I ended up with my desk jammed up next to Kiba's again, and it was with a sort of sick, forlorn feeling that I realized I actually wouldn't be able to follow a single thing happening in any of my classes if she wasn't offering me a fairly constant running stream of translations the entire time.
It wasn't that I couldn't understand the words — I was at least sort of conversant in the language at this point — but it was the
speed of the dialogue that went way over my head. I simply couldn't keep up. By the time Id finished parsing the meaning of any given sentence into english so I'd actually understand it, two more would already have come out of the teachers mouth, leaving me completely baffled by what was going on when I could no longer link any two statements together to grasp the flow of the lesson. Math wasn't so bad, insofar as while I wasn't the best at it, I
did remember doing it once upon a time, and so that was more like trying to jog my memory enough to teach
myself how to do any given task. Word problems were a kick in the balls, but at least they stayed still and let me puzzle them out instead of rushing straight past me.
It was everything else that was killing me.
You would think that I, a native english speaker, would have precisely zero fucking problems in the english class, but you would be completely fucking wrong. As it turned out, I, off the top of my head, remembered fairly little about the actual rules of the english language. I could speak it fluently and, if I had to, kind of eloquently, without thought — but if you sat me down and asked me to explain the rules of how it worked to anyone I'm not sure I could even begin to conjure the faintest memory of my school days. Part of the problem was that the
level of english being taught here was fairly low, like, elementary school stuff, and those particular lessons were so internal to me that I often had to spent a ton of time wrestling with the japanese sentence explaining exactly what any given textbook question wanted me to do than anything else. My Japanese vocabulary simply didn't extend to detailed literary concepts like that.
Don't even get me fucking started on science, or history.
With Kiba explaining what was going on, I was able to fake it enough off of memory to pretend I was following the lessons that I was actually just frantically forcing myself to remember, but that only went so far.
I felt like a guy who'd never taken a single note in my entire highschool career, and now I was doing my final exams based purely on gut feelings and instinct.
Finally, towards the end of the day we had gym class, and I was blessedly freed from my torment — for about five minutes.
I was oddly relieved and uncomfortable with separating from Kiba to head to the boys changing rooms, and combined with my still lingering headache and how deeply tired I was feeling, I was barely paying attention when one of the other boys stepped just slightly to much into my personal space and started speaking to me.
"You have a lot of scars, Cole-san," they said, and I was forced to replay what he had said in my head to understand it after having my attention drawn by the use of my name.
I shook my head to try and get some blood pumping to my brain, then turned tired eyes on the person speaking to me, and was left speechlesss.
'Any of these people could be the stand user, but fuck me if my money isn't on the guy with bright white fucking hair,' I mused to myself, eying the short — no, I guess calling him short isn't accurate because to me, basically all but the most bizzarre outliers were shorter than me — boy while trying to think of a way to answer his question. He had the lithe build of a swimmer, pretty much the entire class did when held up against my own bulk, turqoise eyes, and sort of curly hair that was, as previously mentioned, stark white.
And I don't mean stark white as in 'it's been bleached and then dyed like this', because there was a noticeable quality difference at play here. This person, somehow, at age sixteen, just… naturally had hair as white as the driven snow.
I nearly choked trying to hide the obvious and sudden effect of my power grasping at nothing for a moment, before finally responding, realizing that half the boys in the change room with me were subtly trying to pay attention to the exchange.
What was it he said again? My scars?
"I just scar easy," I lied in my zugzug Japanese, holding my arms up for the guy to inspect, shirtless, because I was moving at about a quarter of the pace that everyone else was going in my sleep deprived haze.
My body, but mostly my arms, were a litany of pockmarks and scars. At a glance, it probably looked like I was suicidal or something, but that really wasn't the case. As a younger guy, I'd had what you might call a casual disregard for my own safety. Not in the sense that I sought out danger, or was ever really
in any significant danger, but more in a… how to put it… kind of belligerent, stupid way. Need to grab something on the other side of a jagged hole in a fence? I'd stick my arm in that thing without a second thought and casually ignore the bloody lines it'd scrawl on my forearm to do it. Bee or mosquito sting leaving an angry red welt on my arm? Fuck that, the pain of genuinely just scraping at the bite with a nail until I was left with a bleeding hole instead of an itchy bump was somehow less troublesome for me to deal with. My cat is bored? I'd play with the little fucker until he was all but tearing apart my arm with his claws.
Years and years of casual belligerence and a neurotic hatred of feeling things on the surface of my skin — like
scabs — had simply left me with an incredibly wide variety of scars on myself.
I'm sure that to the average mild mannered Japanese person, my myriad (not)battle scars probably made me incredibly thuggish looking, even if I could rightfully say I'd never acquired a single one of them in anything even vaguely resembling a fight.
"This is a bit more than 'easily', isn't it?" The white haired boy said wryly, leaning forward to get a better look at my raised arms.
"I clumsy," I tacked on jokingly, finally lowering my arms and lifting an eyebrow in the boy's direction.
I could probably switch to English and stop sounding like a toddler, since I was almost positive I was talking to another Devil, with their stupid translation cheat, but I assumed I was being spoken to in Japanese precisely
because it would be super suspicious for exactly two groups of people to all inexplicably be capable of speaking fluent English.
The white haired guy, probably realizing he hadn't introduced himself, coughed embarrassedly into his hand and blushed slightly as I tired, waiting for him to get to the point.
Not in like, a threatening or annoyed way, just, I wasn't good with this small talk stuff on a normal day, and genuinely found doing it tiring, so with my mental battery already so low I simply didn't have it in me to drag this out. I was happy silently staring.
Seriously, white fucking hair. Just… why?
"Sorry! You can call me Hanakai, I know we haven't spoken yet, but I'm on the student council? I think you met our Kaichou?" He offered sheepishly.
Hmm? Oh, the guy from my first day of school. The anal retentive one. Boy mode Sona Sitri. I think his name was… Sora? He'd kind of slipped out of my working memory when I never encountered him again. Nothing against the guy (mostly), he just wasn't very memorable.
"Yes," I replied monosyllabically, pointedly ignoring the handful of snickers that came from behind me at my continued inability to sound any older than a three year old.
Maybe I'll get lucky and my power will give me a brain worm that gives me language skills or something. That seems sufficiently horrifying to be 'on brand' for me.
"Right," Hanakai said awkwardly, either unsure of what to say next, or unsure of how to say it. The guy kind of just stood there looking uncomfortable and opening and closing his mouth repeatedly, like a fish on dryland.
I stared at him blankly for a few seconds — again, I was
beyond exhausted so even my usual masking method of 'being funny/rude' was absent — until I eventually decided to just finish getting dressed, turning back to my locker to pull my gym shirt out and yanking it over my head.
The shirt was
way too big on me, because it wasn't really proportioned for me. 'Large' in this country was intended for obese people, and simultaneously, was probably equivalent to 'Medium' in Canada and America, which meant that in order for my greater size to fit into one of these things without feeling like I was wearing spray paint I'd been forced to choose the 'Extra Large' sized shirt, which, while it fit my shoulders, also dangled halfway to my knees like I was wearing a mini dress.
It fucking sucked, but I was never all that fashion conscious in the first place, so it just became one more thing on the pyre of my annoyance. By this point, the peanut gallery of other boys in our glass were heading out to go play, or run, or whatever the fuck we were doing in gym today, which left me more or less alone with Hanakai. Unconsciously, I could feel my body tense as I readied myself for some supernatural bullshit to happen when I turned back towards the guy and found him directing a piercing look at me.
"Cole-san," Hanakai said eventually, which is almost the exact moment I felt myself being drawn to Gnosis and thus, completely missed everything he had to say on the topic.
My power had grabbed me the, in my opinion, utterly fucking useless ability to miniaturize my creatures at will, though only one at a time.
Just… why? I mean, I guess that would let me get some use out of the Snarehunter Ant now but…
Actually, with this, I could have Reaper hide in my hair during the day at school. I could scale my Aeoth down to fit on my shoulder, and let it's significantly smaller blasts function like less calamity inducing ranged attacks.
…was shrinking stuff surprisingly powerful? What?
Right. The stand user was staring at me.
"...sorry? I not, hear," I offered apologetically, blinking rapidly to shake off my momentary daze.
Hanakai's eyes narrowed at me.
"Please don't take advantage of Kiba-chan's kindness!" He insisted somewhat petulantly.
I blinked at him again.
Oh… oh my fucking god. Did this guy even know about my abilities? Was he seriously just getting on my ass because he liked a girl I was kind of friends with? What the fuck was my life?
"She speaks English," I said bluntly, gesturing between us with one hand loosely before continuing. "I, Japanese, bad." I pointed out, quite reasonably in my opinion.
Seriously, if this guy was gonna offer to do all my translating for me I had zero problems letting him, it's not like I
wanted to impose on Kiba constantly.
Hanakai exhaled sharply through his nose, then stepped towards me in what I could only take to be an attempt to be threatening, entering further into my personal space. A dim, intrusive thoughts based, part of myself considered the fact that I could turn myself into a swarm of Rippers faster than he could think to respond and that the little bastards were so efficient they'd never find any evidence he was ever in the room, but that was a
very undesired outcome for me so I let it pass quickly.
"I'm also a fluent English speaker. I'll ask the teacher-" He started to say in perfect english while having to tilt his head back to make eye contact with me due to how close to me he was standing.
"Now kissssssss!" A low, female voice half moaned, audible only because there was no other sound in the room to distract from it.
Hanakai lurched away from me so fast you'd think I had cooties, face turning a bright, enraged, red as his head whipped around in search of the origin of the noise.
You know, for a little while now, I feel like I forgot what kind of setting this was. To me, the entire place was urban fantasy, if not outright supernatural horror.
But for the protagonist, this was a fucking Ecchi Anime.
"You know this is literally a crime right?" I called into the open air, more tired of having to deal with this nonsense than offended at being watched change. I mean. I was fucking embarrassed, and I would absolutely be telling the proper authorities about this when I got the chance, but I wasn't going to freak out about it.
What would be the point?
Hanakai's gaze snapped towards me at my statement.
"What did he say? Tsuko, I don't know English! What did he say!?"
"He said… something about doing crime? Do- are we ready for that?!"
"I am always ready for that,"
The voices continued, forcing me to realize I'd offered my warning in English.
I closed my eyes and took a deep, calming breath.
Then decided to just fucking leave the situation entirely.
"You figure it out, I'm done," I grunted, striding quickly past Hanakai without looking back. Someday, somehow, that little fucking pervert was going to save the world with the power of man titty or something, but I was going to have
absolutely nothing to do with any of it. I wished Sirzechs all the best — I don't think the world was ready for a gender-bent Issei Hyoudou.
-()-
Gym class was weird. Japanese physical education standards were like… actually standards? In Canada you might have to do some running and pushups and shit, but no one, anywhere, was actually recording any of that information, and most schools were happy just to know your teacher was tiring you out with something that could charitably be called exercise outside of exams which were usually just some flavour of running.
The Japanese had a whole… measurement system? Specific exercises, expected numbers for your age and height, hell, they measured
how flexible I was, wrote it down, and I was apparently expected to
improve that number.
This was apparently a thing they did every year at set times, so I guess it made sense that it was happening at the beginning of the year - to set a baseline to work from.
Because most of the stations for measuring things could only take so many people at once and the teacher could only be in so many places at once, a lot of it was self study - outside of the running exercises, groups of students were moving around helping each other write down what they'd achieved so they could pass it to the teacher at the end of the class. Girls and boys worked in separate fields, which again, made sense I guess, so I didn't have Kiba to help me do any of that, and I was emphatically not in the mood to deal with lover boy for an entire class, so I ended up more or less alone for the whole class.
I won't say the annoyance and difficulty of doing all of that shit by myself was necessarily
worth the relative peace of not having to force myself to be minimally social with another human being, but well, it
was nice.
By the time class, and therefore school, were over with, I'd 'missed' with my power at least once, which had forced me to restart counting how many chin-ups I could do and left me looking like a dipshit when I fell off of the bars and onto my ass.
Now I was uncomfortably making my way towards the Occult Research Club's frankly preposterously large courtyard and fucking mansion, only this time, I could actually appreciate the cover for what it was. Mindful of how over reliant I was becoming on her for… just about everything around this place, I hadn't bothered waiting for Kiba to finish exiting class to come over here. Instead, the moment I stepped out of sight of the doors to the school leading into the courtyard — I was positive there had to be a muggle repelling field on the doors because there was no way a school of prissy upper middle class kids would just straight up never try to have a picnic or hang out, out here — I summoned up my Grubbin.
The creature appeared on the ground at my feet, facing away from me, looking around itself curiously, before sort of undulating in that way caterpillar like insects do in order to turn around and point its head at me.
"Grub?" It… said… to me, curiously.
Listen, when pokemon do nothing but express themselves using their own names in the television show, you don't think much of it, but try to imagine human sounding speech coming out of a two foot long beetle grub. Like, with inflection and tone control and everything to help you understand the meaning behind it. I could now understand why some pokemon trainers seemed to have the inexplicable ability to hold whole fucking conversations with their pokemon never saying anything but their own names. This was just bizarre.
"Hey bud. I'm Jonathan. I guess I'm your new uh, trainer?" I offered, slowly getting to my knees and trying to maintain eye contact with the oversized insectoid eyes to either side of the creatures head without much success.
Hard to keep eye contact with two eyes facing in different directions.
The grub pushed its body partially up into the air, like a snake about to strike, then twisted its head to the side, seemingly so that it could get a better look at me. Then it twisted to the other side so its
other eye could look at me, then bobbed its head once like it was nodding at me.
"Grubbin! Grub!" It cheered, it's entire body kind of… woogling, like it was made of jelly.
Tentatively, I stretched my hand forward towards the Grubbin, a bit wary of the six inch long, very sharp looking mandibles sticking out of the front of its body, but ultimately trusting in the insanely loving nature of pokemon as a whole to avoid uh.
Having my hand mangled really.
Listen, I really needed a win here. I had enough horrors beyond my comprehension. Grubbin
looked fucking terrifying, but it was still a pokemon, and pokemon
provably get stronger when you love them.
I couldn't assign malicious intent to a creature that… innocent.
In response to my gesture, Grubbin lifted its head to do that same left-right twist it had earlier, before, to my surprise, and with alarming speed, using my hand as an on ramp to rapidly crawl directly up my arm.
Despite the way I kept describing it, it was surprisingly not gross at all to feel touching my body. If anything, it kind of felt like a warm pillow was crawling up my arm as it moved. It kept going though, crawling across my back and reorienting itself so that it could run up the back of my neck and rest its mandible'd head atop my own.
"Grubbin!" It cried out triumphantly, before uh, resting.
Given that Grubbin was effectively the baby form of its species I wasn't terribly surprised that it was already tired. Come to think of it, could my monsters like… evolve? I know pokemon do normally but are the members of my menagerie static? Could they breed? Did they grow? Get old?
I had no idea, but, as someone with a longtime love of the pokemon series, I was at least willing to put the effort in to find out - no matter how tired I was just standing here with Grubbin occasionally wiggling around in my hair.
"So… are you like, a boy, or a girl?" I asked the small insect as I resumed my slow walk towards where I was pretty sure the ORC building was located.
Yes the courtyard was
that big and covered in trees that I could theoretically get lost here.
"Grubbin," Grubbin said matter of factly, which… did not tell me anything.
"Okay, let's do it like this, tap me on the head once for boy, and twice for girl," I tried again.
"Grubbin…" Grubbin offered me, seemingly slightly annoyed I hadn't understood it the first time as it lightly bonked me on the head - twice.
I grunted an acknowledgement at it - her - then continued in silence for a short time. How uh, how does one train a pokemon? Like a person I guess? Do I just have it use attacks a lot? How does a grub do push ups?
"What uh, what all can you do, anyway?" I asked her after a second of thought, then added, "Also did you want a name, or, are you fine with Grubbin? I don't wanna name you like, Princess or something if you dont—" I tried to add.
I am… not the most affectionate person in the world. I try, I really do, but I always find it easier to be told what to do to demonstrate sincerity than to throw shit at the wall and hope it works. Part of that is probably that I expect nothing from anyone in terms of placating
me, and most of the time I just want to be left to my own devices though. I don't exactly have alot of personal desires to compare things to. I like to eat I guess, but I don't really consider myself lustful, or greedy, or gluttonous or anything like that.
Grubbin, who was pleasantly direct for a bug from another dimension, started bonking me on the head repeatedly at 'Princess' however, and I blinked, tilting my head upward slightly to see her leaning down into my field of view with a…
How the fuck did I know what a 'pleased look' was on a grub anyway?
"Uh, Princess, then," I allowed awkwardly, before coughing to change the subject. "So… moves?" I pressed.
Princess nodded at my question, wiggling her head in that left right dance she did when she was trying to see what was directly in front of her, before turning her head towards a nearby tree and firing what, to me, looked like a length of silly string at the thing. The other end of the string attached to the tree fairly high up on it's trunk, and she whipped her head back ferociously enough that my entire head jerked back along with her, and she went
flying.
I watched with dumbfounded fascination as she proceeded to repeat the process a few times, effectively spidermanning her way around the small collection of trees around us, before ending up directly above me on a low hanging branch, that she deliberately hooked another piece of string too, before lowering herself directly back onto my head.
"Grubbin!" She declared somewhat imperiously, crawling to my shoulder so she could see my face, then rearing up and nodding her head confidently, and crawling back to her, apparently preferred, spot atop my head.
Then she started nibbling on my hair.
"Hey! No! Princess!" I yelped, raising my hands to pull her off my head with sort of resulted in my hair getting pulled when she refused to immediately let go.
"You can't—!" I started to scold her, only for my power to kick in, and my awareness of the outside world to click off as I internalized my newfound ability to summon my monsters as suits of armor instead of living creatures.
When I came too, I was sprawled on the ground like a jackass, and Princess was curled up on my chest like a cat getting ready to take a nap. When she detected me waking up, she lifted herself up in that snakelike way she tended to, leaned forward to bonk my forehead with the bottom of what passed for her face, since if she moved towards me head on she'd stab my eyes out with her mandibles, and immediately went back to lounging on my chest like a kitten.
"…you know what? I'm not even gonna complain anymore, this is just my life now," I groaned into the sky, momentarily forgetting that I was supposed to be heading towards the ORC building so I could keep track of what Sirzechs was doing about our rogue wizard problem.
The ground was actually kind of comfortable, if I'm being honest. I mean, it wasn't, not really, but with the waning sun basking me with just the right amount of warmth, and the warm presence of Princess on my chest, how tired I was suddenly crept up on me all at once - and I found myself drifting off to sleep.
-( )-
When I came too, not altogether too much time must have passed because the sun was still up. It'd moved, obviously, but not by much. I'm not really a 'check the time by reading the suns position in the sky' kind of guy, but if I had to throw out a guess, I'd say I'd been sleeping for maybe thirty minutes before something disturbed me enough to wake me up.
"Weird place to take a nap, Cole-san," the disturbance said in a slightly mocking tone of voice.
I cracked an eyelid open, squinting one eyed at Sirzechs Queen as Akito loomed over me with his hands in his pockets.
Princess shook herself awake like a dog, then panned her head around until Akito entered her field of view, at which point she froze, her mandibles opening wide in threat.
"Grub!" She, I dunno, hissed? We'll go with hissed at the boy, who's gaze twitched to my girl, then back to me without any indication of how he felt about her showing on his leering face.
"I was tired. Us mere mortals have to do this thing, it's called sleeping? Maybe you've heard of it?" I shot back, sitting slowly up so as to give Princess a chance to get off my chest, which she did, mostly by crawling up to shoulder level and moving around to my back then her customary spot on top of my head as I managed to get myself fully vertical.
Akito frowned at that, bothered for some reason.
"I thought we sent you home to sleep?" He asked for confirmation.
"Yeah well, you try to sleep while worried a necromancer is about to cast 'fuck everything in that general direction', without knowing which direction" I snarked, finally getting to my feet and shaking my head. I hadn't slept long — definitely not long enough to make up for all the sleep I missed last night being worried about the aforementioned necromancer — but I felt a bit better regardless. Maybe it was just the slight reduction in tension I got from relaxing for a bit, or maybe just from the slight reprieve from consciousness, but I was less irritable feeling if nothing else.
Akito's brows furrowed at my statement, and for a moment I felt like I could see his expression soften slightly, before he returned to his usual leering mask.
"Don't worry, Cole-san. We know what we're doing. If something comes up that we can't handle," He paused, grimacing slightly, "then we'll call Sirzech's family for help," he finished begrudgingly.
"You get that without knowing anything about anything, that means nothing to me right? Do you guys have power level scouters? Is that a thing here? I mean, genuinely, if you had to guess, how powerful was that guy? Could I take him? Can you?" I asked, realizing about halfway through my joke that I was no longer joking and was instead be completely serious.
Real life wasn't an anime. There were no arbitrary units of measure that would allow me to do some quick math to determine how safe I was from any given threat. The sheer breadth of things that could happen in a magical world meant that no matter how strong any given person was, how strong
I was, there was always a non-zero chance that some random person could turn up with some bizarrely specific ability that would completely screw me over out of nowhere.
Hell, how does one even measure durability in this place? Were Devils bullet proof as a matter of course? Were just the 'Rook' pieced devils, the tank spec ones, that tough? If I had to compare the average damage capability of a wizard, would a beam of magic compare well against a gun?
I could pretend I understood this fucking place based on a passive understanding of shounen rules and tropes all I wanted, but my actual, practical, on the ground, knowledge was extremely limited - and that made me very, very, anxious.
Aktio opened his mouth to respond, his smug leer not changing in the slightest, but paused with interest as I closed my eyes and waited out the momentary disorientation of my power dumping an absurd amount of highly detailed information about riding a creature into battle into my head.
I have to stress, this was not something so mundane and simple as 'here are some horseback riding lessons'. This was all encompassing. This was a riding
system that was as close to perfect as you could get. It was like a long, complicated, algebra problem, with variables for things like the size and strength of what I was riding, it's particular abilities, if it could fly, what the terrain was like, what was going on around me, was I under attack or just trying to travel somewhere quickly.
When I reopened my eyes, I was already looking back at my amateurish attempts to sit on Reaper as he flew around, and cringing at how… pathetic, they were.
"Always interesting to watch," Akito spoke finally, once he was sure I was done letting my power fry my brain.
"Yeah, yeah, go back to the other thing," I waved him off, not particularly interested in his opinion of what I looked like when my higher brain functions were disabled.
He shrugged, then gestured for me to follow him, which I did. I idly noted at the same time that Gasp was gone, and that my Sabyr was once more available for use. Usually, I would just make a note to resummon the Djinn later, but I'd been waiting for this so that I could synchronize my summoning of Gasp and Cannon, so I took the opportunity on the spot to conjure both teacup sized spirits in the palms of my two open hands, making sure to apply Magic Boost to Cannon.
Once both creatures had darted into my body, I refocused my attention on Akito, who was shooting me a pensive look.
"Go on," I prompted him before he could sidetrack himself again by making more idle commentary about my new additions.
I think it was obvious at this point that I wasn't going to stop getting them, so if every conversation I had was going to be dominated by explanations I'd very quickly probably find myself bogged down and doing nothing
but explaining things to people.
Thus, I silently swore to myself that I'd explain what I felt like, when I felt like it, and nothing more.
"You're significantly stronger now," He pointed out instead of answering my original question, so I dragged him back to the point with a rebuttal of my own.
"Stronger or weaker than that guy from last night?" I asked pointedly. He offered me an exasperated look.
"That's hardly a fair question," He finally said as we approached the front of the ORC building.
"So you don't know?" I said, because honestly, that was my main takeaway from his response.
He pursed his lips in thought at that, before shaking his head.
"…no, I can make a guess. I can at least sense how much magical power he was emanating — he was somewhere in the middle class, as far as Devils go — but that doesn't mean much for a Magician. Raw power isn't the concern with them," He admitted.
"Because? Also, I don't know what 'middle class' means in terms of biggatons," I asked as we finally made our way into the building and headed towards the same sitting room we'd been in before.
That was true, actually. I had a passing familiarity with this setting, but it was just that. Passing. I remembered a couple of big story beats and the main premise, along with a few of the most memorable characters, and that was about it. I had the vague knowledge that High Class and Ultimate Class devils were a thing, the so called 'peak' of power for Devil kind, and the power levels that most antagonists were measured against, but simultaneously, it was a Shounen anime.
And that meant basically everyone was in the same nebulous 'high' class in general, which completely negated the classifications use as any kind of distinctive identifier for me.
When everyone is super, and all that.
"There are four classes, or tiers of strength in Devil society," Akito said in a lecturing tone as we entered the room nodding to Sirzechs, Ko, and Kiba as we entered. The trio greeted him in return, and Sirzechs and Kiba waved at me as I took a seat, but otherwise remained quiet for Akito to continue explaining things to me.
"Low, Middle, High, and
Ultimate class. Most Devils fall into the first two — a low class devil is only more powerful than a normal human because of the innate advantages our species has over yours, and nothing more. A middle class devil would be the equivalent of a trained, competent, but not altogether impressive fighter for a human," He said, taking a seat next to Sirzechs and leaning over the table to tent his fingers like an evil mastermind.
I noticed Kiba, who was standing dutifully behind Sirzechs like she was some kind of maid or something, spend a couple of moments examining me, before abruptly turning and walking away. I was confused, but didn't comment on it the behaviour.
"Imagine a Middle class as being like Krollin!" Sirzechs chimed in helpfully, though his gaze was mostly focused on Princess, who was twisting around to look at the contents of the room with clear interest from atop my head.
I was surprised no one had commented on her yet, but I suppose that being the tons of bugs guy was already my thing, and, being Devils, they'd probably seen weirder.
"…who the fuck is Krollin?" I asked when Sirzechs didn't follow up, instead opting to try and snatch a biscuit off a plate infront of himself and leaning over the table to try to feed it to princess, who just kind of hissed at him.
He sat back down with a dejected look on his face, before turning his attention back to me.
"The… Drag So Ball character? Come on, everyones watched Drag So Ball!" He insisted childishly when I continued to stare blankly at him.
What the fuck was this twink saying right now? Did he mean
Dragonball? Krillin from
Dragonball? Wasn't he like, literally the strongest mundane human being on the planet? What the fuck?
"…so a middle class devil is a city buster?" I asked incredulously.
"Nothing quite so grandiose," Akito interjected, making a so-so gesture in the air with one hand. "In terms of raw power held, you would class, as you are now, as a low class, but just based on last night you're probably closer to a middle class in terms of danger. It can vary from person to person exactly
why they count as being in a particular class of power, which is what makes Magicians so troublesome. But I'll explain that afterward," He continued.
I cut him off.
"No, wait, unless you're all high or ultimate class, or I'm liable to encounter one of those in the near future, I don't care. Explain the magician thing," I pressed.
Like I said before, nothing in the high class mattered to me because basically everything in the damn setting fell into that class past a certain point. It was a completely useless way to measure things beyond 'these things are dangerous'.
If the necromancer was middle class, and I was middle class, then what I needed to know was the nuance within
that class — and nothing else, for the moment.
Akito squinted at me with visible irritation but huffed and changed topics like I'd asked.
Finally.
"Magicians can often be capable of a very wide variety of tricks. The older one is, the more likely they are to have access to dozens, if not hundreds of individual spells. Often, what makes a spellcaster dangerous isn't their direct damage dealing capability, but their raw adaptability. If someone had a spell that forced you to fight them one on one somehow, would you consider that 'powerful' or 'dangerous'?" He explained pointedly.
I winced, because that was exactly the kind of spell that would fuck me over. Not as badly as it would have a couple of days ago, but still — I understood his point.
"So, rpg logic I guess? Healers, Casters, everyone else, in that order?" I asked for confirmation.
"In a group setting, that would probably be a correct
general assumption," Akito allowed.
Kiba chose that moment to walk back into the room, daintily depositing a cup of steaming hot coffee in front of me that nearly brought tears to my eyes.
I hadn't had a cup of coffee since waking up a teenager, but as an adult, this shit was my lifeblood. You could say I had an addiction, but the reality was that it was more of a dependency.
And yes, I understand that that's worse. Sue me.
"You're a saint," I said jokingly, swiftly snatching the coffee up and carefully taking a sip to gauge the temperature.
It was scalding, which sucked, but I put up with it to take a few more careful sips, then put my mug down, turning to nod appreciatively at the blond who was still hovering behind me like a ghost. She smiled at me politely, then walked back around the table to stand behind Sirzechs who barely even acknowledged her presence besides a mild nod in her direction as she took her position.
"Alright, well, that's at least a useful scale to work from. Do you guys have a plan for finding the guy?" I asked, turning to Sirzechs, whose bright, excited expression dimmed considerably at the question.
"Sora's peerage — that's, the student council president, if you haven't met him yet — will be searching the town for signs of magical energy for most of the night. We'll be on reserve, waiting to swoop in if they find him. Tomorrow, we'll switch. That way one group is always fresh if it comes to a fight," He explained with a strained smile on his face.
I grunted at that in response, lifting a hand to absentmindedly stroke the top of Princess head while I thought through things.
"Kiba told me she already informed you of the protections I set for your family..?" He asked when it became obvious I wasn't planning on offering him more than that.
"Yeah… thanks," I answered him. Most of my swarm wasn't going to be available until later tonight, which meant that, if I had to fight, I could — but it wouldn't be at peak efficiency or anything like that. I also had some ideas for battle strategies using some of my new abilities that I wanted to test out but probably wouldn't be able to given the use restrictions on most of my summoning. It just wasn't practically feasible to waste my more useful creatures on testing things before I'd get any use out of them.
So I probably
wasn't going to be able to peel straight out of here to try to find the guy immediately. I mean. I could, but it'd be stupid, and there was always the chance that someone else would find him first.
I guess—
"Cole-san," Sirzechs interrupted my train of thought before I could spiral into plotting out every possible hypothetical. I looked up, blinking owlishly at him.
"Why don't you head home and rest for today?" He offered carefully. I blinked at him again, leaning back to check Kiba and Akito's expressions.
The stepford smiler duo weren't exactly helpful in that regard, so I turned back to Sirzechs with my eyebrows furrowed together.
"I'm coming with you to fight him. No, actually,
you can come with
me to do that, if you want." I countered.
How had that one comedian put it? 'You get to decide if this is in the news tommorow or not, but one way or another, it's happening.'
Yeah, that about summed up my feelings on this topic.
My power chose that moment to almost lazily yoink a thing called a
Firebeetle out of the primordial soup, depositing it in one of my cages, and I couldn't help but snort.
Sure, why not, a dungbeetle with a lava rock that made you weak to fire damage. It would pair well with Swarm, Explosive Finish, and Cannon.
…actually, damn, that combination would be pretty powerful, now that I thought about it.
"Cole-san… as much as I appreciate your desire to help, you aren't responsible for this. You could get hurt," Sirzechs said carefully.
I chose, in that moment, to take his statement at face value, assuming he actually held some degree of genuine care for my well being — instead of politely telling me to mind my own business.
It's so easy to think the worst of everyone, when it feels like you can't understand anyone around you. It makes life easier too, because you never have to trust anyone in the first place.
But by the time I was an adult I'd already long since figured out how stupid and isolating that behaviour was, even if it was also comforting to engage in, so I deliberately chose to act counter to how I was feeling at that moment.
…Which isn't to say I agreed with the guy, just, I didn't get
mad at him either.
"That dude saw my face and probably halfway attributes you rejecting him to me anyway. I'd bet money that if we don't find him fast enough he'll come after me directly just to prove a point, so saying I should stay out of things because it's dangerous is pointless. Besides, I think I have a way to find him," I said with a thin smile, earning suspicious looks from Akito and Sirzechs but the same, blank, beatific smile from Kiba as always.
"And how is that, Cole-san?" She asked me when Sirzechs and Akito turned to stare at eachother, clearly silently communicating in that particular way people who've known eachother for their entire lives tend to be able to.
They both snapped back towards me when Kiba spoke though.
So I grinned, and I told them.
-( )-
::Sirzechs Gremory::
Sirzechs pursed his lips in thought as he flew alongside Cole and the creature he affectionately referred to as 'Reaper'.
The plan, as he understood it, was simple enough. Cole could apparently set arbitrary conditions on the summoning of his creatures, and intended to use them to triangulate the invading spellcaster by, one at a time, setting three of them to summon themselves when he came within a mile of the man.
Theoretically, with three separate data points, they could find the point that was exactly one mile away from all three points on a map, and that would be where they needed to go.
There were a couple of problems with this, ofcourse.
The first and most obvious one, was that it relied on their target not to be moving. He wasn't too worried about that, if only because Magicians as a rule were much better able to defend themselves from the safety of a heavily fortified, magically reinforced and booby-trapped location than they were in the middle of an active battlefield. That wasn't
always the case, but, there was a reason that even common human parlance like to describe them as 'squishy wizards'.
If a Magician could, they often
would end any fight they were in as fast as possible, using either the most direct way to end a threat or the most efficient way if brute force failed to be a viable solution.
The second problem, was that it relied on what Sirzechs had to figure was a loophole in the mechanics of Cole's ability to be completely accurate one hundred percent of the time.
Sirzechs had heard of Sacred Gears and even spells that could divine information like this, but they were neither common, easy to use, or cheap to power. He strongly suspected there had to be
some limits on the effects use for information gathering, because it made little to no sense that in the entire history of the planet, nobody before Cole had ever thought to use it that way, and even less likely that such a powerful Sacred Gear simply hadn't existed until recently.
Time wasn't always the greatest factor in determining how powerful something or someone was, but it was usually a strong correlating factor for anything but the most absurd of outliers.
"Alright! We got the first point!" The dusky skinned boy called, drawing Sirzechs to a halt as his mount abruptly halted in mid-air, giant insectoid wings buzzing so loudly they kind of gave the Gremory heir a headache.
"Excellent," He said with a smile on his face that he positively did not feel in his heart.
He hated to admit it, but, it hurt his pride somewhat to receive any kind of assistance right now. He could tolerate it, marginally, from Cole, because he was planning on recruiting him later - at which point all services rendered would retroactively simply be the actions of his peerage in the first place. Still, it wasn't ideal, and it was obvious that Cole need to involve himself at all came from a patent distrust in his ability to handle the issue in the first place.
On some level, he understood
why the human teen was so keen on this. He'd made it abundantly clear, across several death threats and tantrums, that the one thing he absolutely would not tolerate is even the slightest whiff of a threat to his family. Even the faintest hint of such a threat was more than enough to prod the otherwise overly friendly, irreverent, boy into a homicidal rage.
In truth, Sirzechs would almost compare how fast his emotions could fluctuate on the topic a form of insanity, and it
did worry him, especially since the first time it had happened he'd threatened to 'kill and eat' someone, but, as always, he felt strongly that he could fix him.
It wasn't like he'd have any reason to engage in such behaviour when his family was safely protected under the aegis of the Gremory family anyway.
"Yeah, just jump us to wherever Akito is…and…" He paused, and Sirzechs got to watch the other boy's mind being blown for a moment before he shook himself like a dog and continued as though it hadn't happened. "...do the next one. Hey, do devils have like, cold resistance or is it just some magical bullshit that's letting you ignore windchill like that?"
The freeze-ups were a serious safety problem, but it wasn't something Sirzechs was going to be able to do much about for the moment. Maybe he'd ask his sister about it, next time she came to check on him.
"Are you okay? We can stop if-" He started worriedly, eyes flickering over the other boys form looking for signs of illness before he consciously forced himself to stop. Humans were frail, and he could still remember finding Kiba, sick and cold, dying on the ground from poison.
Cole didn't seem to appreciate being treated like he was made out of glass, which was ironic, because he might as well be, relative to the rest of them.
Sirzechs would feel a lot less concerned once he'd pieced him.
"I'm fine, Christ," Cole cut him off, invoking the saviours name and jamming an iron spike of pain into the middle of Sirzechs forehead at the same time.
"Shit, sorry! I just meant- I was just bitching because bitching about shit makes me feel better about the shit I'm bitching about," The other boy explained quickly, his mount darting forward so that
he could look at
Sirzechs the exact same way
Sirzechs had been looking at
him a second ago.
The hypocrite.
Sirzechs was just glad he'd so easily agreed to taking a nap before they set out for the night. He'd almost hoped Cole would just continue to sleep, his sunken eyes and physical tiredness were more than obvious enough for it, but the other boy had apparently had the wherewithal to not only set an alarm, but to task one of his pets with forcibly awakening him when it went off.
"I'm fine, it passes quickly. Shall we?" Sirzechs waved him off, affecting what he hoped was an impish smile to assuage Cole-san's concerns.
"Yeah," the other boy replied after a second of staring at him like he was trying to read his mind.
Cole did that alot. He had the air of a confused dog about him alot of the time, taking multiple pauses to blink rapidly at something like an old computer taking a minute to boot up. He didn't seem to think it was strange, or even really notice how obvious it was that he was doing it, but it was much more noticeable when he was speaking his native English than when he was trying to use Japanese.
His Japanese was, by necessity, quite slow and ponderous, largely because he obviously had to think of every word he was using before saying it. But his English, his English always came at a slightly rapid fire pace, like he was rushing to get the words out. It made every pause he took to think very obviously a pause to
think and not one taken to consider his words.
Sirzechs had to snort at that,actually, because if there was one trait Cole had that was going to make everyone in his family lose their minds it was the fact that he almost
never seemed to consider his words. What entered his head often exited his mouth, garnished liberally with curses like fine seasoning. It would be appalling if Sirzechs wasn't so interested in seeing his peers respond to the blithely insulting way it sounded.
"Oi, focus," That very boy called to him, drawing Sirzechs out of his ruminations with several rapid snaps of his fingers, like he was calling a dog.
"Rude," He grumbled, conjuring a magic circle and drifting forward to grab Cole by the arm before teleporting both he, and his pet, to Akito, who was several miles away in a different direction.
When they reappeared, Cole promptly twisted to one side and vomited, causing Sirzechs to jerk away and Akito to smirk nastily at him.
"First time? Was it good for you?" The abnormally tall boy teased, flitting forward with his hands clasped behind his back to mess with Cole, who, still facing away from them to wretch into the open air, none the less lifted a hand with a middle finger raised towards the both of them instead of directly answering the question.
"First off, fuck you, second off, fuck teleporting, third off, don't do that, if that fucking pervert starts shipping us I'll fucking kill myself," He growled with what Sirzechs was coming to learn was his 'joke angry' tone of voice.
Sirzechs had
heard his 'actually angry' tone last night, and this was not that. This felt almost like he was exaggerating how angry he was purely to amuse Akito, almost like he was playing along with the Queen.
"'That pervert'?" Akito asked sagely, lifting an eyebrow in question.
"Right, I forgot to tell anybody. These three girls were spying on the boy's changing room during gym class. Dunno their names off the top of my head," He said with an absent minded shrug, clearly more focused on setting the conditions of his next summon, and gently stroking the head of the diseased looking seagull he'd summoned at the last location.
Akito turned to exchange a questioning glance with Sirzechs but he just shrugged, not really sure what to do with that information.
He was borderline a nudist in the first place, so he certainly didn't care. He'd been controlling the tendency until Cole was more… acclimated, to being around them, but that didn't change the fact that it existed.
They waited a moment for the human boy, who, without warning, nodded, and then jetted off across the city, forcing them to rush to catch up with him.
"Warn us next time, dimwit!" Akito scowled at him, and Sirzechs would have normally interjected to stop them from arguing - which they seemed to do alot of - but he could see the anticipatory twinge of a smile at the edge of his Queen's mouth, and the unbothered middle finger Cole shot back at him, and wisely chose not to comment.
He'd let Cole figure out what kind of fire he was playing with… later.
Recruiting him was going to be hard enough as is.
Eventually, they stopped in the air when a massive, flying, gorilla appeared out of nowhere, and started circling Cole making a number of grunting noises that he seemed to vaguely understand, because he nodded along to them for a second before responding to the animal.
"Yeah, sorry, stick around, we're going to be killing that asshole wizard tonight probably," He explained, which seemed to calm the great ape down because it's speed drastically lowered, and it moved to lazily hover next to it's master, eyeing Sirzechs and Akito consideringly before huffing and looking away from them.
It was always just a bit unnerving seeing how willing most of Cole's monsters were to try to kill him. Sirzechs didn't think he'd have much of a problem fighting them off if it came to it, though he dread the possibility, but there
was something to be said for the primal fear of a large animal bearing down on you.
Not, again, that Cole even seemed to notice. He seemed categorically incapable of perceiving his own minions fearfully.
They plotted the data point, then, both Sirzechs and Akito worked together to teleport both Cole and his Ape to where Ko was waiting for them, and repeated the process for a third time with relatively little conversation.
They could all feel the tension going up as the plan appeared to be working. They all knew they'd be going into a fight shortly.
At length, they landed on top of a highrise, and, while the ape and something Cole called a Sea Vampire loomed behind them, worked out the most likely middle point of the three places they'd gotten a 'ping' from Cole's power.
"Did this motherfucker seriously just go to the edge of the fucking city like the most cliche climactic showdown location ever?" Cole asked no one in particular, his voice turning briefly manic in that way it did that… worried… Sirzechs, just a bit.
But it was fine. He could fix him.
As far as he was aware, pretty much
all of the most powerful people were just a little bit insane.
Why would the owner of Annihilation Maker be any
less crazy than that?
Not that Sirzechs was
positive that's what he was looking at, given that most old records said that Annihilation Maker crafted monsters from its owners shadow - but Sacred Gear had mutated before, and some of the things Cole's Sacred Gear could do very clearly went beyond the scope of a more 'mundane' Sacred Gear, for all one could ever describe the tools as such.
Annihilation Maker was described as a 'Bug' in the system. A Sacred Gear that seemed primarily purposed towards bringing ruin to everything around it, easily capable of destroying a nation with casual misuse.
Sirzechs was starting to wonder if the 'bug' part of that description might have been a bit more literal than he'd taken it for given the overwhelming tendency for Cole's monsters to be insects of some kind. He also
kept getting more of them with no visible sign of stopping.
If 'infinite monsters' wasn't the work of the world's premier monster generating Longinus, he was genuinely terrified to know what was.
"That looks like the factory district," Akito commented, peering over Cole's shoulder at his cellphone where he was trying to manipulate the map with little success.
For a teenager he was surprisingly terrible at using a cellphone.
Speaking of which. He quickly texted Kiba their location so that she could meet up with them before the assault, then turned his attention back to the conversation at hand.
"Ofcourse it's a fucking factory district. Hey, while we're at it, who wants money it's the exact same factory I first saw when sneaking out into the woods? I'm two for two on narrative bullshit today," Cole growled irately like the mere existence of coincidence bothered him.
"It's a good thing. We can push him out of the city if things go poorly, and there's even lots of room for your monsters to run around!" Sirzechs cheered with a smile, walking up to enter the huddle with the other two boys. Surreptitiously, he glanced at Ko, who was paying attention because he was dutiful when he had to be, but also, not really engaging with Cole as much as he'd like, and cheekily waved him over to join them.
The petite white haired boy shot him a nonplussed look, but took a few steps closer to them regardless.
"I fucking guess. Are we going to call your other friends?" Cole asked, rolling his shoulders in a way that was clearly intended to push them away from him, but, because he was the weakest person present, mostly just resulted in him kind of rubbing his shoulders against all of them and then grunting in irritation.
Skinship was totally a good way to make people like you! He read that in a book!
"We probably should. Sora was not pleased to hear about the problem, and we don't know what he could have prepared during the day while waiting for us. He has to know we're coming, if not now then sooner rather than later," Akito noted clinically.
Sirzechs pursed his lips, and tried to be logical instead of allowing his long time rivalry with his old friend to cloud his judgement.
Ko, clearly seeing the expression on his face, hauled back and jabbed him in the kidney, hard.
"Ah! Ko-san! Why!?" He shrieked, hopping back and away from the cat boy to hold his probably already bruising side.
"You were being dumb," The white haired boy said calmly, like he
hadn't just sucker punched his King.
"Hah! Alright, you're okay midget-" Cole started to joke, but Ko turned sharply towards him an wrinkled his nose in distaste.
"Smelly," He intoned like he was pronouncing a sentence, taking a step away from the foreigner.
"Aight, fuck you too," Cole, grumbled, looking like he was going to comment further but instead, slumping slightly over for a moment and then lurching back into motion a second later - like someone had slapped the pause button on him for just a single second.
Before anyone could say anything about it, there was a burst of red light, and Kiba emerged onto the roof with them, a sword already sheathed at her waist. Cole blinked, eyeing her with squinting eyes, before lifting a finger to point directly at her.
"...so it's been bothering me for a while now, but don't you do, like, way too much running and jumping around to wear a skirt into combat?" He asked, drawing attention to the fact that, for all intents and purposes, the 'uniform' for the Gremory group as Sirzechs saw it, was the school uniform of the school they all went too.
Kiba, who Sirzechs had always considered the best at 'fitting in' of all of them, the most attuned to the logic and ways of thinking of normal people, and the most cool under fire, opened her mouth to respond to the question, then looked down at the pleated skirt of her uniform which fell to just above her knees, and then looked back up at Cole with a conflicted expression on her face.
"...is it that strange?" She asked with some mild embarrassment. It wasn't much, but it nearly made Sirzechs jaw drop that she cared at all.
Kiba Yuuto was a very friendly girl, who did her best to be kind to the people around her, but if pressed to answer the question of if he thought she actually
cared about anyone outside of their peerage, she would have to say 'no'. She cared in the sense that she was a good person, but the actual opinions and desires of those people were as far as possible from Kiba's interest.
Of course, she could just have read the writing on the wall and know Sirzechs planned on recruiting Cole eventually, but even still…
"Eh. I promise not to look at your underwear or whatever if you promise not to act like an anime character and slap me when it's not my fault you're doing backflips in a skirt," Cole replied dismissively, immediately pushing himself to his feet and taking a lazy step away from all of them.
He shared another look with Akito, who, if anything, seemed doubly amused by this turn of events, and then turned to Kiba, who remained standing a distance away with the blank smile on her face she used when trying to hide her inner thoughts.
"I'll be right back," She said suddenly, vanishing amidst the glow of another teleportation and leaving Sirzechs
even more flabbergasted by the behaviour before he heard a snort of laughter and turned back to Cole, who was snickering at the girls expense.
"I'm honestly surprised none of you people wear armor or anything. There
has to be some magical bullshit or other that would be useful to you for that," He pointed out, stretching his arms and legs like he was getting ready for gym class.
"I'll… take it under consideration," Sirzechs offered diplomatically, not really sure how to tell him that needing to wear a ton of magical equipment was a sign of weakness and desperation to the upper classes of Hell.
He could still recall his words from the night before.
'What the fuck do you lose if this stupid fucking place burns down!? Nothing. Pride.'
Somehow, he didn't think the actual reason none of them wore any armor would please the foreign boy to hear at this exact moment.
"Whatever you say, I guess. Gimme a minute here, I've never done this before. If I scream? Just ignore it. I'm probably not dying. Probably. Maybe." He joked, when he was done stretching.
Kiba chose that moment to return, still wearing a skirt, but now clad in thick black tights that made the piece of clothing more of a decoration than a necessary defender of her modesty.
"Is this-" She started to say at the same moment that an enormous, white and purple
monstrosity tore itself free from Cole-san's body, leaving his shredded skin and clothing on the ground like a shed skin. Just as quickly, a black and red carapace snapped into place overtop of the bizarre semi exposed musculature of the creature, covering it from head to toe and leaving it looking like a massively overmuscled masked rider. Two scorpion like tails emerged from it's back, and the carapace by it's shoulder blades stretched into two nozzle like apertures sticking out of it at an odd angle.
"Way better," The enormous tank like creature that Cole had become boomed in a deep, disturbing voice - like the creature
could talk but was never
meant to.
"I'm… glad…" Kiba trailed off but Cole wasn't done.
"Sorry, I said that on reflex, this thing doesn't actually have fucking eyes, give me a second," He boomed again, and a swarm of smaller creatures with a similar aesthetic to the gorilloid insect creature burst into being, all buzzing wings and scything claws, as they swarmed around the rooftop like an entomophobic hurricane.
"Aight, yeah, that's less ridiculous looking. Promise not to stare if you rip 'em," He grunted, either complimenting or dismissing his Knight, Sirzechs really wasn't sure.
He
was sure that he could see Kiba growing visibly annoyed by the dismissal though, so he chose to step in before the usually calm girl could make her displeasure known.
"
I'lllll call Sora, give him the location, and then we can hit the place," He rushed out, earning nods of approval from all present.
Sirzechs took one last look at the hulking nightmare Cole had become, and the swarm of horrible insects surrounding him, and shivered.
He could just imagine watching Riza getting
buried under all of that, eaten alive until she gave up out of sheer terror that her immortality would do nothing but prolong her own suffering.
Maybe
then she'd get the point.
He could fix him. He was perfect.
---
Things rolled from Sirzechs POV: Blast Ended Skrewt
