Monstrous Distinction Part 9 (Patreon)

Not much time passed until the eight-legged quin came into view, though both Miku and Fuutarou had to chuckle at the sight of her. It seemed like Nino had been quite busy by herself, judging from the 5 bags she was carrying.

"That went faster than I thought. Did you guys finish your business? Cause I only managed to check out half the stores I planned to stop by." Nino spoke matter-of-factly, though she gave a sarcastic smile to Miku afterwards.

"Wait. Are you sure about that? Didn't you already buy plenty? How many clothes do you need?" Fuutarou asked, while rubbing his head. There are some things on this planet that just couldn't be explained with reasoning alone.

"You truly are moronic sometimes. I know I said it before, but it bears repeating for you." Nino responded coldly, though Miku suddenly started to giggle. It seemed like once again Fuutarou missed something important in this conversation, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

"Yes, we are done. Fuutarou-kun even helped me a lot with my genie self. I think I understand my body a whole lot better now." Miku whispered in her usual shy but meaningful voice, which caused Nino to smile again.

"Perfect. Then I guess it's time for me to take our walking encyclopedia out for dinner now~" Nino laughed to herself. Miku looked like she was about to excuse herself as well, when something occurred to Fuutarou all of a sudden.

"Hey Miku, I would like to try something really quick. Do you mind turning into a Scylla behind my back real quick and pretend to be Nino for a sec? Make it as accurate as you possibly can." Fuutarou asked, though the expressions of the two sisters made it seem like he caught them off guard.

"Why? Am I not enough me for you already?" Nino asked, her sarcastic voice not even bothering Fuutarou by this point anymore.

"No, it's about something else. I would like to see you two side by side in order to check something. Could you do that for me?" Fuutarou asked, looking at Miku with his usual thinking expression. There was something specific on his mind that just seemed a little bit weird, and now that an opportunity had presented itself to him, he just needed to check it.

“Uhm… sure? I can do that.” Miku answered quietly, making Fuutarou nod and turn around, making sure not to peek at her changing, as that would ruin the experiment. It was imperative that he didn’t know who was who after she was done changing.

Thing was, he could hear them move around behind him and even whisper to each other, but still, he just had to fight his curiosity this time. If they wanted to switch places or shuffle their positions around, all for it. The more difficult it is to guess for him, the better.

“Oi, Uesugi! We’re done.” He heard from behind him in the classic aggressive Nino tone, so he knew it was time. He took one more breath and turned around, only to gulp immediately at the sigh.

There stood two girls in front of him, where you might as well assume that a mirror was placed between them. It was clear from the very beginning that the most obvious way to tell them apart was by Nino’s two headbands or Miku’s headphones, but you might as well throw that notion out the window as both of those items lay visible in their respective bags between them.

That meant that in front of Fuutarou stood two absolutely identical girls, with the exact same body shape, face, eyes and everything else. Both also had great control over their respective tentacles, moving them around every now and again seemingly unconsciously. And while, yes, their hair reached slightly different lengths, this wasn’t really a point of reference since Fuutarou had no idea how long either of Nino or Miku’s hair was, when their accessories weren’t holding them back.

If he didn’t know any better, he would have said that there stood two identical looking girls in front of him that were presumably Nino solely judging by how pissed off she looked.

“So, are you happy now? We don't have all day, you know.” Nino 1 asked.

“Yeah. Stare at us all you want, it won’t help you.” Nino 2 added with a slight smirk.

“Let’s just hope that whatever he is trying to pull, is something useful.” Nino 1 rolled her eyes.

“It is fun watching his flabbergasted face though~” Nino 2 turned to face the other one briefly, while the Nino 2 also began to grin. “Agreed~”

This was insanity. If you ignored the hair length, there literally stood 2 Ninos in front of him. A while back, to make differentiating the five a little bit easier, Fuutarou had started to pay more attention to their voices and behavior and such.

But even that didn’t help at all, as one Nino had a hand on her hips, while the other had them crossed underneath her chest. And both looked like they were having sadistical fun. And yeah, even their voices sounded exactly the same. There was literally no way for Fuutarou to physically tell them apart, except…

“The right one is Miku.” Fuutarou stated matter of factly, pointing to the ‘Nino’ on his right. Then he reached with his hand for his head and added. “That being said, your disguise skills are so incredible that it is literally hurting my brain.”

“...how…?”

“...wha…?”

Both Ninos just looked at him in utter shock. Only a second ago both had this superior smug face on, but that had been wiped off their faces with only a single sentence. He had done it. Fuutarou had seen through the most impossible of disguises. And the thing was that Miku could probably still slightly improve her disguise if she were at home and had a little bit of time, but Fuutarou knew that that wouldn’t make a difference.

The thing that gave her away was simply something that she would not be able to hide, no matter how hard she tried.

“It’s your genie mist. Remember when I told you that there was still this very subtle trail of mist connecting you to your lamp, even when you were human? Yeah, it is still there if you are something like a scylla.” Fuutarou explained, making the two Quins briefly look at each other, then check out Miku from top to bottom.

“Unfortunately once you know this trick, seeing through this disguise becomes very trivial.” Fuutarou explained while shrugging his shoulders. He knew that this was a heavy blow for Miku, as that basically made her go from ‘perfect disguise’ to ‘once you know the trick, she cannot fool you’. And even worse since…

“I don’t see it.” Nino declared, crossing her arms again after checking out Miku’s Scylla imitation body one last time.

“I… don’t either.” Miku added, visibly disappointed.

“Hey! You know that cracking a joke right now is not a good idea, right?” Nino hissed at Fuutarou, having seemingly given up completely on looking for that fog.

“Uhm… I… Could you maybe explain again how that mist looks like…?” Miku asked hesitantly, as it was very evident that Nino had already reached the end of her patience.

“Huh? What? I mean, it's this blue-ish, transparent fog all around your body” Fuutarou quickly added, being caught completely off guard. I mean, how else was he going to describe transparent, magical genie mist.

“Must be great to have eyes as great as yours, because I don’t see it.” Nino sarcastically added, looking at Miku another time, before shaking her head. “Nope. Still don’t.”

“I don’t see it either. Does it look something like this?” Suddenly, Miku’s lower body dissolved into that genie-like mist again as she turned from her scylla imitation back into her true form. Nino whistled impressed as she watched her sister transform.

“I mean, yes it does. Just more transparent, but it looks essentially like that. Did you two really not see it before?” Fuutarou asked, trying to think up an explanation, but nothing came to his mind. But to his own surprise, he wasn’t really all that bothered by this. He just nodded to himself and said. “Well, let’s leave it at that. My hunch turned out to be correct, but I didn’t expect you two not to see the mist. It seems like I need to do more research on genies again.”

“Let me get this straight. You are saying that some people are just able to see through Miku’s disguise randomly and others just aren’t?” Nino asked, looking more pissed off by the second.

“Thing is, I just don’t yet know enough about genies to answer that question.” Fuutarou shrugged his shoulders. “It could be any number of reasons. Like maybe it’s because I am a guy, or maybe extra species just can’t see it. I don’t think either of them are true, but until I find out more about it, I just want you to know one thing, Miku. Some people can do it. That's all I can say to help you at the moment.”

Nino did nothing but look at Fuutarou and blink for a moment. Miku on the other hand, started to smile after a bit and answered. “...Okay. Thank you for telling me.”

—

It's Nino’s time to have some alone time with Fuutarou. But first, it seemed like Fuutarou noticed something quite important that Miku should be aware about.