's with him right now may as well be another bomb that might blow up in his face, and he'd rather not send himself to the hospital a second time for the same reason.
Ichika gets up while smacking her lips and sucking her own tongue for a minute. She doesn't do this in a creepy way, like in the stereotypical slasher movie villain-style, lick-the-edge-of-your-bloody-knife kind of unsettling; it's like she's a wine connoisseur at a wine-tasting event, analyzing the quality of the samples she's trying. After that minute, she looks up and casts her gaze across the man-made lake in the park.
"They're at an abandoned warehouse," she says swiftly, curtly, much in the same way that Fuutarou himself speaks whenever he's on the job - the mage one, not the tutoring one. "I believe you all've been there before."
Fuutarou lets out a small snort under his breath. "Same one as before, huh?" he remarks before turning and swiftly dashing away to head for the nearest teleporter rune that he has in the area, since it'll be faster to teleport back to his home abandoned sector of the city than get there by foot.
But as he is running towards his first objective in his task to save the two endangered quintuplets, he keeps his magical senses up to try to see whether or not the Ichika he met at Nino's bloodstain in the park is following him. The fact that Ichika is now suddenly running at his side without him noticing at all tells him that it's probably a futile effort.
"Where are you goin'? This ain't the way to the two you wanna save," Ichika mentions quickly.
"To a teleporter rune I got nearby. It'll be faster getting there like this than running across a quarter of the city just to reach them," Fuutarou grunts back while in the middle of a brisk sprint. "But you knew that already, didn't you?"
The young mage hears the quintuplet next to him chuckle shortly.
"Then I'll see you there," she says, stopping short.
Stopping in his tracks as fast as he started, Fuutarou pivots on his feet and calls back, "If you're gonna come with me, you might as well - "
Nakano Ichika is gone.
" - use the teleporter, but I guess she doesn't need it," he finishes his awkward thought anyway before continuing to and reaching his teleporter to traverse the city instantly.
He entertains his newfound thoughts on the situation that is currently unfolding, in part because he needs something to distract him from the intensifying urgency that he feels in his chest. That Ichika was clearly not the one he knows - a doppelganger? A magical clone of sorts? It's not out of the realm of possibility, but that's only if he's taking into consideration experienced mages, which Ichika is definitely not, even with her own Mystic Eye active. As if he needs even more clones of the quintuplets who are already more than enough of a burden for him at this point.
But her identity isn't the part that he's most worried about; it's reasonable enough for him to assume for now that this alternate Ichika is tied to the original in some way, so he'll ask the real Ichika about the fake one later. No, what the young mage is more concerned about is the fact that this alternate Ichika is leaps and bounds further along in the field of magecraft compared to the Ichika he knows. That, and he had no idea about this Ichika Alter until literally a few minutes ago. Being the kind of mage who meticulously plans for all the contingencies and worst-case scenarios that he can think of and can adequately prepare for, having something unexpected like this happen is normally highly irritating since usually they don't go in his favor, but given the situation, Fuutarou is thankful at least that Ichika Alter didn't decide to just rip his head off on the spot, because she could have easily done something like that and he would have never seen it coming.
How did she even manage to creep up to him like that? As a mage, Fuutarou feels unnerved and, frankly, a bit humiliated. Letting someone sneak up to him like that is an amateur mistake, a mistake that harkens back to his early days as a fledgling mage trying to figure out the ways of magecraft, what little of it he understood at the time. So having that happen tonight doesn't do his psyche much of a favor when he's already feeling a bit down in the dumps about letting all this shit among the quintuplets happen in the first place.
No, wait. Upon second thought, Fuutarou realizes something: is this Ichika Alter even a mage to begin with? Well, that needs to be rephrased - does she know that she's a mage? His initial hypothesis is that this Ichika Alter is a separate aspect of the original that exists separate from her, and that this clone has either developed magecraft more so than the original or has gone down a different path, hence why he's calling her "Ichika Alter". But given that the original Ichika hasn't had much, if any, magecraft training, what are the chances that Alter has gotten any herself? Especially in a city like this, where Fuutarou is either the only or one of the only mages here? Of course, they may have lived elsewhere and moved into the city some time ago, but given their father and the rest of the quintuplets, he highly doubts that he's willingly let them learn magic at a young age.
And the way she was able to pinpoint the location of her sisters - she didn't cast spells to do it; she tasted her own sister's blood. A much more primitive form of magecraft, one could say, and not exactly a kind of technique that would be taught at your average magic classes at the Clock Tower or any other magical educational institution. And that level of Presence Concealment - it's so advanced that Fuutarou isn't sure if it should even be considered a magic spell at all. That level of Presence Concealment shouldn't be possible, either without some serious drawbacks or without the years of experience necessary to pull it off, but someone as young as Ichika Alter was able to maintain it just fine. Fuutarou ventures a guess that it's not a magic spell that she's using consciously at all, but rather something that's more central to her existence, though of course there's nothing he can do to prove his hypothesis now.
As he steps onto his teleporter rune behind a nearby convenience store just outside the park's west border, Fuutarou does let one last stray thought go through his mind: what are Ichika Alter's intentions? At first, she approached him like she was some slasher movie villain coming to confront him to have an epic showdown or something, even if that description is exaggerated, but then when he spoke to her, she mellowed out almost immediately and became serious when he did. Clearly she isn't trying to get in his way and that they share a common goal of rescuing Nino and Yotsuba, but where did she come from, and why did the original Ichika never tell him about a second Ichika running around in the city?
If she wants to save Nino and Yotsuba too, why did she come to him first? To get a sample of the blood that was spilled back at the park? The rest of the Nakano quints don't know still about the emergency that their missing sisters are in, so how the hell did Ichika Alter know? How did she know where to go, and how did she know that Fuutarou was already there, given the way she greeted him?
Perhaps whatever happens at the same warehouse as before will give him at least some of the answers he seeks...if he's lucky. Fuutarou is used to not getting the answers he wants, though.
After teleporting across the city and hurrying as fast as he can to the same warehouse that he saved the girls the first time three months ago, Uesugi Fuutarou activates his own Presence Concealment spell as he approaches the warehouse grounds and double-checks his runes to see if he has more luck finding Nino's and Yotsuba's signatures, which he still cannot. Hopefully this is because Shirazumi Rio sabotaged his sensor runes and not because Ichika Alter fed him a total lie, and he's about to find out soon.
There is no activity outside of the warehouse, and it doesn't appear that the warehouse is occupied. Fuutarou senses faint traces of magical energy around the warehouse grounds, so he knows that this is just a suggestion spell cast over the location to disguise it to potential passersby, and the traces of magical energy are so light that even Fuutarou himself would have had difficulty realizing that it was there if he didn't have prior knowledge of it. Normally he needs to scope out the situation first before deciding on what move to make, but due to this suggestion spell and whatever else magecraft that is set here, Fuutarou knows that the moment he steps in, his position will be compromised and revealed to Shirazumi Rio, assuming that he's here in person.
Where is Ichika Alter? She told him that she'd meet him here, right? Well, it was dumb of him to rely on her help anyway, given that he had no idea that she existed until a handful of minutes ago. Perhaps it was the impression that Ichika was giving him a hand that made him subconsciously assume that she would make good on her words, but even that's a stretch. He'll just have to do this without her.
Taking a deep breath, the high school mage dashes in through the boundary of the magical field. He half-expects the field to eviscerate him upon his entry, since defensive spells can harm unwanted intruders upon entry if their caster is skilled enough, but nothing happens. Not like he had much else of a choice for an entry anyway. Even still, he must assume that he is now known to all the occupants inside the warehouse, so he accelerates all the way to the warehouse entrance. Now is not the time for subtlety - and thus, he shoulder-charges through the door, augmenting his speed and strength magically to pull this action movie-like stunt off, and sends the door flying off its rusted hinges, his defensive spells that cover his body shielding him from potential counter-spells set on the door itself.
The door that he sends hurtling off its frame with his magically powered shoulder charge smashes directly into the most unfortunate soul in the warehouse, one of the handful of Shirazumi Rio's underlings who respond to the alarm that's been tripped by Fuutarou entering the premises. Caving the frontal lobe of his skull and brain inwards, the door bashes the man to the ground a few meters backwards, and he's long gone even before his back scrapes to a hard halt on the warehouse floor.
Taking full advantage of the initial chaos that he's sown among his opponents, Fuutarou springs into action: he wastes no time at all digging his hand into his storage rune and launching a plastic playing card at the first hostile he sets his eyes on with lightning speed and pinpoint accuracy. The top-right corner of the playing card pierces through the second man's frontal lobe, not unlike how the first victim tonight has died, and before the body of this second gangster can crash to the ground, Fuutarou performs a quick, short-range flash-step to continue his assault by sinking the knuckles of his right hand into the side of a third enemy.
"Third Blossom, activate."
Murmuring his incantation under his breath, Fuutarou seizes his knife mid-materialization, as if he's pulling it straight out of thin air, and immediately shoves it up through the fourth gang member's head from beneath the chin before yanking the blade out and shoving his dying corpse aside to set his eyes on the rest of the warehouse for his true rival, if he can even be called his "rival" of sorts.
He needn't even ask. A split second after he shoves the last underling's knifed body aside, the man in question, Shirazumi Rio powerfully jams his knife down to split the young mage's face in two if it connects, which Fuutarou does not allow. Ducking his head out of the way, the high school mage strikes back with a backhanded hook of his right hand holding his weapon, and Shirazumi blocks it in turn with his own.
"Surprised you found this place, kid," Shirazumi growls in a sinister fashion, as if he were a comic book villain welcoming the superhero into his secret underground base. "But that makes my job easier. Don't have to negotiate or bother trying to get word out to you, y'know? That takes time and effort - time and effort I'd rather put into eating people instead. And I got quite the menu on my hands, as I'm sure you know, hahahaha!"
"Then let me serve you the appetizer."
With his usual snarky remarks on deck along with his weaponized playing cards, honed and practiced like a figurative blade over the years, Uesugi Fuutarou suddenly shifts his knife at an awkward angle to defeat the knifelock between him and his enemy.
There used to be five men in the warehouse prior to the high school mage's entrance. Now, there are just two - the two mages of the city. While the warehouse itself has more or less remained the same in terms of its internal furnishings since the last time Fuutarou was here, that doesn't stop him - or Shirazumi Rio, for that matter - from attacking his opponent relentlessly, much more aggressively and violently than their first duel some weeks ago. Before, during their last fight, Fuutarou couldn't fight as he wanted: the basement in which the two of them first met didn't provide the space that he wanted, and even when they headed outside afterwards, he needed to worry about potential bystanders whom Shirazumi might've gone after to put him in at a disadvantage by grabbing a hostage.
Now, even though Shirazumi does have some hostages, who are currently sprawled in front of several large crates and pallets on the far side of the wall from the two men, Fuutarou has both the space and the privacy to let loose. The warehouse is big enough, and thanks to his opponent's own warding spells, Fuutarou doesn't need to worry about other innocent people accidentally wandering into this area for him to deal with. In addition, he has the advantage of knowing how Shirazumi Rio fights, and while the reverse is also true, it's only so to a certain extent; Shirazumi does not know how he fights when he's serious - and neither does he know the rest of his arsenal.
Adjusting the grip on his knife once again to a backhand stance, Fuutarou grips onto its handle tightly and narrows his eyes slightly to focus. Lots of things are going through his mind right now - the tutoring, the safety of the girls, the safety of his family since this warehouse location is not far at all from Daikazoku Business Park...and the accompanying sentiments that follow. Concern at the quintuplets' educational ability and their collective performance on their finals at the end of the week, worry over the safety of Nino and Yotsuba, stress over trying to get the girls to the end of the week in the first place so that they can even take their finals safely, and deepening anger at the deranged, cannibalistic fuckface in front of him who's making his job a hell of a lot harder than Fuutarou wants it to be. Five girls who are borderline failing their academics is a difficult enough responsibility for him to shoulder; he doesn't need another problem child making it worse.
The anger evolves just like the fight does as Shirazumi Rio manages to successfully tackle Fuutarou, who in turn defends himself by breaking Shirazumi's awkward tackle and kicking him with his own momentum off himself, sending him flying across the warehouse and crashing into several of the tall scaffolding rigs, one of which still held several old wooden pallets and empty boxes. As the deafening crashes rattle the structure, the adrenaline pumping through Fuutarou's system accelerates his anger's development: it's now turning into fury, fury at Shirazumi Rio putting the lives of his students and his friends in danger. And it's not just the quintuplets' lives that have been put in danger by this dude who always talks about eating people, and probably not in a joking manner: many of the drug abuse and kidnapping victims are likely tied to this asshole whose throat he's trying to slice open.
Fuutarou deciding to hang back pays off, since Shirazumi bursts out of the ensuing debris, partially in an attempt to catch his enemy by surprise if he's approached the debris zone and partially to get back into the fight faster, so high is he on combat adrenaline as well and whatever manner of drugs he's on. But rather than wait for Shirazumi to reach him, now that he has regained visual on his target, Fuutarou blasts off the floor where he stands with a stronger flash-step and slams his left shoulder into the bigger man with a sort of tackle of his own. The older mage clearly didn't expect Fuutarou to show such a burst of energy and thus gets thrown across the warehouse a second time, and this time his back flattens against the wall, shattering the fragile glass in the windows of the warehouse above him and making it rain glass shards down all over him.
Normally the high school mage doesn't care to play a hero. He's never felt like one, even after committing to the life of a mage at a young age, and that sentiment has never changed. He's committed dozens of atrocities in his career as a mage, even if he's only going by the number of human lives he's taken himself. It's not that he has anything against optimism and seeing the brighter side of things, but he prefers staying out of the light because in his experience, more often than not, the light can be misleading; it's just a better mindset in the long run to always be suspicious, always be pessimistic, always to assume that things will not go your way. But here, tonight, knowing that two of his students are in grave danger and one of them could even be critically wounded has changed his agenda. Knowing that this isn't the first time the quints have been put under fire only adds fuel to the fire, and the anticipation that it will continue to get worse unless Fuutarou steps up to do something about it right now when he has the opportunity to end it all fans the flames. No longer is this kill job tonight professional; now, it's become personal.
Fuutarou cannot put his medically-empowered street-fighting skills to use against Shirazumi Rio. Things like stopping an enemy's heartbeat, striking critical areas on a human body that give the most return for the effort put into them like hitting major blood arteries or the liver, will not work against him, as he is a mage and it will take more than just anatomical knowledge to defeat someone of his caliber. A serious weapon for a serious enemy, then - so as Shirazumi brushes the glass shards off his head before leaping back up to his feet, Fuutarou raises his right hand up slightly into the air.
"Fourth Blossom...activate."
Altering his incantation somewhat, the young mage grasps the air before him with his outstretched right hand while the knife that he holds in his left that he's used to battle Shirazumi Rio with fades away unceremoniously. But instead of thin air, Fuutarou clenches the bottom half of a tall, slender sledgehammer. Its lengthy handle is tightly and carefully wrapped with dark emerald and black grip tape, with the sledgehammer head dipped in jet-black through and through, but other than these distinct features, it looks like a perfectly ordinary sledgehammer that was bought from the local hardware store and slightly customized for cosmetic purposes.
Seeing Fuutarou brandish this sledgehammer at him deftly, Shirazumi can't help but give a pitying laugh. "A hammer? I can get a sword or a lance like last time, but a hammer? The fuck're you gonna do with that? You even got the muscles to swing that thing around, kid?"
"How about you come back over and see for yourself, just like what you tried doing before I punted your ass to that side of this fucking warehouse?" Fuutarou calls over tauntingly.
Shirazumi shakes his head, raising his knife again as another one of his magical runes appears before him. "Nah, I'm good. I'll just stand here and watch you dance!"
Shoving his knife blade into his rune and twisting like before, the deranged mage launches a flurry of remote knife strikes that pepper the space in which Fuutarou is standing, but as soon as the runes surround him, Fuutarou raises his sledgehammer again and smashes the top of the hammer head into the floor at his feet.
An immense, disruptive burst of magical energy that blasts from the head of the heavy-duty tool rocks the ground beneath Fuutarou's feet, and so do the incoming runes, which all get indiscriminately shattered as soon as the magical burst from the hammer head comes into contact with them. The moment he breaks his enemy's ranged attacks, the high school mage bursts off the ground and, like a stone thrown across the surface of a lake or river, skips across the warehouse floor with breakneck speed and drives the hammer into the wall where he sent Shirazumi flying to. Shirazumi himself barely evades the hammer assault, diving out of the way with a magically charged leap and having to roll to break his fall back up to his feet, so his own quick reactions cause Fuutarou to miss his mark. The sledgehammer still sinks into the wall of the warehouse, which ends up blasting that portion of the wall open, as though it's been breached open with a stick of dynamite.
His focus honed and sharpened to the point where Fuutarou cannot be distracted from his main objective of killing Shirazumi Rio, the young tutor locks eyes with his enemy again and walks briskly towards him, approaching him swiftly because he can't hit the shit out of the other guy without getting closer. He doesn't charge at him like he did just now since he's lost his element of surprise; Shirazumi will certainly be on his guard in case he tries something reckless like that again.
"Heh. Guess I forgot that you don't need muscles when magic's involved!" Shirazumi cackles madly, his eyes widening just as crazily now that he assesses Fuutarou to be an actual threat with that new weapon of his in his hands now. "Finally, a worthy opponent! Fuck those girls for now, I've got a better meal right fucking here, don't I?!"
"Then eat this."
Without warning, Fuutarou leaps into the air again and crashes his hammer down onto his hated enemy; he's walked close enough to the red leather jacket-toting mage that while the latter was distracting himself with his own insane words, Fuutarou could simply close the rest of the distance between them to get the upper hand in the fight again. Once more, Shirazumi just barely dodges the incoming attack, and Fuutarou busts out a sizeable hole in the floor where his target was standing just a moment ago, kicking up a large, scattered pile of broken tiles and flooring.
Having gripped the weapon with his left hand, Fuutarou is free to use his dominant right hand to swiftly flick more weaponized playing cards in his enemy's direction, which are cut down when they reach Shirazumi. He retaliates by laughing maniacally while beginning to spam remote knife attacks that inundate the space on what is now Fuutarou's side of the warehouse so that he'll have a difficult time maneuvering through all of them, even if he does manage to blast away the ones in his immediate area, so to counter, Fuutarou charges the hammer with more magic energy and releases it by again slamming the hammer head into the floor at his feet to dispel the runes immediately around him. This succeeds, but with much less payout than the first time since Shirazumi's solution to Fuutarou's counter is to simply throw even more knife runes in his direction as soon as the first ones are gone.
The high school mage knows from experience that magical battles of attrition like the one the two of them can potentially get into here are not worth fighting, so if Shirazumi is fine with hanging back and throwing knife attacks at him like this from afar, then he'll need to answer with another trick up his sleeves. Feigning an air of discomfort and looking around as though trying to figure out how he's going to navigate through this lethal maze of imminent knife attacks, he waits for Shirazumi to activate his attack runes, and he times his own counter so that Shirazumi can't reposition easily. He needs to make this work, because he's spent a dangerous amount of mana tonight fighting recklessly like this, and this hammer isn't normally a weapon he summons to fight with a lot.
Just as Shirazumi Rio commits to his mass attack, Fuutarou lifts up his hammer and hurls it with all of his might at his rival mage halfway across the abandoned warehouse.
Seeing the hammer fly straight at his face, the deranged mage simply sidesteps it, thinking that this is some kind of pathetic last-ditch attempt to hit him from downtown. Then he hears -
"Threefold Blossom, activate."
Shirazumi Rio heaves a little as he feels the six-inch blade of Uesugi Fuutarou's pocket knife sink deep into his back, and the sharp pain causes him to jolt and rip himself away, causing Fuutarou to carve the knife nastily across his back as the latter refuses to let go of his weapon. Suffering such a serious wound of his own, Shirazumi, now terribly alarmed at this ace up his opponent's sleeve that he didn't know about, roars as loudly as he can and slams the back of his left fist into Fuutarou's face, launching him up into the air briefly before watching him come down like a ton of bricks onto the hard, dusty, and grimy floor.
"B...Bitch...!" Shirazumi growls under his breath, realizing how close Fuutarou had gotten to either slicing his spine in half or stabbing a hole through his heart; for as powerful as mages can be, especially when compared to regular human beings, anatomical things like that don't care about your magical status or your mental debilitation.
Uesugi Fuutarou painfully pushes himself up back to his feet, but in just a short amount of time, both men are already exhausted. Shirazumi Rio was careless with the sheer amount of knife attacks that he set up to cut off all of Fuutarou's avenues of escape that he thought were possible, while Fuutarou spent most of his remaining mana calculating the localized teleport he would need to execute to put himself right next to his target by using his thrown hammer as a reference point in an attempt to assassinate Shirazumi Rio right then and there, but he barely missed.
However, the differences in their magical experience now rear their ugly heads. Being an older mage with presumably more battle experience under his belt, and having a reliable ranged attack compared to his rival, all Shirazumi needs to do in this situation is stab Fuutarou in the head from downtown and that will end this nighttime brawl. So he does just that.
"Fucking die already, you piece 'a shit," he hisses like an angry rattlesnake as he begins to twist the rune in front of him with his own knife yet again.
Except he can't turn his knife. At first, it feels like he's trying to turn a key in a keyhole that's jammed or clogged up, so when Shirazumi gets annoyed and looks down to see what is going wrong, he sees a girl's hand holding his wrist that he can barely feel now that he's looking down directly at it.
"Sorry ta ruin your fun, but I can't have this right now," Nakano Ichika drawls, not even facing the mage with the red leather jacket whose wrist she is holding and preventing from initiating his attack on the quintuplets' tutor. "Right now's sort of a bad time. Dunno how else to put it."
Shirazumi inhales sharply through his teeth down at the high school girl next to him.
"You again...I knew it, you're one of them, aren't you...?!" he accuses seethingly, throwing his eyes back over at the two unconscious quintuplets behind him.
"Wooow, took ya long enough ta figure that one out, dumbass. All that eatin' humans thing's really gettin' to your head, you should probably lay off it for a while."
Without another word, the red leather jacket mage rips his knife out of his rune. Somehow in doing so he also manages to rip his hand out of Nakano Ichika's grip - or perhaps she allowed this to happen. Either way, Shirazumi swings his knife backwards to bury the point into her face - or at least that was the plan.
Ichika reacts on a dime by swiftly digging her elbow painfully into Shirazumi's right side, her elbow strike strong enough to impact his liver through his ribs. This causes him to buckle where he stands, faltering for just a moment, and that moment is all Ichika needs to pivot, seize Shirazumi Rio by his long blonde hair, and chuck him towards the large hole that Fuutarou has punched in the far wall of the warehouse.
"I'm gonna fucking kill you the next time I see your bitch-ass! You got that!? There won't be a second time with you!" Ichika watches Shirazumi Rio shriek before he ducks out of the hole in the wall and out of sight into the night.
Having gotten back up safely thanks to Ichika Alter's distraction, Uesugi Fuutarou approaches her, who is still staring out the hole in the wall where Shirazumi has made his exit.
"You're not gonna go after him?" he asks her, which prompts her to turn to him with a slight scowl.
"That ain't my fuckin' job, that's yours," she points out.
"You sure helped me like it was yours too," Fuutarou counters.
"Doesn't change the fact that all this is your responsibility."
"Then who are you? Can you tell me that, at least?"
"I'm Nakano Ichika."
Ichika Alter turns to "her" tutor with a deeper scowl this time.
"I thought that much was obvious."