The Second Morningstar (DXD/Lucifer TV)

[Firewillreign]

Don't even know where this came from. I recently got into DXD, I started writing a fic, posted a chapter, watched some TV, and an idea for a snippet came into my head and I couldn't sleep until I wrote it.

This is not a story, as usual. Just a potential one, so let's see if it goes anywhere.

---

Rory sat in the baggage claim area of the teeming airport, her frown growing as the crowds bustled about flitted about, filling the air with an irritating din that had her fingers unconsciously gouging out strips of hard plastic and metal of the armrests of her chair to center herself.

It wasn't working.

"Is it going to be much longer?"

The guy sitting beside her rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his dirty blonde hair with a long-suffering groan. The pockets of his overcoat jingled when he leaned across the space between them to nudge her with an elbow.

"You're not the patient sort, are you?"

It probably said a lot about how wired up she was that her first impulse was to backhand him through the nearest wall and wipe the smug smirk off his face that way.

Instead, she turned and stared at him blankly with the dead-eyed look she'd mastered in Hell, fingers stilling eerily at her sides, and he abruptly seemed to remember that they were not friends.

"Right." He coughed awkwardly, trying to "Shouldn't be long now."

That's where he was - for what was probably the multi-billionth time in his over-long existence - wrong.

It had already been too long - nearly a month had passed since Rory landed in this ridiculous, bizzaro fever dream of an alternate universe and she still didn't have a clue how to get back home.

She didn't even understand how she'd wound up here in the first place.

One moment, she'd been flying down to Hell to check in with her parents after visiting a couple of friends up top, and then the next-

[Light]​

Light everywhere, washing over her with unnatural power and nearly blinding her with its otherworldly luminescence.

Rory knew that something was wrong immediately.

She was the daughter of the Lightbringer.

Light didn't blind her. It bowed to her, the same way it did her dad, or just about the same that you'd have to nitpick like a professional to tell difference.

Yet that didn't happen.

Instead, It had almost burned her, and the next she knew, she was falling into a twisted kaleidoscope of funnelled space and things she couldn't hope to understand and bieng spat up onto the streets of Los Angeles.

Only, it took her about one two-minute cussing rant that she'd never let her mom hear ever and a few funny looks to get over the murderous headache screaming inside her skull to realize that it wasn't her LA.

Oh, the main bits were still there - the beaches, the commercial avenues, the soul-sucking traffic and the unholy tax rates - but everything personal was gone.

Her home, Lux, Trixie's place - poof.

Just like everyone she knew.

...​

Rory hadn't truly panicked, at first.

She'd gone through plenty of crap before - hell, she'd time-traveled over forty years into the past and set into motion the events that shaped her childhood and irrevocably affected her family - she could handle some new wacky twist in her plans for the weekend without losing her cool.

Or so she'd thought.

Her confidence had strained significantly when she'd carefully tried to fly back down to hell and realized with an icy start that she couldn't. The... path - for lack of a better word - that angels took to cross dimensions into the infernal realm was gone.

She couldn't sense it at all.

Plan B it was.

She ducked into an alley, unfurled her wings and took off into the sky, angling herself in just the way she needed to get to Heaven. Surely her Uncle - God now - could help her figure out this mess.

And then that thought died a fiery death when, just as she approached what had to be Heaven - but not quite, because it felt off - she hit a wall.

No, that wasn't quite it.

Rory had soared full throttle ahead and slammed into a wall, and then had summarily been bounced off of it like a pigeon hitting a reinforced window at speed.

The actual shit?

She'd been so freaking incredulous in that moment she hadn't panicked, registered the pain, or even realized that she was falling back to Earth at an inhuman velocity before she smacked down in the middle of the Pacific like an Amenadiel-damned meteor with an impact to match.

That's when she finally lost her cool.

The next few days had been messy. She tried everything - praying to her angel relatives got her radio silence. Trying to figure out a way back to Hell had been like trying to paint on air - she had all the right tools, but there just wasn't a way.

For fuck's sake, she'd even tried to meditate on the off-chance that this was just some bullshit angelic self-actualization nightmare she was subconsciously forcing herself into just like her trip through time had been, but nada!

She was stuck, and more alone than she'd ever been before.

And then she met the Fallen angel.

...​

Rory had just been walking through the streets of LA at night, only half aware of the way that people were veering away from her path and flinching whenever they passed by.

In the state she was in, her presence was as far from welcoming as it had ever been, and she had never been that open to begin with.

And it wasn't just the fear and despair on the inside starting to creep out.

There was something wrong with her powers.

Back home, celestials couldn't bring about the full extent of their abilities on Earth.

As in, they physically, literally could not. Reality didn't allow it - it was a fundamental law written into the root code of creation. God's security measure to stop his more powerful children from wiping out a chunk of the planet every time they were prodded into throwing a hissy fit, of which there had been plenty.

Half-human or no, Rory should have still been bound by the same rules - but this place was different.

She could feel her power shifting under her skin, unrestrained in a way that should have only been possible in Heaven or Hell - she wasn't at a level remotely comparable to her dad, but it still felt like one wrong move would have it bursting at the seams and incinerating everything around her, and it was terrifying.

She needed to get herself under control.

No.

Scratch that - she needed to get home.

And then she crossed an alley, and saw a man in a black overcoat pinning another to the brick wall behind him by the throat.

Using one hand.

Her attention went sharp, just as the the unnaturally strong stranger seemed to catch sight of her.

"Oho?" He gave her a smary smile. "Is this a friend of yours, little magician, or am I just lucky tonight?"

His victim let out a choking sound, eyes wild and skin purpling.

"Lucky it is!" The smile grew wider "But I hate interruptions, so let me deal with this real quick, and I'll get back to torturing your miserable hide to death in a second."

Wait, what?

Rory hadn't had time to blink before he dropped the 'magician' took two steps towards her and-

Her thoughts came to a screeching halt as wings - two pairs, thin and feathered and black like coal - erupted from his back with a thrum of displaced air.

Rory knew all other angels in existence, even if most of them were in passing only. She knew exactly what they looked like, and how they behaved, and this thing in front of her couldn't be either.

So how in dad's unholy hell -!?

"Oh?"

His eyes had sharpened, and he tilted his head to the side as he stared her up and down.

"Why is my spell not affecting you?"

He'd tried to cast a spell on her?

"Are you resistant to repelling wards, then?" He sighed. "Such a shame. This could have gone easily for you if you'd just walked away."

And then he cocked back an arm, materialized a spear made out of light that bathed the dark alleyway in an off-white glow and lobbed it at her with a lazy swing.

The look on his face when her hand had snapped out and caught it in a vice grip had been, in hindsight, priceless.

"What-!?"

She didn't listen to the disbelieving words that spilled out of his mind. She didn't pay attention to the magician he'd been harassing taking off in his confusion and disappearing into the night.

She just kept her eyes fixed on the off-brand angel, and thought to herself: 'Answers.'

Something must have shown on her face, because he paled and his ugly and unshapely wings flared back in wariness.

In response to that, Rory smiled the way Maze had taught her, and let her own crimson wings unfurl behind her with a wave of presence.

In her grip, the spear of light shattered like glass.

"Oh, fuck me."

Now he was getting it.

...​

His name was Rubar, and he was a fallen angel. He was there to punish a magician - the genuine article - for borrowing cash from him and failing to pay his debt back in a timely manner.

Because apparently, this universe was Bizzaro with a capital fucking 'B'.

Rory had pried everything about the celestial he knew out of him, which had taken hours. This world had about a hundred thousand new flavors of supernatural to it, ruled by veritable monsters keeping up the masquerade behind the scenes, and somehow it was still standing.

What the fuck?

No, seriously, what the actual fuck?

Her reaction hadn't been pretty. Not at all.

It was the reason Rubar still knew to shut up when she gave him the right look, even all these weeks later.

Rory could tell he was as eager to ditch her as she was to get rid of him, but everything about this world was still foreign, as useless as he was - to say nothing of the mess she could sense from his Soul - he was still her guide.

And he'd already given her something very interesting.

There was something wrong with her. Beyond just her powers being unbound and her being, in all effects, homeless. The fact that her wings couldn't carry her to hell, which existed for a fact here even if it had about a dozen names apparently, said it all.

It wasn't self-actualisation, she'd already ruled that out. Which means that she'd been hurt, somehow, or the rules were so different that she might as well start from scratch all over again.

And if it was the former...

She needed to heal.

And much of a pain in the ass as Rubar was, he'd tipped her off to something potentially useful he'd picked up from one of his fallen angel friends.

"There." Rubar suddenly sat up straight, and pointed out a small, diminutive figure walking up to the baggage carousel. "That's her. Gotta be."

Finally.

"Make sure we're not interrupted." She told him brusquely, eyes zeroing in on her target, and he nodded eagerly - already looking forward to parting ways with her.

The feeling was mutual.

She didn't know what she expected to see when she walked up to the girl who couldn't have been any older than sixteen. Rory knew she was an excommunicated nun who'd been kicked out of the church for healing a devil - and that was a whole other can of worms she'd needed to put up with.

It was her power that had interested Rory, not her character - though in the back of her mind, she had been curious about what she would see.

But she'd never expected what she got, so much so that she almost missed a step when she locked eyes with her.

The soul she came face to face with was weighed down by guilt and plenty of regret - but there was an unstrained, heartfelt innocence that was rarer than a blue moon, and Rory had been to Heaven.

She knew what she was talking about.

Almost automatically, her shoulders relaxed and she sighed.

She needed her help, but she couldn't steamroll over her like she'd been prepared to do.

Time for plan B.

Again.

"Asia Argento?" The blonde girl's eyes went a little wide, and Rory smiled as softly as she could. "My name is Aurora Morningstar. I was wondering if you had a second to talk?"

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

Sacred Gears were an odd concept to wrap her head around - magic back home was a nebulous, sideways concept she hadn't had to interact with outside of Heaven and Hell, and only vaguely at that.

Human magic existed, yes, but it tended to stay in the backdrop - and one of the consequences of bieng born at the relative peak of the celestial hierarchy meant that you had to actively look for anything that ranked below you if you wanted to learn more about it, and for Rory, that had been just about everything.

Never mind that she'd already avoided the supernatural for the first forty years of her life out of misplaced spite for her dad - she'd started correcting that mistake the second she'd returned from the past and rewound in her time, with the gates of hell finally unbarred for her, but even then she'd never heard of anything quite like the sacred gears.

Her God - The old and the new alike - didn't make a habit of creating weapons and tools like that, and He sure as hell didn't hand them out en mass like the local variant had. This world was ten pounds of nuts in a five-pound bag, but the whole thing still seemed a little too openhanded and open to exploitation.

But none of that mattered right now - not when she was relying on sacred gear to fix her and let her get back home.

Convincing Asia Argento to try and heal her from whatever potential malady it was that was stopping her from getting back home or even reaching the local hell or heaven had been almost scarily easy.

One five-minute conversation in the middle of an airport, a second's worth of eye contact, and the next thing Rory knew she had an excommunicated nun all but attached to her hip and nodding like a particularly impassioned bobblehead doll.

She hadn't even mentioned the fact that she was an angel - though not local -, only implying that she was injured.

That's all it took.

"Of course I'll help, Miss Aurora!" Asia had beamed so earnestly too, and at a total stranger at that. "The Lord teaches us mercy and graciousness and it's my joy to pass that on!"

"Right." Her answering smile was more of a grimace with a hint of teeth. "Call me Rory."

Religious rhetoric aside, Rory would have been suspicious of the painless agreement if the circumstances had been any different - it was Rubar who'd led her here, after all, and for all that she was forced to keep him close until she was more familiar with this reality, she still dis-trusted about as far as she could throw him.

That being over the horizon these days, at least.

But souls didn't lie, and Asia Argento had one that could have convinced half her angelic relatives to go to war to protect it if needed, so they packed her up and bustled her off to a hotel room without a word of protest.

And here they were, seated opposite one another on a couch that felt like it was made of plywood and waiting to see what would come next.

Rory closed her eyes as the soft, ephemeral light of Twilight Healing washed over her - and just as quickly realized that this wasn't the answer she was looking for.

The sacred gear did nothing to her.

Or, not quite - she could feel a gentle, reassuring warmth emanating from it - more intent than anything else, an attempt to be soothing, but there was no change past that, no click deep inside that might have meant anything of actual value had come of it.

It was a failure.

She clenched her jaw as despair and fury welled up inside her, leashed back by the sole fact that she had nothing even vaguely resembling an acceptable outlet on hand, save maybe Rubar, and she still needed him in one piece.

Twilight Healing's light cut off, and Rory opened her eyes with a carefully controlled exhale.

Across from her, Asia's hopeful expression fell quickly.

"It didn't work, did it?"

Rory fought down the urge to snap - she wasn't a nice person by most people's definition, and she had edges sharper than the blades of he wings when prodded, but taking that out on someone so open-handed with their help would be two steps too far.

"Doesn't look like it." She finally said, tone neutral.

Back to square one - which might as well be square zero for how out of her depth she was here.

The spark of anger inside of her began to crackle.

What the fuck was she supposed to-?

"I'm sorry."

That entire line of thought got blown right to hell when Rory turned, stunned, and saw that Asia's eyes had begun to tear up.

"Wait-"

"I'm so sorry." The nun ducked her head, sounding completely miserable

"Hey, no." Rory wasn't the emotional type, not my several metric long shots, and tears were the last thing she was wired to put up with in her current state. She didn't even understand why the girl was so affected in the first place. "It's fine-"

"But it's not!" Asia cried, and Rory paused. "I'm supposed to be able to heal anyone... If I can't even do that...!"

She was beginning to cry in earnest now, and Rory suddenly got the sense that it had nothing to do with her.

Wait.

Abruptly, her mind flashed back to the conversation she'd had with Rubar weeks ago - When she'd asked him why a nun with an ability so sought after - apparently - would be tossed aside by the Church.

"She healed a devil, didn't she?" The fallen angel had seemed amused when he'd answered. "Dumb fuck somehow got to the Vatican and landed right in front of the poor little nun, and she couldn't help herself. Some priest walked in right as she was patching the Hellspawn up and raised the alarm."

"Wait, that's it?" Rory had blinked incredulously. "What, was the devil some infamous piece of shit or something?"

She'd known plenty of demons who'd warranted that kind of reaction too, but he'd looked at her like she was an idiot for asking.

"I don't know, and it wouldn't have mattered if he'd been a toddler taking his first steps. A devil is a devil - the fact that a holy maiden could heal something so... not-holy was enough for them to give her the boot."

She had ended up staring in disbelief at the backwards logic of it all.

"That's so freaking stupid."

Rubar had the gall to laugh.

"You really don't know much about the Church, do you?"

Rory wasn't going to poke at Asia's past or the circumstances of her ex-communication - she wasn't equipped with the patience to touch that with a five-foot pole wrapped in infernal steel, and she didn't particularly want to either.

Still.

Leaving her like this would be downright scummy.

Taking a deep breath and cursing herself for her weakness, she leaned forward and very gently wrapped her hands around Asia.

The poor girl just about froze in her arms, sobs petering out quickly, and Rory grimaced and decided to get on with it before things got really awkward.

"Thank you for trying to heal me. I really aprreciate it. The fact that you tried is enough - I'm sure God would agree."

That wasn't even a lie. The God that Rory knew would be proud of this kid - her soul was proof enough of it.

"You're putting his gift to good use, and all that." She cleared her throat as she ran out of words - Hell, she sounded like such a moron. No one back home could ever be allowed to find out about this. "Can't go wrong with that, right?"

There.

She'd avoided pressing any obvious trauma buttons and offered a hug. It couldn't get better than that, right?

Naturally, Asia chose then to pop that bubble of delusion by wrapping her arms around Rory and bursting into a fresh round of wailing tears.

Fucking A.

...​

A solid hour later, she slipped out of Asia's hotel room and closed the door behind her softly.

"All done?"

Rubar was waiting for her in the hallway, leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed and an expectant look on his face.

Rory offered him a shallow nod.

"For now. She's asleep." She'd needed the rest after crying out enough tears to leave Rory's shirt a complete right off

Strangely, she wasn't that bothered about it.

"What happens to her now?"

"You think I know?" He shrugged at her sharp look. "Seriously, I have no idea. The only reason I know about her at all is because she's a target for recruitment - healing sacred gears that potent are rare - and a friend of mine is on the team that was supposed to meet her at Kuoh. We actually beat them to her because you were so damn eager to get your hands on her."

That was...hmm.

"Speaking of which." She blinked at him when he tilted his head at her in an obviously leading way. "Are you still not going to tell me why you needed a healer so urgently?"

"No," she said shortly, and his lips pulled upward in amusement.

There was no way he was getting anything more out of her and they both knew it.

"So uptight. That can't be good for you." His smirk widened. "You know you really should be thanking me. If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have known she existed either - hell, if it wasn't for me, you might not have met her at all. I know the hothead in charge of her recruitment team - if things had gone off track and we got here too late, Raynare would have just ripped the Sacred Gear out of her soul and left her to die, and then where would you have-?"

"What?"

"-oh." His eyes widened. "No, wait-Agghhkk!"

In the split second it had taken Rubar to remember that he was dealing with someone not only significantly more powerful than him but almost definitely on a different moralistic wavelength than the standard Grigori associate, Rory's hand had already wrapped around his throat and driven him into the wall hard enough that it splintered behind him.

The air around them was disrupted as her wings unfurled, crimson-bladed feathers whistling through the air with a deadly symphony, and suddenly he found himself pinned in place by her eyes, alight with that terrifying, scorching light.

"Run that last part by me again."

...​

Elsewhere:

"Is that right?"

"Absolutely, my lord. Asia Argento is in a hotel room on the outskirts of the Kuoh territory, unguarded, save for one confirmed four-winged fallen angel and one unknown, suspected human."

"And the rest of the fallen in Kuoh?"

"Either unaware of her presence or choosing not to intercept her just yet. We're keeping eyes on their temporary headquarters at all times."

"Well, then."

It was earlier than expected, and honestly a little underwhelming given all the preparations he'd made beforehand, but Diodora Astaroth was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"This sounds like an opportunity. Gather the rest of the girls." A wide, vile smile slowly grew across his face, and then he tipped his head back and began to cackle. "Let's go get me my new toy!"

This was going to be such fun.

...​

Robar pressing all the wrong buttons to get a reaction:

View: https://imgur.com/adFzSSi



​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

Rubar was more than self-aware enough to recognize that, as far as Fallen Angels went in the long run, he wasn't anything awe-inspiring.

Not on a grand scale, at least.

His four wings and the skills he'd honed to a survival-driven artform over his many, many years elevated him above the average expendable grunt among the ranks of the Grigori, but not nearly enough to play in the big leagues or draw attention from the heavyweights running the show, and that suited him just fine.

It was a madhouse of a world out there, after all, and going out of your way to stick out when you were at his level tended to do terrible things to your future life expectancy, and was often reserved for ambitious or delusional idiots of all sorts with death wishes that he preferred to steer well clear off.

No, his way was the best way - Unimportance was a shield all of its own in this game, and Rubar was an expert at ducking behind it when he needed to.

He had his connections among the rest of his kind - hence him learning of the nun - and the relative freedom to run around doing just about whatever he wanted so long as he actively made sure not to step on any toes, and that was the way he liked it.

If it isn't broken, it shouldn't be fixed - and he'd had no intentions of messing with the system.

And then he met Aurora Morningstar, and that particular conviction died a fiery death.

Almost literally, considering the fact that he was fairly certain she'd been a hair's breadth away from setting him on fire that night back in LA when she'd stumbled upon him trying to collect on his dues.

He'd had have taken it personally and nursed a grudge - and it wasn't as if he was entirely happy with it, even now - but the truth was that ever since then, he'd been reeled into the enigma in his life like a fish on a particularly savage hook.

She was unaffiliated, and her questions and the crash course he'd had to give her on the supernatural factions had been enough proof that she didn't know anything about anything - fucking somehow - but as ridiculously confusing as that had been, it wasn't the real mystery about her.

Not as far as he was concerned. Not even close.

Her abnormal wings, her undeniable power, her light.

Oh accursed father, her Light.

(And that oh-so-curious, dangerous choice of last name)

She wasn't a creature from some other pantheon, he could tell that much instinctively.

Everything about her was familiar enough to resonate with some part of him, but also so equally other that every second he spent in her proximity felt like he was standing on a precipe of some eerie, forbidden truth that he could understand if he just gathered up the nerve to reach out and take it.

It was a trip and a half, uncanny valley at its worst, and it begged the question:

What in the actual hell was she?

Rubar wanted to know.

That was why he'd chosen to play ball and led her to the nun, and why he stuck around when he would have ordinarily split the second he'd delivered on his promise.

The fact that the more help he offered here, the greater the debt that she was going to owe him became just sweetened the deal. She was strong - being able to recognize when he was hilariously outmatched was just another of his many valuable self-preservation skills - and bieng able to call on that could be real handy down the line.

"You were going to let Asia die."

All that said, it was also the reason why he was bieng stared down with a look of contempt that spelled very bad things for his immediate future if he didn't pick his next words carefully.

At least she'd unpinned him from the indentation he'd made into the wall and folded away those terrifying wings of hers, though he wasn't stupid enough to think he could so much as twitch the wrong way without setting her off again.

"I wasn't going to do shit." He answered honestly, massaging his throat gently with a free hand. Her grip had been brutal. "I had nothing to do with the girl, the mission surrounding her recruitment, or anything to do with her at all. The only reason I'm even here is because of you, in case you've forgotten."

She stared stonily, unimpressed.

"I've already told you about the cold war between the three great factions. There may be no outright fighting going on anymore beyond the occasional skirmish, but that doesn't mean that any of them have stopped looking for fresh talent to shore up their ranks, and Sacred Gear holders are all the rage these days. If one side can't recruit them, they take them out so that neither of the other two can poach them for themselves. It's just how it works."

"That right?"

Her fingers twitched, and Rubar hurried to explain.

"Yes. But I..." he grimaced at the hoarseness of his voice "May have exaggerated a little."

"May have?

Her resting bitchface was truly top-tier, but he was fairly certain his face wouldn't survive the experience intact if he blurted that out at the moment.

"Look, I was just trying to get under your skin. The girl's going to be fine. Twilight Healing is rare and useful, and that means we need her to work for us and be happy about it. There's no point in hurting her."

He wasn't even lying - The Grigori didn't need to strong-arm Asia Argento. The girl was an excommunicated Vatican nun with about as much life experience as a freaking fetus, and they already had her.

Where else was she going to go?

Raynare may have been a hot-headed moron who for some god-forsaken reason had wound up with a Sacred Gear extractor of all things, but killing a valuable target for recruitment without explicit orders - and he knew she didn't have any of those yet, he'd checked - would be such a colossal fuck-up of an overstep that the odds of her coming out the other side in one piece would be nill.

Strangely enough, Aurora didn't seem to be all that satisfied with his answer.

"You think that's good enough, you-"

He was spared from whatever that scathing end that opening was leading to when the air around them shifted.

Both of them stiffened.

"What the hell was that?"

"Magic." He hissed through his teeth. This was unexpected - and unexpected was always bad. "Someone's raised a cloak or a barrier of some sort over the hotel."

He couldn't tell how far it extended, but it was heavy. And this taint to it-

"It's demonic power." He met her eyes in realization. "There are devils here."

...​

"Get Asia."

Rory hadn't waited for Rubar's expression to do anything more than pinch in frustrated compliance before she moved.

Demonic power, huh?

She could see it, vaguely. Demons back home had a feel to them, from Maze to the average grunt in hell. Nothing in this world was the same, but she could feel a weighty power somewhere outside the hotel with an edge to it that felt very distinct to Rubar's by know familiar presence.

She didn't like it.

She liked it a whole lot less when she stepped out of the hotel's lobby, past a dozing clerk and out into the night to find over a dozen hooded, robed figures stepping up the path and readying themselves to march inside.

Fifteen young women in priestess garbs, and one single male with green hair and eyes that were a shade off-amber.

"Well, well" His voice was high and cold, and he spoke like he was a performer addressing an audience "A welcoming party! It looks like-"

Rory didn't bother listening.

She went for what was beneath that at once, peering at the contents of their souls - and almost recoiled at what was waiting for her within their souls.

The fifteen young women who trailed a step behind their leader were far from innocent. Their sins were heavy, and they were weighed down by guilt and fear and pain, black like coal.

But they had nothing on their leader.

Greed. Lust. Wrath and Envy, all fuelling a sense of petty cruelty taken to its near-absolute worst. The sick malice all but radiated off of him, and for all that Rory had nothing on her family's experience with souls, she could tell that he was the sort to revel in his depravity.

It was sickening.

"What the fuck are you?" She spat at him, cutting off his tirade.

Just the thought of breathing the same air as this... thing wearing human-adjacent skin raised her hackles and made her feathers rustle in disgust, even as she kept them furled.

"Oho? How rude!" He mocked sarcastically, not losing his stride, but his slightly narrowed eyes showed that he was put off by the interruption "It's the height of discourtesy for Fallen feathered rats like you to mouth off to your betters."

Betters?

The day filth like this was in any way considered her better, Rory would find a way to annihilate herself.

Her standards would demand nothing less.

"Ah, but I suppose lowly, bottom-feeding scum cannot be expected to recognize greatness when it graces them with its presence." He must have taken her incredulous, half-nauseated silence for something it was not, because his smile somehow grew more arrogant and sinister. "I am Diodora, Heir of House Astaroth, kin to the Satan Ajuka Beelzebub. And I have come for what is mine."

Something about the way he said that-

Sacred Gear holders are all the rage these days. If one side can't recruit them, they take them out so that neither of the other two can poach them for themselves.

"Asia." Rory realized, watching carefully as he paused in visible surprise. "You're here for Asia."

"Smarter than you look, are you? Yes." Diodora's tone curled with a kind of delight that would have made a saint wretch. "Asia Argento is mine. I've put in far too much effort to ensure that she falls into my hands, and I will accept nothing else. She belongs to me - to play with and to use for my pleasure however which way I will, and I've come to collect her at last."

His words left nothing and everything to the imagination, and it made her sick.

She stared at the devil - though she could barely stomach calling him that. There was only one Devil that she knew, and comparing this sentient filth to him was an insult.

The thought of him getting his hands on the same girl who'd drifted to a fretful rest in Rory's arms, who'd cried herself to exhaustion because she'd failed to heal her made something in the back of her mind snap almost audibly.

"You'll have to die, of course." He said breezily, unaware of the mounting eruption he'd just provoked. "Witness and all that - but I suppose I can be magnanimous and make it quick, if you beg-"

"You-"

Diodora frowned "Eh?"

The feeling that boiled in her from deep within and up and out was so much more than disgust. It wasn't even base anger.

Rory was far, far past that.

The miasma of loathing that had been growing ever since she'd tumbled into this whacky shit-hole of a universe bubbled and expanded inside of her, igniting in one fiery wave of absolute unforgiving wrath

"You despicable little worm."

Her wings snapped out and blazed with light in the very next breath - her unrestricted power finally being granted an outlet, however limited - and for a moment, it was as if dawn had come early to Kuoh as the very air came alight with otherworldly radiance.

Faced with it, the would-be devils began to scream.

Rory watched as they topped to their knees, howling as their skin blistered and smoked, wails rising in an agonized crescendo.

Only Diodora managed to remain coherent, and he staggered on unsteady feet, features finally twisting into something pained and animalistic - all his showmanship reduced to a snarling, frothing mess that was almost as hideous as his soul was.

"You dare attack me!" He screamed, skin still burning even as his hands came ablaze with their own power, a wreath of green light that wasn't quite light coating his arms threateningly. "I am of noble blood, you wretched bitch! It'll take more than that to bring me down-!

Rory interrupted him by moving, blurring and driving her fist into his gut with so much force he nearly folded in half with a pained wheeze, before she transferred her grip just as quickly to his throat and heaved him up far more brutally than she'd handled even Rubar.

"Oh, I hope not." Even to her own ears. The way Diodora's eyes grew wide with pained terror was gratifying. "After all,

Her eyes lit up with sheer, unadulterated power.

"I have some shit to work through."

And then she drew her arm back and sent him skipping along the asphalt of the road ahead with a heartfelt roar.

"Let's get fucking started."

...


Rubar trying to figure Rory out:



View: https://imgur.com/n2W1uqD


Rory coming in hot with Diodora's reality check:



View: https://imgur.com/rh4nLfC​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Firewillreign]

I haven't watched the show that's being crossover's with DxD so would someone mind giving me a quick TLDR on who our main character is?

Click to shrink...

Right, Here goes.

Ladies, and Gentlemen, I welcome you to Firewillreign's:

Celestials 101 Seminar:


Our Main Focus is:


Aurora Morningstar:



View: https://imgur.com/cR3s9qB

​

In her home universe, Rory is about as high as one can get as when one is half-human. The Grandaughter of God (The Omnipotent one), the daughter of Samael The Lightbringer AKA Lucifer Morningstar AKA the Devil, and the niece of the new God (Her uncle, who took the throne after her Father got it who in turn got it from her Grandpa when he abdicated to take a vacation in another universe. Long story.)

Basics:

​

As a celestial (even if only half) Rory is immortal and unaging. She looks to be in her early twenties even though she's lived well over forty earth years and a good bit longer in hell (time dilation), and will continue to look that young forever.

She also has an invulnerability to all mundane, earthly harm unless under specific circumstances (that's never been stress tested, but with extrapolation it doesn't have to be), wings that can cross fly across dimensions, and super strength that's restricted in her home universe as by the lore of this fic) because God realised pretty early on that allowing his ludicrously powerful descendants access to all their powers on the earthly plain is a terrible, no good very bad idea.


Special powers:

All celestials shown on the Lucifer Show have a very interesting power: The ability to self-actualize.

The cliff notes version is it's very, very limited Reality warping, focused on oneself. If they believe something about themselves or need something subconsciously, it manifests into reality.

Notable examples include:

Her uncle Amenadiel committing crimes against humans and locking away his powers, becoming human and thinking it was God punishing him when in reality it was him unconsciously doing it to himself out of guilt.

Her father manifesting a secondary devil face (classic fictional devil look with the red skin and the fire, blah blah blah) because he perceived himself to be a monster.)

The most extreme example is Rory herself manifesting the ability to time travel after living her whole life without her father and never finding out why, only to realize after a few weeks living in the past that it was because of her older self creating a time loop that necessitated she never meet him until she returns to the future (Long, Long story.). This is also suspected to be an Angelic gift, which is the name of specific powers that angels have given by God, independant of any actualisation shenanigans.

Final:

She's the daughter of the Lightbringer, who brought Light to the dark back in their Universe, or so the stories go. Extrapolate from that what you will.

Sad to see we didn't have no Meme's for the end of this chapter.

Click to shrink...

Fixed.

In fact, not fixed. It was always there - you can't prove anything! XD

 

[Deathsheadx]

I need more of this Naow!

 

[Marsyas]

This is really good so far. I'm not too familiar with the Lucifer TV show, but I like the comics a lot.

 

[Hida Reju]

This is all my opinion from observation.

Rory is an out of context problem, she has Holy light but is not technically an Angel, it appears that local powers dont affect her the same way as they do native people.

This will give her new strengths and weaknesses until she can figure out how to overcome them. Most likely by simply accepting this new world as real and having meaning so it can affect her. Her own abilities kinda both shield her and hold her back in some ways since she is rejecting this world so hard in her head.

Simple put, she does not believe in it so it has less hold over her and she has less power over it. But nothing trumps the fact she is a Descendant of Light. So if it is vulnerable to Light its going to have a bad day.

 

[Sister of Change]

tarmac

Click to shrink...

Asphalt would probably be the better word here, in general tarmac is used (mostly incorrectly) to describe airport aprons, taxiways, and runways.

Excited to read more, DxD is an interesting world dragged down by maleMC harem bs.

 

[ndh]

Is Rory going to use a cheesegrater on Dio?

 

[rogue1615]

I never knew I wanted this crossover before seeing this. But now I definitely want it and more. I love outside context fics and the more she finds out about this world the more pissed off she is going to get.

Thanks for a very intersting fic and concept.

 

[Firewillreign]

Diodora's comeuppance was over in minutes, and it was...

Pathetic.

It wasn't a fight. It wasn't a beat-down.

It wasn't anything worth putting a damn name to, really, and that somehow only served to piss Rory off more.

"Is that all?" She growled in what was almost genuine disappointment, the emotion only vaguely recognizable beneath the cocktail of disgust and sheer rage swirling around inside of her. "All that talk, and you can't even put up a ghost of a fight?"

Crumbled on his hands and knees before her, moaning in pain and struggling to rise with a face that now had more in common with a bruised tomato than the paper-thin facade of humanity he'd worn only a little before, Diodora Astaroth moaned pathetically.

He was spineless in the way all cowards were.

He'd tried to attack at first - lobbing swords of materialized magic, green shards of fractal power that were about as threatening to her as blunted toothpicks, and then trying to ambush her by flitting away into the forest behind the hotel and attacking from the dark - but the second he'd realized that the most he'd achieved was ruffling her hair, he'd folded like a wet napkin.

It had almost been funny, the way his raging bluster had whittled away to incredulity and then real panic as Rory had walked through his rain of green bolts almost leisurely and entirely unharmed.

The magic struck and spilled along the shimmering light wafting off her and almost seemed to burn before it dispersed into the air like it was nothing.

Coming from a worm like Diodora, maybe it was nothing.

She'd seen it - the second he decided to run. She could have read the intention off of him from a mile away, and the second he'd lobbed one last desperate lance of demonic power at her and moved to bolt, her wings had flared and she was on him.

His scream had been very satisfying before she'd cut it off with a punch to the throat.

A storm of flaming fists and light later, and this was the result.

"You-" Every few seconds, his swollen eyes would flick up to her, his jaw quivering with furious disbelief and pain and blatant terror. "You... you-!"

Rory stared back down at him with utter contempt.

He couldn't even string together a few words.

"Yeah."

Her foot lanced out and caught him in the side, and he squealed like a fucking pig.

"Me."

Around them, the woods were burning. Between the worm throwing what amounted to hand grenades like they were going out and Rory's own light, the trees had stood no chance. The flames were no threat to her, or anyone nearby, but they were spreading, casting the pair of them in a muted fiery glow, and an acrid cloud of smoke was rising above.

She eyed them with distaste, before turning her gaze back to Diodora.

"Now look what you made me do."

"..won't get away with this..."

She raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

Diodora took a raspy breath, before looking up at her with hatred that burned three shades hotter than the flames kicking off around them.

"You won't get away with this." He hissed the delusional promise, pupils blown wide with black rage. For a moment, he seemed to forget his fear. "I am Diodora Astaroth, of the blood of Satan Beelzebub. I am of the highest nobility! You're nothing more than some freakish Fallen mongrel! There'll be nowhere you can hide for this!"

By the end of that poisonous spil, he was spitting like a fish.

"'Get away with this?'"

The wave of renewed anger that washed over her at the fucking audacity he had to threaten her almost left her light-headed from the force of it.

"You think I need to get away with anything? To hide?" She could feel her eyes glowing almost of their own accord, and Diodora recoiled with a yelp as pathetic as the rest of him was when that glow fell on him. "On account of you?"

Rory didn't need to hide.

She needed to get home, but she couldn't, and instead here she was, dealing with this puddle of oozing filth instead.

The very thought was infuriating, and the snarl that built up in her throat would have made any of the Lilim flinch like they'd been struck.

She reached for Diodora - likely to do something almost stupidly violent to him for the unwitting reminder of her situation - but her fingers froze inches away from him when an angry scream came over the crackle of the flames.

"No!"

She turned just in time to see a familiar figure lunging at her - one of Diodora's robed lackeys, hood thrown back and silver hair streaming behind her as she rocketed towards Rory full-tilt, a gleaming silver blade in her hand.

It was laughably easy to angle herself away from the stab. Her attacker's confidence seemed to falter when she smacked away the second one with the same contemptuous ease, and she got tellingly desperate when she angled her blow lower and tried to drive the dagger into her side.

That was about the point where Rory's patience ran, and her wing arced out.

The silver-haired woman cried out in pain at once, collapsing to her knees much like her master had as the dagger slipped out of the mangled mess Rory's bladed feathers had made of that hand.

The fact that she had fingers left alone - if ones that were attached by bloody muscles and skin and bone that had been sliced almost all the way through - was a miracle in and of itself.

"So what are you supposed to be?" She mocked, making sure to turn a murderous glare on Diodora to make sure he didn't so much as twitch while she handled this interruption. "Act two to his rendition of 'worthless evil piece of shit?'"

Rory took a step forward.

"Because I have to say, I am getting bored."

"I will not allow you to hurt my master."

Her downed enemy stared her down, which was almost enough to stall Rory.

"That right?"

It was laughable, the way these jokes kept thinking their words had any kind of sway over her. But the... almost empathetic response had Rory halfway curious.

She could see her soul - it was nothing good, but compared to the foul thing Diodora had going for him, she was a small fry.

Which really begged the question-

"Why?" Rory's wings rustled ominously as she took another half-step towards her. "Why are you trying to help someone so vile?"

"Anna, do not-!"

She snapped her gaze back to Diodora, and whatever the clearly panicking fool was going to say died in his throat.

"Interrupt me again, and I will incinerate you." He choked, and Rory turned back to his would-be savior. Anna. "He's after a girl who's never done anyone in the world any harm. Why are you helping him?"

"He is my master," Anna said, and Rory didn't miss the way her eyes flickered to the bloody dagger between them.

"That's not it."

"He is my master." Anna insisted, and then she lunged for the dagger and sprang up like a flash of silver, ready to drive it into her throat.

Rory caught her by the wrist with her left hand - her right snapped out and seized her by the throat, lifting her a foot off the ground.

"Master or no, that wasn't the truth." She said dryly, ignoring the way Anna spluttered and choked in her grasp. "And you can't hide the Truth from me."

Different angels possessed different powers, after all, and she was no exception.

Her father could tempt and draw out one's deepest Desire. His brother - the colossal dick that he was - summoned Fear, and her uncle Amenadiel could embody and reflect Faith even before his Ascension.

And Rory?

Well.

She'd lived her entire childhood on the crucible of a lie her future self had kicked off- because time travel was exactly that kind of bitch - and had unknowingly perpetuated her own misery because of it.

Wasn't it ironic, then, that when she did tap into an intrinsic power, it was the exact opposite of everything that had contributed to making her who she was?

"Tell me the Truth."

Anna met her eyes, and the manic resolve shattered. Her soul shifted as it fell under Rory's regard.

"I-don't-"

"Tell me."

In the end, the answer bubbled out of her almost of its own accord.

"If he has her, he'll hurt us less."

...

...

What?

Rory stared, uncomprehending, as Anna's features broke into hollow-eyes horror. Her grip slackened, and the silver-haired woman tumbled limply from her hold and onto her knees.

She didn't try to move again even as Rory just stood there, her mind momentarily refusing to slot the pieces together.

"If he has her, he'll hurt us less."

"What did you say?"

Her voice was a whisper, but no one could have missed it. At that moment, it felt like even the air had frozen rock-solid.

"He is the master." Anna did not look at her. She didn't look at Diodora, who'd gone shock-still in instinctual mortal terror. She didn't look at much of anything, and her eyes were glazed - distant and far gone. "We are his toys and playthings. He can do with us as he pleases. But if he had one more..."

She bowed her head and swallowed.

"If there is one more to break in, then he would spend less time on each of us. Less.... attention."

Toys. Plaything. One more. Attention.

One minute, the words and the revolting implications were bouncing around the inside of her skull with an unholy fervor, refusing to come to heel.

The next, they all went silent as Rory rounded on Diodora, face blank.

Diodora who had come to take an innocent kid like Asia.

Diodora who had come here alone.

What was it he'd said about Asia?

'She belongs to me - to play with and to use for my pleasure however which way I will'

Their eyes met, black against amber.

"Is this true?"

Diodora's face was chalk-white and pasty with fear, but that didn't stop his Truth from coming to Light when Rory called for it.

"Yes."

She felt eerily calm as she took that in.

Serene, even.

"For all of the rest too? The ones who came with you."

She could see him try to resist the urge to answer, but it was futile.

"You hurt them? All of them?"

"Yes?"

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to." He almost smiled, lost in his Truth. "Because they're mine, and I enjoy it. I break them and fix them back up, just for me to use. It's wonderful."

There was real delight there. True, and from the soul.

Rory nodded.

"I see."

She still felt so calm.

Fifteen girls.

Fifteen.

There was a beat.

And the calm broke.

Light erupted everywhere.

...​

Rory had told him to get the girl.

As Rubar was very much not a suicidal moron, he'd gone ahead and done just that.

Asia followed behind him fretfully as he marched down the hall and started layering spells, eyes flickering to every other shadow as if she was expecting monsters to leap at her the moment she looked away.

"Mister Rubar-"

"Shhh, not now kid. Just stay close."

He probably could have done better than simply barging into her room, shaking her awake and telling her that there were devils here, but beggars can't be choosers and all that.

By the time they made it outside, he was only half aware of the insensenate devils splayed out in front of the driveway ahead. Instead, the rest of his mind was occupied with trying to call the Fallen team in town and telling them to get the fuck out here at once, please and thank you-

His senses screamed and he looked up just as a massive pillar of pure light and power blasted out of the woods behind the hotel and straight up, igniting the heavens for a moment in a brilliant shade of fiery gold.

The phone slipped out of his grasp as he stared, Asia just as still beside him.

This.

This was why he stuck close to Aurora Morningstar.

This oddly familiar yet terrifying power, the otherworldly edge to it, whatever the hell it meant.

He wanted so desperately to finally understand -

And then the light show cut off, just as abruptly, and Rubar was left gaping at an otherwise unassuming night sky with an excommunicated bunny-rabbit of a nun blinking stunned stars out of her eyes beside him.

"What-?"

The air shifted, and Rory materialized to the side, shoving a silver-haired devil forward a few steps toward the tangle of bodies still out cold before them.

He readied a light spear on instinct, tugging Asia behind him... who was openly staring at Rory's wings with a look of awe.

Yeah, that tracked.

Then the devil turned around, ignoring him entirely - the rude fuck - and bowed her head to Rory.

What?

"Thank you for your mercy."

No, seriously, what?

The biggest mystery in his life didn't react to the inexplicable show of gratitude. Instead, she turned toward the mess of tangled limbs ahead one more time, an unreadable look in her eyes.

"You'll get them to behave."

The devil nodded. "They must. We... we are quite finished."

There was another pause, before Rory turned to gaze at her impassively.

"What you are is an ugly mess."

The devil flinched like she'd been struck - and then she lost her composure entirely when she heard what came next.

"But you can do better. Be better. For yourself and all of them. " Rory turned her back to the expression on her face. "It's your call. Fuck tonight - I'm done here."

That sounded good to Rubar.

He was done here too, and he didn't even know what the fuck was going on. His mind was still shaking itself out of the aftermath of the Light detonation that was probably felt for miles outside of the city.

The logistics of mindwiping the residents of this hotel who were probably even now peaking out of their windows and huddling in terror at the display before them were going to be a nightmare.

Oh well. Not his problem - Raynare could make herself useful for once.

"We're leaving, Asia."

"Miss Aurora-? Oh!"

Rory didn't bother explaining. She just scooped the nun up into a bridal carry, and Rubar snorted at the image before unfurling his own wings.

And before the poor girl could get a word in edge-wise - not that she'd much want to - three of them took off into the air, leaving the devils behind, and they were gone.

...​

"I want so badly to kill you." The crimson-winged monster had declared as she held him in his grip, hand clamped down over his mouth and holding him aloft by the face. "But that's not enough. Death is too good for you by far, you worthless abomination."

Her eyes had burned when he had tried to meet them - nothing but pits of Light that scorched his very skin.

But that pain was nothing compared to what came next.

"You took what was not yours to take and hurt those who did you no harm. You ruined their lives - so now I will ruin yours."

Her hand - the one holding him - lit up, and he began to howl like he never had before as his skin bubbled and warped from the heat and hellish agony that spread first from his jaw and then burned away across all of him.

And all the while, the monster spoke over his muffled screams.

"For as long as your victims suffer the fruit of the torment you inflicted on them, so too will you." The thing intoned its unforgiving judgment. "This pain will never leave you, and you will never hide it or your nature beneath pretty words or false skin. Anyone who lays eyes on you from here on out will know the Truth of you - that you are depraved, and cruel and without mercy or goodness - that you are the most despicable of petty evils, filth that has no place amongst anything good, and that your suffering is no less than you deserve."

The light reached a crescendo, and he was tossed away like so much trash.

"Now begone, filth."

The night was not over yet, but even now the pain of that instant was so intent that he could barely breathe.

He trudged between the burning trees in delirious agony for what felt like hours, before his knees finally gave out and he began to crawl.

So great was his torment that he didn't notice the devils descending on him from above until they were nearly surrounding him, and when he did, he could have cried in relief had he still had the ability to do so at the sight of one he recognized through the ugly lens that was his vision now.

The burnt and charred creature that had once been the flawless Diodora Astaroth lifted a blackened, smoking limb towards the devil closest to him, begging wordlessly as he tried to make eye contact piteously.

Surrounded by her equally lost Peerage, Rias Gremory back stared in disbelief and no small measure of horror.

"What happened here?"

...


Rory handling her problems calmly and responsibly:

View: https://imgur.com/YWIOwbP


Rubar's entire mood this chapter:

View: https://imgur.com/b4isZgd​

As always leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[rogue1615]

That was glorious. The after affects of this should be interesting...

Thanks for an enjoyable chapter.

 

[Thotmas]

Yeah that curse about tracks for biblical payback. Neat and deserved!

 

[Alkard]

Yeah, Aurora's definitely an out-of-context problem. Always fun to see Diodora eat crow!

 

[LordEdric]

I really want to see what Rory sees when she meets Issei, he should be turned by now

 

[Firewillreign]

They left Kuoh town behind.

It was inevitable.

Rory hadn't had any kind of a destination in mind when she'd plucked Asia off the ground and took off, silently bidding Rubar to follow, and by the time she was in anything even vaguely resembling a headspace to think - past the haze of unyielding rage - the place was a dot on the horizon behind her.

Fine. There wasn't anything of any real value there regardless.

(And if it kept her from laying eyes on that worthless thing again, then all the fucking better)

They couldn't keep flying forever, though.

Rubar wouldn't have been able to keep up with her if she chose to, and Asia certainly hadn't managed that well - the poor girl had been shivering and clutching tight to Rory the entire flight through, and it wasn't from the colder air at that height alone.

It had been more than enough of an incentive for her to drop out of the sky the moment they came across what looked like a smaller town down below.

Rory couldn't have been bothered to figure out where they were exactly. They dropped down from above, folded away their wings, and took off at a brisk, tense walk, Asia arm in arm with her.

Ten minutes later, they checked into yet another hotel, and fifteen minutes after that, her charge - and it was beginning to become uncomfortably clear that Asia couldn't be anything less, because she sure as hell wasn't letting her out of her sight any time soon - was tucked back into bed, Rubar was none-too-subtly hissing into his phone out in the hallway, and Rory was doing the same thing she'd found herself resorting to time and again over the last couple of weeks.

Sitting on a chair against one wall of the bog-standard hotel room, one leg crossed over the other, hands very carefully laid out over the armrests and head leaned back and braced against the backrest as she just... breathed.

Breathed, and reflected, as calmly as she could manage.

Ignoring the debacle with the devils and the wretch she had left in her wake - it would be bad to recapture that rage without a convenient outlet on hand - the detour to Kuoh had been a total failure.

Saving Asia was a good thing, unquestionably so - especially because the Grigori were definitely on her bullshit radar now, and not in not in a good way when she considered what could have apparently happened to the nun otherwise - but on finding a way back home, Rory was back to square one.

If it could even be called that - square one implies a starting point, and she didn't even have that - Asia had been a ghost of a chance she'd taken on Rubar's word, and even he was only an ally - or something ally-adjacent - because he was just about dying to figure her out.

Yeah, she wasn't blind to that little tidbit.

Even when she wasn't looking for the Truth about the people around her, she could still gleam plenty without putting her back into it.

Rubar was the crafty sort - careful, methodical, and in it for his benefit where it counted - but he saw her as a puzzle to be solved and he desperately wanted to be the one to put the pieces together.

Honestly, she didn't need her powers to work that one out.

It was why he was sticking so close to her, and it was he could be trusted to be helpful.

To an extent. A vague one.

(A very, very vague one)

As she turned that thought around in her head, the door to the room clicked open, and the Fallen in question strolled inside.

"All done-"

He froze when he noticed Rory looking at him with a quiet, contemplative weight to her gaze.

"What?"

She just stared at him for a long minute, before closing her eyes and tilting her head back again.

She had no idea what she was going to do now.

"I need a drink."

Rubar took that in, and then actually snorted.

"Finally, something that makes sense."

She blinked an eye open as he walked over to the corner of the room and popped open the mini-bar. He pulled out two cans of beer and tossed one to Rory.

She caught it and eyed it warily.

Odds were, this would taste like crap. She'd never had much luck with trying new drinks.

Then again...

She popped open the can.

... It might help wash the taste of the last couple of hours away.

She took a sip - and grimaced.

It tasted like freaking cardboard with a chemical edge to it.

Rubar did the same and winced as well.

"This is terrible."

No shit. It was the kind of thing that would drive her cousin Charlie into hilarious dramatics - the less said about her parents and her sister, the better.

They were all such alcohol snobs, even if her mom would deny it with her undying breath.

She almost smiled thinking about it - before she remembered how likely her odds were of seeing any of them any time soon and her mood plummeted.

Rubar must have picked up on the shift, somehow, because he glanced at her oddly and raised a brow.

"You good?"

Was she good?

Batshit-crazy world, no friends or family, and a race of 'devils' out there who had at least one vile piece of shit as a member and likely more?

Ha.

"I hate everything about tonight." She said mildly, and to no one at all, but Rubar nodded along anyway.

"It has been pretty shitty." He agreed easily, and this time it was her who almost snorted. "Devils have a nasty habit of sticking their noses where they aren't wanted and ruining good things where they're able. Their nobility especially."

She blinked lazily.

"That so?"

"Oh, you have no idea. They've always been a problem - these days, they just tend to be subtle about it." He sighed and leaned back himself, taking another pull of the ridiculously awful beer. "You should have seen the shit-storm that unfolded when they first debuted their evil pieces and the peerage system a few centuries ago."

Rory frowned. "That's their... recruitment method, right?"

"That's the one."

Humans reincarnated into 'devils' at the hand of a 'king'.

Near-immortality offered and exchanged for a lifetime of servitude in some kind of bizarre, compounding pyramid scheme of a system.

Even back when Rubar had first explained it to her, it had sounded like a blatant - if prettied-up - brand of slavery. A way to recruit skilled or gifted beings and shore up their numbers while keeping them all on a leash.

For fuck's sake, the tools that were used were called 'Evil Pieces'. She had honestly thought he was making the stuff up or sprouting blatant propaganda - he was a member of an opposing faction, no matter how far removed he seemed to be from the day-to-day stuff.

But no.

After tonight, she was starting to realize that her doubts didn't have any staying power.

"So," She hummed and took another drink. "Devils are dicks."

It was a change of pace, if nothing else. No matter how revolting that change was.

"Devils are absolutely dicks." Rubar agreed, "Though you seem to have handled that pretty well."

Rory smiled humourlessly. "Is that what you think?"

"Well, you dealt their attack quite thoroughly - Maybe a little too thoroughly, honestly." She almost frowned again. "But what's done is done, and there's not so much as a scratch on you. I'd be feeling pretty victorious myself."

"I'm not feeling victorious." She countered. "I'm angry."

He paused. "Oh?"

"Blindingly furious, actually." She smiled, and she could see him tense, just a little.

Good. Keeping people like Rubar on edge was never quite a bad thing - and it was warranted. She was plenty sure he had some negative karma to cash in himself.

Her bieng angry wasn't a lie, either.

She'd learned the hard way that her anger had quite literally shaped the course of her life once and she had no plans on retreading that path, but she wasn't perfect.

Rory was tired, she was pissed, and she wanted to go home and didn't have the slightest clue how.

Tonight was just the boiling point - albeit a spectacular one.

Never had she regretted staying away from the supernatural for so long. The only options left to her weren't options at all - half-baked ideas rooted in old lessons and stray pockets of wisdom she'd gotten Hell, and even then the knowledge was vaguely theoretical and entirely useless given that she had no idea how to apply it.

Dimensional travel. Alternate Universes. Different planes of Creation.

All of it was still too new to her to matter - and the people, forces or things that weren't new to it and who Rory might be capable of blundering into contacting should she try were so hilariously dangerous that a single misstep would be the greatest mistake of her eternal existence.
Dangers that were ephemeral, Infinite and Endless.

She may have been her father's daughter, but the gulf between them as she was right now might as well be infinite, and there was more than just Heaven and Hell out there to contend with.

In this world... and others.

Hence... again, back to square one.

"'Blindingly furious,' eh?" Rubar looked her over carefully. "You're not very easy to read."

Rory's let her dull smile grow a little more pronounced.

"I have a good poker face."

"I'll say." He murmured dryly. "But that's not all you have."

She picked up on the change in his mood almost immediately, though her smile didn't waver.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, nothing much." He said casually - or tried to, at least. She wasn't buying the act. "It's just that... a lot of details about you don't quite add up with what I know of the world."

Ah. So that's what this was

"Did you finally get tired of trying to subtly figure out my secrets yourself?"

It was almost funny, now - She'd expected him to last a little while longer.

Then again, tonight was a bit much by anyone's standards.

Rubar shook his head.

"Hardly." He lied breezily. "But come on - you've gotta admit, you raise a lot of questions."

"Questions you want to ask me yourself"

"Well, sure. I am the curious type." That was a truth. "But that all depends on you - am I actually going to get any answers if I do?"

Probably not, but she might get a kick out of listening to him try.

"Who knows-?"

Her drawl cut off as she stiffened.

"What is-?"

His eyes widened as he felt it too, and his head snapped to the side in sync with hers.

There was something out there - something strange and other that set off her sense as only the supernatural could, and it was powerful.

It was on another level to anything she'd felt in this world before - comparing it to the devils she'd fought was like comparing pebbles to a mountain.

Rory snarled as leapt from her chair, beer can crumpling in her grip.

"Now fucking what!?"

She didn't bother instructing Rubar to look out for Asia this time - he wasn't nearly stupid enough not to know that it went without saying - and she didn't wait for him to catch up, either, or wipe the look of dawning panic off his face.

She unfurled her wings with a burst and was out and ascending into the open night with a single powerful beat.

There.

She didn't have to look for the new threat. It came to her.

Out in the distance, a spec of brilliant light was shooting down towards her almost unnervingly.

Rory's flight almost stuttered when something inside of her recognized it - even as the rest of her recoiled.

(Familiar, but not. Just off, like everything else in this universe was.)

Her disorientation lasted only a second, but at the speed that thing was going, a second was enough.

One minute, it was a pinprick in the distance. The next, even in the air around Rory seemed to be tinted in white-gold radiance as it was suddenly right there, crossing the distance between them like it meant nothing at all.

No.

Not it.

Rory stared in incredulity, and her gaze was mirrored by the brilliant, twelve-winged being who stared back in just as much unfiltered shock.

"Be not afraid. I am Gabriel, an Angel of the Lord."

The Seraph of the Heavenly host murmured, ancient blue eyes flickering from Rory's wings and back like she had never seen their like before.

"And you... are kin?"

...


Rory and Rubar when they just want to have a drink after a shitty night:



View: https://imgur.com/ZZLkiyQ


Rubar personally when he begins to realize that his quiet, low-stakes life is deader than dead:



View: https://imgur.com/iciDobo​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[LordEdric]

Well, this looks fun. And don't forget, this Universe, Micheal took over while in Rory's, he's a jerk with her dad's face

 

[Jormungandr]

Thoughts:
Could this be the universe Goddess went off to create, but basically the same pattern of events still occurred?
One of the angels in Lucifer, I forget which, can send a message to anywhere - - It's how Goddess returned for God, despite her universe being supposedly locked off after Azrael's Blade was thrown through before the portal closed.
Despite being an angel, she's not one of 'their' angels: She might be perceived to DXD angels and devils as being what an Eldritch Abomination is to humans?

 

[Yzarc]

Despite being an angel, she's not one of 'their' : She might be perceived to DXD angels and devils as being what an Eldritch Abomination is to humans?

Click to shrink...

So Biblically accurate?

Man talk about horrifying the horror.

 

[Jormungandr]

So Biblically accurate?

Man talk about horrifying the horror.

Click to shrink...

Imagine looking at a person who looks normal and fine at first glance, but then you notice that there's more... weight or presence to them the more you take notice of them. And then, out of the corner of your eye, you see something more [or, in this case something bright and burning and unfathomable], but when you turn to look, it's just them looking all fine and normal.

That'd be fucking terrifying.

 

[Firewillreign]

Rory had met her Aunt Gabriel before.

Multiple times, actually, on her visits up to Heaven during her childhood, and a couple more on her occasional trips down to Earth.

She was... quite the character.

Bold and sly, terrible at paying back debts, best handled in small, measured doses, and if you trusted her with a secret, you had only yourself to blame when everyone in the universe inevitably heard of it somewhere at some point down the line.

Still, she wasn't the worst relative one could have. They weren't close or anything, not by a long shot, but Rory could admire the older angel's confidence, if nothing else.

In a way. Vaguely. From a distance.

A considerable one.

That aside, once you knew how to pace yourself in her presence, Gabriel and her quirks were manageable, even simple to deal and put up with - Far more than, say, Ibriel's general stick-up-the-ass attitude or Saraqael's passive-aggressive and entirely too petty self-righteousness, and even they weren't the worst of it.

Jophiel was downright unbearable, the very definition of too much all the time, and though they'd probably only ever shared two short and stilted conversations throughout her entire life, Sandalphon always, always managed to give Rory the creeps whenever they so much as crossed eyes.

Whatever.

The point was, Rory knew Gabriel - had a whole image of her of all that she was and should be in her mind and everything, crisp and clear.

This world's local variant of Gabriel was... not that.

Very much not that - And she wasn't talking about her looks, either.

Rubar had been proof enough that angels were built differently around here, so while expecting one thing and then being confronted with something else entirely different had been startling - to say the freaking least - it had only been the tip of the iceberg.

Their initial meeting hadn't been so much a meeting as it was an exchange of mutually incredulous looks - neither of them could get over the sight of the other and for damn good reasons too.

It was trippy as all hell - what part of it wasn't completely absurd? - and it hadn't gotten better with time, because somehow, it had ended up with Rory and a Seraph of a Heavenly host not her own sitting across one another in a quaint little 24-7 café in the middle of the night, ignoring the blatant staring the visibly sleep-deprived barista at the counter was trying and failing to hide.

...Her life was ridiculous.

People liked to joke about being the butt of a cosmic joke, but at this point, Rory was beginning to fear that it was a legitimate fucking concern.

And speaking of concerns-

"Give me a second." She held up a hand to interrupt as Gabriel finally went to speak, and the angel paused, bewildered but not upset. Rory chose to take that as a good sign even as she whipped out her phone and set off a message to Rubar.

A: Stay put. Need some time.

The response was immediate.

R: What's the situation?

Rory considered that for a beat, focus split between the screen and Gabriel's eerie patience.

Then she clicked her tongue.

A: There's a Seraph here.

In for a penny, in for a pound and all that.

R: The fuck?

Yeah, that sounded about right.

R: Which one?

A: Gabriel

There was a pause. Then-

R: The actual fuck!?

Her lips twitched despite herself.

If she wasn't so done with everything in general at this point, Rory might have even been tempted to laugh.

A: Handling it. Explain later. Stay on guard.

Asia's safety was still a priority here and the last thing she need stacked onto her plate was him freaking out and pulling a runner or something else along those lines.

Rory would track him down, and he should know that much full well, but better safe than sorry.

R: No, wait, you can't just-

She ignored the rest of the frantic text and silenced her phone, slipping it into her pocket before she turned back to Gabriel.

"Thanks for waiting."

Her not-aunt inclined her head graciously.

"Patience is a virtue, and you are most welcome." Gabriel's voice was melodious as she spoke. "Might I ask for your name?"

And know it begins.

"Who wants to know?"

Gabriel blinked.

"Pardon?"

"I was under the impression that angels - especially the higher-ranked members of the host - tend to stay holed up in Heaven and only descend to Earth once in a blue moon." Rory crossed her arms and stared at her levelly. "So why the hell am I talking to a Great Seraph of all things here and now?"

Rory wasn't stupid - she had a pretty good guess as to why, and possibly for who, but she wasn't in the habit of showing her cards early and everything she knew about the local heaven came through Rubar.

It was time for that change.

"I mean you no harm," Gabriel said softly, tone shifting into something genuine and almost reassuring - it might have even worked if Rory were anyone else. "Nor do I seek to bring harm to anyone at all. I have only come to investigate and seek answers."

"Investigate what?"

But the question was just her offering an opening - she already knew.

"A great disturbance was detected, and quickly came to Heaven's attention." Gabriel intoned solemnly. "A burst of heavenly light, or a power quite akin to it in nature, was felt on this continent, and in this region - it emanated from the heart of a territory summarily under the dominion of the Devil faction."

Bingo

Rory kept her face carefully blank as the other angel moved a little, the fabric of her white dress seeming to billow as she lifted her arms from her sides and clasped them together on her lap.

"And?"

"The power we felt was... significant. Greatly so. There are few beings, holy weapons, or any manner of tools that could easily reproduce such an effect, and fewer still unaccounted for in some way or the other." Her blue eyes creased with concern as she went on. "None of them should have been anywhere near such a... potentially problematic location, and thus I was dispatched to uncover the truth of the night's happenings and report back as needed."

Rory stiffened a little at that.

So using enough of her power was the equivalent of setting off a supernatural signal flare.

That... could be a problem, depending on how the rest of this meeting went - And apparently not the only one.

"This region is 'potentially problematic?'" Her focus sharpened. "Why?"

"The Devil faction would not appreciate an announced trespassing into one of their territory, and Kuoh town in particular-" Gabriel paused, visibly mulling over her next words. "... it is the home of the close family members of two of the Four Satans. If any harm were to come to them by persons or tools affiliated or thought to be affiliated with Heaven or its subordinate institutions-:"

Meaning the various Churches and beyond, Rory guessed.

"-it could spell an end to the ceasefire between our factions." She finished grimly, lips pressed into a thin line. Everything she'd said matched with Rubar, so far. "A resurgence of great conflict and strife. Heaven does not wish for such. I-"

Gabriel hesitated again.

"-I myself do not wish for such."

And there it was.

Rory heard the words and finally closed in on what it was that was fundamentally different between her Gabriel and the one in front of her now.

Pain.

Somehow, for whatever reason, the seraph seated across from her was in pain.

Not the physical kind, either. That would almost be simple.

From the cast of her eyes to the softness of her face and even the almost unnoticeable slump of her shoulders... sadness and something that Rory was almost sure was grief were cast around Gabriel, so heavy and intertwined with her every move that she couldn't tell where they started and where she ended.

Rory... truly didn't know what to do with that.

She was too far out of the loop, with too little context to work with.

She knew about the Great War in a broad, non-specific sense - but Rubar's explanations lacked details, and they sure as hell didn't give her enough to know what to expect from this angel.

The uncertainty was irritating, and got under her skin like thorns - she hated being on the backfoot.

"It was me." She admitted, partly to move things along - but she kept her eyes on Gabriel, carefully gauging her reaction. "I got into a situation with..."

She grimaced.

"... a devil."

Calling the wretch that felt like an insult to her father in every sense of the word, but she swallowed her disgust and soldiered on

"...and I dealt with it."

"'It?'" Gabriel frowned. "It being the situation... or the devil?"

Rory smiled flatly, humourlessly.

"Both."

"...Might I know more?"

She paused at that for a beat, considering how she wanted to play this.

This was a chance to start testing the water - to see how exactly the local angels worked - and how that might, just might, open up a way for Rory to find some kind of way home.

She met her gaze evenly.

"What do you know about Asia Argento?"

Gabriel's expression shifted in realization and a renewed burst of sadness.

"Ah."

"Yes, ah."

...​

Explaining what had happened - in vague terms only - took only a moment, but Gabriel's reaction was telling.

"I see."

Her face didn't twitch, and the aura of melancholy draped across her like a smothering blanket didn't shift - it was her eyes that showed the change.

Something in them had sharpened, turned near-fierce.

It was almost familiar.

"This cannot be borne," Gabriel spoke softly, but there was an undeniable edge to the words now - and power too. "This cannot be forgiven. That the Heir of Astaroth was allowed to commit to such vile depravity - even if he did so in secret... there is no excuse."

The seraph's hands clenched, and for just a moment, Rory saw them glow before looked up at her, and nodded resolutely.

"Thank you."

Rory raised a brow.

"For protecting Miss Argento from such cruelty."

"I didn't do it for thanks."

"No one ever should," Gabriel confessed lightly. "But it is still commendable."

"Yes, it is." Rory agreed, and Gabriel blinked at the tone she used. "Which is why someone else should have done it."

She gave her a hard look.

"Like, say, any one of the angels who should have guarded someone as valuable as Asia, or prevented her excommunication as a whole."

That was one of the parts of this - plural - that she still couldn't wrap her head around.

In a world as off-the-rails as this one, the power to heal should be more than worth its weight in gold. Significantly more - and hell, it apparently was. The Grigori sure as shit hadn't wasted time leaping for the chance to get their hands on Asia the second she was out from under the Church's thumb.

And even if you put aside the pragmatic part of it all-

"Asia didn't deserve to be thrown out the way she was," Rory told her, foot tapping pointedly. "The church tossed her out like yesterday's garbage for healing someone in need - devil or no, she didn't deserve that."

Never mind the fact that the devil in question was almost certainly planted there by the wretch.

He'd boasted about putting in the work to get his hands on Asia, and Rory wasn't stupid enough to ignore the obvious implications of that.

"No." Gabriel agreed sadly, throwing her off her stride. She'd expected an argument. "Miss Argento certainly did not. But the Heavenly host does not preside over the church, even on the matter of Sacred Gear users. She was excommunicated by their own judgment, and we are to respect that...

There was a beat.

"...however unjust it may seem." Gabriel finished, downcast. "There is more to the matter than first meets the eye."

... Rory's bullshit radar was starting to ping at the back of her head.

She got the sense that there was a lot Gabriel was very carefully not saying... but she chose not to press.

Not right now - because the Seraph had just given her an opening for something she'd been waiting to ask since this mess started.

"In that case," She began lightly, almost conversationally "I've got just one question."

"Yes?"

"What the hell is God doing?"

Gabriel stilled.

Rory noticed that too.

"The world is a mess, and I'm not just talking about the Three Factions. Monsters, other gods, anything and everything in between-" Rory shrugged and stared expectantly. "... Just... what the hell?"

It had been bothering her since the start. The way everything here was too much - there had to be a limit, and those were her Holy Grandfather's whole shtick.

Or at least they were supposed to be.

She'd never met the man... God...whatever, but some things had to stay the same, otherwise this world really had no chance.

"The Most High is... " Gabriel's speech wavered, her voice odd, and there was something to her now that rubbed Rory the wrong way, almost. A stiffness that was almost impossible to place. "...uninvolved in Earthly matters, and has been so for a long, long time."

... That tracked with what Rory had heard of her Grandfather - an Omnipotent diety with a plan he'd never, ever bothered cluing anyone else in on.

(Her dad's rants on that had been legendary.)

And yet...

Her eyes narrowed.

Something about that answer had been off. Very careful, and very deliberate. She just couldn't put her finger on why.

"So he's just doing nothing?" She demanded, as much to complain to incredulously as to probe for information. "His Creation is going to shit, and he's just off doing... what, exactly?"

"I cannot speak to His mind." Gabriel intoned, "It is not my place... nor anyone else's."

The barb there, however unmalicious, was felt.

Rory scowled

"Who are you?" Gabriel suddenly burst "I am sorry, but... I do not know who you are, and yet you feel familiar. A Miracle Child, perhaps?..."

She trailed off hopefully, which was almost enough to mask the balance - and halfway desperate - an attempt at misdirection.

Something was off, here.

"But no - that would not make sense." Gabriel frowned, seemingly getting sucked into her own segue now that she'd had the chance to follow it. "No angel could have or would have kept you hidden, and your presence would be felt regardless. I-"

"I'm not a Miracle Child," Rory grunted and folded her arms across her chest again. "I'm not anything you have any kind of a frame of reference for."

Not technically.

She debated what to do next even as Gabriel's brows furrowed in confusion.

Revealing this next part... it wasn't smart. Information was power and all that, and hers was far more on the absurd scale than just about anyone's she'd ever even heard of....

But she need to go home - and she was stuck, with no leads and just about nothing but her name that didn't come from Rubar of all damned people.

That rankled.

She needed another avenue - another place to look for answers, and so far, Heaven seemed to be her best bet.

An unknowable, foreign bet, but where there is Heaven, there is God in some way, shape or form, and for all that she might know nothing about Him, the chances of anyone having the means to help her couldn't possibly be better than His.

Literally.

In theory.

Rory just needed to get there and test that theory.

And to do that... she needed to level with the Seraph.

Which, considering her dad's local counterpart's general reputation... was probably going to suck.

But needs must.

"My name is Aurora." She said, and didn't give Gabriel the time to process that before she ripped the rest of the band-aid right the hell off. "Aurora Morningstar. Daughter of Lucifer."

...

...

...

"What?"

"You heard me."

"I-" The Seraph could not quite speak, looking at her like she wasn't quite sure what to feel. Even her voice was an uncertain, unmoored tremor. "I... do not understand."

And that was Rory's cue to bite the bullet.

"What do you know about alternate universes? Different Earths?"

...

...

"...Oh." Gabriel stared at her in disbelief and the first stirrings of wonder. "Oh."

Somehow, things got more complicated from there.

...








Rubar, checking his texts and losing his shit at the other end of town.









View: https://imgur.com/md16Ibz








Rory, looking around the DXD-verse and looking back to God's empty spot in the Universe:









View: https://imgur.com/IkP0oUA​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

If you feel like it, please consider supporting me on Ko-fi: Firewillreign

 

[Thotmas]

I do appreciate a level head that can recognize the value in sharing useful background information. Props to Rory for raking Gabriel over the coals over the church's hypocritical excommunication of Asia. Further props to Gabriel for immediately recognizing that the church and Diodora crossed her line in the sand.

It'll be interesting to see if Gabriel reciprocates Rory's honesty with the truth on God's death, or at the very least informs her of his absence.

That poor barista probably needs the "Be not afraid" line more than Rory did last chapter.

 

[Firewillreign]

What's this?

An update in less than twenty-four hours? Yay!

My poor sleep schedule
Anyway, this is the finale for this arc. The future of this fic will now be decided.

Until then, here we go.

---

A few Days Later

Underworld - Devil Territory

In a small, private room deep within the Gremory Castle - part of an entire wing specifically set aside for meetings and hostings of a more... delicate, confidential nature - three of the four leaders of the Devil race convened.

Serafall Leviathan.

Ajuka Beelzebub.

And of course, as ever and always... Sirzechs Lucifer.

"Well." The former heir of House Gremory smiled, gaze serene - it was a shallow, meaningless formality of a gesture, and everyone present knew it. "Shall we begin?"

The other two nodded - and that none of them took the time to poke fun at Falbium's entirely too predictable absence was telling indeed.

This would be a serious discussion.

"There's not much to begin, 'Zechs. There's not much to say at all - except for this, Ajuka" Serafall turned to her other fellow Satan and whispered with false levity - with not an iota of her more... flamboyant flair present. "Your Diodora really screwed the pooch here."

Ajuka's answering expression was equally parts severe and cold.

"He is not my anything, Serafall. His parents made sure of it when they demanded my absence from his life, and I conceded to their childish, petty wish to avoid another meaningless complication-"

"- and look where that bit of genius has led us." The holder of the Leviathan title almost snapped, before she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Sorry. My bad. But this is another nasty mess we absolutely didn't need right now."

Not with their ambitions for peace still on the table.

Sirzechs frowned lightly.

"I assume the angels are...unhappy"

Serafall shot him a dry look.

"Just a teensy bit."

Having a Seraph - and Gabriel of all people - reach out to her office had been unpleasant. The state she had been in was worse, and the last thing they needed was for Michael or his subordinates to start reconsidering their stance in their current cold war.

"What I want to know is how the hell he managed to get away with this. I get that House Astaroth has resources, but come on! Some of the nun's he... collected-" Her features shifted in distaste. "-were quite important, for Lucifer's sake-!"

"Thank you," Sirzechs murmured with a half-smile. Ajuka rolled his eyes.

"- the tricky little bastard even managed to infiltrate the Vatican and stage their Holy Maiden's excommunication!"

Serafall looked incredulous as she panned her gaze across the pair of them.

"How even!?"

"Time. Patience. Plenty of resources, you said so yourself." Ajuka was utterly unamused by the reminder of his kinsmen's sick achievements. "I spoke to Lord and Lady Astaroth, and we had a very informative discussion regarding the extent of Diodora's machinations over the years. According to them, he spared no effort to sate his... obsession."

The word was spoken with such quiet, profound distaste that it was all but a force of its own, and both Satan's present grimaced at the reminder.

"They saw no reason to reign him in or curb his lusts. After all, he was only targeting mere humans. Holy figures or not, where was the cause for concern?"

Sirzechs raised a brow "And they simply admitted as much to you?"

"They refused to cooperate, to begin with, but..."

Ajuka smiled.

It wasn't a kind one.

"I was very insistent."

Serafall snorted at that.

"Couldn't have happened to a nice pair of-"

"It is still happening presently."

"Ah?"

"Oh yes." Ajuka steepled his fingers together, now radiating a disconcerting kind of satisfaction. The two of them, as well as the entirety of the Astaroth Household, will be under my direct supervision for the considerable future. Publicly, nothing will have changed, but their previous freedom and ease of movement is gone."

"Oof. That can't have gone over well."

"Again, their opinions were never in consideration. Not after this disaster."

Sirzechs hummed his agreement.

"And Diodora himself."

"Bedridden. Sedated to prevent him from resorting to agony-driven self-harm." Ajuka adjusted his posture slightly. "Again."

The super-devil blinked.

"You haven't healed him yet?"

It had been days since Rias and Sona had called for help and summarily had him taken - in an admittedly horrific shape - back to the Underworld.

"I have attempted to - if only to make him more coherent for interrogation - but so far my efforts have yielded no tangible results. His condition is novel to me, in that it is markedly difficult to work with."

"How so?"

"I honestly could not say."

And wasn't that interesting - and more than a little alarming.

"Over a dozen Phenex Tears had no effect, and the dozens of regenerative treatments I've had him subjected to were just as ineffectual. His body not only actively rejects treatment of any kind - it behaves as if it simply does not need it. As though his current condition and the near-ceaseless state of agony it has reduced him to is entirely natural. I have never seen it like."

Ajuka paused, a gleam of interest visible in his eyes.

"And that is, of course, to say nothing of the more...esoteric phenomena surrounding him."

Anyone - and Ajuka had already tested that in as much as he was capable of - who laid eyes on Diodora would be hard-pressed not to recoil in instinctive disgust.

And it was not his appearance that was the sole cause.

"Oh." Serafall sat up in remebrance. "Yes, Sona mentioned something about that."

Sirzechs simply nodded. "Rias as well."

Diodora seemed to radiate... an aura of sorts, if it could even be called that.

Laying eyes on him filled the viewer with an... impression. An instinctual knowledge that the devil before them was something vile, sickening and stomach-turning.

Cruel and unsightly, belonging nowhere. - his own parents had flinched away from him and his Truth even as he lay in an induced coma.

It had been the only way to stop his pained screams.

Serafall whistled when she heard. "Any luck figuring that out?"

"None." Ajuka informed her "I can not even rightly tell you what the effect is - it's unlike any spell or magical alteration I've seen before - and it cannot be hidden."

"What?"

"I've tried warding him with glamours and cloaking spells - none of them take. Any magic I use in an attempt to hide the state of his body simply does not take - it dispels the moment it's cast. Only general area concealment wards that don't target him specifically have any effect, and even then the effect of his presence is not diminished. It is quite the conundrum."

Left unsaid was that it was only such because Ajuka wished to unravel the mystery of the effect and not out any real or imagined concern for Diodora.

In regards to him, he couldn't possibly care less.

"Perhaps you'll have more luck once we know who's behind his... comeuppance," Sirzechs murmured pleadingly, eyes flickering to his left. "Any leads, Serafall?"

"Comeuppance is right." She muttered under her breath, arms folded under her chest "Evil little worm giving the rest of us a bad name and leaving me with a diplomatic nightmare-"

"Sera." Sirzechs chided gently before she began to spiral off, and she blinked.

"Oh. No, none." She shook her head in the negative. "I've tried asking around, but the angels are keeping a tight lid on whoever or whatever it is that did this. I know the Holy Maiden was involved somehow, but she sure as heck couldn't have done this. A sacred gear user, maybe? Or a Holy sword?"

"I know of none of either that can achieve something like this." Ajuka disagreed. "Even if it's some manner of subspecies, I couldn't tell you with any measure of accuracy which of them it originated from-"

He paused again.

"Save perhaps for Incinerate Anthem, possibly, but the current wielder is known to us."

"Then I've got nothing. And believe me, I've been looking." Serafall peered at him dryly. "And the fact that the angels might be hiding something you think might be comparable to a Longinus is absolutely thrilling, let me tell you."

"Now, now." Sirzechs drummed his hand across the table gently. "Let's not rush into any conclusions. We still have no leads as to what we're working with, and we need to settle Heaven's concerns before they spiral into something significantly more problematic."

"Don't need to tell me twice." Serafall leaned back in her seat and sighed, tipping her head back more "I'm going to have so much work to do."

"Oh, it's not that bad-"

"Easy for you to say-!"

"-Surely this is nothing the great and wonderous Levi-tan cannot handle?"

...

Serafall stared. Sirzechs smiled back.

Ajuka just sighed and began rubbing his forehead, already resigning himself to the inevitable.

"You know, the funny thing is, I know you're playing me..." Serafall trailed, before beaming. "But you're totally right! This magical girl is on the case!"

And so began the dramatics.

Ajuka just looked tired as Serafall began to sing of all things.

"Really, Sirzechs?"

"Ah, learn to live a little, Ajuka." Sirzechs chucked softly before shooting him a sobering look that drained some of the recently restored levity in the air between them. "You have your hands full as well, after all, and I doubt I won't find myself on that same boat in short order."

His eyes shifted, distant and ponderous.

"Things are going to get very interesting, I can just tell."

And so ended their meeting.

...​

Rory watched from the hotel's rooftop as the sun rose over the quaint little town surrounding it.

Gabriel had not lingered long after their talk - and that conversation hadn't gone quite as she'd expected, either.

They'd spoken in length about Rory's life - the parts of it she was willing to reveal.

Her father. Her human mother.

The fact that none of the above were barred from Heaven and that Rory and her dad both had regular conversations with God.

It wasn't a lie - even if it was misleading - but the specifics were something she had no intention of revealing too early, or so easily.

Having cards up one's sleeve was just basic good sense.

Still, there had been something odd there all the same.

Something about her words had shaken Gabriel, she could tell.

For just a second, the Seraph had looked like she was made from spun glass on the verge of shattering, and Rory hadn't been able to pinpoint what exactly it was that had shaken her so - beyond, maybe, the realization that her father wasn't the raging bag of dicks that the local Lucifer once was, completely and utterly at that.

The devil here had been the caricature ordinary people back home thought her dad was, and that was still something she couldn't quite believe.

Regardless, they had spoken, Gabriel had listened, and then she'd set off.

"Thank you for speaking to me, Aurora Morningstar." The Seraph had stared at her, eyes alight with that same something Rory hadn't had the time to figure out. "You have given me much to think on - but I must return to the Host. I will consult my siblings for a way to return you to your home, you have my word."

Rory had just crossed her arms and stared, impatient but knowing that she wasn't likely to get anything better.

"And Asia?"

"I will do my best to aid Miss Argento - but until then, I would trouble you to look after her." The smile aimed her way was entirely too genuine and heartfelt for comfort. "I will return with news soon, you have my word. But until then..."

She trailed off.

"I'll do it."

Rory had agreed roughly. She was hardly planning on ditching the poor kid anyway, and it wasn't as though she had anything better to do in the meantime.

Gabriel had still beamed at her answer, the expression almost devoid of that sadness Rory had noted in her before.

"Thank you, once more. Until we meet again, niece."

And that had been that.

A few days had already gone by, and Rory was still waiting.

Nothing else had changed, save that her problem was - just a little - out of her hands.

She didn't feel any better - she still wasn't home - but she wasn't getting any worse, either, and that was something she'd take for now.

Only time would tell how that would change.

"Miss Aurora?"

She blinked and glanced over her shoulder.

Asia gave her a soft little smile and half-wave.

"You're up early. Something wrong?"

"Oh no." She shook her head. "I don't usually sleep in on the mornings, and when I woke up, mister Rubar was already leaving."

Ah.

He had mentioned something about heading back to Kuoh and checking in with the Fallen stationed there.

"To avoid any misunderstandings." He'd explained.

Rory had smiled very nicely and made it abundantly clear that any misunderstandings that involved an unknown coming within a hundred feet of Asia without warning would end with someone getting disintegrated.

For starters.

She hadn't been kidding, either.

From the look he gave her, he'd gotten the message - and at least he'd pointed Asia up to her before he took off.

"He'll be back later, then. He always is."

Asia hesitated.

Rory frowned.

"Something else up?"

Nothing came to mind off the top of her head. Asia had been safe, and happy as could be for days now.

She'd bounced back from the scare that was the devils attempted attack, though the revelation that Rory was an angel - of a sort - and that the seraph Gabriel herself had descended and asked for her protection had been... a lot.

There had been tears.

Lots and lots of tears - and hugging had been required.

Comforting a weeping girl who'd just realized that she hadn't been forsaken by the paragons of her faith, regardless of whatever a bunch of useless members of the clergy who had better pray - hah - that Rory never got her hands on them had to say about it had been one of the most trying and awkward experiences of her entire life.

She never wanted to talk about it ever.

Luckily, that wasn't what Asia had in mind.

"I had a question." She said shyly, eyes flickering down. "About Heaven."

Oh.

That did make sense, didn't it?

"I- wanted to..."

She struggled to put the words together, but Rory had already gotten the gist of the thing.

"You wanted to know what it's like?"

What else could it possibly be?

Asia could barely nod timidly - she was probably expecting a rejection of some sort.

Rory considered it, for a second.

Telling her wouldn't truly mean anything - Her Heaven was almost certainly different from the one Asia had in mind, not that she knew it.

Then again-

She didn't want to disappoint her. There'd been enough of that going around to last a lifetime.

"Heaven - my Heaven." She clarified, even though Asia wouldn't know to recognize the distinction "It's-"

A bit too magnanimous. Complex. Jammed full of annoying relatives with terrible boundary issues.

"-big" She decided at last, a little lamely, before she hit her stride. "Bigger than anything you can imagine, always. No matter how large you think it is in your head, the real thing will always surpass it."

Size and space up there were... both less and more.

Not quite real, in some ways, and more up to interpretation.

It was hard to describe, but the way Asia was smiling in awe at her totally half-assed explanation still managed to get her own lips to curve up despite herself.

"Wanna know about my favorite spot up there?"

"Yes."

"The foot of God's Throne"

Asia froze in awe.

"What?"

"Oh yeah."

It's where she and Charlie had played together when they were children visiting Uncle Amenadiel's domain. That spot in the Silver City's throne room was her favorite for a reason.

"It's called the Primum Mobile - The Throne of God." Rory leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially. Asia mirrored her in a trace of wonder. "It is the highest peak atop all of creation. If you stand by the throne just right, you can see everything."

Literally.

At just the right angle - in as much as angles mattered in a place that was more a metaphor-given form than anything else - one could look out and see all of Creation spreading out like a painting splayed out on a canvas God had only just finished decorating with His final touches.

Rory wasn't one for flowery talk, but the view there was true magnificence - a perfect viewpoint for all of Infinity, or as much of it as she could perceive at whatever point in time she happened to be visiting.

"Pretty cool, huh?"

"Uhh?"

Eventually, Asia squeaked out something that might have been an amazed agreement, and Rory snorted, feeling lighter than she'd had in a while now.

Strange, that.

"Don't worry about it."

She'd almost certainly get to her local Heaven eventually - though not any time soon if Rory had anything to say about it.

And she sure as hell did.

"Let's go get some breakfast and take a look around town."

The kid was due for some downtime.

"After that - I'm thinking cheeseburgers for lunch?"

Asia's eyes lit up, and Rory smiled again.

Yeah, even if it was just for this little bit...

This could work.

...​

Neither of them noticed the figure hidden in the shadows of the street below.

The figure that had been observing Rory for quite some time now - quite some time indeed - and still remained focused on a dark, sinister mantra running through their mind over and over and over again.

Soon.

...​

In a place that was not a place, a nexus that was anything but, a lone, solitary figure stood motionless.

He - in as much as he could be referred to as such - observed a particular world that had not previously occupied his conscious attention.

He watched as the Daughter of The Creator's Morningstar began to wade through uncharted waters, and found himself pondering the novelty of it.

The gaze of his siblings would soon be drawn here, now that a way had been paved by hidden machinations - those who were not already present in some way, shape, or form - and this once rigid world would begin to bend as new Games would come to be played.

It would all change soon.

Or perhaps he was wrong.

Perhaps not.

Contradiction and Paradox were integral to his nature, for he perceived everything that ever was, is and ever will be.

And yet, he also knew nothing at all.

He - and it - were all a matter of fate.

And fate was ever-changing and fickle indeed.

For a moment that was not a moment at all, He turned his gaze back to the Daughter of the Morningstar, and a decision was made.

Destiny Of The Endless settled in to watch.




...




Me, to myself, when I vow to make the story simple and uncomplicated:





View: https://imgur.com/Hcjzeuq



​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

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[edboy49]

Good chapter.

For a moment that was not a moment at all, He turned his gaze back to the Daughter of the Morningstar, and a decision was made.

Destiny Of The Endless settled in to watch.​

Click to shrink...

Oh uh.
Any chance that Dream is in this universe improsoned like he was in canon?

Poor Rubar might just need to be promoted to archangel status if he has to deal with not only Lucifer's daughter and a recently released Endless that decides to join the group as they search for his artifacts (maybe DxD God pulled a dick move and made the artifacts into Sacred Gears)

The devil here had been the caricature ordinary people back thought her dad was, and that was still something she couldn't quite believe.

Click to shrink...

Seeing this, I am still waiting for the meeting between Rory and Azazel; with Rory commenting that unlike her Az, DxD Az would be someone her father would get along happily.

 

[Sesparra]

Thanks for writing this!
It's really nice and I love Rory in this so far, cause DxD really is a 10 pounds of cat in a five pound bag huh?