A/N

Reuploaded since the site was a giant Pepega and didn't want to upload it properly the first time.

2:35 AM.

Nakano Ichika gazes up into the ceiling of her dark, silent room with her phone still in her right hand, the digital clock on the screen blinking softly with the incessant reminder that she really ought to go to sleep if she wants to wake up on time to go to school properly tomorrow and study effectively for finals at the end of the week.

She and her younger sister Miku have stayed up much later than they usually would on a school night, waiting for their tutor to return and hopefully with good news. However, not only was he unable to get back to them until late into the night, but the news he delivered was less than ideal: he wasn't able to convince any of them to return. Strangely, not even Yotsuba apparently wanted to come back home for the night, and according to Fuutarou, Yotsuba had gotten into another bit of an argument that caused Yotsuba to become stubborn and book a room in the same hotel that Nino was staying at for the expressed purpose of convincing her to come home. Though, Fuutarou reassured the two quintuplets back at the penthouse that this argument was much less violent than the ones Nino and Yotsuba have had recently; it was more of a matter of pride, much like it was with the original feud between Nino and Itsuki. Although it seems like a stretch for Yotsuba to behave this way, these recent turbulent times for the quintuplets have set the stage for deviant behaviors from the sisters; if Nino and Itsuki have suddenly thought it appropriate to give each other solid punches in the face, then what's to say that Yotsuba hasn't finally had enough of Nino's nonsense and is toughening up against her?

So Ichika and Miku have since retired to their respective rooms to conclude an uncomfortable and, quite frankly, awful day. In case this hasn't been driven home yet, this is the biggest fight that the sisters have ever had among them; never mind the punches that were thrown in it, this is the first night in Ichika's relevant memory that the sisters have slept in different places, away from one another.

Though, that'll probably weigh more on Miku's mind than Ichika's.

For Ichika's part, she has more important matters to go over. How did Miku find out that she was a mage? Well, the answers to this should be obvious; Ichika is merely mulling over this in bed, naked underneath her sheets, because she's slightly tilted at how Miku brought it up like that. Ichika had set it up in her mind that she would hide her identity as a mage from her sisters as long as possible; ideally they shouldn't even find out about it in the first place, but in the event that they do, Ichika would have much preferred to reveal it on her own terms, like having her own superhero moment or coming out with some kind of grand reveal event. Just having one of her sisters point it out to her feels downright lame.

The eldest quintuplet's hand grips her phone a bit more tightly. That bastard...Fuutarou must have told Miku about the fact that she's a mage. There's no other way that Miku would've known so soon, right? She knows already that her tutor wasn't completely affected by her Mystic Eye from that one encounter at Starbucks, so he must have told Miku at some point afterwards without her knowing, which also means that Miku has been sitting on that info for some time, though how long exactly she won't know unless she asks, which Miku definitely won't answer, and fat chance Fuutarou would tell her either. Yeah, it has to be Fuutarou's doing; he must be the one to have divulged her secret to Miku and possibly to the rest of her sisters, because it's not like Miku's magical ability has developed and matured enough yet for her to sense Ichika's own magic signature, and Ichika's practiced cloaking it over the years so that her sisters wouldn't find out on accident.

Since Fuutarou seems like the likeliest answer, the question then becomes: why? Why did he decide to tell her sisters? Was it because he became suspicious of her after their Starbucks rendezvous? Not that she can fault him if this is the case; anyone in Fuutarou's position would react poorly to her. But why tell her sisters? What was he trying to accomplish with that? Was he merely trying to look out for her sisters by letting them know that their eldest sibling has something going on and that they ought to keep an eye on her? That sounds about right, actually, since it's not like anything drastically changed following that incident and life went on as normal until today, when Miku dropped the knowledge bomb on her tonight.

Raising her left hand to cover her eyes slowly to help her organize her thoughts, Ichika pulls her right leg up underneath the sheets, creating a small bit of wind current to draft inside that caresses her bare abdomen and legs momentarily. In hindsight, she should have seen something like this coming. She had known about her sisters' Mystic Eye developments, namely Nino's and Miku's - Itsuki's came literally out of nowhere so she couldn't predict that, but besides her, the fact that her sisters were on track to becoming mages themselves wasn't anything new to her. So now that she knows that Miku knows about her being a mage, and the first mage among the quints at that, what kind of an impact would this have on them as a family? Does Miku think differently of Ichika now, now that the cat's out of the bag? Ichika should've asked Miku whether or not any of their other missing sisters also know about Ichika being a mage, because if the others know, how differently do they think of her now? Her Starbucks incident with Fuutarou was been a good few weeks by this point, and the firstborn quintuplet doesn't recall her sisters acting out of the ordinary since then. Miku is capable of keeping a secret like this, so it doesn't surprise Ichika that Miku was able to catch her off-guard tonight, but surely someone like Yotsuba or Itsuki would have spilled the beans at some point since neither of them are adept at keeping secrets.

If all five of them were destined to become mages, then does this really...change anything? Maybe it would have affected them as a family much more if one or two of them didn't become mages, but at this rate, it's very likely that all of them will. Or...perhaps it's more accurate to say that they were all mages to begin with.

Unable to fall asleep, Ichika slowly sits up on her mattress, letting the top of the sheet fall off her voluptuous breasts, with her phone still in hand. Is she just overthinking this? Has she been going about this all wrong? She was afraid that she would shatter her own life and the lives of her sisters if they ever found out that she was a mage and she's been one for the past several years without their knowledge. But if her sisters have more or less carried on the same while knowing this, then...is there really anything to worry about?

Perhaps her sisters have all stuck to their late mother's last words of sticking together as a family through thick and thin more faithfully than she thought. All this time, Ichika didn't consider the promises that Nino and Itsuki made about them wanting to become their new stand-in mothers to be anything serious since for the most part, they weren't.

"...so how did it go?"

Ichika speaks quietly but firmly in the darkness of her room, illuminated only by the moonlight peeking through the curtains of the only window in the room, as if the moonlight itself wants a peep at Ichika's perfect model-like body.

The eldest quintuplet need not turn to face her audience, for there is someone already seated on the chair that normally sits tucked in underneath her messy, disorganized desk that would be more accurately called a makeshift wardrobe with how many more clothes there are on it than writing utensils and other usual articles of desktop paraphernalia.

Another Nakano Ichika, fully clothed unlike the one sitting up in her mattress on the floor next to her.

As the right pearl shines, so does the left.

"Uesugi's taken Nino and Yotsuba to the Marriott; they're safe now," Ichika Alter answers swiftly, the dim golden light shining subtly from her left eye reflecting off the desktop and the wall in front of her.

"What about Itsuki?" the original Ichika asks.

"Staying at Uesugi's place."

"Fuutarou-kun's place?" Ichika narrows her eyebrows in surprise. "Wait, why did she decide to go there?"

The other Ichika shrugs. "Beats me. All I know is that she's spending the night there for some reason. And if she's staying there, then she's probably gonna keep staying there 'til this whole thing blows over or something."

"Hmph, sure is weird. I'm guessing she just forgot her purse back at home or something..." Ichika finally sets down her phone on the side of her mattress. "So I was right in guessing that the reason why Fuutarou called us late was because some of them ended up getting attacked?"

"Sure were. You better feel lucky that you decided to let me out on a night like tonight; I don't know if Uesugi would've been able to handle everything tonight on his own."

"Tell me what happened."

Giving off a cheeky little grin, Ichika Alter brushes some of her bangs out of her left Mystic Eye.

"Long story short, Uesugi found the place where Nino and Yotsuba were attacked, at the public park northwest from here. I helped him track them down, and they ended up being taken to the same warehouse that y'all got taken to three months ago, remember that?"

"Yikes...what a sick joke. I bet that was intentional."

"For sure, given the kind of jackoff Uesugi's been having to deal with for the past few months. Anyway, we dealt with him, and Uesugi got those two to the Marriott, where Nino was intending to stay."

That would explain Fuutarou's call earlier that night and his alibi.

"Were either of them hurt?" Ichika asks tentatively.

"Nino got shanked in the gut and beat up pretty bad. She's lost a lot of blood, but Uesugi's treating her right now. He'll probably be there for a while to make sure her condition recovers."

Ichika feels her teeth clench a little when she hears this.

"What about Yotsuba?"

"Wasn't hurt as far as I saw, it was just Nino. She probably tried putting up a fight."

"Sounds about right. That was the same thing that happened when those two got attacked that one night, right before the weekend when we were supposed to go out and get parfaits together with Fuutarou-kun paying."

Resting her elbow on her raised knee to set her hand on the side of her head, Ichika lets out a sigh that sounds much calmer than she really is.

"Do you think he knows who you are?" she asks quietly.

Ichika Alter shrugs widely. "Fuck if I know. Only time'll tell, won't it? Besides, you were the one who decided to let me out because you weren't sure of how things would pan out tonight. And like I said, it's a good thing that you did."

"But if you had to guess, what do you think?"

"He shouldn't. Fuck, Ichika, none of your own goddamn sisters know I exist." Ichika Alter slightly turns in her seat, angling herself only a few degrees in her other self's direction. "So what're the chances that he knows?"

The original Ichika smirks a little. "Yeah, but you know all five of us are dumb as nails. While some of them are more perceptive than others and can figure stuff out more quickly, that doesn't change the fact that this is something - you're something that they'd all fail to notice. I mean, it's not their fault or anything, right? Given the circumstances...but anyways, my point is that Fuutarou-kun is a bit smarter than your average human being."

"Something tells me you're underselling that just a bit."

Ichika chortles dryly.

"One thing's for sure," Ichika Alter mutters as her left eye glows ever slightly brighter in the darkness of the room. "Uesugi's gonna have a lotta questions for you the next time you two meet up. I know you're already thinking ahead, but I suggest that you avoid him or at least stick with the others if you don't want this jig to be up so soon."

"Eh, what does it matter now. Miku knows I'm a mage, she told me so earlier tonight when you were out doing your thing. So that may as well be a step closer to them finding out about you, too," Ichika sighs while shrugging nonchalantly.

"Hmph. You act all cool and calm now, but I guess you've already forgotten about our little link, huh? I know you like joking around with the others about how you quints don't have any kind of magical telepathic link or anything like that, but little do they know about us."

"Well, obviously not when they don't even know about you in the first place. No but seriously, they'll find out about you too in due time. You can already tell, can't you?"

It's the firstborn's turn to turn to her other self from her own mattress on the floor.

"Things are changing out of our control now. Admittedly I didn't expect the situation to turn out quite like this, but it's gotten to the point where we can't go back to how we were, how we quintuplets were from before we met Fuutarou-kun."

"But you can't say that this wasn't expected. You should'a seen this comin' when you first became a mage yourself."

"I mean, along that logic, you might as well say that all this would've happened sooner or later. Maybe not in this exact fashion, but you get what I mean."

"Well, yeah, duh. C'mon, Ichika, you might be absolute dogshit at studying, but you're smarter than that."

"You shut your damn mouth."

A sharp hiss shoots across the room to pass through Ichika Alter's ears, the kind of hiss that is never meant for anyone else in this household to hear. Ichika's right Mystic Eye is glowing with full force tonight, outshining the moonlight that peeks through her window curtains as she glares back at her other self.

"I don't want to hear anything about bad studying from someone like you who never has to juggle school, relationships, tutoring, and work all at once, you whore. Not only that, but what nobody here knows, not even you either, apparently, is that I've been sneaking in studying time whenever I can while I'm at work."

Ichika Alter starts chuckling to herself while the original is still talking, much to the latter's heated annoyance.

"Why the hell are you laughing?" she demands, gripping her phone in her hand with the tightest grip she's had tonight.

"Because it's not often that I actually manage to push your buttons like that," the Alter remarks, and this time she turns fully towards the other Ichika, facing her. "I always try, but only rarely do I actually succeed in tipping you over the edge and get you to react like that, so it's funny whenever I see you react like that."

Much like how Ichika Alter began laughing while the other was talking, the original Ichika rolls her eyes with irritation and turns away from her other self, swinging her legs back onto her mattress, but the Alter isn't done yet.

"Besides," she mentions, her voice now dropping down to a low murmur, even more so than before. "Might I remind you that if you wanna turn this into a competition to see who's suffering more, you're never going to win when I'm involved, right? But that's enough from me; I suggest you calm the fuck down too before Miku senses your mana surge right now."

"I know, you don't need to tell me." Ichika groans a little. "And at least you aren't as bad as you can be on some nights. Must be because you ran into Fuutarou-kun tonight, huh?"

"Yeah, you're lucky the last person I ran into wasn't a potty-mouth gangbanger from the fuckin' dumps. Which is funny, since Uesugi himself lives in the abandoned sector, right?" Ichika Alter smiles rather deviously to herself. "I'll keep his personality for a little bit longer. It's actually pretty rare running into people like him these days - the world's goin' to shit if every person I run into's some degree 'a shithead."

"Fuutarou-kun wasn't lying when he said that the magic side of the world is ugly as sin, I guess."

"Yep. He's your tutor, right? You ought to learn from him."

"He said he's not going to teach us anything magical, though, so not much I can do about that."

"And that's a damn shame. You already knew that everyone was headed down this path, and that the only variable in the equation was when everyone would discover themselves as a mage. Why not get everyone prepped now, if you care about your sisters so much? I don't know about you, but you can't just'stay out' of the magic world if you're a mage. Even if you're a normie, there's a chance that you might get caught up in a crossfire between two mages and get killed or worse. What do you think ended up happening to those people who got kidnapped these past few months? I've seen a couple of 'em, y'know. It ain't fuckin' pretty, I can tell ya that much."

Ichika listens to her other self's words contemplatively, in stark contrast to her harsh words from just a few moments ago.

"You know, now that you mention that, one of the things Miku and I talked about earlier before we went to bed was how Miku wanted to learn magic from Fuutarou-kun," she notes quietly but aloud. "Well, more to the point, she says she wants to do something about this situation and not just have Fuutarou-kun go around doing everything. So now that I think about it...since Miku already knows now that I'm a mage, why don't I offer to teach her instead?"

"Hol' up, hol' up. You're sayin' you wanna teach Miku when you barely know jack shit about magic yourself? Unlike Uesugi, you're a sad excuse for a mage; the only thing you know how to do is use your Mystic Eye, and who the hell knows if it's the same as what Miku's got."

Vibe checked hard by her Alter, Ichika shrinks a little, beginning to feel miffed again. Ichika Alter rolls her eyes and gives a small sigh.

"Here, look, I'll give you a simper solution: why don't you just go help Uesugi a hand every now and then? It's not like you gotta tag along with him for literally every jackoff job he's got. Just for important shit like this, y'know? Something that's super important or super relevant to you, like if your sisters're involved or some shit. Because think about it, right? If Miku knows that you're a mage, that means you've gotta've been a mage for a while now, right? And you still haven't told them about your part-time. They're gonna think that your part-time's just a cover-up for you runnin' around at night being a midnight vigilante like their tutor. Hell, they might even think that you're collaborating with him, even if you're not. So you might as well get out there and do what you can, right? Not like you haven't done this before."

"Well, as much as I'd love to, I can't do that," Ichika declares softly as she casts her eyes down to the top of her blanket. "Miku also asked me the same thing, more or less, but Fuutarou-kun doesn't want anyone to help him for things like this. This is one of those things where he - "

"Aaaaaand there's where I cut you off," Ichika Alter bluntly drawls, raising out a hand and swiping it down in the air in front of herself in a cutting motion.

"Wh-What do you mean? Fuutarou-kun's just that kind of guy! He's not that hard to read, you know!"

Again, Ichika Alter rolls her eyes. "Yeah, 'cause your sheltered ass hasn't seen him when he's under pressure, in the middle of a fight or some crap. What the fuck did you think I did tonight, huh, ya dumb bitch? How the fuck did I find out about what Uesugi was up to tonight, and what happened to Nino and Yotsuba? I went in there and fuckin' helped his ass. 'Cause without it, he wasn't gonna fuckin' find those two until they're both fuckin' dead or worse, and that's a motherfuckin' fact and a half."

Pushing herself off Ichika's desk chair, Alter takes pair of short steps forward and bends her knees to make herself level with the original, shoving her own face into hers until there are only a handful of centimeters parting them. The pair of golden Mystic Eyes mirror one another in the presence of the fragile moonlight.

"Uesugi ain't too proud to rely on help when he needs it, Ichika. For fuck's sake, you know this already yourself, don't'cha? Why do you think he accepted your invitations to him to sleep over here at your place? Not just once, but twice? It ain't just 'cause he felt it gave him a convenient excuse to keep an eye on y'all; part of it was to get some actual fuckin' sleep 'cause God knows he fuckin' needs it at least every now and then; shit, you saw that the hard way earlier today, right? And when I met up with him at that park, he didn't once tell me to fuck off 'cause he knew I was his only ticket to getting to Nino and Yotsuba."

Ichika Alter narrows her eyes rather dangerously at her original.

"You fucking know that you can't hide the kinds'a feelings ya got for that guy. You can hide it from the others, but not me. Uesugi's become someone special to you, whether you wanna admit that or not. Even if you wanna keep denyin' that, what the fuck is so wrong with gettin' your ass out there and helpin' him out if that's what'cha wanna do? You went off on him the other week about how he didn't want to consider you and the others his 'friends', right? Then why are you the one being hypocritical right now if you see Uesugi as one? Don't friends help each other out during hard times? You could really take a leaf outta Yotsuba's book, that's for sure."

But Ichika, growing steely-eyed, glares once again back directly into her alter ego's own eyes, and she sits forward to challenge Ichika Alter's dominant position.

"Says the bitch who went all, 'But what if he hates you?' on me in the cafeteria that one time!" she hisses again.

Merely rolling her eyes, Alter snorts off to the side, unfazed. "You already know why, though. Not much either of us can do much about it. And what's the point of complaining about that now when you've never let me piss you off like that before? Or are ya tryin'a tell me that you've changed, just like how everyone else is?"

Then, Ichika Alter sharply turns to the door behind her, and the original follows suit, shifting her neck to look around herself to see what her alter ego is looking at.

"Speakin' 'a change, you feel that, don't'cha?" the second Ichika narrows her eyes tightly in the dark. "Looks like she's actin' up again."

"Yeah. It's been a while, I think, since the last time that's happened," Ichika mutters. "I thought it'd get worse the further her Mystic Eye developed, but I guess it's the opposite? I don't know how that's supposed to work..."

As Ichika is thinking aloud, her body double gets back up to her feet and swiftly strides across the room, not that she needs to take many steps, to reach the door and quietly opens it.

"Wait, what - what are you doing?" the original eldest quintuplet hisses for a third time, but this time she does so in a hushed manner, more to get the Alter's attention and less so because she's expressing dissatisfaction at her actions.

Ichika Alter stops at the doorframe, her face mostly out of view now.

"...did you already forgot who I met last?" she whispers back over her shoulder slightly before closing the door behind her and slipping out of view.

Nakano Miku snaps open her eyes, for a hauntingly nauseating feeling is already permeating her senses like a gas.

The mirror sea of blood welcomes her back with its usual eerie silence that Miku will never seem to become accustomed to, not that she wants to in the first place. This aside, though, Miku is immediately filled with dread as the main course to follow her appetizer of nausea, because she realizes that she has somehow arrived in this weird, disturbing dreamworld of hers without even going through the painful initiation ritual of feeling like her eyes are being clawed out of their sockets.

How? How did she get here without having to suffer through the pain first? The third quintuplet is developing mixed feelings on the matter; on one hand, obviously she's somewhat relieved since she was somehow able to skip that whole first part of wanting to gouge her own eyeballs out, but on the other hand, does that mean that there's something much, much worse in store for her now? But what could be worse than what she's already been experiencing? Miku moans lightly to herself under her breath, letting her dread seize control of her mind for a few moments as she tries desperately not to let herself think about what is to follow. She might have only lived on this Earth for sixteen short years, with the last few of those years living as a sheltered rich girl on the thirtieth floor of a luxury high-rise, but she at least knows that there's always a bigger fish somewhere out there in the world - and therefore, something much worse to suffer than what she herself knows.

Finally wresting control of herself mentally away from her crippling dread, the middle quintuplet slowly sits up on the surface of the bloody water on which she found herself lying when she came to. The oceanscape is bloody, dark, and miserable as ever: the black sky ominously hangs overhead blanketing an infinite sea of dark red blood, and the light plinks of drops of water dripping into the ocean all around her beat rhythmatically in the distance, though no matter where Miku looks, she can never seem to see where the water drops are coming from...or should she say, blood drops.

Shaking her head quickly and mustering her strength to focus her scattered thoughts and senses, Miku tries to tether herself onto whatever solid mental ground that she can make for herself. Logically, this must be the result of her Mystic Eyes developing; it would make sense for these disturbing dreams of hers to also evolve along with them, but again, the notion that they are evolving by removing one of the worst aspects about themselves is terrifying to Miku, since she doesn't know what to expect next. She doesn't remember waking up in the middle of the night like she usually does; she went to sleep and now here she is. Do her eyes feel any different? No, not...not really, at least not at the moment. The pain that usually pulses in them during nights like these is abnormally absent, and her vision is fine for the most pa -

- her vision is not fine. As she pulls her hand up to look down at it to test her vision, Miku realizes that there are thick black lines marring her hand and fingers, criss-crossing like the cracks on a human palm.

These are the same lines that she's seen before, on that corpse that floats up to the surface to rear its chillingly beautiful head to signal the end of her stay here in this hellish illusion. Have these lines been there before? Have they always been there, and Miku has never noticed until now?

The longer she stares at these lines, the more unnerved and unhinged she feels herself becoming. These are just a bunch of black lines on her skin; yes, they're unsettling, but they don't seem to be doing anything. It's no more different than having a bunch of scribbes drawn on her skin with a black marker or highlighter, or that's how it ought to be. But for reasons that Miku can never hope to know in this moment in time, looking at these lines causes the hair on her skin to stand up everywhere on her body - her arms, legs, back of the neck, and anywhere else where she might get goosebumps, and not the good kind.

Miku's right hand that she holds up in front of her eyes begins to tremble. These tremors aren't the usual ones that may occur as a result of holding up one's hand in the air for a bit too long, and Miku knows that she needs to stop looking at these damn lines on her hand. But she can't tear her eyes away - it's like she can't stop looking at them because they're causing her so much stress. This isn't just some variant of trypophobia that Miku is currently experiencing; the quintuplet may not be able to identify exactly what it is, but she at least comprehends that this is something much more profound than just a condition or a phobia.

"Eeeek!"

Like a jump scare in a horror game, except she feels much more than the jump, Miku is forced to tear her gaze away not because of her own will, but because her eyes are struck suddenly, almost without warning, by the same stabs of pain that she knows all too well. Rather than torment her before this vision, they have followed her inside and torture her now, though most likely Miku has brought this upon herself by staring at these strange black lines that muddy her skin. It wasn't just her hand that was infected with them, either; her peripheral vision has seen these lines cover her arms and legs - which means the rest of her body is probably covered with the same lines too.

Having used her other hand to cover her eyes to cope with their sudden pain, Miku pulls it off her face and glances down at it too, only to find her palm now smeared with a light layer of blood. She's not even surprised by this at this point; in a world that's filled with nothing but blood and where she's covered in these sickening lines that causes her brain to feel like it's liquefying inside her own skull, having some blood spill out of her mutated eyes isn't even shocking anymore. It probably isn't the first time it's happened either, to be frank.

Even still, just because she's not as affected by her eye sockets bleeding doesn't mean she doesn't mind it, and Miku is already thoroughly tired of this place, as if she wasn't sick and tired of it before. Is there a way out of here? Where's that corpse that floats up to the surface before her that's her ticket back to the real wor -

A shadowy figure stands over her.

When did that get there?

What even is this thing?

Miku's senses go from not very surprised to completely shocked in the most severe whiplash of emotions she's felt in her life; so shocked does she get that she is rendered unable to think of anything or register the rest of the neurons in her brain that go off, trying to tell her to get away from this thing as quickly as she can like her life depended on it, so she ends up remaining seated on the surface of the blood ocean, staring lifelessly up at the shadow that now glances down at her.

It reaches out a dark and hazy appendage down to her, like a hand that is reaching down to pluck her eyes out.

Pluck her eyes out.

Remove her eyes.

Eyes.

Nakano Miku screams at the top of her lungs, shattering the world in which she'd been dragged into to messily return back to her own. Thankfully, she realizes that she's back in her own room again, so she manages to cut her scream short, but she still descends into a pit of frantic sobbing and tormented sniffling as her only other sister in the house quickly barges in and turns on the lights, having been woken up by the sudden shriek in the middle of the night and responding quickly to investigate.

"Miku, what's wrong? What's wrong?" The eldest quint hurries over, seeing the pitiful state that her younger sister is in and pulling up to her bedside, but she wisely keeps her hands to herself and refrains from being overprotective to see how Miku will react. Instead, she kneels down at the bedside and waits patiently for Miku to cry her fill and calm down enough to speak on her own.

"...it's nothing," the thirdborn replies softly, her voice cracking almost instantly the moment she begins talking.

"'It's nothing' my ass, Miku, you've never done this before, screaming in the middle of the night like this. Don't take this the wrong way, but it's a good thing you did this while the others aren't here."

Miku sinks her head even lower, with her peachy-red hair draping down completely over her eyes to hide them from the prying ones from her older sister knelt at the side of her bed. She totally agrees with Ichika, but at the moment, she can't bring herself to say much, and so she remains muted, sitting up in her bed hunched over with her hair still curtaining her eyes. After staying with her for a few minutes, Ichika, deciding that it's best if she leaves Miku alone, especially in light of their interactions the the previous evening, moves in to give her a quick hug and a comforting pat on her head before bidding her good night again and retiring to her own room, turning off the lights and closing the door behind her as she departs.

Also closing the door to her own room, Ichika strides straight over to the chair at her desk and seizes Ichika Alter, who's seated in it again, to pull her off the chair and up on to her feet.

"What the fuck was that for...!?" the firstborn seethes under her breath so that Miku can't hear through the walls that are notoriously known among their inhabitants for not having much soundproofing. "I thought you were going in to help her. So what the flying fuck was that all about...?!"

"Hey, calm your fuckin' tits, lady, I didn't expect her to react like that either," Alter spits back, and seeing the frustrated look on her alter ego's own face, Ichika forces herself to dial back her own rapidly accumulating rage, though she has to bite the inside of her lower lip to do so successfully. "I swear I went in there to help, honest. You know whose personality I got right now, so while I might'a been goin' around like a douchebag for a while before tonight - "

"Okay, I get it, I get it. Sorry for...for grabbing you," Ichika apologizes quickly while letting go of herself. "It's just...Miku never screamed like that before out of all the times I've seen her wake up in the middle of the night like this."

"Yeah, and for good reason."

"Did you find out something? What's going on with her?"

"Well, obviously it's her eyes. You can feel the surge even from here, can't you?" Ichika Alter points her thumb in the direction of Miku's room. "Her eyes are developing fast. Honestly, I'd say it's going too fast. She can't control it at this rate, and we won't know what'll happen if she can't keep it under control. Her screaming in the middle of the night like this'll be the least 'a your damn worries if it gets outta hand."

"But I never went through something like this, right? You would know; do you remember me going through the same thing that Miku is right now?"

"'Course not, dumbass. What makes ya think that what happens to one 'a you's gonna be the same thing that happens to another?"

"I mean, come on, we're quintuplets! Identical ones at that!"

"Oh for fuck's sake, listen to you right now. Aren't you the one who always laughs at the others whenever they make a joke about you all being quints?"

"Hey, cut me some slack! This is the kind of stuff that things like being identical quintuplets would actually matter, or at least it sure sounds like it would!"

"Well, sorry to disappointment, but clearly that's not what ended up happening. Miku's got the short end 'a the stick, and that's all we know. So either we can leave it there and hope that Miku can get through it just fine, or call in a professional."

At the mention of this "professional", Ichika becomes steely-eyed again, her facial expression once more devolving into a deepening scowl.

"...how likely do you think it is that Fuutarou-kun's a double agent right now?" the original Ichika wonders aloud quietly. "I might be talking out of my ass here, but what are the chances that he really does have an ulterior motive in working with us?"

"Sorry, hold up, I thought Nino was at the Marriott right now."

"And right now isn't the time for jokes. I want your opinion on the matter, now that you've met him for the first time tonight. Is he the kind of guy to betray us later on down the road?"

Ichika Alter shrugs widely. "Fuck if I know, bitch! I only got his personality; that doesn't mean I know literally everything there is to know about him. He sure as fuck seems like an upstandin' guy. Doesn't say much, goes right into fighting, gets the job done. But you and the rest 'a the girls know him way better than I do; what makes ya think that I got any different of an answer?"

"But you're the one who runs around out there. You're the one who acts more like a mage than I do. Why do I need to remind you of this?"

"And why do I need to tell you that we know nothing about what other mages are like? How the fuck does me doing more mage shit than you matter more in this case than you actually interacting with his ass? If I could read him that easily, he wouldn't be much of a mage now, would he?"

Sighing deeply, the alter ego crosses her arms and turns to face Ichika at an angle, her glowing Mystic Eye closer to her than the other.

"You sure got a lotta conflictin' feelings for Uesugi, Ichika. On one hand, you treat him as someone more than just a friend you made at school or some shit. But on the other, you're startin' to not trust him as much as before, now that shit's startin' to hit the fan with your sisters. If you plan to make an enemy out of him, I suggest you do so at a better time than this, at least."

"I don't plan to make an enemy of him, I'm just suspicious, that's all!" the first quintuplet insists. "The fact remains that all this stuff started happening after he began tutoring us, you know! Even he must see that, right? Since he's a smart guy and all!"

"Yeah, well, 'just being suspicious' is a light way to put it when you just said that you're afraid Uesugi might betray you later on. Betraying is a bit of a strong word, isn't it?"

"You get what I mean!"

Ichika Alter shrugs nonchalantly. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Either way, it's late as fuck right now, and you're gonna end up sleepin' in class just like Uesugi today, so get some sleep already."

Scowling one last time at her alter ego to close out the night, Ichika removes the clothes that she's hastily thrown on to go see Miku earlier in her room and crawls underneath her blanket naked again, as is her habit.

"Honestly, I'll just call the school today and tell them that we've got some family matters to take care of. People're gonna get suspicious if they see me and Miku come in without the other three. If only one of us were missing, then obviously we'd all still go to school, but right now's a bit more of an emergency..."

"Aight, whatever..."

In Room 805 of the Downtown Marriott Hotel, Nakano Nino groggily and slowly opens her eyes to witness the darkness of her room. Upon seeing the pitch black of her room where no lights shine, not even from any surrounding appliances or a digital alarm clock, Nino instinctively and sharply inhales and squeezes her eyes shut again.

Nino has always had somewhat of a fear of the dark. It's not bad enough for her to make a big deal out of like she would for other things like blood or needles, and it was more prevalent when she was younger, but it never really surfaced to the knowledge of her sisters since her bigger fears of the other aforementioned things was more noticeable. That, and since Nino was usually with at least one of her sisters at all times back then, her fear of the dark was mitigated by the comforting company of her siblings.

But it has always lurked in the back of her mind, as if waiting to strike whenever Nino is at her most vulnerable. She's fine with the darkness in her own room, since it's a place that she knows the most intimately out of any place in the world with only one or two exceptions, but in a situation like this where she has no idea where she is, what she's been doing, or where she's ended up, she is forced to say hello to her old friend, darkness, as it holds dominion not only in her hotel room but also in the very core of her mind.

And as if that weren't enough, a sharp stabbing pain has been thumping in her gut ever since she's woken up. At least the pain gives her something else to concentrate on other than her old creeping fear of the dark, but not to the point where it can break her partial sleep paralysis. So Nino silently lies in bed, waiting as patiently as she can for her body to slowly regain control of itself through her sleep paralysis and dealing with the pain as best she can.

The comfort of the bed and the sheets that she's in, however, makes enduring the darkness and the pain a lot more bearable, enabling her to collect her thoughts more cohesively. That's right...she was stabbed in the gut by that tall guy in the red leather jacket and knocked out right afterwards, but she doesn't remember anything beyond that. Her head has also been aching with a blunt pain where it connected with the ground earlier that evening, but it feels numbed, like it's not hurting as much as it probably should.

Yotsuba...where is Yotsuba?

Her sisterly concern for her fellow quintuplet sibling injects her with the strength that she needs to finally break out of what's left of her sleep paralysis and her waning fear of the dark in her room, and she manages to carefully sit up in her bed, clutching the painful part of her abdomen as she does so. Her eyes have adjusted to the darkness of her room so that by the time she sits up, she can at least see that she's in a hotel room somewhere and that it looks completely normal, which means she probably hasn't been taken somewhere suspicious or creepy...probably. The suitcase that she took with her with the intention of staying in a hotel like this one is standing faithfully at the foot of her bed.

Looking around carefully, peering into the darkness, Nino finds to her relief her sister Yotsuba also sleeping peacefully in a separate bed to her right, albeit with some troubled breathing, but other than that she seems to be resting fine. She quietly hopes that she hasn't had a knife shoved into her gut like she did.

Nino then takes a glance down at her gut. She's felt some kind of rough fabric over her stomach where she'd been stabbed, which she can only assume is a layer of bandages that's covering up her wound.

There's only one person that she knows who would have done all this. There's only one person that she could guess who would have not only saved them from that asshole in the red leather jacket, but also taken them somewhere safe and treated their wounds. Not only that, but he even recovered her suitcase and left it with her here.

And sure enough, as Nino slowly turns to her left, that person is now seated in one of the chairs of their large and spacious hotel room at her bedside, deep asleep with his arms crossed and his head resting against the top of the chair's back. His breathing is labored and heavy, channeled completely through his nostrils - evidence of his work staying up late throughout the night stabilizing the quintuplets' conditions and ensuring that they would not be disturbed again by malicious agents this night.

Turning away from him, the secondborn gazes down at her lap, remaining silent. She remains this way for a good ten minutes or so.

Another ten minutes pass. After this second set of ten minutes, the door to the hotel room quietly shuts. Nino's bed is now empty, and the suitcase that sat at the foot of it is gone too.

Uesugi Fuutarou sighs quietly in his chair.

"For fuck's sake, Nino..." he groans softly.