Chapter 1: Dying x Dreaming

I died. Yep, Leith Owens, med student, died. It was for a pretty stupid reason too. I mean, I'm a fucking med student; I should have known better than to eat that bad piece of salmon. Long story short, my immune system's never been great and I caught something that made it worse. Go figure right, I learn to take care of everyone else's bodies but neglect my own. I was hospitalized and some nurse forgot to wash the needles properly so I got infected and everything spiraled downhill from there. Good intentions and road to hell and all that.

Anyway, I'm talking to you because I was reborn. For lack of a better word, my soul transmigrated from my world to that of DxD. How do I know? Well, the giant red dragon doing cartwheels in a rainbow sky that looked like a psychedelic stoner's wet dream might have been a clue. Yep, I ended up crossing the Gap and saw Great Red spazzing out. Thankfully, I was thrown into the human world before he noticed or I'd have been Dreamed out of existence or something.

As you might expect, I was placed in a fetus. Do you have any idea what nine months in a womb feels like? I assure you, you don't know boredom like I know boredom. The only thing to keep me company was a note that floated in front of my vision. It wasn't literal, I knew that. Fetuses don't really have functioning eyes, but I saw anyway. I had always doubted the existence of the soul, but if I wasn't living proof, I didn't know what was. Was some random being speaking through my head? Possibly, but whatever the case, I decided to pay attention to it.

You are something of an anomaly. You were supposed to be thrown into the afterlife, but you slipped between the cracks. I was too lazy to deal with you after that so I just tossed your soul into another dimension. You are now occupying what would have been a stillborn infant. Yes, you are in the world you knew as DxD. Yes, you do have a Sacred Gear. Yes, you do have the potential for magic. No, you don't get to find out what they are before even being born. This is all I'll ever do for you so you don't get crushed into oblivion too quickly.

Have fun,

Death

Needless to say, I wasn't too happy about that. I ranted and raged and must have kicked hard enough to give my new mother a hell of a time until I just didn't have the strength to vent anymore. It would have been one thing if I had been sent to correct something. At the very least, I would have had purpose. No, I just need to live my life apparently. People don't realize it, but too much freedom is just as terrifying as not enough. Everyone is looking for direction and I suppose that now that I'm not a med student looking to save lives, I lost mine. Maybe I'll pick that up again? I guess it would depend on my Sacred Gear and whether or not I want to enter the supernatural world. In the end, I fell dormant, the pulsating heartbeat of my mother comforting me. Anyway, I was born, my head was squeezed through a vagina, and some asshat in white slapped my asscheeks. I… don't ever want to go through that again. For that matter, I'm not too keep on sucking on some woman's nipples either… Fuck.

X

Constant blows to my dignity aside, nothing special happened until about my second year. At the age of two, I was already being called a prodigy. I mean, how many people can say their kid reads and speaks fluent Italian by two? Yes, I wasn't born into a good old British family like I was in my last life. This time, my name is Luca Rossi and if I might say, I am one adorable baby. Though I think my lack of crying unnerves my parents a bit. I wasn't all that attached to my parents, I remember being a grown man after all, so that was just fine by me. Sure, they were decent people, but they weren't my parents. Keeping me at a distance left me to my own thoughts anyway. Mission One: Find out when in the timeline I am.

Everything kind of fell apart when my family was caught in a car crash. I know, I live in a reality where devils, angels, and gods exist. I live in Rome, what had to be the locus of European supernatural affairs. And I almost died from a car crash… Fun fact: Car seats aren't foolproof. Another fun fact: When a toddler's head crashes into the back of daddy's skull, daddy's skull wins.

So I lay there dying, in unspeakable agony. No really, I literally couldn't speak because I was in too much pain and the paramedics had given me up as lost. If the frantic shouting was anything to go by, so were my parents.

'Is this how I'm going to die?' I asked myself. 'By some freak accident, I got the second chance most would kill for and I'm going to die at the age of two? FUCK NO!' I mentally screamed out, the haze of pain clearing momentarily as my adult mind supplanted the instincts of a toddler. My surroundings faded to black. The sound of shouting, the incessant whining of sirens, all of that was muted out. Instead, I heard a beat. Then another. And another. Slowly, it dawned on me that I was hearing my own heartbeat. It grew fainter and fainter, weaker and weaker with each passing second. 'No… No! I won't die like this! God, Death, Akasha, Red, whatever the fuck you are! You can't push me here and let me die due to some shit luck!' I cried out.

As my toddler heart weakened, something clicked within me. I felt myself infused with a warmth. It was a feeling and it felt emerald. It's hard to describe, but for whatever reason, I survived. The doctors would call it a freak miracle and sure enough, I was adopted by the Church. Of course, none of that registered. I was too out of it to care. No, the only thing I remember from those few days was the blackness and a name that resounded throughout my consciousness. Twilight Healing…

X

So yea, I have Twilight Healing and I awakened it at an age that should have been impossible. Growing up in the Church was… honestly kind of lackluster. I mean, there was no brutal training regimen (I was two!) and I'd heard the Bible stories before already. Sure, they were boring, but they did hold some of my interest since, you know, I know for a fact that angels exist and all. The priests did try to get me to use Twilight Healing again, but I refused. Or rather, I played dumb and they chalked my survival up to a freak accident. To be fair to them, I was two so that was a rational assumption.

I had no intention of going to way of Asia. I didn't feel like being spoonfed all my life because I got myself designated as a saint or something. Besides, I knew exactly what the loyalty of the Church was worth: jack shit. Call me a cynic if you want, but aside from some of the truly good people like Xenovia and Griselda, the Church wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The teachings of the Bible are good, but the Church… not so much.

For the next eight years, I practiced using Twilight Healing in the secrecy of my room. I would bite my own finger, make it bleed, then heal it. It… wasn't a pleasant experience, but considering even healing a small tear on my finger tired me out, I wasn't willing to try to heal anything bigger. Slowly but surely, I did get better and realized something: my Sacred Gear was a subspecies. Instead of a ring like Asia's mine had no clear manifestation. Like Kiba's Sword Birth, its true form was a mystery to even me. I did find that my healing was more effective when I hummed a tune so that's what I became known for in the Church: music.

When I was six, I told a priest that I'd like to learn martial arts and a week later, I was assigned a tutor. Instead of swords, his emphasis was on not getting hit and stalling for time. It made sense once I thought about it: As a wielder of Twilight Healing, they probably wanted me as something like a combat medic. It stood to reason that they would train me in evasion rather than direct combat. I… I couldn't say I was entirely satisfied, but I decided to just roll with it. Every night, once my training was over, I would tear myself apart in my room with exercise, only to heal it over with Twilight Healing.

The longer I had it, the more I realized that Asia was squandering her Sacred Gear. Sure, it didn't help me recover from mental fatigue, but it did help strengthen my body. Unlike in my past life, my immune system was off the charts. Some fanfictions I read talked about how healing a strained muscle would prevent it from growing any stronger, but that was false. Twilight Healing didn't revert the muscle to its previous state, it accelerated the body's own recovery process. I made good use of that and by the time I was ten, my physical development was clear to see.

X

I discovered my magical affinity when I was eleven and I "awakened" my Sacred Gear. I was, predictably, ushered into a more rigorous training program. I did pay a visit to the Church's hospital wing on occasion, but for the most part, I pretended that using the Sacred Gear was tiring on my person. It wasn't that I didn't want to help, more that I didn't want the attention of the big players yet. Already, the stories of the Holy Maiden were trickling down to me and I couldn't help but compare myself to her. Was I stronger than her? Definitely, I've been using Twilight Healing for longer. Was I worthy of having it at all? Now that was a more difficult question. In the end, I settled for "I wouldn't abuse it so it should be fine." I did find out that she was my age, so that was nice.

Really, I should have seen it coming. My fascination with rhythm should have been a big clue. I was keeping pace with beats literally since before I was born. I slept to my mom's heartbeats after all. When I first activated my Sacred Gear, I tuned out everything except the rhythm of my own heart. When I used Twilight Healing, it got easier if I hummed something. My magical affinity was music and I felt like an idiot for taking so long to figure it out. Since then, I had been obsessed with three types of books: medical, magical, and musical. It was really amazing just how quickly my development progressed after that.

I would never be a frontline fighter, but I did gain the ability to heal at range. That was Asia's big weakness; she had to be touching her target. I did not. I could sing and pick someone to heal. As long as they were listening to the song, my magic could transfer to them. I thought of it as Sona's Aria of Perseverance from League of Legends. It worked pretty much exactly like that, except without a shield and only on one person at a time. Hopefully, that would change soon enough.

I coughed blood as I was thrown from across the room by my trainer. Father Leon was a retired exorcist who had been assigned to me specifically. "Luca, how many times have I told you to stop sitting around? You can't react; if you want to be an effective fighter, you must preempt my movements and avoid them!"

"I don't want to be an exorcist," I wheezed out. "I'm a medic!"

"Bah, same thing!" I crawled to my knees and began to heal myself. Yes, I had gotten better, but that wasn't saying much because Father Leon held back a little less with each training session. The end result was that I got my ass kicked an equal amount no matter my own growth. He studied me for a moment. "We'll stop the physical training for today." He motioned for another trainee to enter.

The trainee was a girl a few years older than me. She was plain, but what caught my eye wasn't her, it was what she was carrying. You would gawk too if you saw a wannabe exorcist enter a room while trying to fight off the incessant pecking of a rooster held in her arms. At Father Leon's nod, she snapped both wings cleanly. I thought I could see a satisfied smirk for a moment. Holy warriors exorcists may be, but they were not above being petty.

"Sing and heal one wing," Father Leon said.

I nodded and dug deep for the warmth I had grown to love. My song started as a whisper. It was the song I used every time I had to heal something. It used to be a favorite back in my old life and it was still good now.

Reach out, hands in the air
Don't care, just what they're sayin'

An emerald glow surrounded the rooster's left wing.

Hold out, just keep on hopin' against hope
That it's gonna get better

Slowly, it began to calm and its agitated shuffling died down.

Don't worry, there's no hurry for you or for me
Everything's gonna come around

I felt myself tire a little from the effort of using my Sacred Gear following a hard workout, but pressed on.

Shout out, someone will listen to you, to me
Someone's gonna see, yeah

By the time the first two verses were done, the rooster's wing was healthy again. Father Leon nodded. "Now sing another song. This time, don't sing a song associated with healing, sing something associated with war or something."

I complied. When I first found out about my magical affinity to music, I began to experiment with different types of songs. I could channel my Sacred Gear through any song, or even just random humming, but it was more efficient when I did it through a song about healing or comfort. Maybe it was my own psychological association, but whatever it was, it worked. I was a bit surprised to think it took Father Leon this long to ask about that.

Death surrounds
My heartbeat's slowing down

This time, my Sacred Gear came with a bit of resistance. As much as I liked the song "Fight Back" by Skillet, it wasn't exactly associated with comfort. By the time I was done healing the rooster, I had gone through the entire song rather than just two verses.

X

"I can't keep doing this," I told myself. I was 13 now and my training had gotten worse. It seemed as though they were saving all the borderline abusive crap until my healing was good enough to let me survive it. Now that it was, it wasn't strange for me to be carted back to my room with several broken bones. I would wake up long enough to heal myself then immediately pass out.

Unfortunately, while my martial arts had grown by leaps and bounds and my magical reserves were also similarly large, I had very little else to show for the spartan training regimen. I was garbage with a sword. I couldn't shoot straight to save my life. I didn't have the finite control or patience to construct magic circles and runes. Basically, I was good for healing and singing and maybe healing while singing. The problem was simple: I had tons of ideas on how to improve, but few ways to go about it without drawing attention.

On the more mundane side of my education, I learned general diplomatic skills and protocols I was expected to know as an agent of a supernatural faction. I got to choose two of the many languages employed in the supernatural world and I chose Arabic and Japanese, bringing my count of fluent languages to four including my native Italian and pre-death English. Arabic I chose because I wanted to learn more about the ancestral home of the three factions. Japanese I learned as a matter of necessity. I wasn't sure when I'd get to Japan, but I was sure I would eventually.

The fantasy media of my old world was filled with those who could sing magic and I fully intended to recreate them. If I did it right, I would be able to defend myself using noise. So, in order to leave myself room to grow, I had to fall off the Church's radar. I began to purposely lag behind in everything. Soon enough, I became known as the "Dullard Songbird" by my fellow trainees and teachers alike. When I succeeded in becoming a part of the decoration, I decided to leave. I wouldn't be missing the place that had been home for 11 years of my life.

Sure, a 13 year old would have trouble making his own way in the world and some of the priests were genuinely good people, but I would rather the chance to pick my own destiny than to be pigeonholed into the role of a subpar exorcist. As a psychic cat-thing once said, "I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are." And no one will determine what I do with this gift of life but me. No one.

Author's Note

What do you guys think of my new story? Yes, it's another OC insert. If you haven't realized, it's not a self-insert. I can't be both a med student and a poli-sci student at the same time, though I do wish I was that awesome.

I got this idea from one scene in the Inheritance Cycle. It was Brom describing Selena's ruthlessness and how she took down multiple experienced warriors without lifting a finger. If you know the scene, you might have an idea of Luca's Balance Breaker.

I'd also like to point out that I just covered 13 years of someone's life in 3,000 words. His worldview has shifted quite a bit. In the beginning, in the womb, Luca was enraged that he would be reborn without a purpose. The final quote suggests quite the opposite. He has chosen to seize that lack of purpose and make his own.

Also, no lie, that quote is the most impactful quote of my childhood. Mewtwo made me cry. Cyber hugs to anyone else that cried for him too.

How strong is Luca? People always seem obsessed with that, as though everyone's power can be measured like Dragon Ball. He's actually really weak. He's stronger than any regular human adult, but on the supernatural scale, he's kinda at the bottom of the barrel. Not only is he young (13), he's also only good at healing and avoiding hits. He's not fast. He's not strong. He doesn't even have any skills that let him hurt his opponent besides punching them. Will that change? Absolutely. How? You can wait and see.

As always, constructive feedback is appreciated.

Pat reon Sorre