Chapter 46: Canicular 8
Koneko
Buchou and I were waiting patiently in one of the mansion's living rooms when Naruto-kun and Norika walked in through one of the sliding back doors, my plain-looking friend's head swiveling slightly to take a subtly gobsmacked look around at the size of the place.
We'd teleported over when he had texted us to meet him here, saying that there'd been a situation and he was bringing a friend. For that friend to be Norika surprised me though. As far as I knew, she didn't have any connections to the supernatural.
"Welcome to our home," Rias stood up from the couch to greet the girl with a polite warmth. "Come on in and take a seat wherever you're comfortable. You probably already know by now, but my name is Rias Gremory."
Other than Naruto-kun's sword missing its cane-sheath, the only sign that anything had happened to the two was a few extra wrinkles and scuffs of dirt on their clothes, mostly just on Naruto's though.
Norika smiled slightly, some of the unconscious tension dropping from her shoulders when the door slid shut behind her. "It's nice to finally meet you Gremory-senpai, my name is Amatsu Norika. Koneko-chan, Uzumaki-kun, and Akeno-senpai sometimes talk about you."
"Only good things, I hope?" Rias asked with a wry smile, glancing between me and an innocently whistling Naruto-kun.
Norika just gave a slightly teasing smile of her own, regaining some color to her face in the welcoming atmosphere.
Rias chuckled. "Anyways, let me get everyone drinks while you're settling in. I have a feeling we'll want to get comfortable before getting into it.
After she took our preferences and walked out of the room to the kitchen, Norika practically fell onto the couch beside me when her legs gave out, finally relaxing fully enough for the adrenaline crash to set in.
"I still remember my first time in a real combat scenario that threatened my life," Naruto-kun said with a sympathetic smile as he sat down on the couch across from us, carefully laying his sword down on the center table to not scratch the furniture. "Even with years of training, I completely froze up and had to get saved by my teammate," He chuckled. "Adrenaline is weird like that. Most people don't know it, but the fight-or-flight response is actually the fight, flight, or freeze stress response. The fact that you were able to give me a callout in time is proof that you reacted better than I did my first time."
"Uzumaki-kun…" Norika just sighed, slumping further back into the cushions with her arms crossed over her stomach. "No offense, but if I'm never there to witness a fight like that again in my life, it would still be too soon. I'm happy living as a normal girl. I'll just stick to having tea parties with Mitsuri-chan, and watching you and Koneko-chan be cute together, thank you very much."
I tilted my head, ignoring the feeling of warmth rushing to my cheeks at the last part of her comment. "How much does she know?" I asked Naruto-kun. "You didn't explain anything in the text."
My whiskered friend shrugged. "I didn't ask. I was more concerned with getting here quickly and making sure she was alright up here after what happened." He tapped a finger to his head for emphasis.
"You could just ask me… I'm right here you know…" Norika whined.
I reached up and patted her head like a puppy. "There there."
She gave an uncharacteristic snort for a laugh, before freezing, a contemplative look on her face.
"... Koneko-chan is petting me, so it's only fair if I can return the favor, right?" She muttered, before turning her head slowly to look at me, her eyes focusing on the top of my head with an intensity.
'I'm in danger,' I thought wryly.
Norika reached over with shining eyes to pat my head and-
"NyAaAh~?!" A weird sound escaped me.
-rubbed my ears?!
Somehow, despite having my nekoshou ears hidden right now, Norika's fingers brushed through my fur, scritching my ears instead of passing through the sort-of empty space like they should have. I released their physical forms reflexively a moment later, still mentally reeling from the surprisingly odd feeling.
"Woah, how'd you do that Norika-chan?" Naruto-kun asked with a grin.
"I would like to know too." Rias finally came back into the room with a tray of cups and a curiously amused tone of voice. Norika's fingers paused in their ministrations as she looked behind us to watch my [King] approaching.
"I see the things other people don't." She said simply. "It's hard to explain. Since I've always tried to ignore it and live normally, I don't actually know much about any of it at all– just that these things exist hidden from the public and I can see through it for some reason." She shrugged. "I've known you were all different than normal people from the start.
"Is that how you noticed the invisible Fallen guy earlier?" Naruto-kun said something really important just now, and my eyes snapped to him while Norika tensed slightly.
I began opening my mouth to get him to expand on that-
-But a purr came out instead, my eyes partially closing involuntarily when Norika continued her scritching in just the right place while she nodded at him in confirmation. "Mmhm."
"Well, it seems like it's even more important for us to hear your news than you thought." Rias set the tray on the table and sat down next to Naruto-kun with an interested look. "We met with an interesting pair of individuals just a bit before you messaged us, individuals who I believe will be relevant to the situation."
"Alright," Naruto-kun nodded with a light shrug. "I kinda hoped Kiba would be here to hear this and give his input too, but I guess we can rope him in whenever he's free."
"Of course." Rias agreed, sitting straighter in focus.
"So it went like this…"
(Several minutes of explanation later)
"And she asked you to take it? Just like that?" Rias had a satisfied smile of victory on her face as she spoke, while I furrowed my brows in concentration.
Concentration that was being heavily distracted by my awareness of Norika's eyes snapping to my swishing tail whenever it appeared in her vision with something bordering what I would call hyper-fixation. For someone who was "good at ignoring things she saw", she sure did drop the act entirely now that her pretext of ignorance to my extra traits was gone. She barely even reacted when told the sword they'd encountered was a fragment of the real, original, Excalibur.
Nope, she just wanted to keep petting me.
Buchou and I had switched spots during the recounting of events when Naruto-kun mentioned his self-injured ankle, so now I was sitting next to him, hand-in-hand to heal him.
If our fingers had laced together at some point, the other two hadn't called us out on it, though Rias smirked teasingly.
She almost definitely could have healed his ankle herself without worry, but after that first scare when Akeno did so months ago, we agreed that it was safest if he only received healing from a Senjutsu user whenever possible to not take chances. A good thing too, because his entire musculature and chakra network showed low-level signs of the same minor cellular strain that Kurama's chakra pulses created back before our mystery sage friend began sharing their life force with him.
Ironically, Akeno was now almost at a level with her Senjutsu sensory skill that she could be added back onto this very short list of approved healers.
Until then though, it was up to me. And I had noticed something interesting...
"Yeah, she didn't want anything to do with it." Naruto nodded with a solemn frown, his fists clenching audibly to my ears. "The Fallen apparently slaughtered his way through all their workers when he went and picked it up. She said she only arrived as he was leaving, and she's pretty fast, so he had to have done it in a hurry to beat their emergency response time. It probably wasn't just a bloodthirsty maniac deciding to kill them out of some twisted sense of amusement, since it was so thorough. It was planned."
It wasn't really a 'thing' that I noticed, but more like a feeling of 'there's nothing there'. It was similar to that first night at the warehouse, but different, for two reasons.
The first, was that this felt– strangely– comfortably warm compared to what I've experienced of normal holy aura, even while my senses couldn't directly, well, sense it.
"That's… that could be important." Rias grimaced at the news. "... Let's set that to the side for a moment though. Before that, where did you leave Transparency? We need to make sure it's safe and secure before anyone else finds out about any of this."
The second…
Naruto-kun opened his mouth with amused eyes, but I had finished tracing the path of the aura by following the side effects of it moving through his body. There was a trail of cells brimming with the brightest, most warm and welcoming energy I've felt before, even more than Kurama's, leading from a spot just between his fourth and fifth gates, up to his shoulders, and down both his arms.
"It's on the table," I answered, getting a confused glance from Buchou when she looked at the obviously mundane cane-sword.
Norika giggled when the blonde pouted at my interruption, but an unmistakably holy aura suddenly filled the room a moment later anyway. Despite that, it somehow didn't feel uncomfortable or dangerous to me in the slightest.
"W-wait, what?" Rias did a double-take at the legendary sword appearing on the table in front of her, stumbling over the first word in surprise. "You're telling me-?!"
The moment I'd laced my own chakra through his body, I'd noticed the pipeline-like gap where my energy was disrupted. When I'd then synchronized my chakra with his being– a new trick I'd figured out recently, effectively doing the same thing the mysterious sage must have done to share their lifeforce with him– the connection between him and the sword had popped into my perception like lifting a veil. That trail of his chakra, previously hidden within the aura of Transparency, extended from his free palm to the slender holy sword beside his cane-sword
"... Yeah," I nodded at my [King] distractedly. "It didn't reject him."
Along the path of flowing energy in his body, the piecemeal parts of his chakra network I'd previously fit back together showed signs of being nudged back out of place (I nudged them back), even as the surrounding cells were recovering to healthier states than I'd ever seen them. Normally his chakra coils were supposed to be what directed his energy, but it seemed like Transparency had decided that it would just do it itself, using its Light to make a path for the connection to work. For the first time, I felt what my friend and sensei's own chakra felt like, almost losing focus on the world around me as I basked in it.
And all of it came from one little structure; the same gate that Kurama's energy usually pulsed out of, with the parts of Naruto's chakra network surrounding it seeming to be– if not fully, then at least mostly– healed by now, the rejuvenating properties of Kurama's Yang passively doing my job better than I could currently.
"This Light…" Rias leaned forward in deep curiosity, slowly reaching a hand out towards the blade. "It's not setting off my sense of danger…"
"Should it be?" Norika asked curiously, no longer totally entranced by my cat-like features. "Oh! It's because your energy is naturally dark, right?"
"Huh?" Rias snapped out of her reverie and looked at my classmate, before it dawned on her. "Oh, right, I forgot you haven't been taught the major details yet." She released her bat-like wings. "I am a devil from the Underworld, heiress to the Gremory clan referenced in the Ars Goetia of the Christian mythology. The short of it is that most religious pantheons and mythologies are real to some extent, though many of the details that humanity has recorded have either changed over time or were incorrect assumptions from the start. For example, accepting the souls of contractors as payment for a deal has been heavily frowned upon in devil society for centuries. We mostly deal in money, services owed, and other commonly tradeable goods nowadays."
She returned her attention to the sword as Norika hummed in understanding. "Back to your question though, you're half right. Dark-aligned beings like Devils and Youkai are weak to light in general, both natural light and the magical element, but Holy Light specifically is outright anathema to Devils, its Holy aspect being so poisonous to us that it can destroy our very souls." Buchou tilted her head, fascinated. "By all rights, I shouldn't be able to feel so at ease while being this close to one of these blades…"
"It's because of Naruto-kun," I stated, metaphorically poking at the connection just a tiny bit.
"Me?" He asked with a scrunched up expression of confusion. "What am I doing?"
I nodded, tilting my head. "You can't feel it I think because it's not flowing through your pathways, but Transparency's power is pulling it out of one of your gates to make the connection, and it looks like your chakra is changing the Light to not hurt us."
"Haaaaahhh…" He let out a massive sigh of relief. "That's actually really relieving to hear, ya know? I wasn't even sure that fixing my coils would have brought it back at all at this point, since I haven't felt a hint of anything in all this time."
I squeezed his hand reassuringly, getting a warm grin from him.
"That's great news, and I'm happy for you," Rias interjected, "but we should get back to the more urgent details of the night, and then worry about getting Norika-san home before her family can worry too much."
"Oh no!" Norika gasped, getting all of our heads snapping in her direction. "My groceries! I dropped them in the park– I need to call my parents and tell them I'll be late!"
She stood and rushed out of the room and into one of the hallways while pulling out her phone, and the three of us let out sighs of relief, relaxing at the false alarm.
"So…" Naruto-kun began after a moment of silence. "You were gonna catch me up to speed?"
"Right." Rias cleared her throat, before giving him the rundown on the two exorcists and their mission.
"Wait wait wait, hold on…" Naruto-kun held his arms up in front of him, crossed in an 'x' shape. "Stop. You mean to tell me that someone stole three Excaliburs from the Church, brought at least one of them to Kuoh and maybe-tried-to frame the Five Principal Clans while tensions are already rising between you and them, and the church decided the best way to get them back or destroy them was to sendmore Excaliburs?" He asked incredulously.
While he was speaking, I idly kept track of how far Norika was wandering while speaking with her family in case she got lost. I tried not to eavesdrop on her tooth-rottingly sappy conversation with her mother while noting that she was basically on the other side of the building at this point– and now she's going up a staircase. When Naruto finished speaking, I quoted what Shido Irina had said.
"'Only an Excalibur can stand up to an Excalibur.' Their words." I said blandly, my opinion on that statement's reliability obvious.
"Of all the stupid… " He facepalmed, dragging his hand down and stretching the whiskers on his cheeks. "It's like someone in the church wants to kick off a war or something. That, or they're really just dumb enough to take the Fallen's bait."
"Back up for a moment; you think they were trying to frame the clans?" Rias asked with a raised eyebrow. "Not that I disagree necessarily, but what evidence makes you say that as opposed to them simply sneaking in to use the clans' sealed storage in secret, or a betrayal after working together to smuggle the blade here?"
"The Fallen targeted Norika twice in the fight at first, so I originally thought that he was after her for some reason," he explained with a frown, "but when he was bleeding out in the end and had one last chance during a moment of distraction, he tried to take me out with him instead of her, even though I'd already reacted to his spear attacks earlier with no real problem."
Naruto-kun scratched his cheek, looking up at the ceiling in thought. "I think he only tried to take her out at first because she could see through his invisibility and could help me fight him, but I was his real target. After he'd killed all the warehouse workers, I was the last loose thread. If he killed me, he probably thought chances were high you guys would accuse the clans of working against you with the church or something, and the clans would probably blame the 'damned devils' for the massacre while ignoring the 'government dog' Shinra girl saying they've got the wrong idea."
"But you lived, and now they have a body as proof for who actually did it." Rias completed the thought process. "I see your point, but allow me to offer an alternative perspective of sorts."
Naruto-kun tilted his head her way as if to metaphorically pass the mic.
"All of those assumptions could still be true," Rias admitted, "but what if it's all a diversion for some other objective? After all, even if it had worked out the way they wanted, these Fallen would have still had possession of up to three Excaliburs, with two 'spares' so helpfully delivered to them on a platter by the church."
"I mean, sure," he agreed with a shrug, "but what the hell would they even need three or more of these swords for that they couldn't just do with their own Holy Light powers? They're supposed to be angels even if they're Fallen, right?"
"Within some limits, Holy and Demonic swords tend to scale higher in potency the stronger their wielders are, so the Fallen you faced almost certainly wasn't a good example of just how much of a game changer this Excalibur could be," Buchou explained. "If these are truly the actions of a smaller splinter faction breaking away from the Grigori like we think, then having these weapons could potentially legitimize a handful of decently-strong leaders, who wouldn't otherwise be able to effectively control their subordinates."
"Oh, I get it!" Naruto-kun smacked a fist into his palm in understanding. "That makes more sense. It's like how some ninja steal village artifacts when they go rogue, so they can make themselves the leader of whatever bandit group they join."
"Dealt with that a lot?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Like, three or four times at least. Two of the times were powerful swords, too."
Sometimes I wondered how the hell he managed to get up to so many ninja adventures already at our age, but then I remembered that everything about him was absurd. In a good way.
Sometimes.
"But wait-" he got our attention again, "I just realized- the exorcists you met said the church tracked the Excaliburs here, right?"
He got a nod from both of us.
"The Fallen have to have known that they could be tracked when they first stole them, if they really were baiting the church into sending the other two, and probably even know how it works, whatever the tracking method is. Chances are, they know how to track these things too." He looked between us before his eyes dropped down to the sleek, one-handed longsword. "Until now, Transparency was invisible, and probably hidden in a sealed chamber at the warehouse."
Our eyes followed his to the faintly glowing artifact.
"Oh dear," Buchou said with a put upon sigh, having been about to lift her tea cup to sip from.
"Shit." I summarized helpfully.
I launched myself at the far side of the room with chakra strings streaming from my fingertips, while Naruto-kun lunged for the hilts of his swords, new and old, just in time for a rapid barrage of dozens-to-hundreds of crimson-red Light spears to begin blasting through the walls. The dozen signatures that appeared on the edge of my range a split second earlier were all almost identical matches to the first one I had sensed that day at the warehouse.
I swung my arms and fingers widely at high speed, weaving my strings around in a controlled chaos to snag and sling away any of the spears that would have struck the people behind me. I had a limited number of strings I could control and not enough practice against this type of attack, so I had to let more than a few get past me to redirect some of the more dangerously close ones, and a bunch of furniture was getting destroyed in the process, including my third-favorite TV.
Oh well. The place was going to need some serious remodeling after this anyway.
The thundering impacts and falling bits of shattered masonry around us were almost deafening as windows shattered, metal groaned, and air was rent with my motions, and yet somehow I still managed to hear the soft sipping of liquid as my master continued drinking her tea.
'Really?' a vein throbbed on my temple as my eye twitched. One particular spear managed to 'slip' through my coverage, and I was rewarded with a sound of shattering porcelain and splattering liquid.
"Really?" A wave of red-tinged black rose up in a wall, consuming the entirety of the room in front of me and pushing outward, halting the flood of Light spears from reaching us. "I wanted to savor that."
I glanced back at my master and let my threads dissipate as she stood up and erased the remains of the cup handle in her fingers with a wisp of her power.
"Oops." My voice was deadpan as I responded, meeting her eyes with an even stare. "My bad."
"My home was just attacked, and yet my cute little [Rook] won't even let me enjoy a cup of tea to sooth my mind," Rias sighed dramatically, before getting serious. "Uzumaki-kun seems to have left during the chaos, likely to go find and protect Amatsu-san."
She was right. He'd slipped away from my senses completely while my back was to him. Not even my sense of smell noticed him leave. I belatedly realized that those facts didn't surprise me at all, as if I'd already known; instead, they just made me want to pout.
'... Annoying.' I kept my expression flat.
That sword was too OP in the hands of a ninja, plz nerf.
Rias tilted her head, looking up at her power past me. "They seem to have stopped wasting their time with ranged attacks."
"Meh." I shook my head and walked over to stand beside my [King, feeling the group split into two. One group of Fallen swooped down, converging on this section of the mansion, while the other spread out around our home with Light energy building up around them, condensing into levitating spears aimed at the building's windows and exits while on standby; one for each cardinal direction, and one high above us on overwatch.
"Here." I reached up above my head to put my hand on her shoulder, connecting to her demonic power to share my mental impression of where all the Fallen were with her. "Get ready."
The group of approaching Fallen were quick but methodical, clearing rooms simply and decisively by throwing explosive spears of Light through doors and moving on. It was lucky that Norika was on the other side of–
'What?'
I couldn't sense my other human friend now, either.
Either she'd somehow been killed already, even though none of the attackers had hit that side of the building and were focusing down on this room specifically, or more likely…
'Seriously too OP. Plz don't nerf.'
After all, it was our party member who had it now.
Rias closed her eyes and lifted one hand straight up above her, finger-gun style, and a marble of destructive power condensed at her fingertip, more and more demonic power being packed into the tiny space. With her other hand, she made a sweeping gesture in front of her, and the wall of Destruction was sucked back towards her, swirling around the marble as it absorbed the remaining energy from the defensive use of her power, the orb small and dark enough that even some devils would struggle to see them at this time of night.
Buchou's brows furrowed and she bit her lip in concentration at this level of control and multitasking. For a long time, she only really trained her demonic power and clan trait for sheer power and flexibility, trying to live up to the shadow that her absolute powerhouse of a siscon-brother cast by making the use of her Destruction come to her as naturally as breathing. She'd never been as good of a spellcaster as Sona or Akeno though, so while her training worked, she'd ended up neglecting the more structured and precise aspects of her control even as she could casually wave her hand and erase a building without a thought.
That training habit began to change after all but losing against Riser, only tying with him by the skin of our teeth, basically by luck.
Five seconds after I shared my senses, the Fallen arrived.
Two of them raced into the room from either end of the connecting hallway, spears in hand. Another turned the corner from the connected kitchen. One came around the back and was flying through the shattered glass back door. An "X" was slashed through the wall where the TV used to be before the fifth and final Fallen burst through like the kool-aid man, duel-wielding a pair of the red spears.
Rias smirked despite the mental strain, opening her eyes as she curled her thumb like a gun hammer dropping.
"Bang."
The glowing marble split into several dozen red-tinged beams, five for each of the crows here and outside; head, heart, liver, and thighs. Lines of Destruction were traced over the world like a laser show at a concert, half of them passing through the mansion as if the structure didn't even exist, all of them racing towards their targets.
Within a second, five of the ten Fallen winked out instantly to my senses, with another two fading fast. The two rushing from the hallway dropped dead, their momentum sending them crashing across the rubble-covered room with perfectly circular holes bored through their bodies. The one approaching from the back door just barely managed to shift his head to the side, dodging instant death, just to succumb to the slightly-less instant death of a pierced heart, liver, and femoral arteries.
The two others that rushed us got off much lighter. Kitchen-guy, having been the least prepared, was the lucky one that Rias had decided to capture for interrogation, and had his shoulders, spine, and the base of his wings pierced, dropping him to the floor limply.
Kool-aid man, having been dual-wielding Light spears, had managed to block and stall the beams of Destruction for just a moment long enough to twist out of the way and survive with no injury.
Until my fist slammed into his cheek, sending him flying back through the wall he came in from– and three more after that– with a snapped neck, killing him instantly.
That left just a single other survivor.
"Koneko-chan, do you mind cleaning up the last one too?" Rias asked me over her shoulder as she walked over to the paralyzed one.
"Mm." I looked straight up, staring not with my eyes, but with my Senjutsu, at the fallen hovering directly above us; the one who'd somehow dodged all the beams aimed at him. A small surge of compulsion magic left Rias and entered the two-winged fallen on the floor.
"Now then, tell me who-"
I narrowed my eyes at the ceiling, my wings popping out of my back as I bent my knees.
"-you work for, and what-"
I jumped, flapping my wings at the same time to surge upwards, and blasting through multiple floors almost instantly.
My eyes narrowed further when a huge burst of power pumped out from the Fallen, while remaining impressively well contained close to his body. They went from the same level of strength as the other four-wingers, to easily tripling or quadrupling in strength in an instant, and when I punched through the roof in the next split-second, I saw why.
Holding a bolt of shining red energy that was more like a burning star given shape than an actual spear, the man hovered in the air on three pairs of raven wings, darker and fuller than any of the other five Fallen I'd seen inside. Unlike the others who wore uniforms with the same eight-pointed star symbol Naruto-kun described, He wore a basic black cloak, with the hood up and a plain white porcelain mask hiding his face.
His arm was reared back with the unstable and crackling spear above his head, intent clear the moment his aura dismissed my presence, instead reaching out towards his Fallen comrade (pun intended).
'... This is gonna suck.'
I banked hard as he threw, channeling as much chakra and demonic power through my body and rearing back my own fist as the spear broke the sound barrier while shooting down towards me– or more specifically, down towards my master and the captured Fallen.
My master who, for the most part, relied on me and Akeno to handle the peerage's extrasensory needs while she focused on training her demonic power. Meanwhile, this man was good enough at containing his power that I'd be surprised if she could sense him even if he was in the mansion, never mind how high up he was right now.
I only barely managed to intercept the attack, since the sharp maneuver meant I lost most of my momentum. Still, when I swung my fist, I timed it just right, blasting a wave of chakra out of my knuckles at the same time.
The bolt of Light exploded violently, a blinding flash of red light and concussive force knocking me back in the air and making my exposed skin itch from exposure to the tainted holy energy. The majority of the energy from the attack was knocked off course, and instead going straight down into the mansion or straight out to the side from my hit, went down at an angle and seared most of the grass and hedges of our back yard a smoking black.
I blinked twice to get the spots out of my eyes, and just barely felt the six-winged Fallen's aura blink out with the signature feel of a teleportation spell while I hovered.
"Dammit." I muttered.
'Next time, I'll beat him to a pulp.'
I tucked my wings to freefall down towards the smoking lawn, only spreading them just in time to catch enough air to soften my landing so that I didn't damage the patio. I pulled out my phone as I walked to the shattered glass door to begin texting Akeno, in order to let her know we'd need to get into contact with some of our contractors ASAP. Both the construction kind, and also the landscaping kind.
Stepping foot into the room though, I paused when I saw Buchou slowly pacing around the room with her own phone to her head, a dial tone reaching my ears. To the side, a slowly fading spear of red Light that gave off almost no residual energy was sticking straight up out of the floor, right where the paralyzed Fallen's head used to be, now just a headless corpse.
Rias saw where I was looking and pursed her lips. "It came down just- My bad, hold on one second please Akeno-" She put a hand over the receiver and tried again. "It came down just after that explosion happened. Less than a second after."
"Sorry…" I found myself looking down, not wanting to see her disappointed expression. "I didn't sense the second one."
"Don't worry too much about it," she waved a hand dismissively. "It wasn't your fault. If that explosion was anything to go by, that Fallen was much more powerful than the rest of them, and good at hiding it. It only makes sense that they had a trick up their sleeve you weren't expecting. No, the real problem is that, after seeing these ones in person, it occurred to me that I think I have an idea who this group might be working for. But I'll share my suspicions later, when we can all regroup."
Just then, I heard a loud sound crackling over the other end of her phone, practically overloading Rias's speaker for a few moments.
"Akeno, are you there? What happened?" Rias asked with some serious concern.
The next second or two later, a string of distant, delayed booms of thunder reached us from across town in the direction Akeno had been patrolling in.
"Rias-" The [Queen]'s voice said over the phone, before another burst of static cut off all other noise for a moment. "-... we might want to call everyone together sooner, rather than later."
We looked at each other, friend to friend instead of [King] to [Rook].
"Ominous as fuck," I deadpanned, hiding any worry I felt as sounds of battle continued on the other end.
"No kidding," Rias gave an obviously nervous chuckle, giving away just how serious she expected the situation to be. "You can say that again."
I didn't.
With how things were going, I half expected our mansion to outright explode if I so blatantly tempted Murphy like that.
At least Naruto-kun and Norika got away, I think.
I hope.
Chapter 47: Multi-Interlude 5
Central Kuoh
Akeno drifted through the air, decently high in the sky with her wings extended, eyes closed for a moment as she made another sweep. She was currently on patrol, and hadn't yet come across any signs of supernatural threats in her area, though it wasn't for a lack of looking. In the past, she would have landed on a building and focused her senses to closely analyze a whole area thoroughly before moving on to the next.
As a shrine maiden– a real shrine maiden taught by her late mother, and not the mundane kind that acted more as a glorified groundskeeper for old tourist attractions– her ability to perceive and sense the various spiritual energies in the world has always been exceptional among her peers, and becoming a devil and gaining access to Demonic Power only strengthened this skill.
Gaining access to Senjutsu on top of that though?
It was like taking soundless, low-quality, black-and-white CCTV footage, and turning it into HD full-color audio-visuals.
Her range didn't really increase– that was a different axis of improvement, and heavily tied to raw power or unique methodologies that she hadn't had a chance to figure out the specifics of– but the sheer detail of what she perceived within her previous range did, so it took much less time and focus to scan an area to a standard of surety even higher than her usual.
After the second time she'd finished scanning before she'd even landed on her chosen roof, she realized it was more effective to simply stay in flight and do a quick circle around if she needed more time.
There was a tiny flicker of dim light originating from somewhere behind her that she caught on the reflection of a building's window, followed shortly by a soft bang far off in the residential district that had Akeno pausing her flight and turning her head to take a glance, but she didn't see any signs of the type of flickering light that would indicate a fire that far away. Nor were there any rising dust clouds, smoke, or other, more unnatural signs of a supernatural battle, like elemental blasts or conjured matter being thrown across the sky.
'I suppose a transformer must have blown.' She dismissed it from her mind and got back to her task.
Less than a minute later, her phone began ringing a familiar tone from where it was strapped against the outside of her thigh, the timing giving her a feeling of wary anticipation and sudden sense of extra focus She took a moment to summon and slip on a wireless earpiece, brushing aside strands of windblown hair as she did so.
Tapping a button on the earpiece to accept the call, she mentally reoriented her flight path and swept her eyes around vigilantly as she answered her [King].
"Hai, what's the situ-?."
"-came down just– My bad, hold on one second please Akeno."
"Mou~..." Akeno allowed herself to pout at being pushed aside so quickly, despite her best friend having been the one to call her.
The good news was that Rias didn't sound like she was in immediate danger or in a terrible hurry, so there wasn't need to panic. The bad news was she was in enough of a hurry to call and potentially interrupt Akeno's patrol, while clearly still dealing with something that required her attention on the other end.
Even as she had the thought, Akeno's expression began darkening as she picked up on a mental deterrence barrier and a familiar type of energy signature near the edge of her range, multiple active signatures at that.
She banked in the air and sped up without a second thought, smiling with grim satisfaction when she felt the Lights of four Fallen be snuffed out in quick succession by strong sources of Holy power, wielded by two humans. The two humans were still surrounded by the dwindling number of remaining crows, but seemed to be holding on fine.
That is, until an absurdly massive surge of power came from one that was already more powerful than the rest combined, and the humans were forcibly separated from their Holy weapons when it crashed into them at high speed. They were blasted through the encirclement just as Akeno passed through the barrier, crested the treeline, and gained direct sight of the situation.
There were multiple craters blasted in the ground, upturned dirt covering much of the remaining grass
The two humans were a pair of teenage girls struggling to stand at the ends of dirt trails their feet had left in the grass, the one with twintails clutching her clearly broken arm while the blue haired one let her own mangled hand hang limply, choosing instead to lower herself in preparation to charge. Her other hand was posed as if to grasp at something that wasn't there. They were wearing the tattered remains of what used to be standard exorcist cloaks, under which they had futuristic-looking skin-tight bodysuits.
Across the clearing, two of the seven living Fallen were quick to snatch up what were very obviously powerful Holy swords. There were dozens of raven-winged corpses littering the clearing around them all, riddled with huge chunks of missing flesh, severed and scattered limbs, and oddly enough, hundreds of bullet holes. Of all of the Fallen, only one had more than four wings, sitting at three pairs with excess wisps of power slipping away from his form as he stood between the girls and the other Fallen survivors..
Akeno took it all in in less than a second, understanding the implications in an instant, and lifted her hand to the sky, mentally defining the targets for the spell she was about to unleash.
The first two targets were even generous enough to already be right next to each other.
She gave a beatific smile. 'Perfect.'
Her Demonic Power surged alongside her Light, her own raven wings releasing alongside her devil pair as an electric-blue spell circle three buildings wide appeared in the sky above.
Her smile turned sadistic when the only six-winger's head snapped her way while radiating bloodlust of his own.
She swung her hand down, and a pillar of lightning fell- the first of many.
Akeno delighted in the look in his eyes behind the mask when he reacted, instantly realizing he wasn't the target, or at least not the first one.
Her smile held as massive bolts of Holy Lightning continued to rain on her victims, right up until half a dozen new signatures arrived within her range- Demonic in nature, each having almost as much Demonic Power as herself, and all converging on her position at high speeds.
Her [King]'s worried voice played in her ear, and she got the feeling that they both had something important to report to everyone.
'It's a shame, but…'
While four of the Fallen managing to escape with a pair of Holy Swords was a problem in itself, it would be far worse if she was unprepared to face so many near-peer threats while protecting her injured guests.
She cut her lightning off, letting the remaining Fallen teleport away as she turned, electricity already crackling along her hands as the first three Strays charged her from below.
"Rias…"
Undisclosed location, North-eastern Kuoh
(Minutes later)
Being associated with one of the original Watchers was probably the most complex, frustrating, and tedious aspect of his position within the Grigori organization. The younger generation looked up to people like him like he was a mythological figure himself, while the older generation were all over the place; some openly disdaining his ilk while thinking themselves better, others hiding their opinions while trying to work cordially with a fellow Fallen, and some outright not understanding that just because they both followed one of the original twenty Fallers, that didn't make him their friend.
It had been like that even from the moment he followed his Lord the Fourth in his Fall, the latecomers and stragglers behind even himself always turning to him and his brothers and sisters in their Lord's absence
It was damn tiresome to deal with, and frankly, he didn't get paid nearly enough for the role.
The Fallen Angel named Gomeisa chuckled to himself and reached up to pull off his plain white mask and hood, revealing a scruffy, middle-aged looking man with dark brown hair and a goatee.
"So, how'd it go?" His similarly-masked brother Procyon asked, the other Fallen flexing his shoulders while walking into the barebones hideout, three pairs of pristine black wings folded up behind him. His arms were reddened from the elbows down in a jagged pattern, until it reached the wrists where his hands themselves were blackened and smoking like burnt chicken. Despite that, he reached up and pulled off his own mask and hood without a flinch, revealing his red eyes, jet-black hair, and clean-shaven aristocratic face. "I see you're missing quite a few of the newly risen recruits-" try all of them "-and no Transparency to make up for it, eh?"
Fittingly, the head of Kokabiel's recruitment organization looked exactly like a younger version of the Fourth Watcher himself. He didn't used to look like that, looking more similar to Gomeisa originally, but after that tussle during the second world war… well, there were some magics that the other man had begun practicing for the sake of their Lord of Stars.
"The Gremory was there with that little [Rook] of hers and two humans," Gomeisa snorted, ruffling his own six wings. "My little fledglings died in practically an instant to the power of Destruction, and one of the humans was a boy that somehow made off with the sword. Couldn't sense even a little bit of the spark in the bastard, but the damn blade responded to him just fine and they disappeared." He took in the other man's injuries, noting the unique patterning. 'Electrical burns, huh?' "That being the case, he was probably involved in Temmael's death."
"Hey now, Temmael went dark on us, but that doesn't mean he's dead, you know?"
"You know how he is- or, was." Gomeisa shook his head. "Out of all the new-blood, he's the most dedicated and thorough. I'd eat your wings if that little killer didn't go down swinging when he realized he was going to fail his retrieval."
"Ha, too true!" Procyon barked out a laugh. "What about that one kid, what's-his-name, the one who likes to dual wield? He had some talent, he bit it too?"
Gomeisa chuckled. "Yeah, the little bastard was the only one to survive the Ruin-Princess's opener without a scratch. 'Course, he immediately got swatted like a fly by that little youkai. Shame, that. He had some real promise, unlike the rest of them."
"Damn." His brother in arms shook his head, hair shifting to reveal his pointed ears. "Oh well, there's always next time for a stronger one to step up."
"Like Kalawarner?"
They both burst out laughing at the ridiculous notion. The two-winged angel was a weakling that had been all-but relegated to minor jobs like grocery shopping after she admitted a human teenager in drag got the drop on her.
When the head of comms relayed it up the chain, their Lord reportedly snorted in a mixture of amusement and disgust before verbally discarding the experiment, entirely too bored with the woman to bother coming up with a scheme to test her usefulness. Thus, she was free game for the others to order around as they pleased.
Going back to his original complaint, it was also the simplest thing in the world, Gomeisa would argue, to say fuck all of the tedious bullshit that was others expectations, and just focus only on what he and all his brothers and sisters did best– doing what they wanted, which happened to be doing battle for Lord Kokabiel. After all, what were those pathetic paper-pushers in the Grigori going to do? Tell him they'd cut his pay if he didn't file his paperwork after a mission?
Ha! As if he even got paid in the first place. Like some of the new generation of Canis Minor recruits liked to say, he was in it for the love of the game. All of the original Army of Stars were the same. It was a shallow existence compared to the Before, and it would end with an equally shallow grave, but it was the one they'd chosen of their own will.
'Yeah right, like any of us gave a shit about that when we chose to follow Lord Kokabiel,' he snorted in amusement at his thoughts. 'Father's grand design, or our own whims– didn't make a difference then and doesn't make a difference now; we're still slaves to our natures in the end.'
"And how did things go on your end?" He asked his co-leader of the newbie squads, eyeing the man's arms again. "Heh, looks like you had a good time."
Procyon chuckled, sitting down and beginning to treat his wounds with the familiarity of someone who's done it a thousand times. "Lost most of my little sparklers too, but hey, the last few at least managed to get away in time. Those two sword maidens managed to take out over half my squad before I had to release my wings to disarm them, even though we got the drop on them. It probably should have been obvious, but swarm tactics don't really work against Excalibur Destruction and a sword that can turn into a minigun." He shrugged. "Lesson learned, I guess. I'll admit, if she gets another couple years, that Quarta girl might become a monster on par with her mother."
"But you did get the swords, right?" Gomeisa asked to confirm.
"Yep. Then Baraqiel's spawn showed up to join the party, and I had to take one for the team and eat an attack to make sure the others got out with the Excaliburs." The other six-winger smirked, blood-red eyes crinkling in amusement. "I was so unprepared, the girl almost killed me with the first strike, and the second and third took out another two when they threw themselves in front of me. It probably would've turned into a running battle if it weren't for a bunch of mutated freaks showing up to crash the party. Distracted her just long enough for me and the rest of my boys to get out of dodge with the loot with a quick teleport."
"Damn, sounds like it could've been fun." Gomeisa shook his head. "Should we get going? She's supposed to be an expert magician or something, if our info's right. If she's good enough to trace your teleport, as hasty as it was, this place is about to be burned."
"Yeah, you're probably right. Might as well head back to the main hideout anyway, see if that weakling got anything good for the officers' feast."
"Lord Kokabiel's supposed to be showing up tomorrow, right?"
"Yeah, he's getting impatient and wants to kick this thing off, even if we only have four out of five. Just thinking about it is making my back itch."
The two Fallen shared identical grins at the promise of coming conflict, before teleporting away in flashes of Light, Gomeisa's red, and Procyon's yellow.
Neither of them noticed the pair of slitted hazel eyes observing from the corner of the room.
Even if they'd turned and stared directly at the glowing orbs, they wouldn't have seen the black cat watching them.
Seconds later, the feline vanished without a trace, summoned back to its owner.
Kuoh red-light district, high-rise apartment suite
(Minutes later)
Ring-ring. Ring-ring. Ring-ri–
"Talk to me."
"He's on the move, sir."
"You sure? Do you have a heading on him? Because a little birdy just got done telling me he was planning on getting things moving tomorrow."
"We're positive, sir. And possibly. He teleported out the primary Underworld base, and sensors traced it to somewhere within the British Isles on Earth. Within moments, his signature disappeared too fast to trace the direction, never making contact with the London base. Given how thorough the coverage of our sensor net across the Isles and mainland is, it's highly likely that he's currently traversing the Atlantic towards the Americas."
"Hmm… so my source isn't necessarily wrong if it turns out old starboy's just making a last-minute milk run somewhere." The buxom black-haired youkai reclining in the chair to the side of the room from him snorted, clutching a large bottle of sake to her yukata between her barely-covered breasts while her other hand stroked a black cat in her lap. "Alright, get me everything we have on the supernatural black markets in those regions. People, services, artifacts, goods; if it sells and seems like something he might want, I want to know about it, pronto."
"Understood."
"And after this is all blown over, how about you and me-"
"Respectfully, go to hell sir."
"Tch." The Scapegoat pulled a hand away from his personal phone to reach up and grab his work phone from his shoulder, flipping it closed, while his other hand pulled double duty on the touch screen controls for his emulated copy of the original Drag-so Ball fighting game.
"Nyahahaha~! Swing and a miss!" Kuroka laughed openly at Azazel's failure to bag a date.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up you feral cat." The Governor General chuckled along good-naturedly. "In all the time you've been part of Vali's group, I haven't seen you with a man even once despite acting the way you do. Having a dry spell yourself, you exhibitionist?"
Kuroka sighed theatrically. "At least I-"
A door opened and a silver-haired male teen in a sleek jacket walked into the room, interrupting her comeback. "Are you two idiots done yet? I'm bored of waiting."
"I'm done here after I finish-" Kuroka held up her bottle by the neck and swished its contents for emphasis. "-this. Youstill have a job to do, oh glorious leader-sama~." she smirked haughtily. "While I'm being pampered by my sister and her boytoy, you'll be waiting to babysit a cranky old loser, nyahahahaha~!"
"Okay, one; you're not going anywhere you feline menace," Azazel cut in, looking at the youkai in a deadpan. "This whole thing can spiral out in ways I haven't accounted for if you're allowed the opportunity to meddle with the players more than you have already. I can't allow that to happen just yet. Two; it's just one more day, two at most, then you can go wild; both of you. We need to wait for him to commit first though, Vali."
"Still don't get why you don't just kill the fucker yourself." Vali grunted. "You're the damn leader, who's gonna stop you? All this waiting is pointless."
"What happened to all those lessons in patience I taught you?" Azazel complained theatrically. "And I already told you before, we need to take him in alive. We can't exactly punish him that harshly if he hasn't actually committed real crimes against our faction; that would just set an unwanted precedent and interfere with the image and rep I need for future plans."
"Vali?" Kuroka questioned mischievously with a tilt of her head. "Paying attention to anything other than fighting?"
Azazel snickered.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up you sleazy crow." Vali grumbled with a roll of his eyes, before closing them and leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed.
The room was quiet for a moment, Kuroka's purring familiar and Azazel's smartphone game the only sounds.
"Not every plan I make is calculated for perfect efficiency, Vali." The cadre was the one to break the relative silence, lowering his phone to the couch cushion beside him with a bright orange 'K.O.!' above his posing character and downed opponent. He ran a hand through his black-blond dual-toned hair, before leaning back into his seat to relax with a stretch and a yawn. "You of all people should know this by now. Some- huwaahhh~, sometimes I just don't want to do certain things myself."
He rolled his wrist around flippantly. "That's not to say that's the case this time– If I personally dealt with Kokabiel, other factions would see it as me running damage control on a fuckup instead of a minor issue that's well in hand– but the point stands; If I wanted him dead and politics wasn't a factor, I still wouldn't want to do it myself."
"Hmm?" Kuroka hummed curiously. "I'd've figured you'd be the type to want to gloat in his face about how you anticipated his entire plan or something."
"I am." Azazel agreed simply. "But I'm also not keen on being the one to put down my siblings when their blades haven't risen towards me."
"His kinda is, though." Kuroka disagreed with the logic. "His goal is literally trying to pull the faction you lead into a war you can't win."
"You hate him." Vali was much more simple and blunt with his argument.
"So?" Azazel shrugged. "You don't put down your rabid dog just because it pulls on its leash when your neighbor walks by; it's a stupid dog that doesn't know any better. Even when it ends up biting you in the ass and all the good feelings are long gone, it's not easy to take that last step and sever that connection for good." The Governor General smiled thinly. "So, I choose to have others take that step for me so I don't have to deal with it. Does a world of wonder for my stress levels, you know?"
Vali looked at him searchingly for a long moment, before snorting. "Heh, how cold of you. And to think for a moment I thought you were going soft."
"I prefer 'dashingly pragmatic', 'cool as a cucumber', or even just 'unflappable', though I'd first have to learn to fly without my wings for that last one..."
Ignoring the childish retort from the ancient Fallen, the silver-haired teen pushed himself off the wall with a grunt and began walking towards the elevator door. "I'm heading out for a while. Kuroka, don't wait up for me."
"Nyaa-aa?!" The cat woman looked at him with exaggerated outrage. "Why the hell would I be waiting for you?!"
"Vali."
He paused at his mentor's tone as the door slid open, looking over his shoulder with one eye towards the man who took him in and trained him. The man was looking back at him in the same manner, one eye peeking over the shoulder.
"Take it from me, kid. Never forget where you come from."
…
Vali's head dipped in a slight nod
Azazel broke eye contact first, waving the teen off with a hand over his shoulder, the other picking his phone up while he turned away to begin another match against the CPU fighter.
Vali disappeared as the elevator doors slid shut behind him.
"Nya?" Kuroka looked back and forth between the Fallen and the metal doors in confusion, before shrugging the interaction off and chugging the remains of her sake bottle, finishing it off with a happy 'Puwaah~!' sound.
A couple of hours later, Vali stepped out of a 24/7 convenience store with a bag full of boxes of noodles and other ingredients. None of the best ramen places around town were still open this late, and he'd felt like taking a long, scenic walk to clear his head instead of teleporting to a more urban city where shops stayed open later, so he figured he'd just get the stuff needed to make a quick batch himself for when he got back to the apartment.
Walking back through the shady section of town with a bored expression on his face, he turned into an alley as a shortcut.
He slowed to a stop halfway through the dim, grimy space, standing with an unconcerned air and sighing in annoyance.
He partially turned, sending a half-lidded stare back in the direction he'd come from.
An eerily tall form stood in the mouth of the alley, only partially lit by light from the few working street lamps behind it casting shadows across its form. With four long and spindly mantis-like legs, feathered arms ending in talons like a hawk's, shiny black antlers rising from a skull with an elongated snout like a stag's, and a pair of bat-like wings, all attached to a darkly-scaled humanoid torso twice as large as a human's.
Two pitch-black orbs stared at the teen, not shifting at all.
Vali just gave it a look.
"I'll give you one chance to leave with your life intact, vermin. I'm not in the mood to entertain your death wish."
As if the creature didn't hear him– or didn't understand him– a carapace-armored leg moved forward with a quiet clink of sharp insectile claws lightly tapping concrete, pulling its massive body closer towards him.
The creature took another slow step towards Vali as if not to spook him, tilting its head as its maw opened slightly, revealing multiple rows of serrated teeth dripping with dark saliva that steamed and sizzled as it hit the concrete.
"You can't even understand me, can you?" Vali mused, slightly curious now. "Are you even a devil anymore, I wonder? Were you ever one to begin with?" All devils, including the newly reincarnated and the most heavily mutated strays, had the Language ability. Even those humans several generations removed from a half-Devil ancestor had an innate ability to learn and understand languages with ease.
Vali leaned down slightly to set his groceries down.
The creature launched forwards a dozen meters in an instant, claws extended–
And was stopped dead with a gust of air when it was caught at the wrists, razor sharp points inches from the teen's mildly interested face.
"Not too bad, for a vermin," Vali mused as it strained against his grip. It wasn't even trying to escape, simply trying to overpower him as if it couldn't tell it was hopeless. "You have much more strength than your usual kind, at least. Probably lower High-class."
It was also faster and had more distinct mutations than the average stray, mutations that had clear start and end points, almost like it was deliberate.
He released the beast and sidestepped the immediate lunge, swiped his hand out, and let the creature collapse limply to the ground a few feet behind him from its momentum.
Vali caught the freshly severed head by an antler as it fell. He brought it to eye level to examine for a moment as its blood dripped onto the ground with a sizzle, gripping it by the antlers and twisting it this way and that. In most ways other than the strange material of the horns, it looked like he would expect any buck or stag head to look, but scaled up a bit to match the rest of the body proportions.
He peered at the eyes in particular, bringing it close to look at one.
He brought a hand up, materializing his [Divine Dividing] gauntlet to not get any fluids on his skin, and with a short and precise application of Half Dimension, plucked the shrunken orb from the skull with his thumb and two fingers. He let it regain its original size and twisted the artificial eye around, looking at it and the fleshy optic nerve from all angles.
The eye was too solid, too uniform, too perfectly round, to be anything but a deliberate design choice. It was made, not naturally grown or mutated by a stray's Demonic Power running uncontrollably through their body. And the shiny black horns, too; judging by weight and feel, they had to be made of some kind of metallic substance.
He paused when he realized what he was doing, scoffed, and tossed the head over his shoulder to bounce on the carcass behind him while conjuring a burst of flame to incinerate the eye.
"Tch, what am I even doing… old geezer's rubbing off on me," he muttered with a scowl, lowering his hand while the other pulled out his phone to text Azazel. 'He can dig around in the corpse if he wants. I'm done here.'
He dismissed his gauntlet and picked up his groceries, before walking away down the alley like nothing happened. As he walked out from the alley and around the corner, he disappeared from the sight of the severed head's remaining glossy orb.
The eye and surrounding flesh began sizzling and melting, quickly turning into a puddle of unidentifiable sludge that left behind nothing but an empty-eyed, antlered skull next to the chimeric body.
Unknown location, Underworld
(Two months earlier)
Deep under the surface, in an uninhabited section of the underworld bordering an extinct Pillar's old territory, a middle-aged looking devil in a white lab coat strode through a well-lit and sterilized hallway.
He had just been performing one of many practical examinations in the testing chambers, recording data on one of the facility's more promising new proof-of-concept subjects.
There were many things researched here- with quite a few of his clansmen holding disdain similar to his own for the new government's ethical regulations- but very few projects required his personal attention. After all, even with their lessening of status and respect since the civil war, the Nebiros were still undisputedly the best researchers in all the Underworld. Really, it was mostly only his own professional curiosity that tended to take him out of his personal lab, and away from the even more top secret lab that only he knew of and had access to.
Chimeras were an interesting topic, one that has existed in some form since even before the dawn of science as a concept. For as long as life had been truly sapient, the urge to improve oneself and one's own in-group has been an intrinsic one, and thus arose the coveting of those successful traits that naturally belonged to other, different beings.
The field had– for the most part– stagnated for thousands of years though, because as it turned out, there were a lotof issues with taking parts from one species and grafting them onto another species. Not all of them were even issues with the accumulated knowledge or technology; many of them were simple practicalities. What free-thinking being with a functioning sense of pride would replace a part of themselves with something else, just because it would make them "better" solely in an arbitrary field? What person would sacrifice the sheer flexibility of potential in the standard humanoid form for a major boost in ability, when that ability is so frequently so much more limited in application?
Four-inch long indestructible claws that can cut through the strongest of steels without effort, or the ability to not shred your own flesh by accident every time you want to make a fist or pick something up? It was not even a true choice.
There was a reason the vast majority of chimera research focused on simple-minded creatures, created strictly for battle and not for comfortable living. Until such problems could be solved through more research, chimerism was relegated to simple-minded foot soldiers, insane freaks, and true shapeshifters on a level that devils simply weren't without specialized magics.
His interest in the topic notwithstanding, he'd been drawn away from the testing chambers and back to his own lab by a high-priority automatic alert on his personal tablet, originating from an offshoot project the branch clan had been tasked with many years back.
Truthfully, he'd been all but convinced that that particular offshoot had reached a dead end after the debacle a few years ago had nearly revealed them, but it seemed he now had potential evidence to the contrary; if the alert wasn't just a false call.
The man passed many doors, each leading to a different staging area-slash-test chamber, before coming to the end of the hallway where a pair of polished steel elevator doors sat. Stepping inside, he pressed the button for his personal lab's dedicated floor, the security system sampling his energy signature as he did so to confirm his authorization.
He had to admit; for all their limitations– likely even because of them– humanity's creativity and ingenuity was beyond most other species, and deserving of respect. What need for elevators did a species which could fly have? Devil-kind would have never conceived of such a technology when stairs sufficed, and yet when your secret base was hidden under miles of rock, with anti-teleportation wards in all areas but the heavily guarded main entrance, it was all but a necessary luxury. If he never stepped foot in the original two hundred-floor service stairway again, it would be too soon.
Finally reaching the lowest official floor of the base, Zaorama Nebiros walked into his sanctuary of progress and made his way to his computer console and placed his hand on the scanner panel to unlock it. Opening his messages to see if the alert was truly worth his time, the head of the Nebiros clan found that he had been automatically forwarded a packet originally meant for a now-dead Naberius member, the one who had been in charge of the project. It contained four files, gathered, packaged, and sent by sweeper programs within the current administration's systems.
One was a text document named "Rias Gremory v. Riser Phenex [2018.5.15] - Predictions & Analyses", another was a visual file which was labeled clearly as a rating game recording between the two, followed by a filetype used primarily for rating games and research purposes, containing data on everything from basic energy levels to state of health readouts, with timestamps that were meant to match up with the recording itself. The final was a folder containing the new rating game profiles for all members of the Gremory heiress's peerage, with one in particular being marked as important.
"The nekoshou, hmm?" He rubbed his chin, opening the file and skimming over the details, displayed strengths, and brief combat history.
'Somewhat impressive for her age. Could become something interesting, but nothing particularly special so far,' Zaorama mused.
He switched to the first text file and once more skimmed through the details. Despite it being a private, non-televised rating game, the analyst staff didn't skimp on their jobs and went through the motions of recording everything as standard procedure, as various peerages training for the competitive seasons frequently requested the recordings of their scrimmage matches for training purposes.
He read through the initial section of predictions made prior to the match beginning. The Thunder Priestess was predicted to face off against the Bomb Queen and either win convincingly after a hard-fought struggle, or lose decisively after the Phenex [Queen] consumes a Phoenix Tear. Both Gremory [Knight] and [Rook] were understood to be substantively stronger than their Phenex peers, aside from one particularly impressive [Knight] of Riser's, and so the predictions favored the Gremory. The Red Dragon Emperor was a wildcard, being so new to his gift, and so performance predictions were split.
In the end, even the best estimates placed the Gremory peerage still fell short of victory, predicted as falling before the continuous resurrection of the Phenex bloodline faltered. Koneko Toujou was expected to defeat between eight to eleven pieces worth of the Phenex peerage before being Retired by decisive action from the opposing [Queen]
He skipped the post-game conclusion and analysis, preferring to view the game through his own eyes to make his own judgements on the performance of the subject in question.
After synchronizing the power and health readout data on one screen to the multiple angles of visual feed on others, Zaorama stood by and watched as the predictions were near immediately showing small signs of error, something he entirely expected after reading through the former nekoshou's profile. Much more physically capable than initially predicted, she swept away her initial opponents with apparent ease. Almost exactly as predicted, the Phenex [Queen] took action, although it was moments before the subject might have gained her predicted eight points, and said action failed to Retire the subject, her defenses much higher than predicted as well.
After a short skirmish in which the Gremory peerage displayed impeccable timing and battlefield tactics, the Gremory [Queen] intervened and took control.
Zaorama began skimming the recording, fast forwarding through most of it and becoming less and less interested as it went, his eyes becoming bored. Certainly, the subject was significantly stronger than previous predictions, but still nowhere near the level of her sister at the time of the incident that made her a Stray. Yes, the readings of her species 'chakra' were somewhat intriguing, especially that particularly novel method of object reinforcement during the amusing instance of Phenex-shishkabob, but–
He snapped to focus when a familiar flare of energy and a bolt of unique lightning from the Gremory [Queen] ended the game in short order. Leaning forward, he rewound and replayed the scene from the beginning, eyes flickering from the energy readings to the game feed.
"This lighting…" he murmured. "This is… just like that Fallen Baraqiel's, no? No, no, not entirely… her Demonic Power is still the source of her lightning, efficiently creating its form, but she infused it with innate Holy Light unconsciously? If that's the case…"
It wasn't unheard of for devils to be able to wield Light based weapons or magics. Exceedingly rare, but not unheard of, and most usually as a result of a reincarnated human or half-breed with a Sacred Gear, bonded Holy weapon, or innate potential for such magics. In all cases though, Light and Dark– Holy and Demonic– couldn't be used simultaneously. They were anathema, and thus could not be mixed together. The world would not allow it.
"So why…" A thought occurred, and his eyes widened slightly in sudden understanding as he connected the dots. "Of course! God himself is dead, but though His miracles within the world have slowed, they have not halted. The systems He put in place are still there, but they must be degraded without Him…"
For a Devil to be able to wield Holy Light, unrestricted? And if he could manage to produce results at scale, even among those Great Devils that are already at the pinnacle of their race, if he wished? Then, he may finally be able to…
He shifted on his feet in instinctive nervousness, consciously aware of the four things that lie asleep far below, in a part of the facility he alone is aware of the existence of.
"Hahaha!" Zaorama laughed suddenly. "How novel! How interesting!"
He pulled up the Gremory [Queen]'s, Akeno Himejima's, profile on another monitor, and smiled as he hungrily read through the info. It was painfully lacking.
He saved the files into a new project folder and began considering ways to begin study of such a phenomenon.
The first thing to do was prepare to gather a more complete data set, straight from the source if need be…