DxD: Fuis Ton Destin (DxD Fate SI)

[Xanothos]

DxD: Fuis Ton Destin
What is Fate? Is it some inevitable burden, set in stone by the Gods? Is it a task you set yourself? Is it the shackles society forges for you? Johan Lewis will have to discover this for himself. -A rewrite of/successor to NPWAFD.-

Prologue 1: Outward View​

In a quiet room hidden from space and forgotten by time, there sat the shape of a man.

It had a weathered face with aristocratic features and steel-grey hair, hands that bore the small scars of ages, and a solid figure hidden beneath dark clothing that wouldn't have been out of place in any noble's court. It would have been an easy mistake to think the figure nothing more than a venerable old man.

Unless the eyes, the exact red of flowing blood, were trained on you as they were at this moment trained on a fluttering storm of pages that hovered before him under their own power. Nothing that had ever been pinned thus by that gaze could ever mistake Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg for a mere man.

Still, no matter what he had become, his mannerisms were still those of a human as page after page vanished from his inhuman perusal until only three were left. He sighed, leaning forward a touch on the cane beneath his folded hands, and closed his eyes a moment. Still, it was only for a moment.

When he looked up once more, the master of the Second True Magic devoted his full attention to the three profiles that still remained. With a wave of his hand, one was immediately discarded - that one was busy preventing the Incineration of the Human Order. Best not to disturb them.

Two choices remained, and the Kaleidoscope drew the papers to his hands as if closing the distance would serve to provide some heretofore unknown enlightenment.

"I know you can see me." He said aloud, as he stared at the images atop the two pages.

His chair turned, despite not being in any way designed to swivel, placing within Zelretch's field of view a small creature that regarded him evenly from its perch. Few creatures could exist in Zelretch's private chambers, let alone find their way in - the list of people that could have managed both without drawing his attention was vanishingly small indeed.

The Old Man of the Jewels and the dormant form of Beast IV locked eyes for a long moment, the more human-looking of the two waving one hand idly. "Primate Murder, dormant or not, would have neither the desire nor the means to enter my sanctum."

"I suppose it was too much to hope that I might be the first to surprise you in so many years." The beast commented, its voice sounding vaguely whiny.

"Indeed." Zelretch agreed. "Still, since you are here - in spirit, if not in body - what do you think of these candidates, Ambrosius?"

The voice of Merlin chuckled airily, the sound at a complete disconnect with the form that spawned it. "I'd choose the boy." He decided. "While her eyes might well be of use in that world, her mindset is all wrong. The boy, on the other hand…" The beast's eyes glinted. "Well. With the right training, I think he'd serve."

Zelretch nodded, considering. "Perhaps. And what guarantee have we that he'd not die as soon as he arrived?"

Merlin was silent for a long moment, the claws of his borrowed form drumming on the floor in thought. Then, he perked up. "Make him a Demi-Servant!" He declared. "I can provide a backup Mana source in the form of the Gardens, since you don't have access to Chaldea's FATE system."

The Wizard Marshal leaned back in his chair. "The idea has merit." He reached up and started stroking his chin. "A few modifications to the Class Card, and with a strong enough power source…"

Seeing that the immortal Magician had drifted off in thought, Merlin had Cath Palug exit the isolated space and left Zelretch to his careful considerations. Flippant he may be, but Zelretch's work was worth his respect.

A few subjective hours after Merlin's exit, the Second Magician concluded his modifications to the Class Card he'd picked out of his deck. Hopefully, with such a tool at his disposal, the boy would be able to buy himself enough time to adapt to his new world. Then, after that…

Well. Averting the Consumption of the Root was always going to be a long-term goal.

As he turned away from his workstation to begin the process, the only sign of how Zelretch felt about his course of action was the slight, satisfied upward curve to his lips.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A long dreary day was dying. As the sun fell lower the clouds followed suit, a weight beyond the physical that pressed on the backs of all the men and women who toiled beneath the darkening sky. By the smell on the wind and the chill of the wind, the threat of rain grew ever more real as people scurried for home.

A young man tugged his hood down as he slumped against the wind, slouching his way home with all the long day dragging at his feet. There had been nothing new in the library, as he'd expected, leaving him resigned to yet another evening of boredom. None of his friends were online, he'd read everything he had on hand until the text faded from his gaze and he didn't want to pick up Dark Souls again until he was sure he wouldn't take out his frustrations on his poor television via ballistic controller.

He was just turning around the last corner before his house when the dam broke and the rain began to pour down, a deluge that roared and clung like a living thing rather than any cleansing force of nature. It forced his head down further and shunted parts of his mind away, the man focussing on nothing but getting home and out of the rain.

That was probably why he didn't notice the coruscating, multicoloured rip in the fabric of reality until he barreled straight through it.

The rain continued to beat against the earth, unaffected by the young man's disappearance. The rest of the world kept turning with just as much care for his vanishing, until the word finally made its way across the ocean to his family from where he'd been working as an English Teaching Assistant for a Foreign Language class.

His mother and sister, alongside a trio of friends made over the internet, started a Kickstarter to fund a search for him. It earned a decent amount of money - all for naught, however. No evidence was ever found of where he'd disappeared to.

After a few months of searching, it was finally accepted that Johan Lewis was gone from the lives of those who'd known him; an empty casket was buried and a small gravestone was planted in an equally small service...

While a world away, a young man stumbled badly as the world around him abruptly shifted. Gone was the rain-assailed street; instead, he stood soaking wet in the middle of a good-sized park. Some bushes and trees, a couple of benches, a fountain - and over his head was a cloudless sky where the sun was dipping down towards the horizon.

He saw it all in the brief moment he was vertical. Then his knee crashed into a bench he'd appeared in front of and he toppled over with a vehement curse. Looking around himself as he cradled his knee, his jaw hanging loose, he had the odd feeling that he'd seen the park before…

Then someone drove a railroad spike into his skull, the blow to his knee suddenly seeming as consequential as being slapped with a tissue. As the pain pressed in, his consciousness was pressed out, grey devouring his vision and fading into black.

His last thought was a fervent, heartfelt plea. 'Why me?'

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As I regained consciousness, putting my scattered thoughts back together, I could feel something had changed. There was...a weight to an air, an ominous feeling that made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I struggled to my feet even as I started getting twitchy, brushing the grasp of the bush I'd landed in away from my clothing. With each leaf I dislodged the feeling of dread only grew, and when I gathered enough of my courage to look up, I saw-

A flash of reddish light.

Searing agony, branching from my chest to my skull and buring my mind to ash.

It hurts. It hurts! It Hurts IT HURTS iT hUrTs It HuRtS!​

As the jagged, spear-like weapon of reddish light in my gut faded from existence, I fell to my knees with a thud. Everything below my waist had gone numb, and my hands were full trying to keep everything that should be inside me actually inside me, rather than letting it fall through the hole in my stomach. Still, I made the effort to look up once more, even as blood pumped through my fingers as my heart's own strength betrayed it.

Hair like spilled ink, rippling as it devoured the light. A body with curves in so many right places that the lack of imperfections was jarring. But what really drew my eyes was the smile. The look of sadistic glee that was writ so wide on her face it eclipsed everything else about her in its shadow - just as the massive, feathered black wings that sprouted from her back eclipsed what I'd been able to see of the sun.

Cowering behind her, just visible beneath the shadow of her wings, there was a boy with spiky brown hair and bright green eyes. It was then, looking at those two, that I realised why the park seemed so familiar.

'Of all the places to die...of all the people to kill me...I'm murdered by a minor antagonist in a battle harem anime?'

My dying mind had certainly chosen an odd thing to fixate on in its final moments, I couldn't help but feel.

As I watched, grey began to spread across my vision once more - but rather than the fog that had devoured my sight before, the grey now was a gradual fading of colour from all things. As colour faded so did motion, until the world stood, nigh-colourless and without even a falling leaf obeying gravity's call.

If not for the crippling, fatal agony of my gut wound, I might have been a JoJo reference.

Once again, the shadow of my vengeance has been called to a world cast in murderous red…​

…?

And yet, there is no great enemy? No terrible wrong? No monster forged from man's true heart?

No - vengeance is called for nothing more than a child.

...Very well, then. An Avenger's path is a winding one indeed, after all.

Tell me, boy - do you accept this as your death?​

"W-what?"

Do you accept that your fate is to die here, felled in a single blow by a being even normal men could slaughter like cattle? Nothing more than a pitiful child, leaving no mark on the world?​

My face began to heat, my teeth grinding together as I spat out a mouth full of crimson lifeblood. "The fuck I do! Of course I don't accept it, but in case you hadn't noticed, I'm fucking dying you asshat!"

Kuahahaha! That's better! Show me your defiance! Show me your rage! The time to Wait and Hope has passed!​

Now! Fuis Ton Destin!​

The voice had grown, louder and louder as it began to shake the still and silent world around me. As it peaked, I felt myself shaking too - coming loose from the sound and the agony. My mind stretched, strained and then - finally - snapped, pulling back from my body and depositing me in the position of a spectator.

And with the driving seat empty...something else took the wheel.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Raynare reared her arm back, a new Light Spear appearing in her hand. She'd been surprised when a random human rose from the bushes inside her barrier and had reacted on instinct, but she wasn't terribly concerned. Humans were, at best, either disposable tools or a source of slight entertainment. She might as well have swatted a fly.

The perverted fool seemed to finally realize the position he was in, she noted. 'I suppose killing somebody in front of him would break through even the thickest of skulls.'" Now, as I was saying, I want you to die for me. This is honestly a waste of my time, but you can blame God for giving you that Sacred Gear."

She was halfway through throwing her spear when she finished speaking. She didn't get any further.

Her arm froze, locking in place just as the rest of her body did likewise in the face of the suffocating malice that flooded the clearing with all the force of a tsunami. When she yanked herself around in a turn that lacked all of her supernatural grace, her lavender eyes sought the human she'd thought slain a moment before.

Instead, she saw the flames.

They were black. More than her hair, more than her wings, more than anything she had laid eyes on in all the many years she'd lived they were black. They burned as if on the light itself, gorging on all brightness and leaving gaping wounds in the air behind them. Nothing, she thought, could possibly survive beneath that.

Then the flames began to rise.

The rather heavy young man she'd impaled was gone, by the time the figure reached its full height. As if the man were burned away by the flames and left only the core in its place, there instead stood a tall, thin man with skin as pale as the flames burning around them were dark. The clothing which adorned him was that of a Victorian gentleman, pressed pants and open jacket in black with a white shirt beneath the open jacket and a long tie of bloody red hung from the collar.

The flames licked the air around him, leaking from the suit's every hem and causing the tie to dance in a wind that was not there. His dirty silver hair writhed to and fro where it fell around his neck, and the glowing crimson eyes that opened in the pale, aristocratic face shone against the dark.

As those eyes fixed upon her, Raynare felt her resolve waver and break. She hadn't felt such fear or sensed such bloodlust since she had first met Lord Kokabiel, and she was as paralysed now as she was then.

"Wretch." The monster addressed her, very deliberately tugging at its cuffs. "You tried to kill my host."

A light like burnt gold sparked to life in the thing's eyes. As it raised its hands the flames roared higher and bent inwards, gathering in its palms in eager anticipation. Raynare screamed in something between terror and defiance, hurling her spear with all she had to try and fend it off-

Only to see the abomination's hand blur out of even her sight, backhanding her spear away without even a flicker in its eyes. The Light she had forged with the skill of centuries shattered like spun sugar, gone before it hit the ground - and then she had no time to think of it, because between one moment and the next the thing vanished from her sight and a burning grasp seared itself into the back of her neck.

She fell from where she had hovered feet above the ground, screaming her pain, as the horrid voice crackled in her ear. "For this transgression...you. Will. SUFFER."

Then her face was buried in grass and dirt, and everything became a confused mess of pain and yet more pain as she desperately tried to shield herself from the worst of the burning and the beating…

Until yelling, flashes of light in red, blue and yellow, and something grabbing her before the familiar rush of taking flight. She was held close to a warmth that didn't burn, that didn't hurt, and she clutched it as close as she could manage between the injuries and the sobbing.

She had thought the most painful thing she would ever experience was her Fall.

She had thought wrong.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Fallen Angels managed to get away with Raynare.

Although the being working through my body had stopped 'playing' and become serious when the other three came rocketing into the clearing, it had proven to be insufficient. Raynare was snatched from right beneath us, the teamwork of the two remaining Fallen wearing down my new alter-ego until they broke off to flee. Raging but not to the point of acting irrationally, my tenant let them go.

To think, I have been reduced to this. The jet black of my vengeance faded into gray...how humiliating.

I suppose it is to be expected when vengeance is rooted in such an imperfect host. The true essence of an Avenger would be too much for this shell, and I have no wish to cast us both into the great beyond before I have fulfilled my ambition.​

If I had been in control of my body, I'd probably have jumped in shock at hearing his voice once more. As it was, I just 'sputtered' as best an incorporeal personality could.

What danger there was has passed - call not for me until the impurity of your white heart has darkened, my host. Such ignimony as you have forced upon me is a shame I will not bear willingly.

Do try to survive once I relinquish control. For your heart to fail before it could truly begin to burn would be...unfortunate.​

"Wait!" I yelped. "Who are you? What are you? What the fuck is going on?!"

Your third question is as much mine as yours, for that knowledge is lost to me. The answer to your first question is as the answer to the second, however. What I am…

Listen! Hear me and engrave these words into your memory!

I am Vengeance, Incarnated upon this World!

I am the King of the Cavern, a darkness upon the shadows themselves!

I am AVENGER - and my flames shall burn away all in our path.​

That really wasn't much of an answer at all. But before I could say so, I felt the overwhelming presence drawing back from me, leaving me free to slide once more into control of my body. As I did so, I felt waves of exhaustion and the specific pains of overwork rolling over me, carrying with them gray that became black.

As I fell unconscious again, I didn't have time for anything heartfelt. Just resigned aggravation.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Issei Hyoudou was all but catatonic.

Part of him was still capable of forming coherent thoughts, but it was busy considering that he really should have expected something like this. After all, he - Issei Hyoudou of the Perverted Trio, the (self-proclaimed) future Harem King, someone who had been told repeatedly no woman would touch him with a Howitzer or a ten-foot pole - had been asked on a date.

By a girl.

A really hot girl, with really nice bre-

Oh, apparently the rest of his brain was working again. Nothing like the glory of oppai to get the old motor running right.

At least it hadn't been the apocalypse like he'd been half-expecting. In comparison, this really wasn't all that bad.

Issei's attention was properly re-focussed when the Chunnibyō magic ninja who had beaten the hell out of his girlfriend (who had turned into a mostly-naked older woman with wings and gone to impale him, which was honestly still kind of hot) transformed back into a noticeably different guy of a similar build and then collapsed. He quickly rushed over, panicking as he tried to recall what you were meant to do to check people were alright and then sighing in relief as he found the guy was breathing and still had a pulse.

And as he tried to figure out what in the actual fuck he was meant to do now, he remained ignorant of the bird with unnaturally sharp eyes that made one final pass over the park high above his head, then began the return flight to its master...

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
AN: Well, hopefully this will go over better than the original did. It took much longer than I'd thought to begin this rewrite, but hopefully it'll go well. I did my damnedest to properly characterize Zelretch by his canonical depiction, rather than making the mistake of even touching Trollretch.
As always, many thanks to Teninshigen for his help with this chapter. Tell me what you think.
Edit: Reworked the chapter in response to helpful feedback from TheOldman, with the assistance of the ever-wonderful Teninshigen.

 

[Xanothos]

Prologue 2: A Study in Mystery, Part 1​

In a particular city, on the grounds of a particular academy, in a particular old building, there existed a particular room. Ostensibly it provided a meeting place for Kuoh Academy's Occult Research Club, and by its decor alone that might well have been accepted as the truth. Its wood panelling and Victorian-era furniture could have been transplanted directly from the site of a nineteenth century seance, an image upheld by the large pentacle inscribed on the floor in a corner. Perusing the shelves that lined the walls would turn up old books, rare books, old rare books and more than a smattering of carefully-hidden vintage bondage erotica.

The use of one side of the room as a bath did kind of break the immersion, though.

Still, for all the support the room lent to the story of its use, the reality was a touch different. A group of Kuoh Academy students did meet there, and they were members of a group named the 'Occult Research Club'. Their mission, however, was not to prove the existence of the supernatural. After all, anyone who gained permission to set foot within its confines was already well aware of what lurked in the dark beyond mankind's candles.

Instead, this room served as a meeting place for an altogether more sinister-seeming convention. Namely, a household of Devils.

Behind the desk set near the room's back wall, centred so that it was the first sight upon opening the door, there sat a young woman with hair so red it would have made a fire hydrant feel inadequate by comparison. Though by her appearance alone she was in her teens, the figure she bore was more suited to a particularly gifted woman in the prime of her life. At the present moment, her turquoise eyes were closed as she considered the report she'd just been given.

In front of the desk, a princely blond stood to attention as he concluded his report. Beside the desk, another young woman with a figure every equal of the redhead's stood, her long black tresses pulled into a ponytail that almost brushed the floor. Where the blond was solemn, the brunette was instead wearing a rather blissful expression that seemed completely out of place and was all the more disturbing for it.

Tucked away in one of the room's corners, the last of the group - a diminutive girl with snowy white hair and amber eyes - was curled up in a chair with a completely blank expression, her hand the only part of her that moved while she lifted sweets from the bowl in front of her into her mouth with all the precision and inevitability of an assembly line.

Rias Gremory opened her eyes and sighed. Akeno wasn't going to be of any use to anyone for the moment, not with the way she was chuckling under her breath and blushing as her imagination ran rampant. Her Queen had obviously enjoyed Kiba's report on the savage beating that Kuoh's newest addition to the supernatural community had inflicted on the Fallen Angel.

Whether that addition could be called a man was, however, debatable. Rias shuddered; she had felt the aura of malice, the hatred, the bloodlust that presence had emitted, even from across the town and through the two barriers she was inside at the time. Whoever or whatever the presence inside that man had been, the only comparison she could find to what she had experienced was the tales her brother had occasionally told her of his confrontations with the Morning Star himself.

Needless to say, that didn't set her at ease even slightly.

Rias leaned back in her chair, popping the kinks from her back in a movement so naturally sensual that a fairly large portion of the school's population would probably have passed out from blood loss if they had seen it. Yuuto Kiba, as usual, never so much as flicked his eyes. He had known Rias for far too long to see just her appearance, after all. "Thank you, Kiba-kun."

One of the gifts of a Devil is a tongue that can form any language and an ear that can comprehend any language. As such, when Devils converse between themselves, they must pay attention to keep speaking in any one language. Otherwise, they tend to cycle through several tongues in even one sentence, creating sounds that are utter gibberish to anyone not a Devil or similarly gifted species. The members of the Occult Research Club tended to converse among themselves in English, since it was something most of their peers didn't have a firm grasp on but wasn't too outlandish for them to know well. Yet, despite that, Rias still used the Japanese honorifics.

The short explanation for that particular habit was that she was a weeaboo. The long explanation was that she was a deep-rooted, extremely passionate, dangerously fanatical weeaboo.

The blond Knight inclined his head in a silent acknowledgement, while Rias tapped her fingers on her desk. "I think a change of plans is in order. Akeno!"

Akeno, cheeks still pink and her odd "ufufufu" laugh still echoing in the background, blinked and turned to her King. "Ah, what did you want, Rias?"

The Gremory Heiress rose from her seat, making her way towards the pentacle in the corner while her long hair floated gently in her wake. "I think we should go and give dear Hyoudou-kun a visit. He's probably feeling quite overwhelmed right now, so go easy on the poor boy, would you?"

Akeno's eyes closed to slits, her usual smile spreading wider on her face. She let out her odd little chuckle once more, hiding her mouth behind a raised hand. "Well, since you asked so nicely..."

Rias held in a groan, while Kiba laughed a halting, nervous laugh, and over in the corner Koneko Toujou looked up from her sweets to glare at Akeno in a flawless deadpan. "Pervert."

Akeno's demure smile turned on the shorter girl. "Why, Koneko-chan, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

Koneko's expression didn't change by even a millimetre. Yet despite that, her opinion on Akeno's response was easy to read.

Rias hid a small smile, enjoying the back and forth between her friends. This was what was most important to her. Being here, with the sister, little brother and pseudo-daughter that she had chosen. Being free.

Unfortunately, as had become common these days, thoughts of what made her happy inevitably turned to the arrangement her family had made. The arrangement that threatened all she had, that would tear apart her freedom and the family she had gathered.

A sharp pain in her hand caught her attention, and Rias looked down to find her own fingernails digging deep into her palm. It didn't take more than a focussed thought to close the cuts, and as a flare of red light scoured away the blood Rias and Akeno, King and Queen, departed from the ORC room in the wake of a flashing crimson sigil.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In the park, Issei's day was getting more complicated. Again.

The sun was disappearing behind the trees, but even as its light faded a new luminescence began to appear. A symbol cast in burning red, it faded into view from the air before him where it began to hover, causing him to gulp loudly. 'Oh, come on! More weird shit?! Can't this bad dream be over already?!'

Unfortunately, that thought took up what little of Issei's brain hadn't frozen up like a deer staring at an oncoming train. Again.

As the panickedly paralyzed pervert peered on, the crimson sigil sank down towards the ground. Where it passed, it left in its wake two forms - forms that he recognised immediately, due to the many hours he had spent in...contemplation of each. Two of the most attractive girls from his school appeared from thin air in front of him, and the worst of his paralysis faded.

If anything more needed to be said about Issei Hyoudou, it could be said that it only took being faced with two sets of magnificent breasts to make him perfectly docile. Like a mouse happily stepping forward for the cheese on a mouse-trap.

"G-Gremory-senpai? Himejima-senpai?" Issei stuttered, gaping as the two 'Great Ladies' of Kuoh Academy walked across the grass towards where he knelt beside the man who had saved him. For once, it wasn't even staring at their curvaceous figures that had so distracted him.

…

Well, it wasn't solely because of how attractive they were, and for Issei that was really saying something.

"My, my! If it isn't Hyoudou-kun!" Himejima greeted him, eyes half-closed and expression set in a welcoming smile. Her tone was as lilting as always, as if she were singing her sentences along to a tune only she could hear. "I wonder what your friends would think of you hovering over an unconscious man like that..."

"Akeno, what did I say about teasing him?!" Gremory demanded, turning on her well-known best friend (and well-theorised very best friend) with her hands on her hips. "He's been through a trying ordeal today, there's no need to add to his issues."

The redhead's reprimand might have held more weight if she hadn't been obviously struggling to hold back a smile as she delivered it.

Issei hadn't really seen anything wrong with his position while he was trying to make sure his saviour was alright, but when Himejima put it that way he couldn't help but try and leap backwards. Unfortunately his knees weren't as keen as the rest of him, and he ended up toppling backwards on his rear and bashing his pelvis on the ground. Hissing, he felt his cheeks glowing as he turned red.

'Uuuugh! How am I supposed to get them in my harem when I keep making a fool of myself?!' He asked himself, internally bemoaning his bad luck. In doing so, however, he came to a realisation. He felt like a traitor just thinking it, but he knew it to be true for at least this moment:


There were more important things than building his harem. This man had saved his life; thoughts of building a harem could be saved for after he made sure he was okay.

Issei Hyoudou may have been a pervert, but never let it be said he didn't have a heart.

It was as Issei Hyoudou had just began to worry about the man that the very subject of those worries let out a low groan, prompting all three of the teenagers around him to crowd inward as his eyes flickered open. Those light-blue eyes swept across the faces above him, focussing momentarily on Issei's eyes, Rias' hair and Akeno's smile. Then, they shut again as the man groaned once more and said the first words Issei had heard from him in a voice as dead as the bush that had hosted the black flames. "Oh, fuck my life."

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As I drifted out of unconsciousness for the second time in as many hours, I was treated to the admittedly pleasant sight of two young women hovering over me with curious expressions, though one also seemed slightly worried. Unfortunately, it only took a few blinks to clear my gaze and a quick look around to realise that those two young women were Rias Gremory and Akeno Himejima. Which meant that my most recent memories were not some bizarre dream, and that I really was in Highschool DxD.

I astounded myself by constraining my instantaneous reaction to a single f-bomb, though the emotional and physical exhaustion of the day were helpful there, then started trying to sit up. A hand on my back helped me straighten, and a glance to my side showed that the hand in question was attached to Issei Hyoudou.

Doing my very level best not to think about just where that hand had been, I nodded my thanks before turning to the two Devils in front of me. "Who are you? The last thing I remember…" I clicked my teeth. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

My Japanese was flawed in several fundamental ways, but it seemed comprehensible enough for Issei as the boy babbled introductions.

Hoh? Perhaps you are more intelligent than I gave you credit for, boy.​

My entire body lifted a good six inches off the ground in my ensuing shock, almost knocking Issei over as he yelped and fell backwards while Rias and Akeno looked at me in alarm.

Indeed, you should keep this 'foreknowledge' of yours to yourself. Secrets only retain their power for as long as they are still secrets.

HOWEVER!

There is no doubt in my mind that they will have tasted my malice; I held back little enough in my punishment of the tainted angel, and what strength I have remaining I unleashed fully upon her comrades. Demons have a greater familiarity with the Flames of Grudge than those carrion birds.

They will not that believe you a normal human, not now. It is regrettable, but we may have to divulge our status as a Demi-Servant. These hellspawn are well within my ability to exterminate, but your control of your powers is laughable - let alone your grasp of mine. To destroy them, I would have to force a full transformation once again…

Killing you in the process.​

Avenger's final words to me were almost gentle. If anything, it made them all the more terrifying in their impact.

Realising that I had spent more than a minute unresponsively clutching the sides of my head, I snapped into sudden attentiveness as I started registering what was right before my eyes once more. Rias was giving me a knowing look. "That was the spirit that possessed you, wasn't it? You were communicating with them."

My brows shot up just as my stomach dropped. This girl - no, this young woman, was more observant than I'd given her credit for. "H-how did you know about that?!" I asked, not really having to fake the panic in my voice as I desperately hoped I wasn't about to suffer a horrifying demise in the form of A, a complete cessation of existence, or B, repeated thunderbolts.

Rias raised her hands, showing them to be empty - a universally peaceful sign...among humans. Honestly, if she was going to kill me that would just make it easier for her. Thankfully, the expression on her face didn't match that intent, and I didn't think she was the kind of person to look me reassuringly in the eyes before murdering me. "I promise, I will explain everything." She glanced sideways, to where Issei's eyes were darting around nervously. "To both of you."

She stood up properly, Issei and I both following suit with a certain measure of caution apiece. "All that I ask for is that you remain patient for a few moments more. If you'll follow me, there's a safe place where we can talk."

I considered her for a long moment, trying to give off the impression that I wasn't quite sure if I trusted her. Certainly, my own uncertainty over...well, everything about my life at the moment, helped with that. It was fortunate that I had extra emotion to draw on at the moment, rather than having to build the facade from scratch. I wasn't an actor. Not like N-

My thoughts ground to a momentary halt. 'Oh my God. Willow. Ness. Tenin. What are they going to think? They know how I am; what if they think I finally gave up?!'

A maelstrom of black emotion started building in my stomach and throat, threatening to drown my mind in a frothing darkness of depression and fear. Fortunately for my sanity, though, I was broken from the cycle by Avenger telepathically smacking me upside the head.

Calm yourself, boy! Much as the sight of men wallowing in the bleakest pits of despair and self-loathing may serve to deepen the conviction of my black vengeance...and provide entertainment...there is a time and a place for such feelings.

This is neither, nor both. What use is such a dark stain on your white heart when my flames are not called to burn from it? What point is there in allowing emotion to rule you so when it cannot become the heat which reduces your enemies to ash shadows?

I will not suffer a host that cannot grasp such simple concepts. LISTEN, BOY! THIS IS OUR CREED! OUR PURPOSE! OUR EXISTENCE!

Ours is the hand that chokes the life from the vile!

Ours is the claw that disembowels the monsters which men become!

Ours is the flame that cleanses the world in a conflagration of dark fury!

Ours is NOT the limp wrist that wastes away, despairing in a dungeon! If you miss your friends - if you worry for them - then seek power! Power such that you may tear your way through all that stands between you and your own world!

We are the specter of hate that escaped the Hell Château d'If. What other prison could possibly compare to that miserable place?!

Think on this, and answer me one question.

What is a 'world', but a larger prison?​

"I don't need to 'think on this' to know you need to cut back on the monologue, you ass." I grumbled in English, drawing Akeno's attention and a widening of her smile. She let out an unsettling chuckle, then addressed me.

"The spirit in you seems to be an unruly one, eh Mr…?"

I blinked. I'd been lost in thought again, apparently; Issei was walking just behind Rias in front of me, while I was walking alongside Akeno. We'd already left the park, even. 'I really need to stop drifting off.'

"Lewis." I answered, brain on autopilot. "Johan Lewis." Remembering Akeno's question I snorted derisively, switching back to Japanese. "He's a damned Chuunibyō, and as edgy as a man made out of swords."

I heard Rias swallow a surprised laugh from in front of us, while a sense of disapproval and a snort of disdain echoed from within me. Then silence fell, and as Rias continued to lead our little party to our destination (presumably Kuoh Academy), I found myself presented with my most terrifying opponent of the evening.

Small talk.

"So, Lewis-san." Rias began, thankfully saving me from needing to try and break the silence myself. "What brings you to Japan?"

Her voice sounded earnestly curious, rather than probing, which helped me keep relatively calm as I answered her. "Well, I've always been an otaku, so I picked up Japanese while I was still in education. When I was looking for a job I decided that I could mix my skills and my interests, so I came here to teach English as a Foreign Language. I haven't been able to do much sight-seeing yet, though. I still need to visit Kyoto - and Akihabara…"

A fanatical light sparked in Rias' eyes when I mentioned the Holy Land, and I felt like Avenger had just shifted uneasily inside me. He didn't get any more comfortable as Rias and I started going back and forth about our favoured anime, picking up the pace of the conversation until we both lost track of our surroundings and it was up to Akeno and Issei to keep us from getting run over or trying to walk through solid objects as we made our way through Kuoh.

(It turned out Rias favoured adorable romance fluff and ridiculously over-the-top badassery. This surprised absolutely nobody.)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When I passed the wall around the main Kuoh Academy campus, I experienced a strange sensation like I had just walked through a bubble that I couldn't see. When I asked about it, Rias told me we'd just walked through a detection barrier that would notify anyone tied into it if anyone possessing ill intent or a certain level of magical presence crossed it.

I pondered that and my many questions about the nature of magic in my new world as Rias led us to the old schoolhouse in a wooded area near the main academy building, trying to recall what I could of the explanations given in the story I knew. What I remembered most clearly was that there was a major difference between Human magic and Devil magic. It was a fundamental divide, something about...calculations versus imagination…?

…

I valiantly resisted the urge to facepalm as I realised my most prominent regret in life had now become not having finished a battle-harem Light Novel series. Mostly because there was a considerably above-average chance that not having read it might just get me killed. 'This is going to be my life now, isn't it? Fuuuuck.'

By the time my internal bitchfest was satisfactorily concluded, we'd arrived at the entrance to the building.

"Hyoudou-kun, Lewis-san…" Rias declared, turning to look at us over her shoulder as she placed her on the door. "Welcome...to the Occult Research Club!"

The door was flung open wide in suitably dramatic fashion, and in spite of myself I felt a small smile pulling at my lips. Rias certainly had a charisma and energy to her - it was difficult to be mopey when she was so upbeat.

And thus I stood a little straighter and followed Rias, Issei and Akeno into the vaguely creepy old schoolhouse to have a meeting with some Devils, while the door closed silently behind me.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
AN: Well, here's the second part of the rewrite. As always, Teninshigen was a huge help with getting this all pretty-like. Enjoy!
Edit: Fixed some issues and made a few things clearer. Thanks for your help finding the problems, Magery!

 

[Xanothos]

Prologue 3: Remaining Sense of Opprobrium​

The town of Kuoh was a relatively recent settlement, all things considered - but the woods which surrounded it were ancient. Older still were the hills the dense foliage carpeted, and much younger than both but older than living memory was the church hidden by the branches and trunks.

It was an old, weathered thing, worn down by time and disuse as the populace grew further apart from both God and his house. It was about as far as one could be from Kuoh Academy while remaining, technically, within Kuoh's boundaries - and that made it a perfect place for a group of Fallen Angels to set up shop.

Three pairs of black wings cut through the air before vanishing without a trace as their owners set down at the edge of the church grounds. Though the Church wasn't officially sanctioned by the Vatican, the Scriptures warding its grounds were made perfectly real by the Faith behind them, and they felt its touch as they stepped onto the hallowed grounds.

The four Fallen arrived back together, Kalawarner immediately setting off towards the altar at the church's rear with Raynare being half-carried along with her. The other two members of their party each broke off to slump on a pew, Dohnaseek leaving his trench-coat on a hook by the door as he passed it. Mittelt pulled a book from nowhere, fumbling a bit with the cover as her fingers shook, while Dohnaseek propped his feet up on the back of the pew in front of him and pulled his fedora down over his eyes to shut the world away.

None of them had had nearly enough time to start settling down when a soft male voice rang out from the shadows behind the altar. "You're back."

A young man with shoulder-length silver hair, styled with shaggy bangs that hung to just above his eyes, stepped forward from the shadows at the church's rear and almost immediately fixed rusty-red irides on Raynare. "What the hell happened to you?"

"Some abomination interfered when I was about to kill the brat with the Sacred Gear! That's 'what the hell happened' to me, Freed!" Raynare snapped back, glaring through the tears that were still dripping down her scorched cheeks.

Freed's face, which had been concerned, hardened. "Kill him? Nobody said anything about killing the boy; you led me to believe we were going to recruit him!"

Raynare snorted as best she could, biting down a whimper as it irritated her injuries. "What's the brat's life matter? He's just some perverted ape; he's not even strong like you are." Through her pain, the Fallen gave Freed a disdainful glare. "It's not like it's any of your business, anyways. The order came directly from Lord Azazel; you're just some Stray Exorcist that the Devils tolerate because you're too much of a pussy to let out your bloodlust. Know your place, Sellzen."

Kalawarner inched away from the duo, leaving Raynare standing somewhat lop-sidedly under her own power. She alone among this group of Fallen was young, barely thirty years outside Heaven compared to Raynare and Mittelt's two millennia or Dohnaseek's one and a half. If Light started flying, she wanted to be nowhere near it.

Freed Sellzen, for his part, remained undaunted by Raynare's vitriol or disdain. "'Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.' Genesis 9:6."

Raynare flinched back, half-raising her hands, then stopped and flushed in embarrassed anger as she realised Freed had been merely quoting Scripture, rather than Invoking it. Ignoring her agitation, Freed continued. "I've ignored your hatred of humans, your disrespect of me, and even your blasphemy. I've suffered it all with a smile, as He would want me to. But this…"

Freed's knuckles turned white as he clenched his fists, an unearthly light gleaming in his eyes. "You'd better be glad that you didn't manage to kill that innocent boy, Raynare. Because if you had I'd be delivering your head, caustic tongue and all, to the Sitri heiress and orders be damned."

Raynare's face twisted in snarling rage even as a spear of pinkish Light formed in her hand. Before it had finished appearing the hilt of a Light Blade had already fallen from Freed' sleeve into his grip, while his off-hand darted into his cassock for the Light Pistol he kept there. Before they could actually come to blows, though, Dohnaseek and Mittelt cleared the lines of pews with twin leaps and landed between them.

"Enough!" Dohnaseek declared, his voice raised. Kalawarner, now several feet away from the scene, raised her eyebrows at the man's shout.
"Raynare, you're not thinking straight. That...thing did a number on you." He turned his blue eyes on Freed. "Father Sellzen, I apologise for our leader's conduct; I'm sure you felt that...malice, even from across town?"

Freed, whose weapons had vanished with all the evidence of a morning dew, nodded seriously. "Yes, I did. The Hell was that? You called it an abomination - why?"

Mittelt chose that moment to cut in. "Because not even Donny knew what it was, and he used to be one of the Big Man's bookworms. Whatever it was, it made Rayray scream like i haven't heard since she first-"

"Mittelt!"

The blonde gave a cutesy giggle despite the sharp tone of Dohnaseek's reprimand, knuckling her head and poking out her tongue. The other Fallen knew better than to take the airheaded act at all seriously - their spymistress revealed painful secrets with the same habitual sadism that Raynare showed when she seduced then murdered men. Sometimes, Dohnaseek and Kalawarner wondered which one was more cruel.

Privately, of course. If the two ever got it into their heads to compete, they might as well restart the Great War.

Freed began to pace, a troubled look on his face. "And it came out of nowhere?"

Raynare winced. "...No. Some other ape woke up from being passed out in a bush, so I went to kill the witness first." Not noticing that Freed's pacing had stopped dead, leaving his countenance cast inshadow, she continued. "I impaled him easily; he went down while the perverted monkey froze up. Then…" The Fallen's body shook with the memory. "Then it took control of the body. It said something about making me suffer for trying to kill its host. After that...everything is a blur."

Silence. Absolute, dead silence was all that existed for several moments, as the very air around Freed seemed to press outwards and down, strangling all that might disturb it.

Then, came two simple words. "Get. Out."

Raynare looked up at the Stray Exorcist in shock. "What?!"

Freed turned around, his eyes free of the shadow and icy with rage. "I will not allow my church to be cluttered by trash like you. I allowed you to stay here, and by my will I'll not suffer your presence any longer."

The shadows Freed had been standing in began to lighten and peel away, driven back by coruscating white energy that began to rise from his skin. He reached up to his throat, gripping the cross that rested there, and the arcs of Light grew ever larger. The energy's pulse quickened, and in seconds the aura had become strong enough that, combined with her wounds, Raynare couldn't move even an inch towards the silveret.

"The cities of the Negev have been locked up,
And there is no one to open them;
All Judah has been carried into exile,
Wholly carried into exile.

Banishing Scripture - Jeramiah 13:19."

Freed's words echoed and eddied in the closed space, carrying a far greater weight than any earthly voice could muster alone. That was only appropriate - after all, Invoking the Word of God was an unearthly act indeed.

From a standing start, Raynare was bodily thrown from the church, passing its doors and steps before coming to a tumbling halt at the border of its grounds where the wards hissed and spat at her. Standing shakily, she slammed a fist into the golden-white barrier that now rose up to resist her, her hand recoiling from the bite of Faith that was no longer held in check. "Y-you three!" She shouted, internally cursing the quiver in her voice. "Get out here. We'll find somewhere else to stay while I plan our next move."

The three Fallen still in the church looked at one another, then at Freed. The younger Father regarded them in turn, then spoke, traces of White still crackling between strands of his hair. "Go or stay; I don't care which. If you leave, though, don't come back." He paused, and his stern countenance split slowly into a manic, unstable grin. "Or do. After all, I could use some new decorations, and I'm sure it'd be fun to cut your fucking heads off!"

Kalawarner darted for the door just as soon as Freed's voice tilted into a strange, lilting register that shrieked across her soul like a violin bow made of glass and nails. Mittelt scoffed, but followed quickly after, flipping her hair as she passed through the doorway.

Dohnaseek sighed, and ran a gloved hand through his hair while his other held his fedora by his side. "She's going to get them killed, I just know it." He looked up, meeting Freed's eyes. "I'm loyal to the Grigori - but something's fishy here."

With that, the tall Fallen flopped back down on a pew. "Now, if you'll excuse me Father, I'm going to take a nap. Today has been...a hassle."

Freed's twisted smile disappeared, replaced with a smaller, much more genuine expression as he nodded to the other man. Then he turned away, violently shoving that part of himself back into the depths of his subconscious.

Dohnaseek always was the one he got along best with.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I shifted a bit in the chair I'd been offered in front of Rias' desk, hands intertwined in my lap as I thought. Rias had just completed her explanation of the Abrahamic Factions' current state, as well as a brief history of how they got there. She had made an off-handed mention of Sacred Gears, referring to them as 'metaphysical artifacts of great power placed into the souls of humans by Him', and Issei had apparently recalled Raynare saying something about him having one.

Rias seemed mildly curious, but when Issei told her that our attacker hadn't said much beyond that she tabled the subject.

Then, Issei posed the big question. What were our hosts?

Rias, a slight smile on her face, stood. Her Peerage followed suit. "Well, Issei-kun, other than you and Lewis-san, everyone in this room…" There was the distinct thoom sound of a rather large amount of air being suddenly displaced, while the shadows in the room abruptly changed as four pairs of large, jet-black bat's wings spread to their fullest span. "Is a Devil."

Issei's jaw dropped, and I internally applauded Rias' dramatics. Avenger, however, didn't seem as entertained.

How incredibly dull. Hellspawn or not, they are but children. A shame; I'd have no hesitation killing adult Demons, but these...Hmph. It's almost sad; my pitch-black flames of Vengeance will sputter and die if there is nothing to kindle their rage.

I frowned. 'I don't know about you, Avenger, but I prefer to judge people by who they are, rather than what they are.'

The only response I received was a noncommittal hum.

As my attention returned to my senses, I met Rias' eyes as she looked at me with an odd expression. "You don't seem very surprised, Lewis-san."

I laughed awkwardly. "Well, the spirit did call you hellspawn back in the park." I sobered, my expression falling. "That'd make the bitch who impaled me a Fallen Angel, then…" I half-asked, suppressing part of a shudder but not managing to stop the rest as I laid my hand over the part of my stomach where Light had torn a hole.

Rias blanched. "She impaled you? How are you uninjured?"

I went to respond - then, I realised I couldn't. My tongue wasn't working, nor was my mouth. Then both did begin to work...but not at my command. "That is none of your concern, Demon child. Do not presume that my host's soft heart will afflict me; I am not so inclined to reveal more than we must."

I could feel the tension in the room take an abrupt upward lurch as Avenger spoke, the degree only worsening with every word. The atmosphere crackled with it - or, that might have been the lightning sparking around Akeno's hands.

"It's worse than I thought." Rias said grimly. "Whatever spirit resides in his Sacred Gear already has so much control over him...Akeno, rest-"

I felt a bit more control of my body disappear Avenger cocking my head at the heiress and speaking once more, cutting off her command. "What nonsense are you spewing now, Demon child? I am no mere pitiful spirit, shackled by the artifact of an impotent God. I am the pitch-black flames of resentment that will encompass the world! I am Servant Avenger, and this boy is what keeps me bound to the world!" He snorted. "Though I'd not have wished for my earthly partner to be so white-hearted, nor so easy to bend, we are decreed partners - for better or for worse."

Koneko, for the first time since I'd arrived in the club room, spoke up. "...Not lying. Doesn't feel like a Gear. Power's too...free."

"At least one of your number has eyes with which to see." Avenger remarked, before the Servant (and wasn't that a troubling surprise; I had totally forgotten that the Avenger Class was a thing) returned control of my body, leaving me to flop back in my chair and press a hand to my head. "Ugh, fucking hell...warn me next time, won't you? Actually, never mind - just don't do that, ass…"

Rias glanced at Koneko, who gave a simple, small nod...then glanced at Issei, who was trying to surreptitiously wipe drool away from his lip. I guessed Rias and Akeno getting to their feet so quickly had caught his attention. While I sighed internally, Koneko gave an annoyed sniff. "Pervert."

Issei turned to her, his mouth dropping open in horror as a distraught expression pulled at his features. Meanwhile, Rias ignored the byplay, sighing in relief as she gestured to Akeno. The sadistic Queen let the lightning fade from her hands, then returned demurely to her seat.

"...So." I said, making an attempt to break the silence. "That was a thing."

I heard a soft chuckle from behind me, accompanied by a sound like cracking glass. When I turned around, I found that Kiba had come up behind me at some point, and was just in time to catch sight of a hilt fading from sight as his hand pulled away from the back of my neck.

Oho! The little prince has fangs, does he? Not bad, not bad at all! Perhaps there will be opportunities for your hate and rage to sharpen here after all.​

Rias shot me a tired look. "This state of affairs is...concerning, to say the least. This...Avenger, seems to take control of your body at a moment's notice. And he doesn't seem the trusting sort."

I sighed, nodding. Couldn't argue there.

"That being said," Rias continued, "I think it would benefit us to be peaceful with one another, if not actively allied." She clasped her hands before her, and I caught a certain hint of anticipation in her demeanour. "What do you say, Lewis-san?"

Even as I told her aloud that I'd be fine entering a cooperative relationship with her, my mind reached the logical conclusion as to what she was anticipating. At the same time, so did Avenger.

Peerage? I think not! I'll not shackle myself to another again, least of all a child of the Pit, no matter how well mannered. I'd sooner walk freely into the Château d'If with arms wide open.
​

'What about me?' Interjected. 'Aren't I a shackle?'

Foolish boy. Need I say it again? Very well. Listen, for this is our contract, written in vengeance and binding beyond even Love and Hate!

Your bone is my bone! Your flesh is my flesh! Your blood is my blood!

Soft hearted and naïve though you may be, you are no shackle. We are partners, boy! And just you wait - with time, I shall forge you into an instrument of perfect vengeance!​

Avenger's voice trailed off into manic laughter, and I blinked. Did...Avenger just tell me he had my back?

Well, I wasn't going to figure that out in a minute or two. I shook my head, then started paying attention to Rias once more, finding she was speaking with Issei. "Well, if you do have a Sacred Gear, you should try to awaken it."

She had him stand up, then began giving instructions. "Alright, Issei-kun. Picture something powerful - something invincible."

Issei, eyes squeezed shut, considered only for a moment before adopting a familiar pose. Side on, hands cupped at his hip, knees bent.

Rias looked torn between laughter and a squee.

A moment passed. Then several. "Ah…Rias-sempai....nothing's happening…"

I coughed lightly. "Uh...maybe try deep, even breaths?"

Rias nodded. "As good an idea as any. Try it, Issei-kun."

The dormant Red Dragon Emperor did as he was bade, the quiet room beginning to echo with the sound of respiration - then, a minute later, there was an abrupt flash around the teen's left arm that dissipated to reveal a crimson bracer on his wrist. Two yellowish spikes sprouted from its sides, and a dull green gem was set over the area of the knuckles.

Issei turned to look excitedly at Rias, only for his face to fall as he saw the clear disappointment on her face. "Twice Critical, huh?" The heiress mused, before giving Issei an apologetic look. "Issei-kun...I'm sorry, but your Sacred Gear isn't that powerful. It's called Twice Critical, and what it does is double your strength for a limited period of time."

Issei looked like the entire world was coming crashing down around his ears, and for all his flaws I couldn't quite stand to see the boy so disheartened. So, I spoke up. "Don't feel bad, Issei - this just means you'll have to get stronger. After all, if you're already stronger than normal before you use your Gear, then the result once you use it will be a lot more impressive."

The teen looked thoughtfully at the bracer, and I decided to add the coup de grace. "Plus, I hear some girls are attracted to strong guys…"

Even if nothing else had, that reached him. Or at least, I guessed so, judging from the way he leapt to his feet and yelled that he'd "become so strong that he'd drown in breasts".

The smack of my palm hitting my face echoed through the club room.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After that, Rias directed Kiba to escort Issei home. Then, when she learned that I didn't have anywhere to stay, she immediately offered me a room in the old schoolhouse. It was a few doors down from a room covered in magical seals and caution tape; in other words, Crossdressing DIO's room.

When I asked, Rias just told me that one of her 'family' didn't like to go out and that his Sacred Gear was difficult to control, so he'd volunteered to be sealed away.

A minute or so later, Rias left me to get acquainted with my new room - though not before telling me that we'd need to talk with someone about my staying on school grounds. If I had to guess, I assumed that 'someone' would be Sona.

The room was decently sized, though sparsely furnished. There was a single chest of drawers, a writing desk with a chair and lamp and a smallish bed in one corner of the room. A door off to one side led into a Western-style bathroom.

I sat down heavily on the bed, though somewhat less heavily than I would have done that morning, and was preparing to disrobe for bed when the day's events hit me all at once like a dump track at terminal velocity. I leapt from the bed and practically sprinted into the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before the first wave of panicked nausea forced my acidic, half-digested lunch from my throat.

I kept vomiting for longer than I cared to consider or remember, until my stomach was empty and my abdomen was burning like I'd done a thousand crunches. I struggled to my feet and tottered to the sink, then proceeded to rinse my mouth out with water and scrub my hands until they were raw.

My panic attack over, I flushed the toilet, shambled back to the bed and collapsed onto it without bothering to disrobe at all. My clothes were a good bit looser on me now, after whatever had happened to my body when Avenger first took over, so there was that at least.

Even as I almost immediately began to drift off into an exhausted sleep, I could faintly hear Avenger's voice.

I'll warn you now, fool boy, as I wish I had once been told. To vent one's heart is not to weaken it, nor to cheapen it - rather, it is to let it grow stronger, and cloak itself in the darkness that can withstand all the ills that a white heart cannot bear.

Remember that. For both our sakes.​

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
AN: Well, laddies and germs, here's the third part of the prologue. As always, I have Teninshigen to thank for making it all nice and shiny, and Magery for offering oodles of useful advice.

 

[Xanothos]

Prologue 4: The Hollow Priest​

The night was dark, and full of terror. What faint light the moon could grant was obscured by a funeral shroud of endless clouds.

It suited Freed just fine.

Nights such as this one were the perfect hunting times of the Stray Devils, where the light grew dim and they dared step beyond their fetid shadows. As a man of God, there was no better time for him to give vent to those parts of himself that would not serve his role as a shepherd of the flock.

Better that the monsters bear the brunt of his sinful bloodlust and sadism, rather than the undeserving innocents.

The young priest wished he knew why his nature was as it was. Why the father had decreed he should live, burdened by such a disposition for harm. The twisted desires within him, that grew and rooted ever deeper no matter how much he beat them back...they weighed heavily on his mind, and the questions they raised weighed yet heavier.

Or so they did these days, anyway.

Once upon a time he had borne no such worries. He had felt no shame for his affliction - had revelled in it, even, glorifying his own rampant desires to kill, torture and maim.

It had taken but a day - but an instant, to forever break that single-minded lack of caring. A chance meeting as he left a meeting with his Exorcist instructor, the legendarily formidable Griselda Quarta, and quite literally ran into someone.

As always, recalling his first meeting with that girl brought a bitter smile to his face. He had shown her such cruelty, over and over, and never once had she shown resentment in return. Never once did her voice rise or bite in anger, no matter how much his own words tore at her or his actions pained her.

As he had been, young and impatient and full of base emotion, he couldn't comprehend it. It had taken only days for what patience he had to evaporate, and he had demanded an answer of her.

"Are you stupid or something, brat?! Why don't you ever fight back?! Why don't you ever get mad?!"

He hadn't been expecting an answer. Or, at least, not one that he cared about enough to really think on.

Then she had said nine words, and their simple weight had shattered the dark glass which kept him from realising his own nature.

"Because I could see that you were hurting, too."

Such a simple answer…yet it had confounded him so utterly as to leave the bloody creature he was then without a single word to speak. The monstrosity that had been slowly consuming the name of Freed Sellzen, an Exorcist so steeped in blood that to embrace his debauched lifestyle would have been so easy as to step away from it, had been stopped in his tracks by a slip of a girl with golden hair and emerald eyes, who had deigned to look beyond the monster and to the man beneath.

He spoke no more to her that day. But as time went by, Freed Sellzen would always find himself seeking Asia Argento once more.

At first, he did so in the name of breaking her faith.

Later, he became utterly confused by that same faith, and sought her for a kind of guidance no priest would ever provide.

And finally, as his faith began to decay while hers remained bright as ever, he spent every hour he could spare beside her as he sought reassurance in her.

Every time he left her, Freed found himself with greater and greater will to look, to truly look, at what he had become. The hate he felt turned inward and grew every stronger...and just as it darkened his heart, so too did it grow lighter as what love remained in him latched ever tighter to the girl who was the closest thing he had ever seen to God's light.

Freed recognised quickly that as he was, he could never be worthy to stand beside her. And so, he returned to his instructor, and begged her to excommunicate him.

In the church, he felt he could never reconcile his monstrous urges with his faith. He had struggled with both in equal measure, where so many others struggled with neither, and his path lay not within the Vatican.

She had been sad to see him go, when he had finally begun to set himself straight - but still, she acquiesced.

Freed spent the following year wandering aimlessly. He visited Jerusalem and the many sacred sites to which it was home. He spoke with Buddhists, Daoists, Quakers and Mormons, discovering the places where faiths clashed and where they stood together. He visited pagan sites like Stonehenge, looking for the fervor and heart of faith born long before Christ had descended to Earth.

He learned - more than he ever thought he could. But still, the answers he craved eluded him.

Settling in Kuoh had been almost a spontaneous action. It had occurred to him that, perhaps, there was something about offering sanctuary and succor to others that would help him reconcile with himself.

Six months had passed since he had made that choice, and they had been good months. He had spread the Word, he had done the Lord's work, he had shepherded the flock when they needed guidance. He had felt joy, a rare enough thing in his life.

But his hated desires still lingered.

Meditation and Scripture held them at bay - but on days such as this, when the monster bayed in his blood, he knew that it would need to be sated. One way...or another.

His footsteps halted outside a dilapidated warehouse, the Scripture of guidance and discernment of evil that he had spoken at his church's doorway buzzing behind his eyes. From its intensity, the quarry within the warehouse wouldn't require anything...special, to dispose of.

A flick of the wrist, and the hilt of his Light blade was in hand. A practiced motion of the other, and the Light gun from within his cassock was held firmly at the ready.

Nudging open the warehouse door with his shoulder, he led with his raised gun as his eyes took in everything and nothing at once. Once he had cleared the entrance and assured himself that there wasn't an ambush to be sprung just yet, he stepped forward, his footsteps silent despite the gravel beneath his feet. Any Exorcist worth their Light Element knew how to be stealthy when the situation called for it.

Well - with one or two exceptions.

Freed shook his head minutely at the thought. 'In fairness, Zenith Tempest and Durandal are rather effective arguments for discarding the subtle approach.'

Sticking close to the wall and making sure to check both behind him and above him at irregular intervals, Freed made his careful way around the various pieces of machinery and storage containers still littering the building. There were almost no clear sight-lines in the darkened labyrinth, and many Stray Devils were ambush predators…

...Except this one, apparently.

Leaning just enough of his face around the edge of a rusted fork-lift's cab to see, Freed examined his prey with an expert eye. Like all but the eldest or most uncontrolled Strays, it retained a humanoid element - in particular, a female body from the waist up, leading down into a lower body with far too many limbs for a humanoid but far too many fingers for anything else.

Perhaps she would have been pretty, once upon a time - now, as a centaurean nightmare with half a human body dangling from her maw, even that thin veneer of humanity was gone.

Freed took a deep, cleansing breath, closing his eyes-

Then they flashed open, and in a blur of silver hair and crackling white Faith, he moved.

Symbols formed of Light flashed across his skin, bolstering a physique forged by hardship and battle ever further beyond the mortal norm. While without it he was the match for any normal swordsman or gunslinger, with the augmentation his run was easily mistaken for teleportation by the untrained eye.

The Stray Devil, distracted by her meal, didn't register anything more than a quick glint of light like a reflection in glass.

Well - not until her arms abruptly fell from her shoulders, in any case.

Her roar of agony shook the floor moments after her severed limbs slapped down onto it, closely followed by the corpse she had been gnawing on. There was, surprisingly, no blood - the cauterizing heat of a Light blade, combined with the skill of Freed's cuts, assured that.

In contrast to the Stray's agonized yowls, Freed was utterly silent as his pistol rose, took aim, and loosed six bolts of Light in the blink of an eye. Each one slammed into her head, the grouping just wide enough that subsequent shots didn't pass through the holes left by their predecessors, and what remained of the Stray's head after that might have filled a matchbox.

A half-full matchbox.

The creature that had once been human staggered, then slumped to the ground as Light burned away what remained of her nervous system and the body recognised that there was no longer a brain to issue it commands.

Freed exhaled lowly as he deactivated his Light Blade, then surveyed the abattoir the warehouse had become. Not including the ravaged lower half of the corpse the Stray had been eating, there were the remains of four other bodies in varying stages of rot, scattered here and there.

'This…' he thought to himself, as he concealed his weapons and began gathering the bodies, 'is the part I hate most.'

After carefully lining up all five bodies, or at least what remained of them, Freed began to chant. White Light rose from his body in coruscating waves, then ran down him to pool at his feet and spread forward, sinking into the corpses before him.

"Brothers and sisters,
We do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death,
So that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.
For we believe that Jesus died and rose again,
And so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.

Exequies Scripture - Thessalonians 4:13-14."

As he chanted, the rot and vicious wounds on the bodies began to fade. Cold, dead flesh sprouted from the dessicated remains, filling in those parts that had been chewed or mauled away. It was more of a seeming, than anything - though the parts grew back they were truly dead, of no use to anyone even as raw materials.

But still - that was fine. That wasn't what these Words were for.

It took a full minute, but eventually five pristine corpses lay still in the dark, and Freed massaged his aching head. No matter how strong the Faith or Light Element, there was only so much Light a human could handle safely. The Word of God drew on Light like few things ever could - only the Archangel Metatron could speak it as others would their native tongue.

It was only fitting, for the Archangel known as the Voice of God.

Since, last he'd checked, Freed was no angel - much less the one that Enoch had ascended to become - he was sporting the beginnings of a killer Light-headache. 'Ugh, like a hangover of the soul. Wonderful.'

Not speaking a single Word, and barely using any Light, for six months before he used it several times in the space of six hours probably wasn't helping his ability to handle things.

As he stood and prepared to leave, keen ears pulled his attention to the approaching sound of footsteps. The tingle behind his eyes, a different frequency than the Stray had produced, told him that it was at least one Devil in control of their faculties.

Quickly, Freed backed into the shadows beyond the Stray's body, knowing that the Devils' vision would pierce the shadow but hoping they'd have no cause to look too closely for him. 'God, if you have any affection left in your heart at all, please, PLEASE, let it be Sitri. I can't deal with that Knight of Gremory's right now.'

Thankfully, Freed's prayer was answered - or, perhaps, he was simply on the lucky side of a coin flip - as moments later, a petite young woman with black hair in a bob cut entered his field of view, three others trailing behind her. Even from where he was crouched, one eye just barely peeking around the corpse's side, Freed could see the way her lavender eyes narrowed behind her glasses at the sight of the dead Stray.

The sole male, and the sole stranger to Freed, among Sona Sitri's entourage looked rather green around the gills as he stared at the Stray Devil's vast corpse. Freed absently noted the reptilian gauntlet on the boy's wrist as a Sacred Gear. One more of God's artefacts in the hands of the Devils.

Ah, well. At least it was Sitri; she had her head on the right way around.

The other two members of the party he recognised, at least. The curvaceous young woman whose black hair brushed her ankles, blue eyeglasses concealed her heterochromatic irides, was Tsubaki Shinra, Sona's Queen. The teen was generally polite but cold to Freed, which was fine by him. He'd much rather that cool distance that the open hostility he always found in Yuuto Kiba.

Immediately behind Tsubaki was a girl equally as voluptuous, though by far her most striking feature was her shoulder-length white hair. Momo Hanakai was one of Sona's Bishops, and incidentally one of the members of Sona's Peerage whom Freed actually got along with. She was a kindhearted person, and her temperament reminded him a bit of Asia on a good day.

As the four Devils filed into the open area at the back of the warehouse, Freed stepped out from behind the corpse, his hands empty and held loosely in plain sight at his sides.

Sona's eyes immediately focussed on him even as Tsubaki and Momo both reflexively tensed. Momo, upon registering who it was, relaxed just as quickly - Tsubaki, though, remained at readiness. Honestly, Freed rather approved - a Sacred Gear like hers rewarded a carefully maintained guard.

Sona, her gaze locked unwaveringly on Freed, spoke first. "So - 'I'm not an Exorcist anymore'. Wasn't that what you said?" She adjusted her glasses. "Would you care to explain all of this, then?"

Freed felt his fingers beginning to twitch, and quickly interlaced his hands behind his back as he started pacing to burn off agitation. "Believe you me, Sitri-san, I'm not happy to be here either. A...guest came back to my church today to tell me that she had almost succeeded in killing two innocents, and didn't fail for lack of trying. She targeted one of them for holding a Sacred Gear, and the other for being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Freed stopped his pacing, facing Sona. "Naturally, I kicked them out and barred their return with Scripture, but her actions have left me…" He swallowed a large number of words unsuited for polite company. "A touch livid." He glanced to his side, kicking the corpse hard enough to shift it a couple of inches. "I needed to work off some steam and my divinings revealed a nearby Stray, so I figured I'd dust off the old Light Blade and kill two birds with one stone."

The exorcist rubbed his brow again. "And now, instead of being just agitated, I have a headache." He chuckled, bitterly. "My luck remains unchanged, apparently."

Sona pursed her lips, resettling her glasses again. This time, despite the darkness of the warehouse, they flashed. "Well. In the future, I'd appreciate it if you let me know about your need to…'let off steam' in advance. I was going to show the newest member of my Peerage the basics of Devil combat against the Stray Devil Viser, but it seems you've already taken care of her."

Freed scowled, once more kicking the corpse. This time it slid a full foot away from him. "Not quickly enough." He muttered. "She killed at least five people before either of us got to her. The best I can do for the families is restore the bodies for burial." He sighed, once more rubbing his temples. "At the very least, they can have closure."

Sona's face softened. "This was not your fault, Father Sellzen. The fact of the matter is that Rias and I are stretched thin trying to manage this city, even between two of us. This failure is ours. Not yours."

Freed graced her with a small smile, but still shook his head before he walked past the Devils on his way out of the warehouse. Whatever they might say, he still blamed himself.

After all, what was one more measure of guilt to go with the hundreds of other sins crawling on his back?

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was light, slicing through my curtains and across my face, that roused me from my slumber.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, wincing as I sat up; my abdomen still felt like it had been piled high with burning coals, and the memory of the panic attack I'd suffered the night before had me shuddering. It...hadn't been pleasant, to say the very least.

Idly, I noted that I was still wearing the clothes from the day before. They were miraculously pristine, in spite of the fact that I'd slept in them - never mind the blood and intestine I'd gotten on them. Though, even more oddly, I distinctly remembered them being loose on me the night before. Now, they fit my leaner body snugly.

This is but a small application of one of my Noble Phantasms. Though the sublimation of my very being isn't normally used for mere convenience, I'll allow it for now. That said, boy, you need to get some more suitable clothing. Not only do you look painfully generic, you have but a single outfit to your name. Unacceptable! An Avatar of Vengeance must always be the height of class!

I blinked slowly, processing the fact that, in addition to being a Chunnibyō, the as-of-yet unnamed Servant in my head was apparently also a fashionista. I personally would wear pretty much anything so long as it was reasonably comfortable and I could move in it - a disposition that, judging from the disdain Avenger was radiating, didn't sit well with my tennant.

Before I could lose myself in thoughts of fashion and Heroic Spirits, a knock on my door kept me grounded in reality as I got up from the bed to open the portal. Doing so, I discovered the petite form of Koneko standing in the doorway, a blank expression on her face and a stick of Pocky in her mouth. The latter only lasted about a second, though, before vanishing from my new plane of existence through the bottomless pit that was Koneko's stomach. "Prez wants to see you." She relayed dully. "C'mon."

She didn't wait for me to give an answer, just walking off down the corridor. So, I straightened my shirt and hurried after her.

Soon enough, she'd led me to the part of the old building which was connected to the school proper, where we met a waiting Rias. Koneko glanced at me for a moment, gave a minute nod, then walked back the way we'd come without a word.

Rias had a slight smile on her face when I turned back to her. "She seems to like you. She's not usually so expressive with strangers."

I cocked my head. 'That was expressive?' "Really? Huh. I wonder why…"

Rias waved a hand as we started walking. "She tends to have good instincts about people; she can take the measure of a person with only a small amount of time in their presence." Her smile grew wider. "I guess she didn't find you wanting."

I hummed in thought. "That's nice to hear." 'Must be a Nekoshou thing.'

A few minutes of walking led us to a door which bore, to my complete lack of surprise, a sign reading 'Student Council'. Rias knocked sharply on the wood, glancing at me. "The Student Council President is an old friend of mine. Additionally, she, too, is a Devil."

I nodded, hoping I looked like I was absorbing new knowledge rather than hearing something I already knew, then turned to the door as it opened. It revealed a boy with messy blond hair and bags under his eyes, who stepped out of our way to allow us entry to the room. I vaguely recognised him as one of Sona's Pawns as we passed him...something about taking up four Pawn pieces?

Before I could be distracted by my thoughts, the young woman sitting behind a desk on the room's far side spoke up. "Yes? What was it you wanted, Rias?"

The Sitri heiress sounded as tired as the blond looked - a fact that wasn't lost on Rias.

"Sona-chan, what's wrong?" She asked. "Did something happen during your Stray hunt last night?"

Sona's eyes snapped to me, before she raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Rias. "Before we get into that, why don't you introduce your new friend?"

Rias coughed into her hand, blushing faintly. "Right, right. Sona-chan, this is Johan Lewis-san. He was introduced to the supernatural world last night when he came across a Fallen Angel attacking Issei Hyoudou-kun."

Sona's eyebrow rose higher. "Oh? Then I assume you've reincarnated both of them?"

Rias shook her head. "Not at all. While Lewis-san was apparently impaled by the Fallen, he somehow managed to heal himself and fight the Fallen off." She paused. "Or rather, a being possessing him manage to do so."

Sona's lips set themselves into a firm line. "A possession strong enough to heal a fatal wound and fight off a Fallen Angel using a human body…" She hummed. "While impressive, I'm not sure why you brought him to see me. You could just as easily have come alone."

"True." Rias admitted. "However, Lewis-san doesn't have anywhere to stay, and I offered to let him stay in the old school building."

Sona waved a hand. "That building is your domain; so long as he causes me no trouble, he can stay there as he wishes." She then turned her eyes on me. "Forgive me, I've been talking as though you weren't here. What are your thoughts on this, Lewis-san?"

Feeling a bit like I'd been put on the spot, I coughed into my hand to buy myself a moment. "Ah...well...I don't like being indebted to people, regardless of their species." I began. "So I wondered if there was anything I could do to earn my keep - maybe even something for myself…"

Sona tented her hands beneath her chin and, after a few moments of careful consideration, spoke again. "Give me a few days to think on the matter and I'll see what I can do." She paused. "As a favour to Rias, of course."

I bowed my head in thanks, smiling. "Thank you, I really appreciate this."

Rias turned to look at me. "You can find your way back to the club room, right Lewis-san?" I nodded hesitantly, and a few moments later I was dismissed.

I made my way back to the club room after a few wrong turns, entering quietly. The only other person present was Koneko, who was - unsurprisingly - munching on yet another type of sweet. This time, the small girl was nibbling on the end of a Toblerone the length of my forearm and the girth of my wrist. There must have been ten pounds of chocolate in that thing, at least.

'Well, if anybody deserves a Big Toblerone it's her.' I thought to myself.

Avenger, I noted, seemed to have started paying more attention.

Truly, that one's ability is beyond even my understanding. Devouring such a bizarre volume of sweet foods is patently insane, and yet she remains so petite...what manner of Demonic sorcery is at work here?

I hid my chuckle behind my hand. Clearly, Avenger had never learned of anime girls' legendary power to eat as much of whatever they wanted as they cared to and never gain weight. Or, at least, not gain weight anywhere it wouldn't be welcome.

Unsurprisingly, Avenger didn't dignify my thoughts with a comment.

The two (technically three) of us sat in a surprisingly comfortable silence as we awaited Rias' return. There was no clock in the room, so the only sounds were my breathing and the quiet nibbling of small teeth at a large bar of chocolate, with the occasional rustle of packaging.

With most of my panic having passed by that point, I was feeling almost...optimistic.

In hindsight, that was probably a mistake.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"So, you didn't manage it."

"..."

"I am not a patient man. Complete this task, or you really won't like what happens next."

"..."

"I don't care what you have to do, so long as you don't make me repeat myself. You are well aware of what happens to those who waste my time and energy so."

"..."

"Good. I'll send a few reinforcements; don't fuck this up, or you'll wish you'd died instead.

"Hmph...amateurs. Father, I need a smoke."

Click - Fwooosh…

"Ahhh, that's the stuff. Heaven, Earth or Hell, there's nothing like a Cuban to take the edge off."
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


AN: Well, here's the fourth installation in Fuir Tes Sort, a few days early. The early posting is due to the fact that my wonderful and helpful beta, Teninshigen, will be out of contact for the next several days, so I figured I'd get off my ass and get this to y'all while I still had a chance. Enjoy!

 

[Xanothos]

Prologue 5: Degenerative Spiral​

Koneko demolished two thirds of her oversized candy bar in the time it took my thoughts to turn inwards, showing no signs of stopping as I took a metaphorical step back to just think. The last day or so had been more stressful than they had any right to be, without any opportunities to really stop and consider, so I felt I was owed a few quiet moments.

My top priority, as of the present moment, was discovering my Servant's identity. I hadn't pursued that information much earlier, but that was before I realised that I was hosting a Servant.

I hadn't even properly formed the question when Avenger spoke up, though.

Ask not for my identity, boy. The name I bore before taking up the mantle of Vengeance is known to you; all that you need to discover the identity that this Avatar cast off has already been given to you. If you cannot accomplish something so simple as to determine the source of my legend, you may as well lay down and perish at this moment so as to spare us both the ignominy.

I blinked, then shrugged. If this was Avenger's idea of an intellectual test then that was fine by me; I'd written more than enough last-second papers in college to perfect the art of pulling relevant fact out of basically nowhere.

My reverie was interrupted by the synchronised noises of Koneko devouring the last of her Toblerone and the club-room door opening.

Glancing at the doorway, I found Kiba looking at me in mild surprise. "Oh, Lewis-san. I didn't know you'd be here...I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"

I waved dismissively. "Please. Even if you were, this is your place, not mine. Anyhow, I was just thinking; do whatever."

As Kiba nodded and moved into the room, I felt myself tense slightly when he moved past. There was something, a buried whisper at the back of my mind, telling me that being so casual was a mistake. That in spite of the way they acted, the Devils could turn on me at any moment.

I squashed it under a mental boot.

It might have been naïve, but I'd always believed in giving people the benefit of the doubt before making any judgements. I hadn't always succeeded in doing so, and at times my attitude had almost gotten me burned (very literally, in one case), but I couldn't find it in myself to regret my view.

Oh? What's this? I had thought your heart drenched white with innocence, but perhaps I underestimated you. To some small extent, you know the darkness of man - it has its home in you and you see it well in others. But despite this, you still seek the light - even knowing that it may be in vain. Yours is a fool's quest, my host…

But a fool such as you is, perhaps, tolerable.​

Huh. He almost sounded respectful.

Even with that tone, I still rolled my eyes. Avenger had an interesting way of showing approval - that was for sure.

Blinking, I was a bit surprised to find that Kiba was on the other side of the room, regarding me with an amused turn to his lips. Koneko was still in the same place, but she'd moved on to consuming a more traditional Japanese sweet of some kind. Mochi, if memory served. "Incredible…" I murmured, shaking my head. "Where does she put it all?"

Kiba, Devil that he was, of course heard me and chuckled. "Not even the Satan Beelzebub, the Underworld's greatest genius, has managed to solve that mystery."

Koneko, whose hearing was better than Kiba and I's combined if I had to guess, looked up from her snack. Her expression was as neutral as ever - yet I felt the force of her irritation just the same.

My weak chuckle did nothing to disarm the laser focus, but I was spared the petite rook's potential wrath when the door opened once more. There was a lot more force behind it this time, however, as Rias stalked through the entrance with her fingers to her temples and a grimace on her face.

Kiba rose from the seat he had taken, concern writ large on his face. "President, is everything alright?"

Rias sank into her chair with a sigh. "Sona had an...interesting experience hunting that Stray last night; the Father who holds service at the old church in the East District had already killed it by the time her Peerage arrived." She slumped a bit. "'Former Exorcist' my foot."

She sighed. "Things could be worse, I suppose. He's not particularly hostile to us, and from what Sona said he was mostly upset that the 'guest' he had been hosting tried to kill a pair of innocents." A concerned look was aimed my way from the corner of Rias' eye - probably to gauge my reaction.

It probably wasn't very interesting, since it mostly just made me think. 'A former Exorcist in Kuoh? Can't be Freed; he's bugfuck crazy and wouldn't give a tenth of a damn about innocents being hurt or killed.'

Much more emotive than me was Kiba, whose face twisted into a brief rictus of burning hate before he locked himself back into neutrality. Considering his past, reacting that way to any member of the Church - an Exorcist in particular - was probably to be expected. Unfortunate, but not unexpected.

Gathering herself, Rias sat straight in her chair. "Anyway! That's a subject for our meeting later. For now…" Steepling her fingers, Rias leaned over her desk. "Lewis-san. Was there anything you wanted to discuss, or would you prefer some books to occupy yourself?"

As tempted as I was to accept her offer and withdraw into my temporary abode with an armful of literary sustenance, my curiosity got the better of me. "Actually, Miss Gremory-"

"Please," she interrupted, "just call me Rias." She smiled. In fairness to her, it was only slightly too tight around the edges.

'Riiight. Her whole hang-up over wanting to be seen for who she is rather than her family name.' I nodded in acknowledgement, continuing. "Alright then, Rias. I'll be blunt; I'd like to learn magic, if that's possible." I glanced to my own arm, which was a noticeably different shape than it had been a little more than twenty-four hours before. "The powers that Avenger has granted me are great, but I don't know when I'll be able to actually use them. Especially as well as he can."

I clasped my hands, able to feel how the strength of my grip had improved. "I know I'm human, possession aside, but is there anything you can teach me?"

Rias' brows furrowed in thought. "I'm afraid I couldn't teach you. I know a few things, but as Devil magic is fundamentally different from human magic, I never actually learned anything about that system beyond some jargon." She paused. "However…" She trailed off for a moment, tapping her fingers against the desk. "I believe Tsubaki and Reya come from mystically inclined families; I'm sure Sona would be willing to work something out with you."

The redheaded heiress stood, pacing over to a bookshelf. "In the meantime, I'd be happy to lend you some of the tomes we have here, as long as you promise just to study them for now." She gave me a wry look. "I don't need the headache of having to repair my headquarters because you thought you could handle a mono-layer transfixing mandala and accidentally made an unstable quadruplex spatial-fold array."

I blinked. "I'll...pretend that I have more than a vague idea of what those are for now. More importantly, I won't try anything without help."

Rias nodded, tugging a few thick, weathered volumes with odd inscriptions on their covers from the shelf. The table in the middle of the room groaned slightly as she tossed them onto it, hefty thump noises echoing out. Then, once she was done moving the brick-like books, she rummaged around in the space beyond where they had been before and retrieved a couple of thin, unassuming books with no markings to speak of and plain, boring covers.

A layered deception. How very fitting of a Devil.​

Ignoring the slightly jump in my heartbeat that came with Avenger speaking out of nowhere again, I eagerly accepted the books when Rias handed them to me. Before I retired to my room to get started studying them, though, I paused to ask Rias one more thing. "Say, Rias - does the phrase 'King of the Cavern' mean anything to you?"

Rias hummed thoughtfully for a moment, then perked up. "Oh! 'Gankutsuō: The Count of Monte Cristo'! The effects in that anime were beautiful! Why?"

What.​

I snorted, choking down a great deal more laughter by force of will. Of course, leave it to anime to provide my answer. "It's just that Avenger called himself that."

Rias' eyebrows both rose. "So, you're being possessed by the Count of Monte Cristo?" She turned back to the bookshelf, searched for a few moments, then withdrew another volume. "I've got a copy of it here, if you like."

"Of course." I agreed. "It'd be foolish not to learn more about the man inside me." I paused, rewinding my last sentence in my head, then turned a groan into an awkward laugh as I felt my cheeks and ears heat up. Rias had apparently caught it too, though she was polite enough to hide her giggle behind a raised hand, while Kiba had turned away completely and seemed to have sealed a hand over his mouth.

Koneko, who had moved on to some gumdrops, was as blank as ever even as she looked in my direction. I couldn't tell if she was judging me, or if my slip of the tongue had amused her.

My heart and body are pledged only to vengeance, boy. Even were that not the case, you are no Mercedès, to easily ensnare me.​

Well at least the Count was amused.

Choosing to just move on, I thanked Rias profusely for the books and got a simple wave in return. "Think nothing of it, Lewis-san."

"Please, Rias." I shook my head. "Call me Johan; we aren't strangers, after all."

Rias gave a small, genuine smile. "I'll do just that, Johan-kun. I'll be speaking to Sona again later, so I'll see what I can do about getting you some magic lessons. I'm sure she'll be pleased to hear of your wish to improve yourself; she wants to be a teacher, after all."

Though I'd known that already, I made sure to seem interested. "Oh? I can respect that. The world needs good teachers as much as we need good doctors."

New literature in hand, I then bade the three Devils farewell before returning to my room to study.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In a seedy bar's seedier back-room, concealed behind a ratty curtain, there was an unremarkable switch. The only thing remarkable about it in any shape or form was that, in order to see it, one would need the aptitude to pierce a Light-woven veil, spun with all the subtlety and experience that two millennia of lying, cheating and stealing for survival could impart.

Though, what happened when you flipped the switch could be quite remarkable as well.

If the person who used the switch wasn't keyed in to the wards with which it was linked, then a portal to the not-space where all Light originated would appear beneath them. Of course, for beings above a certain threshold of strength, such a defense could be little more than an annoyance.

'But for the Devil scum inhabiting this town, this is more than enough.' Mittelt thought with grim satisfaction as she sauntered past the defences that she and Raynare had worked together to lay. Raynare was fairly adept at the less subtle end of Fallen sorcery, while her own specialties lay in...well. Lying.

As a Fallen bearing the Mortal Sin of Invidia, a talent for the subtler arts of mind and mirror was woven into her very being. If anything, Mittelt's honest belief that it was her Father-given right to mold the minds of humans as she pleased served only to strengthen that talent with conviction.

Raynare, on the other hand, was a Fallen of Ira, and as such specialised in sorceries of pure power. Which wasn't to say that Raynare couldn't do mind magic or that Mittelt couldn't fight; they merely had different specialties, decided for them by the Sin which had consumed their Virtue once they Fell.

"Oi, Rayray!" Mittelt yelled as she entered the bolt-hole. "Bossman ain't too happy with us!" She quickly perched daintily on a cushion, the motion at complete odds with her annoyed, irreverent tone.

Raynare emerged from a corridor, her expression twisted in bitter anger. "Lord Kokabiel must understand that we couldn't have accounted for...that." She couldn't quite kill the shudder that ran through her at the thought. The show of weakness just made her more livid.

Mittelt shrugged. "He doesn't care how we do it, he just wants the brat dead. He's sending reinforcements, if that helps."

Raynare blanched. "By Father's tomb I hope it's not him. That man...he can be as bad as that thing was."

Mittelt flipped her hair, unconcerned by her leader's distress, then made a lazy motion with one hand. A book on a corner table shot from where it lay into her waiting hand, and the petite Fallen engrossed herself in her reading.

Raynare, on the other hand, returned to her room. With every step her foul mood darkened further, and by the time she shut her door behind her it had grown unstable enough that it gave shape to a foolish plan through which to vent her wrath. 'You won't escape me this time, dear Iss-ei~'

Kalawarner looked up in concern as Raynare's demented cackling echoed through the partitioned basement, but Mittelt dismissed her worries without even looking up from her book.

Even as the cackling continued, Kalawarner sighed. She really wished she hadn't left with Mittelt and Raynare…

The most junior of the Fallen slipped out of the bolthole, claiming she 'didn't want to stay near a maniac'. Mittelt grunted a half-aware acknowledgement, but that was all.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Underworld was not a world suited to bearing life.

Over ninety-percent of its surface was completely barren, which was a major improvement from its natural state of ninety-nine percent and represented the work of millennia invested in magical terraforming. The Devils and the Fallen Angels alike shared the ball of dust and rock, staking their claims on the dark mirror of Earth and doing their best to battle the harsh landscape into submission.

Quite a few of its many blasted plains played host to some vast structure or another, Devils and Fallen Angels all being quite fond of shows of power and wealth. It was a rare member of either race with any influence at all that didn't have themselves built some form of grand residence, though the Seventy-Two Pillars of the Devils were the most obvious guilty party.

On one plain in particular, however, there rested a bizarre fusion of a medieval castle-city and a massive business complex, all sharp angles and all-black. Like someone shattered an obsidian slab and then tried to melt it back into one piece again.

If the architects were attempting to create a finished product so stereotypically sinister-looking as to border on comical, they had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Deep within this bizarre, ominous fort, a stern-faced man with a full beard sat behind a desk doing paperwork. Paperwork which, by all rights, should have been his boss' responsibility. Unfortunately, Azazel had been called away to break up a spar that'd gone too far, so the dull task had been passed to Baraqiel instead.

Though he'd never admit it, Baraqiel almost cheered when his mind-numbing task was interrupted by the appearance of a priority communications circle appearing in the office.

The progenitor of Holy Lightning gestured to the circle, accepting the 'call'. "Oh! Lord Baraqiel! I was hoping to contact Lord Azazel…"

Baraqiel vaguely recognised the Fallen on the other end of the communication. One of the younger members of the Grigori, sent on a mission to Devil territory recently if his memory served. "Unfortunately, Azazel is indisposed. It seems the Vanishing Dragon decided to spar with Slash Dog. Again." Baraqiel massaged the bridge of his nose. "Naturally, the Governor-General had to go break that up before they could destroy more than about a quarter of Dudael Keep."

Noticing how pale the girl's face became at the thought, Baraquiel moved on. "Such matters aside, what seems to be the problem?"

The blunette, whose name still escaped him, swallowed audibly. "W-well, Raynare's been acting...strange. Ever since she failed the first time to kill the Gear holder and had her soul burned, she's been acting unstable and paranoid. I really think-"

Baraquiel interrupted the girl, a thunderous expression on his face. "Raynare did what?! Her orders were to observe the boy, not kill him! And what's this about her soul being burnt?!"

The blunette visibly flinched back in the face of the being who had, once upon a time, been known as the Wrath of God by every being between Hell and Heaven. "W-when Raynare tried to kill the boy, some...thing attacked her to protect him. It used flames black as Azazel's wings, flames that Raynare said hurt her like nothing since her Fall. When Mittelt checked her over, there was damage to her body and her soul." She shuddered. "That malice...I can't remember ever feeling anything like it…"

By the time she finished speaking, Baraqiel had mastered himself once again and spoke with a steady voice. "That is troubling...Nothing should be able to hurt one of us like our Fall." He pursed his lips. "Tabling that for the moment, why in Helel's name did she go so blatantly against her orders? Raynare is almost slavishly devoted to Azazel."

The girl - ah, now he remembered her name - spoke up again as he looked at her expectantly. "Ah…A couple weeks ago, Raynare came back with new orders for us, saying to eliminate the boy instead of observing him." Kalamazoo said.

'...Wait, that can't be right.'

Baraqiel frowned. "New orders? From whom?"

The blunette had just opened her mouth to reply when the communications array shattered. Baraqiel leapt from his seat immediately, rapidly casting the magical equivalent of a redial function - but to no avail. Six times he repeated his efforts, each time equally in vain.

Finally, he spun and slammed his fist into the desk, leaving a sizeable dent in the heavily enchanted metal. Thankfully, he hadn't wreathed his fist in Holy Lightning, or he'd owe Azazel a new desk.

And a new office.

And a new tower.

Instead, he just exhaled wearily, sank into his chair and grumbled. "I'm too old for this shit…"

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In a room not so far away from Azazel's office, a slender but powerfully built man sat in a chair so impeccably comfortable that it was said a Fallen could be aligned to Acedia in an instant just by placing their weight on it. Raven locks framed an angular face, and long, tapering fingers tapped idly on the side of an empty glass. Violet robes hung loosely, their size obscuring lean, chiseled muscles.

There could be no doubt among anyone who saw him: Kokabiel radiated a sense of barely restrained danger, like a cursed Muramasa blade left sheathed for far too long.

Before him stood a fairly nondescript man. He was neither excessively tall nor significantly short, his build was neither especially bulky nor lean; even his clothes were unadorned - a simple black tunic, pants and boots made up the entirety of his plain outfit.

Indeed, the only thing noteworthy about the man's appearance was the shock of silver-grey hair on his head, with bangs that nearly obscured his violet eyes.

The formidable seated Cadre regarded the Fallen who he considered his right hand. An elegant hand rose to gesture at a magic circle which had, until moments before, been piggybacking off Kalawarner's own communication circle. "As you can see, my plans seem to be beset on all sides with incompetence and cowardice alike. I want you to go to Baraqiel in half an hour. Inform him my scientists detected an anomaly preventing us from communicating with Kuoh, and tell him I'm willing to part with my valued assistant to 'ensure the safe return of our subordinates.'"

The sardonic tone of voice and sneering expression Kokabiel bore for his final words left no doubt as to their authenticity. "Naturally, I want you to assist Raynare and Mittelt with their mission for as long as they remain useful. After that, I leave things to your discretion."

The silveret smiled. It was a disturbed, toothy thing that made his eyes glint unsettlingly, and after seeing it you could only ever wonder how you thought of its bearer as normal.

Kokabiel continued, unconcerned by his subordinate's psychotic grin. "As for Kalawarner and Dohnaseek…" The Cadre's expression sharpened into a glare that could have sliced through dragon scales. "Teach them what it means to betray Kokabiel."

The cold rage faded over the next few seconds, Kokabiel's face smoothing and returning to its earlier appearance of aloof aristocracy. "Do you have any questions?"

The silver haired Fallen, slasher grin long gone, shook his head. "No sir. I, Mastema, the Flatterer of God, will complete your orders with great vigor." Came the genial reply. And with it and a sharp salute, Mastema spun on his heel and marched from Kokabiel's chambers with a purpose.

Left alone, the Watcher of the Stars reached out and poured himself another glass of bourbon. "I swear," he sighed, "sometimes I think my followers will kill me with their shenanigans before I can die in battle." He raised the glass to his lips, leaving it to reflect his fond smile in the dark room.

"Not long to go, now…"
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

AN: Another week, another chapter. This almost didn't get finished on time, but I managed to get it done. As alway, I offer my thanks to Teninshigen and Magery for offering their insight. Also, those of you who've read Magery's quest Of Gods and Monsters: A Raynare Quest over on Sufficient Velocity might recognize my nod to "The Chair". If you haven't read the Quest, do so. Magery's a talented guy.

 

[Xanothos]

Prologue 6: Oblivion Absolution​

Humans are, when you get right down to it, separated into two distinct camps.

There are those who, upon hearing certain sounds - gunshots, shattering glass, footsteps from an unknown source or the quiet screeching of metal rubbing metal - would put their heads down, their hands in their pockets and the pedal to the metal as they tried to put as much distance as possible between them and whatever situation might try and pull them into it.

Then there are the people who would perk up, grab a flashlight and enthusiastically wander down the dark alley with a cheerful shout of 'Hello? Who's there?'.

For future reference, the easy way to figure out who's who along this divide is to mark a big red button with 'UNIVERSAL SELF-DESTRUCT, PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', hide it somewhere vaguely out of the way, then leave for five minutes and come back. By the time you check on it there'll be a flock of curious onlookers daring one another to press the button.

The point is, the sounds of clashing metal and the sight of rising dust from just inside Kuoh Academy's border-wall should have had the walkers on the fairly busy street directly beside the same wall either scurrying for cover or clambering over one another to peer inside. Which made me all the more thankful that Devils had millennia of experience in hiding themselves and their activities from humanity, as well as the magic to turn that experience into wards.

Mostly thankful, anyway. After all, they were the only thing letting Kiba and I spar in the open like this. So, the degree to which I was thankful tended to fluctuate depending on how badly I was getting my ass kicked.

Which, surprisingly enough, left me fairly grateful lately.

I was by no means having an easy time - I was being pressed to my utmost limit, just like I always was when Kiba made time to train with me, and the frustration of never really feeling like I had a grip on things was always simmering at the back of my mind. It was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that, through Kiba, I was doing battle with the teachings of the legendary swordsman Okita Souji himself, but being completely unable to land so much as a glancing blow still got to me anyway.

One of the blunted knives that I'd been using in our matches shook in my grip as I barely parried a strike of Kiba's shinai, but the seconds it bought were enough for me to raise my other hand palm-first towards my opponent. Light shone in my sleeve as glowing tracery shot across my arm to my hand, the Magic Crest bestowed upon me by Avenger's Monte Cristo Mythologie running the calculations necessary for the spell far faster than I could ever have done so.

Humanity in this world had the ability to use magic - but they were not, themselves, magical beings. Where other races could use magic as easily as they could breathe, humans were forced to instead treat spellcasting as a kind of science. Like a program, each spell required the mage to calculate the proper 'input', interface with the 'server' and then execute the 'program'.

Luckily for me, Avenger's first Noble Phantasm had implanted a Magic Crest in me. Outside Avenger's parallel of Earth it couldn't quite fulfil its original purpose, since it relied on universal principles that didn't exist here - but what it could do was handle the heavy-lifting of magic. Like a computer it could run all the necessary numbers with barely any input from me, placing my magical ability several notches higher on the ladder than my actual knowledge should allow for.

That said, I still needed to learn spells before I could cast them - and the two weeks of practice I had under my belt weren't enough for me to reach any great heights. I had a couple of tricks now, but my most-practiced skill was still one of the most oft-underlooked entries in any mage's arsenal.

Underlooked or not, though, it had potential - not in power, per-say, but versatility. Kiba had learned that lesson well, and remarkably quickly; he'd only fallen for it once, and that had gotten me closer to a hit than anything else had. Now, he knew better, and the moment he saw the mandala flare to life over my palm he disappeared from my sight with only a burst of displaced dust to show he'd run rather than teleporting.

Unfortunately for him, I could learn too.

My telekinesis grabbed hold of a sizable chunk of earth, ripping it from the ground and hurling it over my shoulder closely enough to leave dust on my shirt. I almost breathed some of it in as I spun, hurling one of my knives as hard as I could with hard-practiced technique.

The earthen projectile was nowhere near fast enough to catch Kiba, which he proved with an expert dodge, but that wasn't what it was for. Its actual role it played perfectly, forcing the Knight into the path of my knife and leaving him to bat it away with his sword rather than dodging it as he normally would.

Light gathered in the Knight's off-hand even as his main blade was forced out of guard to deflect the projectile, his Sacred Gear forming a new blade to intercept my anticipated follow up-

Which made the look of bewilderment on his face when I vanished in a blue flash and re-appeared directly behind him, 'blades' at his throat and kidney, all the more satisfying.

Knife skills and spell-casting had eaten up a lot of the past two weeks - but there had been time left over for me to practice other things. While my ability to wield the Count's abilities was still in its infancy, and my proficiency was from from even a tenth of his, I could at least use Avenger's second Noble Phantasm, Enfer Château d'If. Even if it was limited to a sort of quick-step.

Avenger had explained it to me as 'Escaping the Concept of a Distance between two points', but I wasn't sure I'd quite managed to wrap my head around everything he was trying to convey. Still, I at least understood that it was exhausting. I could only pull it off a few times before I'd keel over for a while.

In front of me, Kiba loosened his grip on his blades and let them fall, where they vanished into motes of light. Still, I didn't let my guard down; the last time I'd thought he was at my mercy he'd used something called Utsutsemi, leaving me with nothing more than fingerprints on his jacket and a fetching new set of bruises for my cranium.

Realising that I wasn't going to leave myself open for a counterattack after a few seconds of waiting, a subtle tension left Kiba's body as he spoke. "That's your win, Johan. I have to admit, I'm impressed; even when I'm holding back so much, defeating me after only two weeks is incredible progress for a Devil, let alone a human."

Relaxing my own muscles, I lowered my blunted knives into the most basic facsimile of a guard and stepped back, leaving Kiba to turn and face me with a small smile. I could feel a vague warmth fading from my face, and I knew that the golden glow of the Count's power had faded from my left eye. "It's your teaching, Kiba-san. Whoever taught you must have been...peerless."

Kiba nodded seriously. "Okita-sensei was a harsh teacher, but a truly incredible swordsman. Fitting, for a former Captain of the Shinsengumi."

I painted a look of tired shock over my features as I replied. "I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised that Okita Souji was reincarnated as a Devil, should I?"

"All I can say is that the Lord Lucifer has good taste in subordinates, if Okita-sensei is any indication." Kiba replied easily.

I nodded in agreement, wondering if there was anything else to say for a moment before a new voice entered the conversation. "Good job."

Kiba and I both turned to look as Koneko stepped unhurriedly forward from where she had been idly watching us, raising a fist as I approached. I raised my own, feeling the thud when we knocked knuckles. I didn't even wince anymore, and Koneko gave a small nod of acknowledgement. "You're getting stronger."

The petite rook had graduated from pointed looks to full sentences when she dealt with me over the course of the past two weeks. Going by Rias' reactions, I had effectively reached the level of 'friendly acquaintance' in Koneko's books. I had quite possibly set some kind of record.

We'll forge an Avatar of Vengeance of you yet, oh host of mine. Your performance today showed...acceptable progress. As a reward for your diligence, I shall begin to teach you how to use Les Flammes de Rancune. My cold and merciless Flames of Rancor will be the perfect quench for the blackened steel that your heart and existence shall soon become.​

I had become so used to the Count chiming in with his commentary as I went about my life that I barely did more than twitch an eye if he caught me off guard. As things were, I acknowledged him with a nod that barely counted as a motion, then got on with things.

A twist of my wrist and a snap of my fingers conjured a mandala - a different shape, this time, and quite a bit smaller. By the time I finished turning to Kiba it had done its job, depositing a box in my hand after pulling it from its extra-dimensional home.

It was kind of mind-boggling that this world considered the creation, maintenance and access of a dimensional pocket to be a cantrip. I wasn't complaining though.

I waved the Knight over as I raised the box, plunking it down in his hands once he was close enough. "I know you said that you were happy to do this as a favor, but I thought I should get you something nice." I raised a finger, waving it back and forth. "It's a gift, not payment, so you can't refuse it."

Kiba sighed ruefully as he lifted the box, one corner of his lips turning up in a much more genuine smile than the expressions he usually wore, and beside me Koneko offered a hand which I promptly low-fived.

Kiba gave her a look with more than a little pout in it, but the Rook was unrepentant. "Outplayed." She said simply, leaving Kiba to chuckle to himself and shake his head.

"Well, when you put it like that, what can I say but yes?" He asked wryly, opening the box quickly to reveal a basic kit for sword care and maintenance.

"I know you usually use your Sacred Gear for swords, but I figured you would have at least one sword that you didn't make yourself." I paused, scratching my head sheepishly. "Soooo...yeah." I never was any good at gifts. Giving or receiving.

Kiba closed the box with a quiet little smile, clapping me on the shoulder. "It's a wonderful gift, Johan. Thank you." He regarded the box. "I'll make sure to make good use of it."

I smiled back at him. "I'm glad." Stretching my arms out above me and bending my back a bit, I groaned to myself as I felt the familiar low-level fatigue make itself known. "Now, I think it's time for my magic tutoring. I'd better hit the showers."

A quick gesture slid both of my training knives through a mandala and into my pocket dimension, and with them stowed away I offered Koneko and Kiba a sharp nod each before trekking back to the clubhouse.

I'd barely taken a few steps before my stride paused, held in place for a moment by a sense of unease that was all too familiar. It was a bizarre sensation; like clawed fingers lightly tracing the trenches and furrows of my brain, while twin tendrils of an unknowable texture probed the workings of my spirit. What was worse, it seemed like whenever I left the clubhouse for more than maybe half an hour the stress would always return.

I shivered, the involuntary motion breaking my frozen stature, then lengthened my pace as I stepped forward once more. As had become the norm, Avenger offered no comment on the random bouts of anxious tension. Whether because they were products of my own subconscious or because he wanted me to figure it out myself, I didn't know.

Thankfully, the ominous feeling abated almost immediately upon my crossing the old school building's threshold. Feeling its oppressive influence peel away left me breathing a sigh of relief.

"Oh? Is everything alright, Jo-han-kun?"

The familiar lilting voice that spoke up from my right helped me shake off the last dregs of my nerves, an anticipatory grin rising behind my mask of neutrality. Talking with Akeno was always entertaining; I had very few opportunities to truly let my degeneracy off its leash these days, and our innuendo-filled back-and-forth was never dull.

The way it let me sharpen my wit for face-to-face conversation, in comparison to the usual delay of online communication, was merely icing on the cake.

"Ah, Akeno-san," I replied, turning with a smile. "It's nothing; I've just been feeling things I don't quite understand."

Akeno's own smile was demure in a way only hours of practice could achieve, the glinting of her eyes belying the expression's innocence. "Is that right? Well, I hear that's normal for a growing boy…"

The shudder that ran through me wasn't entirely fake. "Spare me that curse; I barely survived puberty the first time around." A few seconds passed for our mutual smiles to sombre a tad. "But seriously, I've been feeling a strange...attention, I guess, whenever I got outside." I described the sensation as best as I could in hopes that Rias' Queen could offer some insight.

Once I'd finished, Akeno tapped her chin with a finger a few times while humming in thought. "That doesn't sound familiar to me...I'll ask Rias if she knows anything, okay?"

I inclined my head. "I appreciate it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to hit the showers."

Amethyst eyes twinkled with mischief, but Akeno didn't say a word as I walked away. She knew as well as I did that, sometimes, the most suggestive thing to say was nothing at all.

Following a thorough, though rapid, scrubbing, I made my way to the ORC club-room. Rias was sitting behind her desk, attention focussed with utmost precision on a manga in her hands. From the well-worn cover, I could extrapolate that she'd read the slim volume from cover to cover numerous times before.

Understandable. It was JoJo, after all.

She looked up from her book as I entered, slipping a bookmark into it before she snapped it shut. "Oh, Johan-san. It is about time for your lesson, isn't it?" She paused, then snapped her fingers and picked up an envelope from the surface of her desk to hold out to me. "That reminds me; Sona-chan was pleased with your work. You'll be hired part-time as a janitor and she sent some advance pay from your first paycheque. She already deducted Tsubaki-chan and Reya-chan's fees from it, so you don't have to worry about that."

I nodded my thanks as I accepted the proffered envelope. I had my mother to thank for my access to disposable income; she'd taught me all too well the skills of a homebody, and I managed to put them to good use cleaning the old schoolhouse. Apparently I'd pulled it off well enough to impress even Sona.

Rias got up from behind her desk with a smile, walking around as I pocketed the envelope. "If you don't mind, Johan-san, I think I'll stay and watch your progress. I have to admit I'm curious as to what methods you favour."

I considered her for a moment, but I didn't find any real reasons to say no. So, I just nodded my agreement.

A necessary choice. Better to show one card and let them assume it is all you hold, than let them notice the ace up your sleeve. My teachings are for you, and it would be prudent for them to remain that way.​

I was half sure that the main reason Dantes wanted to keep some of my abilities in reserve was so that I'd be able to do a dramatic reveal later, rather than him mistrusting the Devils. However, his tale was one of abrupt, senseless betrayal on the part of those he called friends, so...there was really no way to be sure.

A knock on my door snapped me from my reverie. It appeared my teachers had arrived.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kuoh wasn't the largest of towns by any nation's standards, but it was big enough to warrant an airport - though that may have been for the convenience of the heiresses Gremory and Sitri, considering it had been built in a staggeringly short amount of time and completed only days before they began attending Kuoh Academy.

Coincidence? Not in a million years.

The fact remained, however, that regardless of how it had come about Kuoh had an airport - and an international airport at that. The significance of that distinction was that one Asia Argento, former Holy Maiden and current excommunicate of the Roman Catholic Church, had just disembarked from her flight in precisely that airport.

She had heard word that his journey had taken him here, so when she had been discarded by the only family she had ever known, there was only one place that she'd considered. She knew that he likely believed himself a monster, unworthy to even be in her presence, but she believed in him.

She knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was that of God within Freed Selzen, whatever he may think of himself.

The blonde had found a map of the town off to one side of the terminal and buried her nose in it, looking for a likely place to start looking, but was surprised from her attentions by a large hand coming to rest on her shoulder.

She jumped, spinning around to see a tall man wearing odd clothing standing beside her. Without looking her way, the man spoke, Italian flowing smoothly from her lips. "Argento, right? It's not safe here. I'll take you to the church of this town; the people after you won't be able to get in without a great deal of trouble."

Asia blinked at the man, bewildered by the sudden turn of events. "I'm sorry, but...who are you?"

The man let his hand drop off her shoulder. "Dohnaseek. I'm a Fallen Angel who's thrown his lot in with the only priest in this Devil-infested shithole of a town."

Asia blanched. A Fallen, here for her? Well, she'd known that the Grigori had a habit of taking in the excommunicated, but this didn't sound like a recruitment speech.

Before she could even reply, Dohnaseek swore under his breath. A moment later, all throughout the terminal, people crumpled to the ground like marionettes with their strings cut.

Dohnaseek, reacting to something she couldn't perceive, slashed his hand through the air, a thin, wide blade of blazing azure light arcing across the room. As it passed the terminal's central point, it seemed to catch on something - and a clump of straw blonde hair drifted to the floor.

Their cover broken, the assailant dismissed their illusion to reveal the irate face of a young-looking girl. The reason for her rage was clear; namely, the pigtail missing from her head, which had been sliced off by the spell's passing.

"You want to play it that way?" the girl spat, raising a hand and forming a rose-colored trident of Light. "Fine. Let's dance, Donny-boy."

Dohnaseek looked his fellow Fallen dead in the eyes even as he pushed Asia behind him. "You don't want to do this, Mittelt. In a fight, you've never once matched that brute Raynare, and you and I both know that my days in Heaven's Archives gave me access to literal mountains of forbidden sorceries. You can't best me in a fight."

Mittelt smirked. "Good thing I don't have to." The small Fallen then clenched her fist, crushing the part of the Light she'd made deliberately fragile. With a sound like shattering of a thousand windows in tandem, pink Light erupted. Donahseek swore viciously, even as Asia stumbled backwards, clutching her eyes.

The former Sister stiffened when she felt a pair of thin arms encircle her in a vice-like grip, one hand gripping the front of her habit while the other clamped down over her mouth. Even as she struggled futilely, a voice whispered in her ear. "Don't worry, little nun. Your sacrifice will elevate us to status beyond your imagination. Rejoice, for your life shall now hold meaning."

Tears welled up in Asia's eyes as she tried her best to writhe away from Mittelt's grasp, and the last thing she heard was Mittelt sighing before Light took everything away.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The world blurred as the smaller Fallen rapidly zig-zagged out of the way of Dohnaseek's arcing orbs of sapphire Light.

Dohnaseek faced Mittelt resolutely, showing no indication that he'd been affected by the burst of light."If you want to get the drop on me, you'll need to do more than just rely on tricks that were stale when you were born, dear."

Mittelt's only reply to the Fallen who had long ago been a lover, more recently a friend, and most recently of all just an ally was a scoff.

A twisting gesture from Dohnaseek conjured blue sigils all around Mittelt's feet and, bare seconds later, stakes of Light lashed out from the circles. Each thrust targeted a part of Mittelt's legs such that even a single hit would render Mittelt unable to walk.

Yet even as she was impaled through the legs in multiple places, Mittelt only smirked.

The illusion, woven of Light and Sin, shattered like spun glass and the real Mittelt drove her spear of Light into Dohnaseek's back...only to have it slam to a halt against a plate of azure Light.

Mittelt dropped her spear in an instant, the construct fading back into the primordial plane of Light, but her backstep was a hair too slow. A massive, ice-blue hand erupted from the barrier, wrapping around her and pinning arms, legs and wings even as it lifted her from the ground.

Dohanseek's construct brought Mittelt around to face him, the grasp too firm to let her do more than vibrate slightly with her efforts to escape it. For all his faults, Mittelt had to admit that her ex could weave Light with the best of them, no matter the limitations his two wings placed on the breadth of sorceries at his disposal.

More than a millennium of practice would do that for a guy.

"Mittelt, Mittelt, Mittelt." Donahseek's voice was filled with a mixture of fondness and sorrow. "Wherever did we go wrong, that our paths would diverge such?"

Mittelt shot him a look of disdain. "You know damn well why we split up. You actually like these hairless, dull-brained apes."

Dohnaseek sighed sadly. "You didn't always hate them. I remember when it started, when you encountered that sickening excuse for a being."

Mittelt's eyes filled with Wrath at the memory, the small Fallen redoubling her struggles.

Dohnaseek clenched his fist. "I understand your hate, but the actions of the few are no reason to condemn the many! Among the humans even heartless murderers look down upon that scum - they are less than dirt in the eyes of their fellow man."

Mittelt opened her mouth to reply, but anything she said was lost in the explosion of sound that erupted out of nowhere. If Mittelt's earlier technique had sounded like the simultaneous destruction of a thousand panels of glass, then this noise was reminiscent of a rocket taking flight.

Rather fitting, considering the wave of destruction that consumed the terminal.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As Dohnaseek slowly felt his consciousness trickle back into his body, he let out a groan best known to teenagers everywhere at roughly seven AM on a school-day. His eyes cracked open, dislodging dust only to reveal yet more of the stuff, drenched in shadow. As he slowly, painfully regained his feet, a flick of his hand conjured an incandescent blue orb to illuminate the devastated terminal.

Dohnaseek had seen more than his fair share of wanton death and destruction in his time. But even despite that, he shuddered as he looked out on the abattoir the airport had become.

Hundreds of bodies, rent asunder more violently than even the most brutal of attackers could accomplish. Blood and viscera would be running across the floor were it not for the dust that settled and soaked it in, creating a congealed mess of disgusting dark red. And the smell…

Dohnaseek grimaced as his attempted breath came right back up again, and barely managed to stop his lunch going with it. He kept his breaths coming in through the mouth from that point on.

Battered and wounded, his ward snatched from him at the moment of his triumph, Dohnaseek hobbled from the tomb the airport had become. He'd need Freed's help for this one; that attack hadn't been one a two-wing was capable of.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Wheels within wheels within wheels, the mask of peaceful days unpeeled to show the blood and bone beneath. With many eyes watch fleeting shadows, the battle-lines begin to narrow and all the petty words of men are cursed to die away. Plots steeped long in sound and fury rise to greet the day, and though the candlelight still flickers the rain is on its way.

Who shall take the stage today, and prove themselves the victor? Shall wicked madness have its way, end all things with a whisper? Or will the righteous rise above and mend the mystics' fissures?

This tale has only just begun, the wind blows dark and fell - but what new Hell tomorrow knows? Only time can tell…
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
AN: Well, here we are. Things are beginning to escalate, and will continue to do so. As always, thanks to Teninshigen for making it all purest and Magery for telling me when I'm making bad decisions. Finally, I'm going to shamelessly shill my new fic, a collaboration between the aforementioned Teninshigen and I. It is a DxD fic, entitled "Of Gods and...Men?", and it can be found on posted by me on Sufficient Velocity, and by Teninshigen on both Spacebattles and Fanfiction.net.
Anyways, enjoy, and I'll see ya'll next week.

 

[Xanothos]

Prologue 7: A Study in Mystery, Part 2​

My first indication that my day was about to take an unexpected turn was when the ground began to shake, jarring both my hands and my focus to the point that the spellform I had been weaving between my hands destabilised and collapsed into nothingness.

The book whose levitation had been the point of the spell fell from the air with a thump that was barely audible over the noise of groaning earth, shaking decorations and falling objects. My incredibly calm response to the surprise was to damn near fall out of my chair and ask, "What the fuck was that?!"

Rias shot to her feet, producing a phone even as she left the room at a quick gait. Tsubaki shared a look with Reya for a moment, then turned back to me and rose from her seat with a bow. "I think we'll have to take this up at another time, Lewis-san," she told me as she turned to stride to the door.

Reya followed her, leaving me with a friendly smile and a request to, "Be sure to practice your telekinesis before our next meeting; we'll be testing you!"

Ordinarily I'd have snapped off an overly dramatic salute, but since I was understandably distracted I settled for just an absent nod as the brunette vanished through the doorway.

I spent the following half-hour wearing a divot in the floor as I paced, turning possibilities over and over in my mind and shooting looks at the door as I debated heading out. Part of what kept me from doing so was Koneko, still lying on a couch and keeping a lazy eye on my back-and-forth motions.

In the end, however, it was the buzzing of her phone that broke me from the cycle of steps. As she checked the device, looking up at me afterward with eyes that were more expressive than was usual for her, my eyes came to rest on a nearby TV remote. A bit of fiddling activated a monitor on one of the walls, and a bit of guess-work found a news station.

An androgynous reporter was standing in front of what looked like a ruined airport. "...here at Kuoh International Airport, where police say what appears to be an act of terrorism has claimed more than two hundred innocent lives. We now go to the lead investigator, Detective Kenta Shirogane, with more."

Koneko eyed the screen with a slight curl of distaste to her lip, muttering a single derisive word. "...Crows."

If I hadn't been so keyed up, the softness of her voice might have had it go unnoticed. As it was though, my brain took the single word and ran with it. 'Fallen did this?' I wondered incredulously, staring at the massive building that had collapsed completely in on itself. 'None of those four should be capable of that level of destruction...unless!'

A voice from the television snapped me from my thoughts, and I saw a slender, stern-faced man with bluish-black hair was regarding the camera with palpable intensity. "...in the process of gathering all the facts, but this was definitely no accident. Someone did this deliberately." Even across the airwaves, the look in his eyes was somewhat discomfiting in how it seemed to pierce through me. "Whoever was responsible for this slaughter, know this: I will not rest until you face justice for this heinous act of mass murder."

With that, the man—Kenta—turned away from the camera to collect himself, and I muted the the television.

Usually, I would dismiss a statement like that as useless platitudes from an overworked member of the force, but that Detective's rage was palpable. I certainly didn't envy whoever the hammer would fall on – Fallen Angel or not.

...Not that I was particularly calm myself.

I could hear the plastic of the remote creaking under my grip as I glared holes in the screen, keeping myself sitting still since I didn't trust myself to stand up yet. In the back of my mind Dantes' wrath had risen to match and exceed my own – somewhat tempered by his joy in my own anger, I felt, but no less real for it.

I should have known that Vengeance would never take root in someone incapable of this rage. I understand now, boy; this white heart of yours is not a natural state. I can feel it – the true black heart within, caged and buried by civility and sloth.

I tell you now, boy – the heart of white you wear out of fear and the wish for companionship; it shall not avail you here! You must reach down and grasp that burning ice of rage with both hands! Let not the cage be buried, but lift it up high and turn its entrance to the world; when the time comes, release it – that we might show all those who oppose us what it means to bear the wrath of the King of the Cavern and his protégée!​

My muscles were starting to hurt. The tension all over my body, and especially in my face as the rictus of anger pulled my features into something I was unsure I wanted to see...it strained me to the point of pain.

If anything, it only made me angrier. 'I know. I don't care if I'm not ready; we're going. Whoever did this is going to pay.'

Good...good! This rage, this hate, this resentment; all of these will grant you the strength to stand against the World itself should you need to! Such is the power of an Avenger!​

Despite the control I tried to exert when I stood, the chair I had fallen into still skidded back several inches. My footsteps came down on the wooden floor like falling bricks as I stalked to the door.

Koneko grabbed for my arm as I passed her, but only her fingertips brushed against my sleeve as I turned and fixed her with a steady gaze. "Toujou-chan. I cannot...I will not stand by and do nothing at a time like this. Surely, you can understand that?"

Traces of frustration flashed across her face, even as the tiniest of nods moved her head. "...Prez told me to keep you safe. I want you safe. You're not leaving."

...That was probably more than I'd ever heard her say in a day, much less the span of a few seconds. Under other circumstances, I might have paid more attention to that – maybe even rejoiced in it. But right now?

She was trying to keep me confined.
She was impugning on our freedom.
Even if it was for Our sake, We couldn't allow that.​

Dantes slid forward.

I slid backward.

And somewhere in the middle, everything became the black flames which devour light.

My/His/Our minds were one.​

Fingers and will flexed as one as We stood, resplendent in Our power once more, before the child who presumed to confine Us for Our own protection. Mayhaps it would have proven endearing, were it not so infuriating.

Yet We would act on neither perception, for We were the master of Our emotions, and would be ruled by Our will alone.

We regarded the artificial Demon with a cold gaze to match her snowy hair. She shook under the weight of Our malice, unfocused as it was, but still stood firm.

A strong will. Worthy of Our respect.

We spread Our arms to Our sides as We spoke, "Your worry for Our safety is noted, child, without basis though it is. We are more capable than you know." Our eyes narrowed. "But do you truly believe you can confine Us?

"What chains could you forge that We could not break?! Within what cell could you place Us that we could not escape?! We are the King of the Cavern, and We will not. Be. Confined."

The feline child frowned at Us and spoke with a quavering voice, "...If you give Lewis-s…" She paused, seeming to firm herself. "...If you give Johan-niisama back, I'll take him to Buchou…"

We could feel the ripples of emotion that He felt within Us at the address. No matter - He would call on Our power again soon enough; the Other known as Dantes would make sure of it.

"Very well, child of the mountains. We will reduce Ourselves to Our lesser forms...for now." We fixed the child with Our sternest expression. "Should you renege on our agreement, however, know that We shall return, and if our leaving must be by force then We shall not hesitate a second time."

Our minds fragmented, the resonance of the black flames dissolving as Our connection to It faded from Us/Him/me…

And I was standing in the ORC room once again, Dantes lurking in the shadows outside my thoughts.

...There was really only one thing I could say. "What the fuck was that?!"

…

That…
I did not like that.
I did not like that one bit.​

Well, that made two of us.

...I really just wanted to get my mind off what had just happened, now.

Koneko was staring at me, her expression inscrutable once more, as I looked at her. "So...I believe you made a promise?" I managed to ask, my voice hoarse and shaking more than I would like.

Koneko didn't say a word. She just sighed, opening the door and beckoning me forward.

As we left the room, she gave me a sideways look. "...You have issues."

I couldn't argue with that, now could I?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Raynare smirked, a cold, not entirely sane expression twisting her features as her eyes fixed on her prey.

She had spent two weeks meticulously, obsessively, learning Issei Hyoudou's schedule and habits. Now her target was heading home, just having left an adult video store, and she was ready to strike. 'He'll never see me coming.'

Raynare's savage grin went unseen under the illusion she wore as she walked past the teenager. Issei didn't even notice – and he still didn't notice as a palmed knife of pink Light flashed from beneath Raynare's concealment, its point seeking the pervert's brain stem as the Fallen Angel who wielded it spun.

Unfortunately for Raynare, she had failed to consider a single important factor: Rias Gremory actually cared about the humans under her purview – and as such, she'd made sure that Issei was never left unprotected.

Something Raynare learned rather abruptly when with a burst of displaced air and a flash of steel, Yuuto Kiba intercepted her strike millimetres from his underclassman's neck.

Issei spun around at the noise, gaping at the sight before him and freezing once he saw the malicious rictus of Raynare's now-unconcealed face.

"Run, Hyoudou-kun!" Kiba shouted, breaking the frozen moment, "Get to your home, bar your door and don't let your parents out of your sight!"

Issei barely hesitated before tearing off down the street, shouting gratitude over his shoulder as he went flat-out for home.

Raynare's scream of rage was completely wordless as she hurled a spike of Light at Issei's rapidly-retreating back, but it barely made it a few inches before Kiba struck it from the air with another sword. The same arc of the blade made its way for Raynare's neck, only a rapid beat of her wings to retreat saving the Fallen from injury.

"Damn you…DAMN YOU!" Raynare howled, spinning a massive hammer from the threads of Light within. "I'm going to crush you into paste!"

Kiba flashed her a grim smile as he brandished his swords. "You're welcome to try."

With another angered roar, Raynare charged the Knight, bringing her hammer down where Kiba was standing with a meteoric crash that launched shards of concrete and Light in equal measure.

In such a situation, one could be forgiven for thinking that Raynare had let her Wrath overcome her – given that she had attempted to use a weapon suited for destroying tanks on someone capable of moving faster than sight. Kiba certainly made that assumption—

—And got a nasty cut to the cheek from one of the Fallen's heels, the spike forged from rose-colored Light, for his troubles as Raynare turned her overhead swing into a sinuous forward flip to bring the weaponised footwear up through the Knight's approach vector.

Her wings spread wide as she hovered before Kiba, a spear of Light appearing in one hand even as more of the same celestial substance dripped from between the clenched fingers of her other hand and coagulated into a net.

Raynare looked down on Kiba with a disdainful expression, the rage in her eyes kept on a careful leash. "Quick little Devil, aren't you? That should have taken your head clean off."

Kiba stared at her, his face twisted in a pained grimace due to the long, smoking cut marring his once-flawless face. The twin blades he had been holding vanished even as a new pair took their place, thrumming with energies most Dark. "I suppose I should thank you. This scar will serve as a reminder to never underestimate my opponents."

Raynare scoffed, pointing her spear at Kiba as she ascended. "Stupid child. No matter how prodigal you may, I'm still two thousand years your senior! Where others have honed their power, I have been forced to hone my wits! I won't be brought low by the likes of—"

And that was as far as she got before she was forced to evade twin arcs of Darkness launched from the swung edges of her opponent's blades, finding herself in the path of a third that devoured her spear when she was forced to intercept it.

"All that experience," Kiba remarked, "and you still stop to monologue."

The Knight darted forward with a barrage of lightning-fast thrusts. Raynare's net morphed and split into two daggers, lashing out to meet each strike in turn almost before they were launched.

Two thousand years of life had left her plenty of time to hone her ability to read people, on and off the battlefield, and it showed in the almost preternatural way her blades moved to intercept Kiba's strikes in spite of their blistering speed.

Unfortunately for her, while she could go a ways to balancing the speed difference with her experience, she couldn't keep up completely.

A nick on her left cheek, a gash to her right thigh, a thin cut to her abdomen; as the exchange continued, Raynare was pushed back with nary an opportunity to counter-attack, even as she collected numerous minor cuts.

Finally, a miniscule lull in Kiba's furious flurry gave Raynare the opportunity to fling herself back and ascend, slamming her daggers together and stretching them into a long, stafflike spear. With a flourish, the spear began burning with a Light such a deep pink it was almost crimson, and Raynare prepared to dive towards her foe—

—Emptiness—​

—Only to flinch and hurl herself to one side, barely avoiding the orb of hungry crimson that would have reduced her wing to absolute nothingness if she'd continued. Her eyes widened again a moment later, and she launched her spear skyward to intercept the bolt of lightning that had flashed down at her despite the completely clear sky above.

"You hurt my cute little servant, vile thing," a female voice commented. "I'll make sure you regret that."

Raynare swallowed.

She was starting to feel like she might be in just the tiniest bit over her head.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As we approached the vicinity of the ruin that Kuoh International Airport had become, Koneko abruptly halted and pushed me behind her before taking up a defensive stance.

During our trip, I'd noticed that my usual feeling of being under the observation of something or someone had intensified, so I figured that Koneko had sensed them too, and that they were about to confront me.
...
I was wrong, of course.

The actual reason Koneko had put her guard up became apparent almost immediately: a dust-covered, wounded Dohnaseek stumbling around a corner ahead of us. He looked both ways up the street, his eyes half-lidded, then noticed us from beneath the brim of his bedraggled hat.

He blanched, then slowly raised his arms. "...Parley?"

Koneko narrowed her eyes. "...What happened?"

The Fallen coughed, then spat to one side. There was pink in the phlegm. "It's a long story, and I need to get back to the Father, but the short of it is that one of my former compatriots made off with a nun. The girl has a Sacred Gear and I suspect they intend to tear it from her soul."

"And why do you care about that?" I questioned, more than a little heat in my voice.

The damaged dandy look at me with a complicated expression on his face, weariness warring with discomfort. "Well, it's your choice to believe me or not, but I don't hate humans. The only reason I fought you to get Raynare away was because I was ordered to. After we returned to the Father, when he forced Raynare to leave for what she did I chose to stay. Not just because I dislike needless killing, but also to save my own skin."

I snorted. "Self preservation, huh? I don't know what to think of you, but I'll have my eye on you."

At least the naïvety of your white heart has its limits. If you had placed trust in this one, despite facing him in combat but a fortnight past, I…

I know not what I would do, in truth. But it would be drastic.​

I projected my urge to roll my eyes back towards the Count. 'I might hate myself sometimes but I'm neither suicidal nor stupid, o'Count.'

The only response my psychic squatter gave was a disbelieving snort. 'Well fuck you too, then.'

Feeling amusement and irritation radiate towards me with equal measure, I returned my attention to the situation at hand.

Dohnaseek was apparently trying to convince Koneko to let him pass, but the Rook was as implacable as the castle that represented her role. The situation was set to escalate further – at least, until an indistinct black blur shot past us, displacing the air with a thoom.

From further down the street, a familiar voice loosed an enraged shout, "Get back here! I haven't finished destroying the fabric of your very being yet!"

I shuddered. Whatever Rias was chasing had managed to get her angrier than I'd ever heard her before.

"...Prez, chill. She got away," Koneko commented dully as the Crimson-Haired Ruin Princess flew up beside us, glaring in the direction of her target. The Rook's voice seemed to penetrate Rias' rage, prompting her to spin and take in the sight of Koneko, Dohnaseek and I in a single glance.

She almost immediately lifted a palm to point at the downtrodden Fallen, only an instinctive snap of "Wait!" from me saving Dohnaseek from instant obliteration.

I promptly found myself on what was very definitely the wrong end of Rias Gremory in a flat-out rage, and the only reason I didn't completely lose my ability to speak was because my reptilian hindbrain was too petrified for fight-or-flight to kick in. "This guy asked for parley, it'd be bad form to kill him when he's actually cooperating!"

Rias' glare lasted another couple of seconds before she turned away, her arm lowering and a faint sigh accompanying the slouch of her shoulders.

While Rias was gathering herself, Akeno and Kiba approached, the former shooting Dohnaseek a look so caustic it would have melted glass. The Knight, on the other hand, looked more unwell than anything – which probably had something to do with the festering, singed cut on the side of his face. His veins were picked out around the wound in gold over a spreading area, reminding me a lot of the images I'd seen of blood poisoning.

Except, you know. Gold.

When Rias turned around again she seemed to have regained her composure, though the look she fixed me with was still distinctly unsatisfied. "I suppose I can assume you're not going to just stay out of the way where it's safe, Lewis-san?"

I met her eyes with a level expression and clenched teeth. "I can't just sit by and do nothing."

At my side, my first clenched just so, and the light vanished around it. A corona of inverted flames, outlined vaguely by an azure tinge where they met the rest of the world, engulfed my hand as cold rage fed the Flames of Grudge, the flames that had made Raynare turn and run during out first encounter.

They only burned for a moment before I flicked my wrist off to the side, dispelling the Flames. My point was made.

"You don't need to worry about me," I asserted, turning towards the airport. "The anger that I'm feeling right now…" Backward and forward, two minds digging in their heels at the very edge of abyssal black. "...will be more than enough to reap Vengeance for this massacre."

Dantes and I each retreated from the borderline merger, each feeling the strain from keeping ourselves apart, and I ignored the slight alarm that flashed in Rias' eyes as I turned to Dohnaseek. "Fallen-san. Do you know where the person who did this might be?"

Dohnaseek shook his head wearily. "I don't, but the Father should be able to find them. He's good with the Scriptures, especially for a human." The injured man promptly fumbled a phone from his pocket, turning away as he made a call, and I was left to chafe at the waiting once more.

Until Rias interrupted, at least. "Now hold on, Kiba's got Light poisoning; I need to get him back to the Academy for healing!"

Kiba's protests to the contrary fell on deaf ears.

Nobody was surprised.

"...Prez," Koneko interjected, "I'll go with Johan-nii. Go heal Kiba-sempai."

Akeno chuckled ominously. "Don't forget about me; Johan-kun isn't the only one that could do with a little...stress relief."

Rias aired her frustration with a sound somewhere between growl and sigh, but gave a sharp nod. "Fine. I'll see if Sona can send anyone to reinforce you all, but I can't guarantee anything." She stared each of us in the eye – first Rook, then Queen, then myself. "All three of you had better survive this, you hear?!"

If her voice was slightly desperate, none of us commented on it. We just did the only thing we could, and promised to return alive.

...Which was, as it turned out, easier said than done at the end of the day.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Wow, Rayray. You look like shit."

Considering how bedraggled Mittelt herself looked, her greeting was the height of hypocrisy – not that this seemed to bother the blonde at all, much like the irritated glare Raynare shot her from where she was stitching her cuts with Light.

"Cease your prattle, wench," a disdainful male voice called from a far corner of their hideout, "you have no place to speak. It was I who had to pull you out of that fight, I who had to rescue you from your former paramour's spellcraft. At least Raynare was forced to retreat in the face of three foes, and her injuries were sustained during a mission undertaken on her own initiative. You, however?" He scoffed. "Absolutely pitiful."

The sound of rattling chains followed the words as the man in the corner went about his work, securing the nun who was presently a bearer of the Sacred Gear called Twilight Healing.

Those who knew Mittelt would anticipate a scathing retort in a long-dead language at the very least. Maybe even an attack on the offender's mind. The fact that she instead frowned and looked away from the speaker was a far more poignant demonstration of the man's power than any physical demonstration.

As it happened though, such a physical demonstration had already been given. Something Raynare was keen to comment on. "Speaking of you cleaning up after Mittelt's failures," she began, "is there any particular reason you decided to level that airport?"

A gaze turned from its task to pin Raynare with the intensity of a falcon, and she hurriedly continued, "N-now, I'm not complaining about you getting rid of a bunch of those useless apes; that couldn't be further from the truth! I was just wondering if drawing so much attention was really a good idea…"

Raynare's frantic babbling came to an abrupt end as the target of her questioning emerged from the corner where he had been securing their prisoner, pulling on a pair of black gloves as he strode further into the light.

Mastema's mad grin, a white crescent splitting his face in a fashion most macabre, sent chills down Raynare's spine. "My dear girl, that was the point!" he declared. "How am I to engage in glorious, bloodsoaked combat if this mission remains a game of shadows?" With a snatching motion of his hand, the silver-haired man in black tore the wards and defenses of their hideouts to shreds. "Now, I do believe it is time that I carry out the duty that our Lord Kokabiel charged me with!"

Mittelt and Raynare shared a look of dread as he turned away.

Mastema formed a clawed grip with one hand, then thrust that hand into a fold in space. From the rift he withdrew a battered Kalawarner, who was promptly dumped unceremoniously on the ground. Her wings splayed to either side of her body, the only sign that she was still alive a low, agonised groan.

Raynare leapt to her feet, wincing at the pulls on her injuries. "What are you doing?!" she demanded, only to immediately blanch as her brain caught up with her mouth.

Mastema didn't seem to mind however, the look he gave her mixing pity and approval in equal measure. "Your loyalty to your comrades does you credit girl, but with this one it is misplaced. This traitorous dog," Mastema spat, planting a boot in Kalawarner's ribs with sufficient force to create a small shockwave, "almost cost Lord Kokabiel everything! If our wise Lord had not been monitoring communications at the time he was, we would've been cast out! Our race's chance of ascension would have been annihilated, by some stupid sow who couldn't stomach the death of a single human!"

By the time he finished speaking Mastema's whole face had been twisted into a nightmarish mockery of human features, rage and madness in equal measure distorting him to the point of monstrousness. Yet, in only a moment, that expression vanished to be replaced with his usual passivity. "For the crime of Treason against the Ascension and against Fallenkind, I sentence Kalawarner, daughter of the ex-Principality Zachiel, to the highest punishment that can be inflicted upon an Angel."

As Raynare and Mittelt looked on in horror, Mastema planted his boot in the small of Kalawarner's back, then almost gently took ahold of her wings, one in each hand.

If they listened—and they had no choice, in the otherwise silent building—the other two Fallen could hear Kalawarner's near-silent crying and the terror that resonated in it. "Goodbye, child. May the Stygian Quietus cleanse your sins."

Then with one, violent motion, Mastema tore Kalawarner's wings from her body and hurled them aside. Almost instantly, the feathered masses caught fire, and in moments they burned down to ashes as a sickly light shone from the flames.

An aborted scream lodged in the fledgling Fallen's throat as the Light within her turned upon her body and soul. Cracks formed on her flesh as it was transformed into an indestructible cage for her tortured mind and shredded soul. Within seconds, the transformation was complete. Kalawarner had been spiritually lobotomized and would now be forced to endure to the end of Creation, unable to do anything but watch.

Raynare and Mittelt were absolutely silent in the wake of the horror they'd just borne witness to – which was probably why the sound of the front door of their hideout impacting the back wall was so loud.

Five distinct figures entered the room. Two female. Three male.

All very pissed off.

The females were a study in contrasts. One was petite and short, the other tall and curvy. One had short, white hair, the other sported raven locks that hung to just above the floor. One's face was nearly emotionless, while the other wore the smile of a woman about to inflict horrific violence and thoroughly enjoy herself doing it.

The only thing the duo had in common? The aura of Devil magic emitting from their persons.

As for the males…

An Exorcist with silver hair, a Light sword in one hand and a Light pistol in the other, scowled at Mastema without blinking even once.

Dohnaseek, battered and wounded, nonetheless stood tall and looked to Mittelt with sorrowful resignation.

The third of them was the least remarkable of the group. A brunet with curly hair, bearing no particularly interesting features at all...except, perhaps, for the piercing blue eyes that darted between Raynare and Mastema at a pace so frantic it edged over into manic.

It was perhaps surprising that the brunet spoke first. "You piece of shit…" he breathed, and the normal-looking features became anything but as anger and disgust rose to prominence like a volcano erupting. "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU FOR THIS!"

None of the Fallen would have been particularly affected by hearing that particular line again. The pillar of night-black flames that engulfed the man's body, blowing a sizable hole in the roof and sending everyone but the Devils flinching back, did make it a bit more attention-grabbing though.

The side of the pillar erupted a moment later, diffuse black flames like a comet's tail streaming behind the blurring figure of the man alongside a substantial green scarf. Raynare had just enough time to see the burning black talons that engulfed the man's fingers and the eldritch lights like starry eyes that dotted the scarf before she got a much closer look at the talons than she would ever have wanted.

Only for a moment, though. After that, they had vanished through her torso and out her back, which was a bit out of her field-of-view.

Her choking gurgle hadn't made the full transition to a scream before the black fire leapt eagerly from the man's hand and devoured her from the inside out, roaring their satisfaction as the Flames of Grudge burnt even the Fallen's ashes out of existence.

Mastema just blinked, a grin slowly creeping across his face. "Well well well!" he declared. "Quite the nasty power you're in possession of, boy." His grin widened sharply. "I can't wait to tear it to pieces and rip your head off."

Before the battle-hungry Fallen could do more than take a step in the burning, snarling brunet's direction though, a bullet of Light scraped his cheek. Blood hadn't quite had time to well up at the cut before a small fist slammed home with a bit more accuracy, snapping his head back with a grunt.

He kept grinning. "This is fine as well; please, dance with me to your hearts' content! It shall make it all the more satisfying when I rip them from your chests!"
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dohnaseek absently spun a sword of Light in one hand as he approached Mittelt, the fingers of his other hand twitching as a swarm of needles swirled around it. They were both tired, both injured and they both recalled their previous fight very well indeed. How could they not? It had only been a few hours since they had matched spell to illusion.

There was one key difference between then and the present moment, however: Here, there was much less space for Mittelt to reposition when her opponent was distracted with illusions.

They both knew it. But Mittelt didn't have anywhere to run.

Dohnaseek sighed as they closed to a few paces. "I'd tell you to surrender, but I know you well enough to know you'll fight to the death so you aren't subjected to...that."

Dohnaseek looked at the husk that had been Kalawarner only minutes before and swallowed the gorge that threatened to rise. No matter how many times he'd seen it, the Stygian Quietus made him feel ill on a fundamental level.

Mittelt's response came, not in words, but in a bardiche of Light that arced for his throat and was handily parried aside by his wing, edged in scales of glacial Light.

Mittelt danced back out of range of his riposte, but a hurled spike of Light that followed landed a glancing blow on her arm. The next several moments were a blur of bright Light and black feathers, Mittelt acknowledging the futility of judicious illusions in such a cramped space. She'd have to save her illusory diversions for a key moment where they could turn the fight in her favour.

Unfortunately, for all her scheming, fate had other plans.

An eruption of black flames, brilliant lightning and incandescent light came in quick succession, and despite herself Mittelt whirled around to stare.

It was her last mistake.

A vortex of Enochian sigils, traced in dark blue, swirled around her by the time her attention returned. Dohnaseek had been given a moment of opportunity, and that was all he needed to weave a simple but powerful sleep compulsion on her. With her concentration as compromised as it was, she never had a chance to resist.

The petite blonde slumped to the ground unconscious.

Dohnaseek took a step forward to retrieve her and promptly did likewise as his legs finally gave up the ghost and let exhaustion get to them.

"Fuuuuuck…."
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Mastema was not a man who believed in doing things by halves.

If his opponents hadn't known that before, they figured it out quickly when he unleashed all eight of his coal-black wings at once and rained knives of Light from his fingers while howling in unrestrained glee.

All in the first seconds of the fight.

The Devils took a special care in avoiding the knives that was usually warranted by near-critical nuclear materials, while the Exorcist and the burning man batted them aside without care.

That didn't put Mastema off at all, and it showed as he sheathed his hands in clawed gauntlets of Light and dove at Baraqiel's spawn, slamming a fist into her midsection and hurling her backwards.

He clicked his tongue at her in mock reproach. "If you want to have a chance at beating me, child, you'll need to do better than some piddling lightning bolts!" He spread his arms wide, parrying the strikes of the Exorcist and the Anomaly with his wings almost absently. "Show me the proof of your bloodline, Nephilim! Show me Baraqiel's rage! Use your Holy Lightning! Or are you too much of a coward, hmmm?!"

The girl's only response was to cough wetly and spit out a wad of bloody phlegm, then fall to the ground.

Mastema blinked, then sighed in frustration. "Truly, I apologize. I should regulate my strength more; finishing this as quickly as that is no fun at all!"

That said, the eight-winged Fallen spun and rammed his fist into the Anomaly's face, launching him through a wall and out of sight. Next, he turned to the Exorcist, who was halfway through his Scripture when the Fallen punted him into a support pillar.

He was advancing after that other silveret when a white-topped ballistic missile exploded into his abdomen.

The small Devil hadn't really registered as a threat before that – thanks in part to her small stature and emotionless demeanour, undoubtedly. As he stumbled back and registered the feral rictus of rage her features had become though, Mastema found himself reconsidering his position.

"Fiery little Devil, aren't you?!" He crowed even as she pummeled him with blow after blow. The strikes would've been more than sufficient to reduce concrete to rubble, but to him? They might as well have been a deep-tissue massage, and from the frustration on the tiny Devil's face, she knew it. "As amusing as this is, I'm going to ha—gurk!"

Apparently the Devil didn't like the sound of his voice. Or at least, she had put a lot of force behind that uppercut to his chin.

ba-bump​

Lightning quick, his hand wrapped around her throat and began to squeeze. "You know, this was funny, at first. But now? I'm mad."

ba-bump​

The Anomaly was coming back through the hole in the wall, faster than any human athlete, but he wasn't close enough to make it. The Exorcist and the Nephilim were still down. The traitor Fallen had collapsed in the corner like the trash he was.

ba-bump​

The enraged eight-wing further tightened his grip on his prey, intent on snapping her neck, and a scream of helpless rage tore the air asunder…

ba—​

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I cried out helplessly.

Space twisted.

A severed hand fell to the floor with a wet thump.​

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

—bump​

There was a woman. A woman with black hair, cradling Koneko to her ample chest as the bells on her low-cut black kimono rang clearly in a room as silent as the gap between 'tick' and 'tock'. A large pair of black cat's ears were folded flat against her head, and two tails of the same abyssal shade swung menacingly in the air behind her.

I watched without a word to speak as the SS-Class Stray Devil Kuroka turned golden eyes bisected vertically by feline pupils on the eight-winged Fallen. "Crows who'd pick on defenseless kittens…" she began, and the space behind her suddenly exploded into the unsettling purple light of an octagonal magical seal that sent every instinct from my body to my soul into utter overdrive, "should be ready to suffer the consequences."
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
AN: Well, here it is. I apologize for the lateness of the chapter, but my beta, Teninshigen, had some IRL stuff to sort out, and I wouldn't feel right posting it without his expertise unleashed upon it. That said, he's back, I'm back, and if everything goes right, the last prologue chapter will be uploaded next Sunday. Enjoy!

 

[Xanothos]

Prologue Finale: Fateless Gospel​

As I watched a pissed-off nekoshou sadistically toy with a high-level Fallen who had dared to lay hands on her little sister, I came to the frankly epiphanic conclusion that today was a fucking disaster.

First, said high-level Fallen jackass destroys an airport and kidnaps Asia Argento. Then, when a couple of unlikely allies and I (seriously, who the fuck replaced Freed Selzen's personality with an ironically unholy amalgamation of Alexander Anderson and pre-corruption Kirei Kotomine?) went to confront him, it turned out that the jackass was Mastema. As in an actual, named Fallen Angel from the Bible.

We were outclassed from the start. And then I'd gone and used up entirely too much energy when I—

I almost fell back through my hole in the wall for the third time in a few dozen seconds, staggering during a wave of nausea. Whether I regretted ending Raynare's life or not, this was an awful feeling.

'Mom always did believe that ending the life of another sapient being was an act that would scar the soul.'

Your mother was wiser than you know, my partner of a heart not-so-white.​

The Count continued to speak as I grabbed the wall and steadied myself, grimacing as my vision swam.

Even as I speak, my – no, our Pitch-Black Flames of Vengeance are engraving a sigil of memory and proof onto your heart of hearts. An immortal reminder of the Vengeance that you have reaped.

So long as that mark remains meaningful—as you long as you remember that the taking of a life is never an act to treat as light—your heart of black will become an Avenger...and not a Beast.
​

I threw off a shudder as he said the final word. For some reason, that term made me feel...cold.

A particularly loud bang to my immediate right snapped me back into my present, reminding me once more that I really needed to stop spacing out in the middle of things before it got me killed.

Kuroka was still cradling her sister to her chest, but around her purple sigils appeared and disappeared between one moment and the next, lashing out at Mastema with writhing tendrils that were only visible from the way they distorted space. One such tendril yanked Mastema toward Kuroka even as several others snapped into being around his midsection, binding his arms and wings to his sides.

The kick that Kuroka then landed lit up the room like a comet dropping through the atmosphere and I realised that must be Touki. Bound and drawn towards Kuroka as he was, Mastema could only bend double to vomit blood and bile as the nekoshou followed her kick with a knee to his already battered abdomen.

Even as the Tempter of God was recovering, Kuroka vanished in a ripple of space and appeared above his head. Her heel gleamed with brilliant purple light as it came down on Mastema's head, driving it almost a foot into the concrete floor and shattering the surrounding material.

Approaching the crater, Kuroka paused to finally set her unconscious, wounded sister to the side. Then she reached down into the shattered ground and pulled Mastema up by his throat, her slim, clawed fingers wrapped around his neck as she didn't even seem to strain.

"When I'm through with you," The Sage purred maliciously, "you'll be begging for the release of death." She considered him. "But I won't grant it. You'll live on…" Her grip suddenly tightened. "As a testament to what happens when you lay a hand on my SISTER!"

I took that as my moment to start making my way toward Koneko when the other two were preoccupied.

That was a mistake, and it kicked off a chain of events that only took a few seconds to complete.

Kuroka's feral gaze snapped to me as I took my first stumbling step, and I instantly froze in my tracks.

As the SS-Class Stray Devil turned her focus on me, a tendril of distorted space snapped into being around me, Dantes' powers already reacting to the idea of being 'confined'.

Mastema, taking advantage of her distraction, pulled himself from her grip – heedless of the long gashes torn in his throat from her claws.

A rift of Light appeared immediately behind him the moment he was free. Willowy arms in white robes lined with crimson caught him as he slumped, the eight coal-black wings of the golden-blond Fallen behind him flaring from behind a dancer's build.

A coil of coruscating steel-grey Light shot from beneath the newcomer's robe, wrapped around the waist of an unconscious Mittelt and reeled her in. A second lashed out for Dohnaseek, but was intercepted by Freed in a streak of Light, the former Exorcist lashing out with a fist that gleamed with white-gold Light at the encroaching whip.

Liquid steel forged by an Angel's soul clashed with the hand of a mere man.

The hand lost.

But the man didn't move.

Freed flinched as the grey Light pierced through his aura and his arm, but he still stood firm. The newcomer went to attack again, but almost as one Kuroka and I lashed out at him. Well actually, I lashed out at him – Kuroka aimed for Mastema.

The Fallen clicked his tongue in aggravation and hurled himself back through the rift behind him, Mastema and Mittelt dragged alongside. The Flames of Vengeance were only an inch behind them when the tear in reality snapped shut.

There was a momentary silence. Then Kuroka rounded on me, her eyes burning with an unearthly light.

I was standing between her and Koneko.

Franky, I'd rather be standing on top of Krakatoa at t-minus no seconds, but I held my ground.

"Move aside, odd little man," Kuroka commanded. "I will be taking my sister with me. You're only alive because you're trying to protect her." Her eyes narrowed. It had roughly the same effect on my composure as a missile lock flashing green. "Don't make me change my mind."

I swallowed, but shook my head. If I could stall her long enough, maybe I could buy the ORC enough time to arrive and get Koneko awa—

There was a finger on my head.

Kuroka stood behind me, Koneko cradled in her arms. "Sleep."

I did.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Freed regarded the yokai that had just rendered his nominal ally unconscious with a wary gaze, standing between her and a cross. The cross that held the kindest, most understanding girl he'd ever met.

The cross that held the love his life.

The SS-Class 'Stray Cat' Kuroka was known to him, as she was known to every Exorcist that graduated their gruelling training. Freed that even if he used that he would only be able to hold her for a moment or two, and that was a generous estimate.

By the way the woman stared knowingly at the cross behind him and the girl who hung limply from its chains, Freed knew. He knew that, should he attempt to get in the way of her escaping with the person who mattered to her the most in the world, even if only for a moment, Kuroka would have no problem striking at the person who mattered most to him.

It truly pained him to allow the Stray to take Gremory's Rook; aside from the Ruin Princess herself, Koneko Toujou had been the member of her household who had shown him the most kindness, in her own quiet, subdued way.

In this case, however? He had to choose between fighting a battle he knew he couldn't win and thereby risking the safety of his beloved Asia, or standing aside from the Sage that was staring at him and not giving the incredibly powerful woman a reason to lash out at him.

And that was just no choice at all.

Freed gave her only a measured look before he turned pointedly away. He felt yet another burden drop heavy on his neck, another pendant for the necklace of guilt, but still severed the chains that held Asia aloft with a single slash of his Light sword. Before the girl could fall she was already in his arms.

The former Exorcist knelt as he cradled her small form gently, holding her with all the care he had to give. Feeling her even, though shallow, breaths on his cheek was enough to lift his tension, or at least a great deal of it. The Fallen hadn't had time to complete the ritual.

He paid the faint noise of Kuroka's portal no mind as he held the woman he loved to his chest.

However, his moment of snatched peace was not to last.

Moments after Kuroka departed, the pounding of several sets of feet approached the demolished hideout.

First on the scene was Rias, who took in the injured form of her Queen and the unconscious man who'd burned Raynare to nothingness in her first sweep of the room. There was enough intensity in her eyes that the bespectacled pair of Sona Sitri and Tsubaki Shinra barely registered to the—admittedly distracted—former Exorcist.

Her turquoise gaze landed on him after only a moment. "Father Selzen! Where is Koneko?" Rias demanded, with perhaps more force than necessary. Freed couldn't blame her for it, though. Rias Gremory was many things, but foremost amongst those things was a protector of her family.

"...I didn't know that your Rook was the Stray Cat's little sister, Miss Gremory," he told her.

His voice was quiet, and his words apparently a non-sequitur – but Rias wasn't stupid. Her already pale complexion faded further as the words sank in. "You don't mean to say that Kuroka has taken her?!"

The redhead's expression was a picture of despair, and Freed gently laid Asia to one side before he hung his head in an attempt to distract her. "I am sorry, Miss Gremory," he rasped, his throat filled up with guilt and sorrow alike. "I knew there was no way I could hold that monster of a woman off, but I didn't even try; I couldn't, not with the woman I love at risk."

Rias had paced over to Akeno and laid a hand on her arm. From the way the energies in the room shifted, Freed guessed that she was sharing her Demonic Energy with her Queen so that the brunette could recover more quickly.

As the King with brilliant crimson hair tended to her friend and confidant, she regarded Freed with an expression that betrayed the conflict in her heart. "...I want to be angry at you. To lash out, to blame you, Father Selzen," Rias bit out, clearly choosing her words carefully. "However, had our positions been reversed – had it been one of my precious household under threat by someone stealing away your loved one?" Rias let out a weary sigh, the corners of her eyes glinting wetly. "I'd have done the same thing."

Freed simply nodded and raised his head, his gaze shifting to the prone brunet who was just starting to stir.

"That guy," Freed muttered, just loudly enough to be heard. "He didn't stand aside even in the face of his likely death. Even if it was a suicidal decision...I can't help but respect that conviction, that devotion to a friend." He turned to Rias. "You're lucky to have such a loyal Contracted Magician, Miss Gremory."

Rias' chuckle was so hollow that it could have swallowed the sun. "Johan-kun isn't a Contracted Magician of mine, not even close. In fact, we've barely known another for more than two weeks." She shrugged. "But it seems that in spite of that short time, they've bonded incredibly quickly."

Freed nodded distractedly, his eyes pulled to the now-identified Johan, who was struggling to sit up, an eerie glow flashing beneath his skin from time to time as he moved. The man was mumbling something under his breath that Freed barely managed to catch.

It was a shame he didn't speak French. Otherwise, he'd have known what to make of the mumbled phrase.

[Wait, and Hope]
"Attendre, Espérer."​

In hindsight, the azure light that engulfed Johan's body was a pretty good clue.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After I woke up and healed most of my injuries with Avenger's second Noble Phantasm, things turned hectic rather quickly.

Asia regained consciousness shortly after I did and set about healing Freed, Akeno and Dohnaseek without a word of complaint. In fact, if I hadn't pointed out that I could heal myself and let her work on the others, she would have healed me too and not spared a thought for her own ordeal. 'Honestly, that girl is something else.'

Indeed. And to think I called your heart White.

That child...truly, I don't know which I should hope for. That her heart should remain pure and faithful, a shining bulwark of salvation and a salve for those lucky enough to be in ignorance of the bleakness of man? Or for her to confront the darkness within us all, becoming blemished by it, but in doing so, inuring herself against the howling Dark?

Both options leave a foul taste in my mouth.
​

I sighed. 'People of her quality are rare indeed. It would be a waste to have it ruined, though in this darker side of the world it may well be an inevitability.'

The Count's feelings were of affirmation, but neither of us commented on that subject further. Instead, I drew my attention to the twisted, wretched husk that had once been the Fallen Angel Kalawarner.

I shuddered in revulsion, and not a small amount of rage. This...was an atrocity, a violation of mind, body and soul on the absolutely fundamental level. (It wouldn't occur to me until later to wonder how I knew these things, as rattled by events as I was.)

My anger and disgust and many other things all burned in my heart every moment I saw her, and I could feel the way they fed the powers of the Avenger Class. My tenant was of a mind with me, even more than usual, both disgusted and enraged by the senseless monstrosity that had been passed off as a 'just punishment' for some supposed treason.

So when I demanded 'Can we save her?', I knew the Count was truthful when he replied.

Not even Attendre, Espérer has the means to heal someone so fundamentally broken and violated. We could reverse the transformation for a few seconds only, just enough time to grant her the merciful peace of death, rather than the eternity of solitude and torment that awaits her now.​

I swore under my breath, clenching my fists in fruitless anger. 'That's… GODDAMNIT!'

All this potential—the powers of a Legendary Spirit at my fingertips—and all I could do was helplessly rage against being stuck with two utterly wretched options.

I was so busy with self-recriminations and anger that when a hand came down on my shoulder I leapt almost a foot into the air, spinning towards the toucher with a hand that bore dark flame.

I recognised the bedraggled but now-whole Dohnaseek after only a moment, even as my heart was trying to catapult itself out of my ribcage, and it clicked that he'd backed up several paces and raised his hands to show they were empty.

Why people kept doing that was beyond me.

The Flames of Rage wreathing my fist flickered out and I slumped, the sheer exhaustion of being angry so long catching up with me. "Sorry," I mumbled, "I'm a bit on edge."

Dohnaseek let out a snort. "I can't imagine why," he remarked, his voice dry enough to turn the Sahara green with envy. Then the dapper Fallen's eyes turned to what was left of his former comrade, and his expression flattened.

I knew he had to be burying how he felt about the situation. I knew that it would be terribly rude to ask about it. But I'd had enough of today's shit, and politeness and propriety could go and fuck themselves with the same anthrax-covered spade. "Is there any way she can be healed?" I asked bluntly, shattering Dohnaseek's calm facade like glass.

The man took a deep, shuddering breath, then spoke quietly. "The only one who could've reversed the Stygian Quietus...has long since passed from this world." He shook his head. "The only thing that could spare her now would be the vaunted bloodline of the House of Bael." He shot a look at Rias. "Her skill with it wouldn't be sufficient to break through the Light ravaging Kalawarner's body and soul, though."

He shook his head and gave a wry chuckle. "It's hopeless. The only one who could grant her the dubious mercy of uncreation with any degree of certainty would be the Lucifer, and what reason would he have to go out of his way to give that to a Fallen, especially one who'd been allied against his sister?"

"He'd do it if I asked him."

Rias' voice was weary and strained, and when we turned to look at her it was plain to see that her composure had long passed 'fraying at the seams' and gone into full-on collapse. Worry was etched into her every muscle.

"That won't be necessary," I said quietly. "I can't heal her, but the spirit within me believes that we can revert this vile metamorphosis long enough to grant her the mercy of death."

The line between Avenger and myself had begun to blur again – our emotions were too similar to stop it completely. But we could keep our autonomy and maintain our own consciousnesses, even if only through sheer determination and a stubborn defiance.

Dohnaseek looked at me with no small amount of trepidation, then visibly steeled himself. "Do it...but I'll be the one to end her suffering." A single tear traced down the path of his left cheek as he looked at her, but he didn't seem to notice. "I owe her that much, at least."

I nodded, then knelt before Kalawarner's twisted, damaged husk, feeling the violent and ferocious rage which her Light had turned upon her.

I placed a hand on her head, and I invoked the Noble Phantasm once more.

[Wait, and Hope]
"Attendre, Espérer."​

Fueled by our incandescent, howling rage at the injustice of it all, Kalawarner's body slowly began untwisting itself. Her eyes became wild with panic and pain, and she began to writhe and thrash beneath my hand. The only reason she didn't throw me off completely was the fact that she was literally hanging onto her life by a single strand of Hope.

Dohnaseek, a cobalt knife of Light in hand, knelt beside her and took her hand. He leaned forward and whispered a few words in her ear – I wasn't sure what, but she stilled almost immediately, then stared into his eyes.

"Do it," she whispered.

She didn't drop his gaze until the dagger sank into the back of her neck, killing her instantly.

Nausea welled up within me, and I stumbled away from the scene before I emptied my stomach in a corner.

One part of my brain calmly noted that my response to merely assisting in the euthanizing of a doomed woman was significantly more dramatic than my response to literally burning someone to subatomic particles.

The rest of my mind and a good portion of my gut's response was to kick that part of my brain in the metaphorical dick and tell it to shut the fuck up.

After vomiting one more time I felt a pair of small hands press gently into my back and, while the self-hate and nausea didn't vanish, they were dulled somewhat. The urge to vomit a third time subsided completely.

With a shaky gesture, I managed to conjure my dimensional pocket's mandala, and with a thought towards what I needed I pulled a napkin and a bottle of water from its depths.

After rinsing my mouth several times and wiping the bile and spittle from my lips, I turned to the girl who'd eased my suffering. Thinking back on the couple of words I'd actually bothered to learn in Italian, I inclined my head to her and said "Grazie."

My pronunciation was undoubtedly dreadful, but the radiant smile I got in response was worth embarrassing myself.

"Don't worry, mister," Asia reassured me in English, "I speak English. It's Japanese that I'm clueless with." Her feelings over that were clear from her pout.

…

Between her and Koneko, I'd be dead by Type-Moe Diabetes before I hit thirty.

Unfortunately, I wasn't fully able to appreciate Asia's adorability. Not when Kuroka had taken Koneko and we had no way to get her back.

And that is where you are wrong.​

I turned my attention inward.

They have no way to track them, the young cat or the black cat both. I, however, can use the residual energy from the black cat's spell to track her.

Thus, the question then becomes…

Why should I?
​

I gritted my teeth. 'If this is one of your tests, Dantes, I'll not be pleased. This is no time for games.'

There was a beat of silence.

Then my passenger's voice came again, and this time there was a depth of ice to it that I had never experienced before.

Dare you attribute the name of that milquetoast to me again, BOY, and you shall regret it.​

My hand flew to my head, pressing against my temple as I swallowed the urge to groan. I felt like I had a shard of ice lodged in my brain.

...That said, you have a point.

I know less of the dynamic between those two than you, but I can tell that this is not the path to a proper resolution of their estrangement or the injustice that plagues them.

I cannot blame this 'Kuroka' for stealing back her sister from people she clearly sees as captors.
​

I sighed. 'I can't either, really. Their whole situation is beyond fucked up; in fact, everyone in Rias' Peerage has a fucking landfill's worth of issues.' I ran a hand through my hair. 'Honestly. My mom would've been better for them on that end of things; I don't know the first thing about counseling.'

Turn your mind away from your mope, boy. Your position is no different from any other's in the world; your situation is not ideal, but that means only that it falls on you to make the best of it with the tools you have at hand.

And of the many tools in the hands of man, my teachings are always a potent aid.​

With his usual cackle, Avenger withdrew from the conversation, leaving me to ponder his words and consider my next move.

While I was standing there, a puddle of vomit on my right and a corpse on my left, Rias' words drifted to my ears. "...could do that, I would be in your debt, and the House of Gremory always repays its debts handsomely."

The small, blonde ex-nun looked at Rias with a small smile. "I don't need you to pay me for helping somebody, Miss Gremory. Especially since you put your people in danger to help Freed." Her smile faded. "Especially since one of your people was kidnapped because I was too wea—"

Her words were interrupted when Rias pushed a finger against her lips. "I know you think you're to blame," she began. I'm sure everyone here is blaming themselves for one thing or another." She took a shaky breath. "But if we just stand here pointing fingers, there won't be any justice for that woman—" she jerked a thumb at Kalawarner's corpse, "—and Koneko...Koneko...Koneko will remain lost!"

Rias was visibly holding back tears, and it almost broke my heart to see. Someone who was normally so full of spirit and life teetering so obviously on the edge of despair? It was enough to firm anyone's resolve, and I was no different as my doubts disappeared like morning mist.

Despite my sympathy for Kuroka's plight.

Despite the fact that I couldn't possibly defeat her.

Kuroka's actions were tearing apart the people who'd taken me in upon my arrival in this world. Injustice of Kuroka being separated from her sister or not, I couldn't stand by and do nothing as my friends suffered, not while I had the means to even attempt to make the slightest difference.

I stepped forward and looked at Rias. "You can track someone's location if they have one of your fliers, right?"

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After Johan's shocking declaration and abrupt departure to pursue an opponent far above his means, Freed and Asia had accompanied the Gremory heiress back to her base so that Asia could heal the Light poisoning Kiba had been afflicted with by Raynare.

Freed had been ready for a fight when the Knight of Gremory had laid eyes on him, but Asia had swooped in and laid her hands on Kiba's festering wound.

Shockingly, even though the marks of her former affiliation were plain to see, Kiba did not treat Asia with any resentment or anger. Though, Freed mused, he supposed that shouldn't exactly surprise him; after all, she'd managed to soothe the savage beast within him with but nine words, after all. By comparison, a survivor of the Holy Sword Project would be even less likely to resent one such as her.

After a few minutes of grueling work (the Light had managed to spread a surprising amount, considering Raynare's specialties and lack of power), Asia straightened, bowed to Rias and Kiba in turn, then made for the door, catching Freed's hand in hers as she passed. Freed was struck dumb for a moment by her uncharacteristic boldness, but followed her quickly as she tugged on his hand.

The cassocked duo had gone almost halfway from the Academy to the church when something broke him from that dumbness.

They had stepped onto an empty side-road, and they had barely begun walking down it when a buzzing in the back of Freed's head made him step forward, pushing Asia behind him as he palmed his Light sword.

A slender youth with black hair and violet eyes stepped from the shadows. A demure smile covered his face as he addressed Asia. "Do you remember me, dear one?"

Freed didn't know who this Devil was, but he could feel the presence of several more surrounding them, so he snapped, "Cut the shit; we've had a long day. Tell your Peerage to show themselves."

The boy closed his eyes and sighed, his polite mask discarded in favor of an expression of utter disdain. "How droll; a competent member of the Church for a change." He snapped his fingers, saying, "Though, I suppose it'd be 'former member of the Church', if you're with this slut."

From the shadows came several nuns, each with eyes that were roughly as expressive as those of a fish several weeks dead. They arrayed themselves almost robotically, surrounding Freed and Asia while remaining just outside melee range.

The boy let out a manic giggle. "Soon you'll be all mine, little Asia!"

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The sunrise is generally accepted as being a beautiful sight.

When your eyes feel like they're covered in sand, you've been running all night and you're half-frantic with worry, it's just a sign of how long it's been since you got to work.

It turns out that when you can draw strength from negative emotions, being half-depressed, half-panicked and completely pissed was a good thing. My time wouldn't have been half as good if I was even close to a well-adjusted human being.

Thank God I wasn't.

In the distance before me, the temples of Kyoto loomed. Somewhere within that city, a precious friend and little-sister figure waited, being kept from the people who had been there for her, who had more or less raised her.

I felt for Kuroka. I really did. But this wasn't the way to go about doing things.

'I hope I can convince her of that. If not…' I patted my pocket, reassuring myself that the flyer was still there. 'Well. Then things will get extremely complicated.'

My partner, you have a miraculous gift for understatement.​

The Count's raucous laughter echoed in my head as I continued my run towards Kyoto. 'I'm coming for you, Koneko.

'Just wait for me.'
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________AN: Well, this chapter was heavy. It's never fun to have unpleasant things happen to the characters you care about, but such is the burden of an author. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy.
Edit: Removed mention of an ill conceived plot device.

 

[Mirriam Grave]

Well, cannot fault Kuroka for kidnapping her sister from what is seemingly being sended to death by her supposedly benevolent boss against a superior and clearly murderhobo opponent.

And frickin Diodora, without Asia joining Rias Peerage he have no obstacle in just trying to directly kidnapping her. I hope bad things happened to him and I also hope Freed and Asia is fine.

Click to shrink...

Yeah. I am not actually worried in the SLIGHTEST for Freed and Asia.
Mastema might have made Freed look like a weak pushover... but to MASTEMA he WAS.
To Diodora? That pompous weak little shit?
Diodora got his ass handed to him in Canon by people weaker than CANON Freed was by this point in the story. THIS Freed is MUCH more dangerous than Canon Freed was by this point.
Now, I understand that considering he is surrounded and guarding Asia, he is in a MUCH more precarious position. He still has many avenues that lead to victory. And unlike Canon Freed, is MORE than capable of seeing them all.
He can just pick up Asia and run away back to Rias so that she can impose Territory rights over Diodora appearing without mention.
He can just quickly go for and KILL that little fucking shit and then be left with a bunch of automatons incapable of doing anything since their master is dead.
Or, if he is feeling particularly pissed at what the day has mostly done to him? He can just tell Asia to close her eyes, cover her ears, start reciting the Bible out loud, and then proceed to SLAUGHTER THE HELLSPAWN THAT DARES TO EVEN CONSIDER SUCH A THING TO HIS ASIA!!

Side Note? Xan?
Freed/Asia pairing.
Just like in your Dual SI story with Ten, you give me pairings I didn't know I needed.
And despite logically being Crack Pairings of the HIGHEST caliber. In your stories they are perfectly freaking reasonable pairings. Even more than that, they are CUTE and ADORABLE pairings.

Good sir!
Anything that can make Jouji Nakata make such hmnnngg noises with that beautiful voice of his can't possibly be anything other than the work of God himself!

Click to shrink...

Great, now I can't help but make an Omake about Jouji Nakata's voice.

-----------

It was probably due to having been chasing Kuroka for over 12 hours.
AFTER having been awake for most of the day and dealing with Mastema and his shit.
Then dealing with her and Koneko for another four hours before shit started getting resolved.
Then dealing with that fucking monkey.
Then back to Kuroka and Koneko.
Then coming back to find that Rias is now apparently in a feud with the Astaroth Family since Diodora tried to kidnap Asia while she was under guard of her BOYFRIEND FREED FUCKING SELZEN, and he proved why Canon Freed was considered DANGEROUS and an actual threat until about TEN FUCKING VOLUMES IN, when Issei was fighting GODS at that point.
Seriously, Cao Cao was quite literally the ONLY OTHER HUMAN in the series that was shown to be such a threat. Although Arthur was probably as dangerous.
Oddly enough, that knowledge, that Diodora was ripped to various pieces in a most painful and brutal fashion actually made me like this version of Freed so much more.
Regardless. It had been a LONG LONG LONG time since he was asleep.
And that moment of unconsciousness that Kuroka forced on him doesn't count.
So it was with some despair that he noted that every time that Freed spoke... he kept hearing Edmond's voice...
Ignoring the content from Avenger, he just focused on his voice, and the startling realization that he DID in fact sound just like Freed did as he made Mapo Tofu...
WHEN THE FUCK DID FREED START MAKING MAPO TOFU!?
WHY WERE BOTH OF THEM MAKING THOSE WEIRD MOANS OVER AND OVER AGAIN!?!?!?
WHERE THE FUCK DID DIEHARD REID AND BAKI COME FROM!?!?!?!?
WHY ARE THEY ALL SHOUTING FOR HIM TO REJOICE!?!?!?!
NO!! NO SHIROU! I DON'T WANT THE DAMN MAPO TOFU!!
I WILL FIGHT YOU-NO! DAMMIT STOP TRYING TO FORCE IT DOWN MY THROAT!
WHY ARE MY FLAMES NOT WO---

"JOHAN!"

I jumped up "Whuh!?" before looking around wildly.

I found only Rias and her peerage alongside Freed and Asia staring back at me with expressions of worry on their faces.

I was too busy looking for that fucking traitor. Hero of Justice my ASS! A bit of Mapo Tofu and suddenly he is okay with sacrificing someone else!??!? "Where is he!?"

They just looked at each other in confusion and even more worry. "Who?"

"That bastard Shirou!"

"Who?" Asked Freed.

I looked at him all of a sudden. "Why do you sound like Yoshitsugu Matsuoka all of a sudden?"

The confusion spread. Although the look of shock and revelation that Rias had was amusing. "He's right!" She quickly hunted down and played Shokugeki no Soma and everyone was stunned at how the main character had the same voice that Freed had.

In the ensuing ribbing and questioning, and the looks of awe that Asia and Rias sent him. Everyone seemed to forget about Johan, which he thanked severely realizing that he and Avenger sounded nothing alike, and that had all clearly been a fever dream.

His whisper was caught by no one in the confusion of Rias asking Freed for his autograph to the recently arrived Sona's complete confusion. "Why though?"

-----------

I am sure you can all easily find the connection, but I thought of Freed as a Kirei Kotomine pre-Zero from his first appearance, so you can see why I made him part of it. It was also funny to me that Nakata played both Kirei Kotomine AND Edmond Dantes, so I HAD to write this.

 

[Xanothos]

Koneko Rescue Arc 1: A Game of Cat and Mouse?​

Freed Selzen wasn't the most pious of men even in the best of times. This was, understandably, seen as something of an issue for a man in his field of employment.

It afforded him some benefits, however – such as not having an ingrained prejudice against all Devils. A benefit which he was rather glad to have, since Sona Sitri and Rias Gremory certainly proved that—even though Devils were quite literally beings alien to man—they could still be called people; they could still be 'good'.

The Devil that stood before him now couldn't have been further from the heiresses in temperament if he had been a mutated Stray.

However, the part that sickened Freed the most wasn't the nuns that, based on their glassy, thousand-yard stares, had clearly been broken mentally and physically. No, the part that sickened Freed the most was that a small, twisted part of him enjoyed the sight of such things. A blackened part of his heart that wanted to cut down the Devil and take his place enslaving the Sisters, and even add his precious Asia to their number.

Needless to say, it was these most vile of urges that made Freed despise himself. Fortunately for him, there was an excellent target before him, a disgusting creature without value on which he could vent his rage and disgust.

Freed took a step forward, uncaring of the Reincarnated Devils surrounding him and Asia, staring like unseeing dolls. He smiled firmly as the familiar weight of his Light blade fell into his hand. So focused was he on the maniacally grinning Devil in front of him that he was taken completely by surprise by what happened next.

As one, a chorus of monotone voices rang out.

"For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.
"Binding Scripture–Acts 8:23."

Freed froze as bands of Light snapped into being all along his body. Had it been one, or even two iterations of this Scripture, he could've snapped it effortlessly, but this was a Scripture reinforced by fourteen separate voices, fourteen bodies of faith. However, none of that was particularly important to him, as he'd just had Scripture used on him by Devils, former Sisters or not. As he looked on, blood trickled from their mouths and noses, but if the blank-faced women felt a thing, they did not show it.

The slender Devil let out an unhinged laugh. "How do you like that?! After undergoing my specialized treatments, even after becoming Devils they can still use Scriptures! Of course, that's just icing on the cake beside their real purpose!" An inhumanly wide grin split his face. "To serve me with every fiber of their being."

Freed pushed against his bonds, testing their strength. Unfortunately, his physical strength was not sufficient to break the bonds, and he knew the Scripture the nuns had used would prevent him from enhancing himself with his own Scriptures. This left Freed only one recourse.

"Asia. Come close to me and shut your eyes."

Once he felt his love press her face into his side, he began to chant. Not to use a Scripture, but an aria to call on that weapon. The unknown Devil, sensing the buildup of power, screamed for his slaves to stop Freed, but they were too late.

*******!

As crimson light swallowed the world around them, so too did that same light consume the sound of the name Freed shouted.

-x-x-x-​

When Rias arrived at the scene of the battle a minute later, she gasped at the breadth of the rapidly-fading Holy aura. As she surveyed the battleground, her eyes passed over several things:

A group of ten women in the habits of nuns laying unconscious here and there, covered in minor lacerations and burns that felt of Light wounds and something…else.

The badly burned, Light-wounded, unconscious form of the scion of the Astaroth clan and the younger brother of the Satan Beelzebub, Diodora.

And finally, near the center of the unconscious nuns, she saw Asia kneeling over a shaking Freed, the calm green light of her Sacred Gear washing over him in tandem with the calming murmurs of Scripture.

Rias palmed her face. "This is going to be one of those days, isn't it?"

-x-x-x-​

After Asia had finished healing Freed of whatever had been ailing him, the keyed-up priest explained what had happened. Rias, needless to say, was not amused.

"Something always did feel off about his public face to me, but I never expected this." Rias gestured vaguely between Diodora and his Peerage, a look of disgust on her face as she pulled enchanted shackles from her pocket space to bind them.

Even though Diodora was a fellow heir and one of her species, and many would call her a race-traitor and worse for siding with Freed over her 'kinsman', her gut told her that Freed was telling the truth. And this? This abominable act made Riser's lustful advances look like childish flirting by comparison.

Rias turned to Freed. "I don't suppose I could ask your assistance getting them back to Kuoh to await judgement? My b– the Lucifer is sending someone to debrief us about the battle and pursue Kuroka, and whoever that is will have a certain degree of authority over someone who invaded my territory and attacked my dear allies." By the end of her sentence, Rias' already fraying control was stretched to its absolute limit. Understandable, considering the absolute clusterfuck the past 12 hours had been.

Freed nodded slowly. "If my testimony means that this worm will get his just desserts, I'll recount my entire life if I have to. Not only is he a piece of shit–no, that's too kind of a descriptor. He's a sub-human, single-celled piece of rotted, spare placenta that had the misfortune of being born. I hope he burns for what he's done—" Freed glanced at Asia, "—and what he threatened to do to my Asia."

Asia shuddered, too appalled at the things that had been done to her fellow Sisters to even pick up on the implication of Freed's address.

Rias chuckled darkly. "While I doubt telling your whole life's story will be necessary, you will have to tell them what manner of Holy relic you used to inflict all this damage." She gestured at the burns which covered the unconscious Astaroth, painting him an angry red from the front like he had been plastered to a sun-facing window in Death Valley for a day in high summer. "No ordinary Light-sword could do this much damage or produce a Holy aura like this."

Rias then glared at Diodora, full of wrath. "As for him getting his just desserts? I'll push for him to be made an example of. Trash like him gives all of us civilized Devils a bad name."

Freed let out a short, raspy bark of laughter. "Though I'd hardly call this sword Holy, I understand your meaning all the same. I'm sure that the Lucifer and the Leviathan would like to know that their sisters were sharing a city with just a former member of the Church, let alone the new wielder of—"

-x-x-

"Eeeeeehhhh?!"

-x-x-​

Freed let out a genuine chuckle at Rias' dumbfounded expression, the sound underlaid with Asia's soft giggling. Realizing how loud she'd been, the Gremory heiress reddened. She tried to put on a composed face, but her incandescent blush and pout rather ruined it.

Freed got to his feet and, after muttering a few lines of Scripture under his breath, slung the bundle of trussed-up nuns onto his back. After waving a hand at the debris and casting a spell of repairing, Rias tossed Diodora over her shoulder in a fireman's carry, and the three of them walked into the night, unaware of the grey eyes fixed on them.

-x-x-x-​

"What. The. Fuck."

The man looking on had seen a lot of shit in his time, but never anything like this. He fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a jumbo box of Pocky, opening the cardboard box with shaking fingers, before taking a fistful and shoving them savagely into his mouth. Normally he'd take the time to savour the treat, but right now he was stress-eating in hopes that the chocolate would stave off an impending panic attack at the upending of his entire worldview.

After a minute or two of frantic chomping (not to mention noises that sounded more like an animal tearing up its kill than any noise a human should make), the man had calmed down a fair bit. Suppressing his emotions for the time being, he let his intellect attack the problem, walking forward and crouching down onto the balls of his feet to inspect the now-spotless area with a keen eye.

'While this being a hallucination is possible, neither me nor my family have any history of such things, and I'm certainly not intoxicated. So, that leaves only one real option: Devils exist as either an organization or a species, the Church knows this and trains warriors to fight with 'Holy relics', and both parties have abilities that resemble what could be called magic. The government may well know of these things as well.'

He rubbed his chin. 'There are a few possibilities as to why this isn't public knowledge, none of which are mutually exclusive...Tch. She said Kuoh, didn't she? The uniform she was wearing was Kuoh Academy's, so I should probably start my investigation there.'

His thinking done, Detective Kenta Shirogane straightened and strode away.

'I'll have to be careful. There's no telling what they're capable of, or if they're amicable to normal humans.'

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was a damn shame, a small part of me mused, that I didn't have the time to just slow down and appreciate Kyoto. It really was a beautiful city, and I definitely wanted to come back to visit the shrines when I wasn't on a time-sensitive mission.

The rest of me was keenly focused on the rapidly-fading energy signatures that Kuroka had left behind. She'd clearly taken great pains to mask her presence once she'd arrived in Kyoto, presumably because of the heavy concentration of yōkai within the city, especially Yasaka. As powerful as Kuroka was, I imagined even she would be wary of a nine-tailed kitsune with one of the heads of a pantheon on the metaphysical equivalent speed-dial.

However, as skilled as Kuroka was at masking her signature, she wasn't perfect at it, and even the smallest shred of shed energy was enough for the Count. It was clear to me that Avenger was pure, unadulterated bullshit in the best of ways.

When one has steeped themselves in the concept of 'Escape' as I have, they gain an understanding of it that borders on enlightenment.

Is it any wonder that I, the Unincarcerable Inferno of Vengeance, cannot be escaped, just as I can escape any prison?​

I rolled my eyes even as I continued towards the signature. 'Unincarcerable's not a word.'

Fool! When presenting oneself, the legitimacy of vocabulary is secondary to how impressive you sound! Ask any politician!​

My lips twitched up in amusement even as my eyebrow twitched in annoyance, my inner chunnibyō warring with my inner grammarian. However, my inner conflict was shoved roughly to one side as I came upon the site of the next signature and saw that someone had beaten me to the area.

Two someones, in fact.

As I slowed to a walk, the occupants of the clearing turned to me as one. The one closer to me was short and slim, maybe five feet tall at the most, though the grey wolf ears that stood straight up from his silvery hair added a few inches to his height. His willowy build was partially concealed by the many-layered jōe he wore, marking him as some manner of priest. Perhaps he assisted Yasaka with her devotions to Amaterasu?

The young man stared at me with brilliant blue, slit-pupiled eyes, the sharpened claws on the tips of his fingers flexing, and the fluffy tail curling behind him nervously. Based on his features, I guessed he was an ōkami, a wolf yōkai.

The one further from me, though…

That woman was all muscle.

The tanned woman had to be pushing seven feet tall at least, a single horn curving up from her forehead marking her as some kind of oni. She kept her crimson hair in a short pixie cut, and green eyes to rival Rias' in their shade were fixed on me with all the intensity of Koneko looking at a cake.

As for her physique? I'd never really understood the phrase 'muscles like steel cables' until now. Her muscles weren't especially big for someone her size, but goddamn were they toned. The tight black tank-top she wore accentuated her chiseled muscles even as it did nothing to hide her six-pack and not inconsiderable bust. Her baggy brown cargo pants weren't quite as revealing, but I had no doubt that her legs were equally toned.

In short? She could snap me like a twig. Furthermore, from the charge in the air centered on the ōkami, I was sure that he was equally capable of destroying me, albeit in a less physical manner.

Speaking of the ōkami, he was the first to speak. "Who are you? What are you?" His voice was thick with wary defensiveness, his body tensed and ready to spring backwards at a moment's notice.

I carefully kept my arms at my sides, and replied in a calm, albeit weary voice. "I'm just a guy looking for his kidnapped friend, that energy you were examining was left behind by her kidnapper. As for what I am?" I shrugged. "I'm an unaffiliated Magician, though I've been told by another Yōkai that my chakra feels...strange. The name's Johan."

Upon hearing my explanation, the ōkami seemed to relax, his tail uncurling and his ears twitching. "Ah. Yasaka-dono did say that someone with an odd chakra would be coming from Kuoh to pursue the Stray Cat, but this is beyond what I expected."

Something occurred to him rather abruptly, if the look on his face was any indication. "Oh, where are my manners?! I am Kagerō, Priest of Tsukuyomi in this city." He gestured to the muscular woman, who'd approached remarkably quietly for someone so large. "This is my bodyguard, assistant and Mate, Karin. Yasaka-dono assigned us to find out where the last two nekoshō were, and I think we've almost got it."

I bowed to each of them in turn. "A pleasure to meet you, Kagerō-shinpū, Karin-san. I do wish we could've met under less trying circumstances."

Karin looked at me funnily, then replied in a soft, low voice, "You're not the usual human, are you?"

I arched a brow at her quizzically, but she shook her head.

Kagerō's mouth twisted. "Most humans...let's just say they aren't exactly fond of oni. You're the first that I've seen treat her like an actual person." Karin glared at him, clearly displeased that he'd shared that with a perfect stranger.

I let out a gusty sigh. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; my species does have a tendency to look at anything even slightly different than us and freak out like idiots." I looked at Karin. "For what it's worth, I apologize for humanity's collective stupidity."

Karin huffed, then turned away.

I winced, then shook my head. As interesting as talking to this pair was, I had a mission. I looked past them to the dissipating energy, and reached out with my newly-discovered, ill-understood sixth sense.

I stiffened. Part of the energy twisted and crumpled, but I could follow the signature to its other end with my senses. And at that other end?

Power.

She hid herself well, several wards and other spells obfuscating her position. Unfortunately for her, those same spells gave off just enough energy for me to detect and then, with a twist of the mind, bypass.

..

She truly was terrifyingly powerful.

"She used spatial warping here, and teleported about…" I considered the distance, then pointed. "Half a kilometer that way. She's hiding, but I can make out her wards."

Kagerō gaped at me. "Buh, wha...How?! Even I can't detect at that kind of distance that quickly!"

I smirked tiredly. "Trade secret." I then bowed to them both, and moved rapidly into the forest in the direction I'd indicated.

-x-x-x-​

All too soon, I arrived at a quaint house in a clearing, a small cobblestone path leading to its front door.

Steeling myself, I walked slowly to the house. I raised my hand to knock on the door, and did so with shaking hands and a rapidly beating heart.

A couple of moments passed, then the door swung open of its own accord.

Kuroka fixed me with a bemused look from several steps past the threshold, her tails twitching behind her as she tapped her clawed nails pointedly on the underside of her folded arms. "You know," she said in a voice as soft as velvet and as dangerous as nightshade, "most people don't waltz up and knock on the door when they're hunting someone. Especially when that person is someone as powerful as me."

I popped a knuckle nervously; I was bad enough at talking to people when they weren't strong enough to kill me with but a thought. With Rias and her household it was different; I intellectually knew they could kill me pretty easily were they so inclined, but in all my time around them, they'd never directed that kind of power, that sort of intent towards me. Even yesterday, when Rias turned her rage towards me, I had faith that she wouldn't hurt me.

But Kuroka? I didn't know her beyond half-remembered recollections of anger at the injustice of her tale while perusing Koneko's backstory. And, as my encounters with Freed and the Fallen proved, I had to take even what little I remembered of the original work with a hefty pinch of salt.

In short? I was running on yesterday's eight hours of sleep, nervous out of my mind, and standing in front of an irritated, possibly irrational Sage who might at any moment kill me in any number of unpleasant and agonizing ways for interrupting her time with her little sister.

…

Yeah, I didn't like my chances either, but even if all logic pointed to failure, I'd made my bed, and now I'd have to burn it.

I'm fairly certain that's not how the phrase goes, dear host, though I can appreciate a good Flame as well as any other.​

'I know what I said, Avenger, and I meant it.' I inhaled and looked at Kuroka. "W-well, most people aren't me, fortunately for them." I cleared my throat, internally cursing at the way my throat cracked. "A-anyways, I'm not here to fight, so there was no reason to come bursting into your place like an asshole."

Kuroka arched a thin, manicured brow. "Oh? 'Not here to fight', he says. And yet you chased me all the way from your master's territory to here, without stopping to rest or get more than superficial healing." She fixed me with an unimpressed stare. "You'll forgive me if I think you're full of shit."

I fidgeted nervously under her gaze, and that moment of indecision was more than sufficient time for the Count to seize control of my vocal cords for the first time in a while.

…

At least this time he prefaced it by telling me to 'let him handle it', even though he still didn't wait for me to give permission.

"You assume much, mistress of the Artes Druidic," the Servant sharing living space with my soul commented, though rather more respectfully than the way he'd addressed Rias when last he'd done this. Even he recognized that we wouldn't stand a Devil's chance in Heaven in an actual fight against Kuroka. "My host and I have no master save ourselves; the softhearted child pursued you of his own accord, in spite of the indecisiveness weighing on his shackled heart."

The moment Avenger's voice left my lips, Kuroka had tensed, and now that he had finished talking she addressed him with not a small amount of heat. "I was wondering when I'd get to speak with you, restless ghost. I don't know who you were in life, but I could feel the sheer negativity and malice you released from here."

Her eyes narrowed as she continued, "At first, I was terrified that my dear Shirone had tried to grasp Senjutsu and had been overwhelmed by the World's hatred, so naturally I rushed to Kuoh."

Her face twisted into an amalgamation of so many clashing emotions that I couldn't begin to interpret how she was feeling. "Of course, I was relieved that she hadn't, but then I noticed you. Or rather, you and your host." The nekoshō frowned. "He seems kind enough, if rather boring. Honestly, the only thing interesting about him was your energy – at least at first."

She unfolded her arms and rubbed her chin. "Looking more closely at him, I could see that he was barely holding himself together; that your malice and rage wasn't the only malevolence and darkness within him."

Kuroka's face darkened. "Considering how much time he spent around my sister, I had more than half a mind to kill him. But..." She sighed, her weariness coming to the surface for a brief moment.

'Give me back control. You're not the most sympathetic of people, and I get the feeling that she needs that.'

Very well, host mine. Do try not to stumble in conversation again.​

With that, he released his control over my vocal cords, and from the way she looked at me Kuroka knew it.

There was now the slightest bit of softness buried under the steel in her expression. "You were kind to her. Just being around you made my Shirone happy, if only a bit." She ran a hand through her long hair, a motion I recognized as a nervous tic only because I had a habit of doing the same.

"It was all too clear that, whatever your faults, just being around you made her feel real happiness." Kuroka said quietly. "That made me doubt myself. If some stranger could worm her way into my shy sister's heart in just two weeks, if she could call you a sibling that quickly...what did that say about what she thought of me?"

For a moment, her somber expression remained. Then, in the span of an instant, her face became akin to a hurricane, all ferocity and lightning.

"And then that Devil Bitch sent my little sister on a suicide mission!" In that moment, Kuroka was no longer an enraged woman, standing before me. She was a furious lioness, looming over me. I flinched back from her, my fight-or-flight response warring with my desire to help Koneko.

Even as I stamped on my animal instincts and stood my ground on shaky legs, I doubted my ability to reason with her in this state.

But I had to try. Even if I was weaker when compared to Rias or Akeno, I had still been the sole adult of the Gremory side to attend the battle. It was my responsibility, my fault that Koneko had almost been killed.

If I'd been less stubborn—if I hadn't been so damn weak—none of that would have happened.

I steeled my nerves and met Kuroka's gaze. "Don't blame Rias-san for this; she was against it from the start. If I hadn't let my anger get the better of me, if I hadn't gone after an opponent who was out of my league, this wouldn't have happened. Koneko-chan was in that fight because she knew I was still weak, and it was my recklessness that almost got her killed…!"

I bit off my words, my teeth grinding against one another as the corners of my eyes began to sting. "So don't blame Rias-san. If you're gonna blame someone? Blame me."

Kuroka's golden eyes wouldn't seem to let me blink. Their constant stare bored into me, pinning my feet and eyelids in place as she considered. "Are you sure," she murmured, "that you want me to do that?" She tilted her head slightly to the side. "Do you want to die?"

I flinched – but I didn't move. "...No," I admitted, "I don't. I really don't want to die. But…" I took a deep breath. "I won't stand by and let someone else take the blame for my fuck-up.

"I know damn well that if you decide to kill me, I probably won't even realise you've done it until after it's over." I spread my hands. "But I don't think you will – and I've been wrong about a lot of things, but I don't think I'm wrong about this. I hope I'm not wrong about this. Because I've still got a few reasons to live."

Kuroka the Stray Cat, one of the last nekoshō alive, a master of Senjutsu and Youjutsu, stood in front of me for a few moments more. Then she sighed, quietly, and the elder sister shone through. "You're lucky you mean so much to my sister, Magician – and that you're earnest besides. Otherwise this conversation would be going really differently." She shook her head. "But as it is, the only thing killing you would do is cause Shirone more pain." She turned away slightly, and I doubted I was meant to here her quietly mutter, "Gods know I've done enough of that already."

I decided not to forfeit my life by commenting on that, so instead I decided to press on to the reason I came here in the first place. "Speaking of your sister, is she alright? Is there any way that I could see her?"

Kuroka's expression shifted to something acutely aggrieved. "Nya, if you're going to keep pestering me with questions, you may as well come in. Just don't try anything, hmm?"

Two things came to mind. The first was, 'Holy shit she actually just said 'nya', Ishibumi what the fuck.'

The second was that passing through the threshold felt rather like walking into a lion's den...if that lion could warp spacetime on a whim and punch me hard enough to reduce me to constituent atoms.

There were so very many ways this could go wrong and get me killed that I couldn't even imagine them all. Unfortunately, that didn't stop my mind from trying.

I swallowed thickly and followed her inside.

As we walked into a living area, Kuroka idly waved me over into an isolated chair before sinking onto a couch. Koneko was curled up on the cushion beside her, fast asleep – and as she sat down beside her, Kuroka seemed to actually relax a bit for the first time since I'd seen her.

Her hand reached idly out, long fingers trailing meticulously through Koneko's snow-white hair, and for a moment my mind conjured the image of a mother cat giving her kitten a tongue-bath.

Then I remembered which universe I was currently in and consigned that memory to the darkest pits of my subconscious to never see the light of day.

And speaking of things that would probably spontaneously combust in direct sunlight, Avenger had been quiet for a while now…

Many things you may lack, my scion, but you do possess a certain nature, a way of presenting yourself that is more conducive to this sort of work than anything I could teach you.

I'm not ashamed to admit that, while I outclass you in the Artes Vengeance, you'd make a better counselor or mediator than I.

Thus, I chose to remain silent. I must have at least a little faith in my host, after all.

...It is interesting. Even as my Fires of Vengeance act as a temper for the raw iron of your potential, the fragments of Hope and White within you act as a quench for my own unbending ways...
​

I blinked, processing. 'Well, I suppose it makes sense. We're of one body, if not one mind, after all.'

A distracted, noncommittal grunt was the only indication that Avenger had heard me at all.

I returned my attention to Kuroka, who had finished...grooming?...Koneko for the time being, and tented my hands in my lap, swinging one foot up to rest sideways on my knee. "So," I asked quietly, "how is she?"

Kuroka stared at me, one hand still hovering near Koneko. "She's not injured anymore, my magic saw to that much at least. She's still asleep because I had to draw on her own magic and chakra reserves to add to help her heal more quickly."

I sighed in relief. "That's good to hear. I'm glad you had the skills to take care of her, even if you snatching her up caused all sorts of trouble."

Kuroka eyed me with a suspicious look, but said nothing, offering me the floor.

I cracked my neck nervously. Now came the hardest part.

I'd been dreading this, but I somehow had to convince Kuroka that letting Koneko return with me to Rias was in both her own best interests and Koneko's. Otherwise, this conversation was probably going to turn into a fight, and when I inevitably lost and suffered a tragic fate Rias would give it a try. And whether she actually found Kuroka and also inevitably lost or just swallowed her pride, Sirzechs would get involved personally.

It would be a fatal, irreversible clusterfuck, and I couldn't let it happen if I had any alternative options available.

"...Kuroka-san, I won't pretend to know everything about your situation," I began. "I only know the basics of what happened. What I know for sure though, is that you genuinely care about your sister – any fool could tell that." My foot slipped back to the floor and I leaned forward. "But I think there's got to be a better way than snatching your sister away from people who care for her. I know this can't be easy, but—"

I tasted blood, and realised that the very tip of my tongue had just been caught between my teeth as my jaw slammed shut. The reason for that being the Stray Cat looming over me, a grip that looked like glass but felt like an industrial claw pressing on my jaw.

I hadn't even seen her move.

"Don't you dare," she spat, "assume that you know what I've been through. You haven't had to stand by, powerless, as your sister walks to her own execution. You haven't had to feel gratitude to the Devil himself for stepping in and giving your only remaining family to his little sister. Giving her! Like some kind of pet!"

The irate nekoshō's grip on my jaw tightened with each pronouncement, until the pain almost seemed to cloud my sight – or at least, it should have.

Oh, it hurt. It hurt like the very devil. But more than the fingers on my jaw, Kuroka's words had hit me deep, and with everything the past day or so had managed to bring, everything came tumbling out.

I shot to my feet, my chair shooting across the room and her grip broken. Kuroka tensed – presumably anticipating an attack.

What she got instead was words – and they were more effective than any weapon I had to bear. "You're right that I haven't had to endure those things, and I'm thankful for that. But don't you fucking presume that I haven't gone through my share of shit. In the span of two weeks, I've had to completely realign and reassess everything I know and believe, I've almost died twice, I've seen someone I care about almost killed, and I've had to adjust to the fact that my mind and soul aren't completely mine anymore, and I'm playing host to a vengeance-obsessed spirit!"

The pain of my jaw began to be subsumed by the aching of my face as what felt like every muscle there pulled taut. "And you know what? None of that means shit beside the grief, the absolute agony of losing everything and everyone I ever cared for or loved.

"I'll never see my mother again, my sister, my nieces and nephew. I'll never get to share my joys and sorrows with my family in all but blood again; Willow, Ness, and Tenin are lost to me forever!"

I was left panting, taking in deep breaths as I practically slapped the tears from my face and turned away, uncaring of the fact that I'd presented Kuroka with my back. I could barely summon the strength to fetch and right my chair, slumping down into it and rubbing my eyes. I felt empty. "I haven't gone through the same things you have, but don't assume that means my heart hasn't known its own measure of sorrow. I don't know everything you've been through, but I'm willing to listen, to try and resolve this clusterfuck peacefully. You said you didn't want to put her through the pain of losing someone she cares about? Well, the same thing applies to you, Kuroka-san. Losing you again might well be her end."

Kuroka didn't say anything. She just considered me, cocking her head to her side as if seeing if my appearance changed from a different angle.

The silence in the house was almost as empty as me – until it was broken by a quiet voice. "...You've been through a lot, Johan-nii."

Kuroka and I both turned our heads as one, our gazes snapping to Koneko – who, by the look on her face, had probably heard everything. "...Sorry. I didn't see…"

Koneko's voice trailed off, and I coughed awkwardly to try and fill the silence that threatened to follow. "I just...didn't want to worry anyone," I half-muttered, my throat feeling oddly thick as I swallowed. "Besides, it's usually fine. I can manage it."

The fractional rise of Koneko's eyebrow conveyed a stronger sense of 'bullshit' that any I had yet encountered.

Before she could say anything else though, she was cut off by Kuroka tackle-hugging her into the couch.

From the way Koneko stiffened and her expression went blank, she was not pleased.

...I couldn't lie; seeing her treat her sister that way caused me pain, even if I understood why completely. 'Their whole situation is a fucking shitshow that would never have happened if the fucking ruling council of Hell weren't made up primarily of stubborn, biased, bigoted politicians with sticks the size of the Washington Monument rammed up their asses. Seriously, instead of actually fucking investigating the circumstances behind her killing her King, they arbitrarily decide that Kuroka had gone mad with power and then use that to commit genocide on an entire subspecies of people?! Absolutely disgusting.'

While I was ranting internally, Kuroka was cuddling her tense, unresponding sister, clearly too caught up in reuniting with her to actually pay attention to how Koneko was reacting. Well, to be fair, she kind of wasn't – she had gone almost completely still.

...For a few moments.

For the first time since I had met her, I heard Koneko raise her voice. "Let. Me. Go!" the petite girl practically roared, shoving at Kuroka with both hands. "You're not my sister!"

Kuroka's look of shock seemed completely out of place on someone who could bend space or break a spine with the same fingers, but even more out of place was the momentary flash of soul-wrenching agony that spiked across her face.

I could only watch silently as Koneko let the vitriol flow, words pouring from her like they never had before with an acidic bite that was meant to do nothing more than hurt the one who Koneko felt had left her, abandoned, scared and alone. In her wrath the stoic mask was cast aside, a rictus of grief and rage framed by running tears as Koneko vented six years of resentment, pain and sorrow into Kuroka's ears. "...you promised! That you'd never leave me behind, that you'd always be there for me, that nothing could ever tear us apart! But at the first sign of trouble, you ran.

"And now?! You think you have the right to take me away from the people who actually fulfill those promises?!" Koneko was tiny, but she still stood tall. She was shaking, likely with more anger than grief, but her voice was its own kind of steady. "I only have one thing to say to you," Koneko declared, eyes that mirrored her sister's burning like lamp-light. "Fuck. Off."

...I thought I could almost see the moment when something in Kuroka tore in two.

It was somewhat eclipsed by the next moment though, when some combination of Chakra, Magic and sheer presence forced me to the floor, barely letting me catch myself on all fours as the walls and furniture groaned.

When Kuroka spoke, her voice reverberated eerily, the edges of the space around her burning with a corona of an unfamiliar light. "So stealing you from me wasn't enough, was it?" she asked rhetorically. "They had to brainwash you as well. Well, nevermind that. I'll make you well again, and we can be one happy family again. Okay, Shirone?"

Koneko wasn't doing any better than me. If anything, she was worse off – it wasn't just the force keeping her on the floor, it was the fact that this was Kuroka. This was the sister who she believed to have succumbed to the World's evil and gone mad before killing their benefactor.

And I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to know what Kuroka thought would 'make her well again'. 'Fuck, fuck, FUCK! This is bad, this is VERY bad! What options do I have?! I'm too weak to stop her, and she's very clearly not thinking straight in the slightest, but if I don't do anything she'll do something we'll all regret!'

There's nothing you or I can do. ​

'Excuse me?! I can't accept that! There has to be something, anything! I don't care what the cost is!'

Even if I were to possess you again and guarantee your death, I wouldn't be able to hold the transformation long enough for it to matter with your body already in the state it's in right now.

However, you didn't let me finish speaking. There's nothing you or I can do, but have you forgotten that flier?​

If I could have facepalmed without getting slammed into the floor, I would have done. Hell, I might have been only a little ways from spontaneously growing a new arm from the side of my head for easy access to my face.

I'd asked Rias for a flier in case I failed or got in over my head, and if I channeled a little magic to it she should be able to track me down and send reinforcements my way.

Presumably her brother, the Satan Lucifer of the Four Satans, was sending someone to Kuoh to debrief everyone (and oh boy did I not look forward to going through that after all this shit), so she'd be able to give them the coordinates and get me actual backup if I needed it, rather than just sending herself and her Peerage.

Unfortunately, the flier was on the inside of my jacket, and if I tried to go for it now I'd just fall on my face just as I would have done if I tried to facepalm.

For just a moment, I felt utterly helpless.

And that was the last boost I needed.

The Avenger Skill burned inside me. It ate greedily of my rampant negativity and, to my private disgust, Koneko's abject terror. With the extra edge it provided me, I staggered back to my feet, my hand darting into my coat for the flier even as the other lashed out and grabbed Kuroka by the collar of her kimono.

A moment later, there was pain.

When the agony cleared enough for me to concentrate on seeing again, I found myself embedded in the far wall of the room, the front of my jacket burnt away to reveal my chest and abdomen. I took an experimental breath, and, while it was horrendously painful, it wasn't a blinding, stabbing pain that prevented me from even breathing. 'Hopefully that means my ribs aren't broken.'

My hazy eyes focussed on Kuroka, who was staring at me with eyes that glowed with an unspeakable energy. I could just about make it out as she crushed a scrap of paper in her left hand, then incinerated it.

It only took me a moment to realise that had been the flier.

"You really are a hardy little bastard, aren't you?" she mused. "It's a damn shame you're getting in the way of our happiness: with a bit more time and effort, you could've become quite strong.'

I saw my death in those glowing golden eyes. Yet...maybe I was just crazy, but beyond that I saw sadness.

Kuroka didn't particularly want to kill me. She had no burning vendetta against me, no dire revenge to take, not even a particular distaste. She just wanted the happiness that the world had denied her, time after time after time – and under the influence of what I could only assume was Senjutsu, she believed that the path to that happiness required her to go through me.

Probably in a very literal sense.

As she stalked towards me, a brilliant purple light enveloping her hand, I did my best to move. I practically threw my rising fear, the dregs of my rage, anything even remotely negative on the fires of the Avenger Skill – and I failed spectacularly.

I had put everything I had on hand into that one attempt at retrieving the flier. I'd blown my one shot.

I had nothing left to save me.

If I could have moved to any appreciable degree, I might have been shaking as Kuroka approached. When she stopped perhaps a foot away from me, I felt like my bones were trying to shake off my skin. "In honor of how kind you've been to my sister, I'll hear your dying request. If I deem it reasonable, I swear on Izanagi's spear that I will fulfill it."

"I d-don't suppose t-that I can ask to b-be spared, can I?"

Despite everything, I felt the manic urge to giggle at the sheer flatness of Kuroka's face. "F-fine." I exhaled deeply, then spoke. "If you get away, you keep her safe. Don't ever leave her behind again, you hear me? Become strong enough that not even the Satans will dare challenge you." I took a breath. "And if you don't get away…don't you fucking dare die. Don't leave her alone again. I don't care what you have to do. Just survive."

There was a slight twitch to Kuroka's eye – then it passed. "I have no problem with that request." She sighed. "If only there were more people like you; maybe I'd have a chance at a peaceful life with my little Shirone." She placed one hand on the side of my face, even as she drew back the other with its sharpened glow. "For what it's worth, I've never wanted to kill someone less than I do you, but I can't hypnotize you with that Spirit inside you. The Devils can't know where I am."

"Well, SS Rank Stray Devil Kuroka," a cultured female voice declared, "I think you're going to find that ship has sailed."

Kuroka froze in place, turning quickly to the door. After a moment, I managed to do roughly the same, although I only managed to turn my eyes and neck and the latter groaned all the way.

Two women entered the room, practically a taijitu of cultural contrasts.

The woman on the the left had long, silvery hair worn in several braids, and her outfit was distinctly that of a Victorian maid. Her irides matched her hair, silver and no-nonsense as she stared at Kuroka with a raptor gaze.

The woman on the right had hair of such a brilliant blonde that it reminded me of the sun. Her low-cut kimono was almost equally brilliant, as was the fur on the fox ears which perched atop her head and the nine tails that waved behind her.

The kitsune walked past the maid and strode towards Kuroka. "Kuroka the Stray Devil...one of the only remaining nekoshō or no, I don't believe I gave you permission to stay in my city."

Yasaka, the Chief Priestess of Amaterasu, the undisputed leader of the Yōkai, stood with her hands concealed in opposite sleeves and glared.

The silverette, meanwhile, walked over to where Koneko was down on her knees and shaking. "In shock," the woman mumbled to herself, then shook her head.

A flash of cold blue light.

The rumbling crack of earth, wood and stone all giving way at once.

The boreal bite of an Arctic winter on my skin.

The faint scent of tulips.​

My senses registered the burst of power in an instant as an icy obelisk which broke through the ceiling rose from the ground in front of me, separating me from Kuroka as she was forced into a leaping retreat.

I, on the other hand, just fell gently out of my indentation and landed on my face. 'Ouch.'

"I'd advise you surrender, Stray Cat," said the maid. "It will make this much less painful for everyone involved."

If there'd previously been any doubt in my mind as to her identity, it was now dashed. A silverette Devil dressed as a maid, with enough power over ice that even a minor working had given my senses such a shock…

This was Grayfia Lucifuge – the maid and wife of Sirzechs Lucifer. Or, as she was better known in the Underworld…

The Strongest Queen.​

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AN: I have to apologize for how long it took me to get this out. I intended to have it posted last Sunday, but my muse has been distinctly uncooperative, and I was bitten by the Bloodborne bug besides, as is evidenced by my new story, Luna Contritum: Grant Us Eyes. Speaking of which, if everything goes well, I'll be updating that one as well this Sunday. As always, many thanks to Teninshigen for betaing and buffing this, and Magery for helping me work out the kinks in what I had planned. I hope you all enjoy!
Edit: After a consultation with Magery, I have removed any mentions of 'Imprinting', which was to be a plot point. However, Magery raised several good points as to why it wasn't a good idea, which completely passed me by when I had initially considered the idea. Just goes to show that it's always a good idea to have someone check behind your ideas.