Inside Nishikado Palace, the training grounds had been built in imitation of Konoha's.
Makoto Nishikado went through his usual morning workout. The only difference now was the chainsaw dog trotting beside him.
After finishing his warm-up, he grinned and slapped paws with Pochita.
It looked nothing like the overbearing presence he'd shown during his speech, and Yotsuba Nakano's eyes lit up at once.
"Makoto! Pochita!"
She waved from a distance as she ran over.
Makoto lifted a hand in return. While Yotsuba closed the distance, he opened the food cart beside the field. It was stocked with breakfast.
He hated exercising on an empty stomach, so he always ate a little beforehand. Not enough to drag Erina, Alice, and the other former Elite Ten out of bed at five in the morning to cook for him, but a light meal was well within the abilities of the chefs who used to work at the White House.
"Huh? Nino and I see this stuff all the time when we watch American dramas." Yotsuba stared at the spread in surprise.
Cinnamon rolls, donuts, muffins, chocolate milk...
Makoto nodded. "Yeah. I got curious about how Americans can stand this much sugar, so I had them make some. Go ahead."
"Then I'll try one too."
Smiling, Yotsuba picked up a donut and took a bite.
Then she stopped talking.
It tasted like her pancreas was filing a resignation letter.
Makoto burst out laughing.
If something disgusting tasted good, there were usually only two explanations. Either you were trying to mess with a friend, or you were already broken enough to enjoy it. Makoto was firmly in the second category.
"Mmph!"
Yotsuba puffed her cheeks out like a frog and glared at him.
There wasn't much she could do about it. Getting mad at him felt like kicking a pillow.
Just as she was gearing up for revenge, Makoto suddenly pointed behind her. "You brought one of your sisters today?"
Yotsuba froze.
Then a familiar voice spoke from behind her.
"Um... I haven't had breakfast either. Mind if I try some too?"
For a second, Yotsuba's thoughts went completely blank.
A beautiful girl stepped up beside her, wearing a face that looked ninety-nine percent identical to her own. But where Yotsuba felt bright and springlike, this version carried a mature, almost sultry air.
"Commander Nishikado, it's nice to meet you. I'm Yotsuba's older sister, Ichika Nakano." Ichika bowed politely.
The neckline of her clothes left very little to the imagination.
Beside her, Yotsuba kept her head lowered, letting her bangs hide most of her face.
Why?
Why did you always take the things that were mine...?
Makoto probably didn't even remember anymore, but the first time they met hadn't been in middle school.
It had been in elementary school.
He'd already been in the habit of exercising back then. Not to the point of obsession, but after being thrown into a world full of heroines, he'd felt it was only practical to stay in shape.
That was when he ran into Yotsuba, back at the age when kids were at their most irritating.
At the time, Makoto had no interest in little girls. Yotsuba had been far less appealing to him than Akizuki Kayoko back at home.
But one day, while jogging past Yotsuba's elementary school, he saw her cornered by a few classmates who were trying to force her to do their homework for them.
"Aren't we friends? You can't help us out?"
Yotsuba's incurable habit of being too nice to people had already begun to flare up, and she was just about to agree when Makoto walked over and kicked the girls away from her.
"Fuck off. I despise moral kidnapping."
He'd believed in equality from a young age.
Trash was trash. Men, women, it made no difference.
After all the nonsense he'd seen in his previous life, there was no way he was going to indulge people like that in this one.
That was how they met.
Afterward, Yotsuba started buying him snacks, and the two of them became familiar with each other.
Then, later on, something happened that even Makoto never realized.
One day, while waiting for someone outside the school gate, he mistook Ichika for Yotsuba.
It wasn't that strange. Back in elementary school, all four sisters wore the same long hairstyle and the same uniform. Anyone could have made that mistake.
Ichika, for her part, never corrected him. Instead, she played along and went off to get food with him.
To be fair, Makoto had been ridiculously good-looking even then.
The real disaster was that Yotsuba came out of the school gates right in time to see it.
Makoto and Ichika had probably both forgotten the whole thing.
Yotsuba hadn't.
"Wow... Nino was right. Up close, you really are handsome."
For the first time, Ichika studied Makoto from only a few steps away and realized her sister hadn't been exaggerating.
Then again, compared to everything else about him, his face was almost the least remarkable thing.
Now she understood why Yotsuba had kept this from the rest of them.
The sisters shared almost everything, but even they had private little treasures they didn't want anyone touching. Ichika had one of her own too: her dream of becoming an actress.
Yotsuba's behavior felt a lot like secretly dating an idol and hiding it from the family.
"Don't worry, I'm not suspicious."
Ichika raised her hands with a teasing smile. "Want to frisk me? America might allow guns, but I really didn't bring a weapon."
The movement stretched her clothes tighter, making her figure look even more mature.
"This isn't America anymore. It's Makoto Nation."
Makoto repeated the same line Yotsuba had heard last night, then smiled. "No need. If you actually had a way to kill me, I'd be interested in seeing it."
"I was kidding, I was kidding." Ichika hurried to smooth things over.
With his killing intent completely hidden, Makoto barely looked like a man capable of crushing a nuclear-level monster. Right now he just seemed like an absurdly handsome athlete, and Ichika had slipped too naturally into her usual teasing tone.
If Yu Ishigami were here...
Click.
A cold metal object pressed against her temple.
Ichika turned stiffly.
"How'd you get in?" Ishigami asked, his right arm transformed into a machine gun.
He really appeared.
"Ishigami, relax. She's a guest." Makoto waved him back.
Only after Ishigami withdrew did Ichika breathe again. She pressed a hand to her chest and stammered, "I... I'm Yotsuba's sister. The guards let me through."
Makoto had already guessed as much. The two looked identical. If it had been the Yukinoshita sisters, the guards would have told her to get lost.
Ichika draped an arm over her younger sister's shoulder and leaned in until their cheeks touched. "See? We look alike, right?"
She was so focused on cozying up to Makoto that she never noticed something was wrong with Yotsuba.
Makoto did.
Whenever Yotsuba was around him, she was always smiling, all sunlight and energy.
But not now.
Now she looked crushed. Worse than that, there was something dark in her face that didn't belong there.
"Yeah..." Makoto said. "You do look alike."
Yotsuba's spirits sank even lower.
Same as always.
Sometimes she wished the four of them didn't look identical. If they hadn't, maybe Makoto never would have mistaken Ichika for her back then.
Then he spoke again.
"But I can tell you apart from Yotsuba."
Her head snapped up. Shock flashed through her blue eyes.
Makoto went on, "If the four of you stood together and Yotsuba wasn't there, I might not be able to sort the rest of you out. But if Yotsuba's in the group, I can pick her out."
Her gaze trembled faintly, his reflection caught in her eyes.
The real training began after that.
Ichika, naturally, didn't join in.
Among the four sisters, her athletic ability was second-worst from the bottom to begin with, and she'd stayed up all night. Forget training with Makoto the way Yotsuba did. At this point, two laps might've killed her.
While Yotsuba rested between sets, Ichika quietly asked what was going on. Yotsuba told her that Makoto had noticed she had the potential to awaken powers and had started training her.
Ichika's eyes went wide. "Seriously?"
Before they knew it, an hour had passed.
Ran Mouri, Megumi Kato, and Kotonoha Katsura arrived one after another. Utaha Kasumigaoka and Alice Nakiri, who liked sleeping in, were definitely still in bed.
Normally, seeing so many other girls around Makoto would've left Yotsuba at least a little dejected.
Not today.
Another hour later, morning training ended.
Ran, Megumi, and the others headed to school together. Yotsuba and Ichika went home, planning to wait until their other three sisters left before coming back out.
Makoto, meanwhile, rarely went to school anymore. He was heading back to his room for what might be called the second wave of his morning workout.
Everyone staying in the palace knew what exercise tended to do to teenage boys.
Yukiko, Mrs. Yukinoshita, Akizuki Kayoko, and the others had their own opinions about that.
Totsuki Academy had been merged with Nishikado Nation Shuchiin Academy. In practice, even Harvard had simply been stripped of its old sign and folded in.
It wasn't only Makoto's female companions attending classes there. The Yukinoshita sisters did too.
Now that they were living on their own, they no longer had the protection of their family.
Then again, Japan had become such a mess that the Yukinoshita family, deeply tied to real estate, had been hit harder than most of the old conglomerates. With Mrs. Yukinoshita now living inside Nishikado Palace, the family name existed more on paper than in reality.
Still, with the ninjutsu they'd learned in the Naruto world, the sisters weren't exactly in danger of starving.
Yukino Yukinoshita, now a second-year high school student, walked to school instead of arriving in a luxury car.
Of course, if she wanted to, she could have made plenty of money with her powers.
She chose not to.
Using supernatural abilities for personal profit violated her principles.
It was her principle, and the absolute bottom line she adhered to.
She was nearing the school gate when chaos erupted up ahead.
Students fled in every direction, faces white with panic.
"Help! Help!"
"Call the police... no, get the commander to send someone!"
"A monster! There's a monster! Run!"
Monster?
Yukino's expression changed at once.
That was the official label for mutants like the Crab Monster and the Earring Rat Woman. They were usually violent, irrational, and eager to slaughter innocent people. If one appeared, disaster followed.
Something came flying toward her.
It hit the ground in front of her with a wet thud.
The instant she saw it clearly, her face drained of color.
A boy was sprawled at her feet, a huge hole torn through his abdomen.
She knew him.
Shogo Haizaki. Her classmate. A basketball club member with a reputation for bullying other students.
"Help... help..."
Haizaki reached toward her with the last of his strength.
Then his head lolled to one side, and he went still.
Yukino's face hardened. She sprinted for the gate.
Not far away, Kaguya Shinomiya, who was being dragged off by Ai Hayasaka, looked back in alarm. "Hey! What are you doing?"
Hayasaka kept pulling her along. "Don't worry, Kaguya. She's a superpowered one too."
Kaguya blinked.
Really?
She didn't remember that girl being one of them.
It wasn't so strange. Even among superpowered people, fame varied wildly. Makoto and Ishigami needed no introduction, and the others people remembered best were usually the women around Makoto. Yukino's presence in that crowd had always been easy to overlook.
By the time Yukino reached the scene, she heard the sickening sound of flesh being pierced over and over again.
She stopped dead.
At the school gate stood a bloated man over three meters tall, thick with fat, attacking students indiscriminately. He seemed especially fixated on the muscular athletes.
The most abnormal part of him was his forehead.
It jutted forward in a long tapering spike.
If Makoto had been there, he probably would've said the man looked like Chinjao from One Piece.
Pointy-headed either way.
"Then let me ask you this... if your muscles are better than mine, why don't you fight me?"
"Then let me ask you this... why don't girls like me when I'm this strong?"
"Then let me ask you this... if I'm juicing on steroids, why am I not dead yet?"
The pointy-headed man clearly had a grudge against big, muscular sports types. He kept swinging his head, skewering boys straight through with that sharpened forehead.
The way he began every line with "Then let me ask you this" might have sounded ridiculous under other circumstances.
Not with several corpses hanging from his skull.
"Stop!"
Yukino shouted and flashed through hand seals.
"Water Style: Water Dragon Jutsu!"
Water surged up at her feet, climbing fast before gathering into the shape of a roaring dragon.
It was the strongest ninjutsu she knew.
The dragon slammed into the monster's gut and blasted him backward more than ten meters.
Students who hadn't managed to flee far enough started cheering.
"She got him!"
"That girl has powers too? She's amazing!"
"Is she one of the commander's women?"
"I don't think so. I've looked up all of them. She isn't on the list."
"Makes sense. She's kind of... flat. I mean, slim."
A vein throbbed in Yukino's forehead.
Why did people bring that up everywhere?
Once upon a time, she'd comforted herself with the thought that she still had time to grow.
After spending more than ten years in the Chainsaw Man world, she'd accepted reality.
So now, whenever the subject came up, her answer had changed.
Judging a woman by that alone was the mark of a lesser life-form.
Rip.
Just as everyone was starting to celebrate, the spike on the monster's head sliced sideways like a blade and split the water dragon in half.
"What, exactly? I just finished working out. You trying to help me rinse off?" the pointy-headed man sneered.
He advanced step by step.
Yukino retreated.
That last attack had been her strongest technique, and it hadn't hurt him at all.
At last, her back hit a wall.
Nowhere left to go.
The pointy-headed man loomed over her like a small hill, his body massive enough to block the light. Once he got a good look at her face, disgust twisted across his expression.
"Hmm... I was gonna be generous and offer you a chance to go on a date with me, but never mind. Too flat."
Yukino's lips parted.
Heat flooded straight into her face.
Ordinary people said it.
Even monsters said it.