Cid stared blankly at the two girls standing before the open door of the suite, and for a moment, the three of them simply looked at one another.
"Cid, what's wrong?"
Kanade poked her head out from behind Cid. The moment she saw the two girls in front of them, her eyes lit up.
"Wow, Cid, are they friends of yours? They're so beautiful. They look really dignified and powerful, too."
"...I guess you could say we're pretty good friends. Rias-senpai, Vice President Sona, long time no see. I didn't expect to run into you here."
After casually answering Kanade, Cid greeted his two acquaintances in a more serious tone. He had assumed the next time they met would be after the vacation ended and they returned to school.
"Cid, long time no see. I never thought I'd run into you just when I was thinking about you. Looks like today's my lucky day."
Rias spoke with a bright, delighted smile, although the implication behind her words made Cid slightly wary.
"I wouldn't exactly call it a long time. The vacation only started seven or eight days ago. But for you and Rias, Cid, I suppose it really does count as a long time."
Souna Shitori adjusted the glasses on the bridge of her nose and expressionlessly pointed out the problem with their exchange. After glancing between the two of them, however, she quickly decided to let it go.
Cid understood what she meant. It was nothing more than the usual pleasantries between acquaintances.
"I'm glad to see you too, Cid. But who's this girl with you...?"
Once the greetings were over, Rias turned her deep green eyes toward Kanade, one slender eyebrow lifting slightly.
"Oh, oh! Hello, both of you! My name is Kanade. You can just call me Little Kanade!"
Kanade greeted them with tremendous enthusiasm. As always, she was exceptionally good at seizing an opportunity the moment it presented itself. Having sensed just how powerful the two girls in front of her were, she sounded so eager that even Rias was startled before letting out a soft laugh.
"You certainly seem energetic. Nice to meet you, Kanade. My name is Rias Gremory. You can just call me Gremory. I'm Cid's senior and his squad leader, and I'm also a Devil."
Rias introduced herself politely, then mischievously unfurled a pair of Devil Wings at the end, startling Kanade.
"Rias, don't scare her like that. You'll ruin our reputation."
Souna Shitori sighed. Watching Rias act so unseriously in front of Cid, she could only think that love really did lower a person's IQ. She tapped Rias on the head twice, then turned toward Kanade with a gentle smile.
"Hello, Kanade. My name is Sona Sitri. I'm the second daughter of the House of Sitri, a Devil family from the Underworld. You can also call me by my other name, Souna Shitori, just like Cid does."
"Oh... ohhh..."
Kanade nodded. Rias and Souna Shitori had both been perfectly friendly, but Kanade's instinctive prejudice toward Devils still made her shrink behind Cid in fear. She lowered her voice and whispered to him.
"Cid, why didn't you tell me sooner that these two friends of yours were Devils?"
Cid gave her a look.
My fault?
He never said a word, yet Kanade somehow read the meaning perfectly from his eyes. An embarrassed expression appeared on her face.
Come to think of it, he had a point.
The instant she realized the two girls had a good relationship with Cid and weren't malicious people, all Kanade had cared about was cozying up to them. More friends meant more connections, after all. She had been in no mood whatsoever to listen to Cid explain anything.
"Sorry about that. Kanade was being a little rude."
While Kanade was still lost in thought, Cid had already pushed her down into an apologetic bow.
This was exactly why he didn't like hanging around with Kanade. She was way too much of a country bumpkin. If he wasn't careful, she would drag him into embarrassing himself right alongside her.
"Sorry. I did something wrong."
Kanade apologized immediately without arguing or accusing Cid of forcing her to do it.
The biggest reason Kanade had managed to survive until now was that she knew exactly when to latch onto someone powerful and keep her head down.
"Pfft. It's fine, really. That reaction is perfectly normal. Kanade, you and Cid really are alike."
"Don't worry about it. Rias was the one who scared you in the first place."
Rias and Souna Shitori exchanged a glance before smiling, neither of them taking it seriously.
"Still, I really didn't expect to run into you here, Cid. Shouldn't you be busy dealing with things back in your own country right now?"
Once the laughter died down, Rias walked over to Cid, clasped her hands behind her back, and leaned forward curiously.
"Well... I guess you could call this a government-funded vacation for Kanade and me."
"Hm? So you're here to negotiate with the Mitsugoshi Company too, Cid? Or are you carrying out some kind of mission?"
Souna Shitori had been trying not to pay attention to Rias, who had clearly forgotten friendship the moment a man appeared, or to Cid, who apparently wanted to become a cad. But the words "government-funded" immediately caught her attention.
"Uh... no. Kanade and I came here to take refuge. But President Sona, what did you mean by 'too'?"
Realizing they had misunderstood him, Souna Shitori and Rias exchanged a glance. After thinking it over, they decided it wasn't particularly sensitive information.
"Rias and I came here on a mission from her older brother and my older sister. Our objective is to discuss a few business partnerships with the Mitsugoshi Company."
"Basically, we're selling some businesses we don't have much use for to the Mitsugoshi Hotel under President Gamma in exchange for enough special materials."
Souna Shitori stared at Rias speechlessly.
She had deliberately kept her explanation vague, yet Rias had immediately revealed all the details.
Rias could only chuckle sheepishly. They had already revealed the matter anyway, so as far as she was concerned, a little more information hardly made a difference.
"Why do you need to sell them?"
Cid sounded genuinely puzzled.
As far as he remembered, the Underworld wasn't poor. In fact, the Devil faction as a whole ranked among the world's foremost powers.
The moment he asked that question, everyone fell silent.
Cid immediately realized that he might have accidentally stepped on a land mine.
"Sorry. Just pretend I never asked."
"...It isn't anything we can't talk about. We're simply out of money."
Souna Shitori was the one who finally spoke, telling Cid not to worry before explaining the reason.
They were simply broke.
Recently, Shadow and several of the other strongest beings in the world had appeared one after another, utterly disregarding everyone else's lives as they fought without restraint. The mere aftershocks of their battles had been enough to effortlessly destroy defensive lines established by factions all across the world.
For those factions, repairing their barriers and defensive lines was painfully expensive, but normally it was only that. Painful.
Given their accumulated wealth, even if it happened several times in a row, the most it would do was make the people at the top faint from distress. It still wouldn't be enough to make them jump off a roof.
The Hero Faction was another matter entirely.
They had raided the major factions down to their foundations.
Twice.
Two whole times!
They had practically cleaned out every last reserve those factions had. Rumor had it that several officials responsible for finances had already keeled over and died, only to be resurrected afterward.
In short, every major faction was poor now.
And aside from the Fallen Angels, the Devils had suffered the worst.
The Hero Faction's first worldwide robbery had been triggered by the Devils in the first place. Not only had they been robbed, but they had also been forced to pay a massive additional sum, while two Transcenders had gone to the World Battlefield to fill in and work off the debt.
After struggling for more than half a month, they had barely managed to catch their breath.
Then the Hero Faction robbed them a second time.
On top of that, Shadow had torn their defensive lines apart with a black sword stretching across the stars.
The newly integrated World No. 4 had also been carved up by Shadow in advance. More than eighty percent of its valuable resources and prime territory had been allocated to World No. 3, while the roughly ten percent that remained, consisting mostly of resource-poor land with terrible terrain, was randomly divided among the major factions of the world.
That cut straight into the Devils' lifeline.
With no other choice, they had begun cutting loose all the freeloaders they normally supported.
That included more than a dozen Underworld outposts in Kyoto, Japan. They were negative assets that normally did little more than drain money and existed largely for the Four Great Satans to maintain for amusement.
Aside from the handful that absolutely had to be kept, every one of them was being sold.
And the buyer taking them off the Devils' hands was the Mitsugoshi Company, which practically represented the entire commercial sector of World No. 3 and had more money than it knew what to do with.
Incidentally, the Fallen Angels were in even worse shape than the Devils.
They hadn't been reduced to poverty simply because someone robbed them. Instead, both the location of their treasury entrance and the keys to it had been leaked, allowing someone to sweep away every last material inside.
How miserable were the Fallen Angels now?
Apparently, when the Hero Faction's Evil Dragon army conducted its second worldwide raid, the Fallen Angels' base was the one place where they failed to gain anything at all.
In fact, rumor had it that several Evil Dragons took one look inside and ended up leaving half a coin behind out of pity.
"Wow..."
After listening to Souna Shitori's explanation, Cid suddenly found himself understanding their predicament.
After all, the Mitsugoshi Company was now so absurdly wealthy that, by the standards of his previous life, they were practically oil-sheikh rich.
Gamma's habit of trading rare materials for ordinary businesses had earned her the title of "money-throwing fool" among the world's major factions.
But given the chance, who wouldn't want to be that kind of "money-throwing fool"?
Wait.
Something about this didn't feel right.
Cid suddenly remembered Gamma complaining to him about something similar before. At the time, she had looked like a scheming villain whose grand plan was about to succeed from beginning to end.
It was only recently, after Beta started working her like a pack animal, that Gamma had begun wondering whether Beta had actually tricked her into being the sucker.
"It's all my fault."
While Cid and Souna Shitori were talking, Rias stopped walking. Her voice sank as she began blaming herself.
"My selfish actions are what caused the Underworld to suffer such enormous losses."
Clearly, Rias still remembered what Kokabiel had told her.
In her mind, Yuuto Kiba's defection from her peerage and the battle that caused devastating losses for the Underworld government had both happened because of her.
Souna Shitori sighed and glanced meaningfully at Cid.
That was exactly why the subject they had just discussed was such a sensitive one for Rias.
Since you brought it up, Cid, you deal with it.
Understanding the message in Souna Shitori's eyes, Cid awkwardly scratched his hair.
"The idea that it's better to drag other people down than improve yourself is definitely twisted logic, but I think it actually suits your situation pretty well, Rias."
"Instead of blaming yourself, why not put all the blame on someone else? Think the way I do. Everything is the fault of the evil Shadow. No, wait. It's all the fault of the inherently evil Great Red."
The effect was immediate.
Rias, who had still been wallowing in depression, jerked her head up in alarm and stared at Cid with wide eyes.
Even Souna Shitori, who had wanted Cid to comfort Rias, was stunned.
Compared with Rias shutting herself away beneath the weight of her own guilt, Cid's incredibly targeted statement was clearly far more effective.
"Thanks for trying to comfort me, Cid, but you really shouldn't say things like that too often."
There was no denying it.
Cid had won this round.
Rias had been shocked straight out of her depression, because nobody could guarantee just how extraordinary the hearing of the "World's Strongest" might be. Normally, the major factions only dared curse that existence after putting up silence barriers.
"It's fine. The Great Red is flying around inside the Dimensional Gap. It can't reach the human world."
Were you talking about the Great Red?
Seeing Cid's completely carefree expression, as though none of this concerned him in the slightest, Rias and Souna Shitori could only exchange helpless smiles.
Ignorance truly made people fearless.
"Come to think of it... Rias, neither of you seemed surprised at all when I mentioned my government-funded vacation."
Cid turned his head in confusion as something suddenly occurred to him.
Rias and Souna Shitori had reacted far too naturally.
Normally, shouldn't they have asked him a few questions about it?
"Because we already knew."
"Not bad, Cid. I never expected you to be the first one among us to enter public service."
Rias spoke as though it were perfectly obvious, even parting her lips slightly in envy.
She and Souna Shitori were still only helping their families with various matters.
"You already knew!?"
"Yeah. Your name just wasn't at the top of the list."
They nodded together.
The Kingdom of Midgar stood at the epicenter of the collision between two planets. Even knowing they might be killed by Shadow, the various factions had still sent people there to investigate.
As a side benefit, they had also figured out what had been happening recently in the Kingdom of Midgar.
Rias had been paying particularly close attention to the matter, so naturally, she had noticed Cid's name mixed into the list.
"...And here I was planning to surprise you. Unfortunately, Christina favors Kanade the most. Otherwise, I might've been the most famous one."
"Huh? Me?"
Ignoring Kanade's startled cry, Cid quietly took a step backward, putting Kanade squarely in front of himself.
Just as he had expected, the instant they heard what he said, both Rias and Souna Shitori instinctively gave Kanade another careful look.
Excellent.
It seemed the plan he had prepared in advance, "If things go wrong, push Kanade to the front," was flawless.
It was only a small organization anyway. At worst, it would cost him a little money.
"...It's fine, Cid. If you decide things over there aren't working out, you can always come to the Underworld. I'm sure Lord Serafall would be happy to take you in."
Thanks for the invitation, Rias. One of these days, I'll beat that magical girl maniac to death.
"By the way, Cid, where are you planning to go now?"
"Well... I was thinking of visiting the nearby Inari Shrine, then coming back for a bath."
"...Why are you going to exactly the same place as Rias?"
After exchanging a silent look with Souna Shitori, Cid agreed to head there together with the now-recovered Rias.
Then he suddenly turned toward Kanade, who had started poking him with a finger.
"Um, Cid... when did you learn to talk like Princess Alice?"
"I didn't learn it. It really is all Shadow's fault."
Delighted by Kanade's dumbfounded expression, Cid looked away.
Just like Princess Iris, there were times when even he found himself wondering whether this world was already beyond saving.
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