[MF] Ch 14: Touko Aozaki

— — — — — — 

"So technically, I just robbed the Ryougi family by proxy? Interesting. I wonder if they'll send someone after me."

Kaito rubbed his chin, grinning. "If I remember right, the Ryougis are one of Japan's Four Great Exorcist Families, creating the Demon Hunter Organization…"

"Whatever!" 

He shrugged, then asked Jarvis to send the documents he'd stolen to the local police—anonymously, of course.

No doubt about it, those files were explosive. They named high-ranking figures across Mifune, stuffed with evidence of bribes and dirty dealings. The Yakuza's illegal profits had been funneling into the pockets of "respectable" bigwigs for years.

But Kaito didn't expect fireworks. Japan's political system would bury the scandal. The real fallout would be on him—the "avenger" who dared stir the pot. The cops would come hunting. Maybe even assassins.

After all, people who know too much rarely live long in this world.

So Mifune was just about to get noisy.

Not that it mattered. The man who'd robbed the Yakuza and tipped off the cops was "Iron Man Tokiomi." What did it have to do with some student from America?

Laughing to himself, Kaito left behind the wrecked safes and the incriminating papers.

Sure enough, not long after, the police arrived. An anonymous tip, an untraceable number. The moment their leader flipped through the files, his face drained of color. Orders were barked, evidence sealed, the scene locked down.

This was no longer a matter for ordinary officers.

While Mifune's police force tossed and turned all night, Kaito was already back at his hotel, snoring contentedly.

...

The next morning, he was on the move again. This time, he dropped by a local detective agency to post a commission: find a woman, single, in her twenties.

He left a deposit, then spent the rest of the morning running errands. By afternoon, he was playing tourist—hopping from one sightseeing spot to the next, snapping photos with a brand-new digital camera.

To anyone watching, he was just another college student on holiday.

Which wasn't unusual. By this era, students already traveled frequently, and overseas students were everywhere. A young solo traveler didn't stand out.

What did stand out was his face—so handsome it would make Leonardo DiCaprio sigh in defeat. Everywhere he went, women stared. JK girls, office ladies, even married women found excuses to strike up conversations.

Good character modeling was a cheat code in any world.

Kaito, however, didn't bite. He slipped smoothly into his "Sigma Man" act, rejecting every advance without hesitation. At one point, he even amused himself by cosplaying Jotaro Kujo. When a cluster of persistent JK girls wouldn't leave him alone, he barked out Jotaro's famous line: "Shut up already!"

For a second, the girls froze. Then they practically squealed with joy. "He spoke to me!" "No, me!" Their delusional fangirling almost broke Kaito's poker face.

The system chimed in.

[Achievement Unlocked: Crossover Cosplay – JOJO's Iconic Scene.]

Apparently, even this counted as "fun." The reward, though, was pathetic: a measly 10 Fun Points. Kaito grimaced. It felt just like grinding achievements in a mobile gacha game—tiny rewards for pointless effort.

Still, he learned something useful. The system's big payouts only came from actions tied directly to the current main storyline. Side antics in unrelated areas might be fun, but they paid scraps.

At least achievements weren't single-use. If he could milk enough entertainment value from a stunt, he could repeat it for points. Fun was the core rule. Everything else was wide open.

The Fun System was as free-spirited as that man who shouted "freedom" and turned into a genocide titan, or like Fujimoto's manga—so unhinged it left normal people baffled.

---

Two days later, the detective agency called. They'd found the woman.

Kaito immediately paid the rest of the fee, collected the intel, and set off.

His search led him to Mifune's industrial district, to a run-down office building. On the fourth floor, he found a door with a sign that read: Garan no Dou.

He knocked.

"Come in, it's open," called a rich, husky female voice.

Kaito pushed the door open. The first thing that hit him was the heavy stench of tobacco. Whoever lived here smoked with the windows shut, often.

The office was big—about eighty square meters—but dim and cluttered. A coffee table, chairs, a wide desk, filing cabinets stuffed with documents. Statues, a globe, clocks, and random ornaments filled every surface. It had that distinct aura of "everything important is here, but nothing is organized."

Several doors led off the main room—to a lounge, a bathroom, storage, even a stairwell to the floor below. Clearly, the office occupied more than just this one space.

And there, lounging in the boss chair behind the desk, was a red-haired woman.

She looked to be in her late twenties. Beautiful, sharp features, her hair tied back in a simple ponytail. A cigarette smoldered between her fingers, smoke curling lazily as her crimson eyes studied him. She had just removed her pair of glasses, still poised as if she'd only now set them aside.

She wore nothing more elaborate than a white blouse, but her body filled it out perfectly. The effect was magnetic—a mature woman radiating danger and allure in equal measure.

Her name was Touko Aozaki, nicknamed "Scarred Red"—though the English localization went with 'Disgraced Scarlet.'

She wasn't a Fate character at all, but one of Kinoko Nasu's other creations—a formidable magus, master of puppetcraft. In the future, she would remake her own body into a puppet, craft multiple spare vessels, and achieve something close to immortality by shifting her soul between them.

But that was the future. For now, Touko was in her lowest ebb. She'd lost badly to her younger sister years ago, suffering the most brutal defeat of her life. Cast out, disgraced, she lingered in Mifune, researching her craft in exile.

She was still developing her doll-making art, nowhere near the peak she would one day reach.

And that was exactly why Kaito had come.

He held in his hand the system-drawn blueprint for Clone Technique Data. Someone in this world could bring it to life—there was no shortage of geniuses in magecraft—but few would agree to help him, let alone quickly.

Except Touko Aozaki.

She was desperate enough, hungry enough, and skilled enough to make it happen.

Kaito had a backup plan, too. If she'd dropped a character card, he would've used that power directly to craft the puppets himself. But she hadn't. Even though Touko was popular and powerful, she wasn't part of Fate/Zero's main cast. No card.

Which left Plan B: hand her the blueprint and let the exiled magus work.

---

[Clone Technique Data]

[Detail: A complete set of knowledge on creating clones, built upon the homunculus alchemy already existing in the Fate world. If mastered, it allows the creation of perfect puppet doubles.]

.

.

.