"Alright - on your marks!"

I let out a low breath, closing my eyes for a moment as my fingertips dug a little into the asphalt-like substance of the track.

"Get set!"

I tensed, preparing my legs for the push-off and pulling my arms taut as I anticipated the launch.

"GO!"

There was a bright flash from the side of the starting area and I immediately set off, hurling myself forward with my arms and legs combined to kick-start my run before getting my feet under me and accelerating as hard as I could.

I crossed the couple of hundred meters between myself and the finish line in a blur of motion a short time later, whereupon I dug my heels in to try and bleed off speed and come to a stop.

What actually happened, however, was that I tried to stop too abruptly, my front half kept going despite my bottom half's sudden loss of velocity, and the result was a faceplant that continued on for at least three feet with most of my body off the ground.

When I stopped moving, I groaned into the ground, embracing my oneness with the world beneath myself.

I was one with the asphalt; there was no point where it began and I ended, there was merely the singular existence of this patch of ground. It was incredibly peaceful; an almost zen-like state…

Which was then ruined irrevocably by raucous laughter.

"Oh, man that was a good one!" Azazel gasped, clutching his mid-section with both arms as he bent over nearly double, creasing his stereotypical coach's outfit.

It was done in shades of maroon, purple and black, complete with a baseball cap despite the fact that we were indoors and the Fallen Angel territories in the Underworld didn't have a sun. He was holding a stopwatch in his left hand and a clipboard with attached pencil and sheets of paper in his left, although he wasn't actually using the latter - he was just putting the touches on his ensemble.

"It might not have been the longest skid yet," he continued, oblivious to how his voice was shattering my hopes of achieving nirvana, "but it had a certain je ne sais quois...maybe it was how you resembled a duck getting kicked in the middle of landing?"

The Fallen Governor stroked his goatee, putting on a faux-ponderous expression that wasn't going to fool anyone with the way his eyes were glittering. "I'll have to re-watch the video to check...maybe I'll ask some of the others for a second opinion?"

I grimaced, rising off the ground with a pushup motion and getting back to my feet, shaking my head to dislodge anything that might have been stuck to my face. "Yeah yeah, I get it." I muttered. "Clumsy old human with a Fallen body, let's all laugh at the new kid."

"Aw, no need to feel that way…" Azazel began, using the single-most condescending toddler-voice I'd ever heard. "It's not like the rest of us haven't been where you are or anything."

'It kinda pisses me off that he'd just talk bullshit straight to my face.' I considered, knowing damn well that the Fallen had come into existence as Angels, formed by the hand of the Abrahamic God himself and already knowing every nuance of their own being.

Unlike me, who had all the strength, speed and magic of a First Level Fallen Angel, but none of the instincts or experience using them.

I gave the Fallen my best gimlet glare. "Fuck you, Azazel."

"Sorry, but I didn't get these wings sleeping with dudes." He riposted. "And anyway, we here at the Grigori frown on interpersonal relationships. They're unprofessional."

I shook my head. "I have no idea how you can say that with a straight face."

"Practice." Was his response, then he took on a somewhat more serious tone and expression. "Look, Drew, it's only been a couple of days. You'll get the hang of the basics soon enough."

"'Soon enough' is too damn vague when I still can't go an hour without breaking something." I sighed, and Azazel shrugged.

"That might be the case, but it's all you've got, so suck it up." He told me, before waving back to the starting line. "Now c'mon, we'll try it again - if it's any consolation, your speed's a bit above average for a First Level Fallen."

"I'm a tiny bit faster than the closest thing the Abrahamic Factions have to a trash mob. Joy." I drawled, pacing back towards the white line which had been painted across the asphalt.

"Those are my people, y'know." Azazel commented.

I nodded. "And my opinion of their place in the pecking order doesn't need to be repeated."

"Indeed not." Azazel snorted. "I think my ears are still ringing from that little rant."

"You're a Sixth Level Fallen, the leader of the Grigori and the pioneer researcher into Sacred Gears." I called over my shoulder. "Suck it up."

The Fallen Governor clicked his teeth. "Man, you kids these days have no respect, do you?"

"I have plenty of respect." I answered, getting into my starting crouch once more. My feet settled into the dents made when I pushed off the asphalt, and my fingers slid into the grooves my previous launches had scored into the same surface. "I just don't go tossing it around willy-nilly."

"Eh, I guess I'm not one to be lecturing about that, what with being Fallen and everything." Azazel shrugged, before raising his conjured stopwatch again. "Alright then - on your marks!"

It had been the better part of a week since I woke up in the Grigori Medical Care Ward.

After I ran into them in the corridor, Azazel and Coretha had half-dragged me back into the room I'd just exited, Azazel had fixed the door (enchantments and all) with a lazy wave of his hand and Coretha had sat me on a bed to start running basic tests.

Reflexes, sight and hearing were all familiar tests to me - but I'd had to be talked through each step of the magical power test, and Azazel had been watching me with a somewhat unsettling kind of hunger in his gaze during the process.

When the basic medical tests were over, Azazel had dismissed Coretha, then started in on questioning.

That ended up taking a few hours - questions about who I had been and where I was from, how intact my memory was, differences in sensation, what I'd been doing before I appeared, my interactions with Malachi, the circumstances of our mutual deaths…

It was a bit like pulling out teeth to recall those moments, both difficult and painful, but the moment I recognised who I was sitting in front of I grit my teeth and bore it.

I had a working knowledge of Highschool DxD. I knew it well enough to match the character of Azazel to the human-shaped force of creation I was sitting with once he introduced himself and took the hairnet off, and I was willing to put up with a bit of personal discomfort in exchange for him not deciding I was better dead than alive and reducing me to my constituent atoms.

Admittedly, I didn't think the peace-advocate would actually do that - but he had enough power in one finger to 'accidentally' me out of existence without really thinking about it, and the rampant paranoia that appeared to have started growing following my death told me not to take the chance.

In between his questions, I got to ask a few of my own. The first was, rather obviously, just how I had managed to live through bleeding out and simultaneously suffocating.

The answer I received began with the explanation that Malachi had been a Fallen Angel who was banished from the Grigori - and, indeed, from its reality entirely - for trying to raise a ruckus among the other Fallen and lead them into murdering humans.

Azazel's standard punishment for a first-time offence of that type was apparently to utilise a 'Script' (which was the name given to works of magic written in Seraphic, the inherently magical divine language of the Angels - the written-light that had held me to the bed being a good example) he had developed to both seal away a Fallen's magic and, in the case of their performing a truly selfless act, feeling true remorse or dying, return them or their body to their home dimension.

It was meant to be a punishment which would lead to a Fallen developing compassion or a sense of empathy. As a credit to its inception, in some instances, it had done just that.

But the Reclamation Script, as it was known, had brought quite a lot of bodies home in its history. Or, so I inferred from the weariness in Azazel's eyes as he explained it.

I felt a certain pang of sympathy for the Fallen Governor. He had given those Fallen a chance, but they had apparently been unable to bear the idea of changing their ways before they got themselves killed.

That'd be enough to make even an immortal feel old.

But going back to my survival, it seemed that as the Reclamation Script had activated on Malachi's death, an error of sorts had occurred.

It had been triggered by Malachi's death. But, upon encountering my nearly-dead-self, the remorse I had been feeling (and possibly my choice to try and save that woman acting as selfless) had seemingly caused it to include me in the transport. It was a one-in-a-million chance - but what came next was too small a chance to have a quantifiable numerical value.

As the Reclamation Script transported us back through the Dimensional Gap to the Grigori Headquarters, the corrosive, reality-warping properties of that dimension had gone to work. Since Malachi and I had already been subsumed into the magic of the Script, effectively meaning we had were both occupying the same space both physically and magically, those properties had done something utterly impossible.

Human and Fallen Angel had...well, melted into one another, leaving the strongest traits to survive. The magic and body of a Fallen, which would have been able to traverse the Dimensional Gap with ease so long as the Script had contained only a Fallen; and the mind and soul of a human - since Malachi was already dead and gone, leaving mine the only consciousness present for the amalgamation to draw on.

There simply weren't numbers for how small the chance of what had happened occurring was...but it had still happened, and I had to deal with it.

I wasn't really complaining about still being alive - but there were some issues with my 'reincarnation'.

Like my constant faceplants, the swathe of wrecked doors and small objects I left in my wake, the frustration of having to re-learn a lot of basic motor skills…and, of course, Azazel himself - utterly irreverent troll of a bastard that he was.

Still, he'd been dedicating the time to get me started on regaining my ability to perform basic tasks, and I owed him for that. For not immediately blasting me, but instead giving me a room in the headquarters and letting me live among the Grigori. I'd already resigned myself to figuring out some way of paying him back; I'd regret it far too much if I didn't.

But as for the rest of the Fallen Angels…

Well.

Individuals like Malachi and Kokabiel were...technically a minority.

But that didn't make me feel any less like a mouse in a building full of lions.

I exited the running track room with a sigh, feeling my aches from the long day.

My face was, thankfully, too durable to be really hurt by my faceplants. I'd been practicing the fine art of coming to a halt for several hours however, and Fallen Angels still had to deal with fatigue.

Well. Fatigue of a sort, anyway.

The thing about Fallen Angels is that they don't actually need to eat, sleep, drink or even breathe, being as they are purely magical beings who were made by the hand of the Abrahamic God. When they were first made, they weren't even humanoid; they were merely formless magic that could follow orders, barely even distinct from God.

They didn't have personalities or names. They were simply existences with no purpose other than to serve God.

But, after God created humans in the Garden of Eden and told the Angels to watch over them, that began to change.

Over the thousands of intervening years between then and the present, Angels had become easily mistaken for humans. They took on human forms, gendered themselves, developed personalities and even gained names.

But, they were still magical beings - they didn't need anything more than magic to exist, and just by existing they generated magic.

In other words, they were truly immortal beings; the only way for them to die was for them to be killed.

And now, I was the same.

I could simulate human processes if I wanted to. As a purely magical being, my form was dictated entirely by my will (or, until I actually learned to control my own form, my subconscious image of myself), meaning I could conceivably cause my form to mimic a human's in every way beyond just the aesthetic.

Because that's all my body was now - aesthetically human.

I breathed in and out, but the air was the same since my 'lungs' were just a way of drawing air in and expelling it. I had a 'heartbeat' and 'pulse', but those were just parts of my body that went up and down at certain times - I had no actual circulatory system. I acted like a human in every way, but it was all superficial. Just...habit.

'Habit'. An odd way to reference my humanity...but for all intents and purposes, that was what it had become. I had an eternity spreading out before me, and it was generally believed that I would at some point take off my 'habit' like an old coat and hang it up to never be worn again.

And that both terrified me and pissed me off in equal measure.

Still, as I closed my eyes for a moment and concentrated, causing the pain I felt to disappear like it had never been there, I couldn't deny a simple truth.

I wasn't wholly human anymore. I was a being that had never really existed before, a true Immortal with the mind and soul of a human.

And the moment that got out, I was going to be hunted to my death or capture.

The Devils would want me dead for my 'heritage' or in their Peerages for my potent Light element and the prestige it could give them in the Rating Games. Half the Grigori (or a bit less, at least) wanted me dead - again for my 'heritage', but the other side this time. According to the laws of Heaven, I was an abomination that should be put to the flame and sword so I could be removed from God's creation.

And that was just the Abrahamic Factions. Just about any other mythological faction on the face of the planet would be just as likely to gut me for being either Human or Fallen as try to sell me to whichever one of the Abrahamic Factions they were most closely aligned with.

Quite literally the only person who was even vaguely on my side right now was Azazel - and I was convinced that his interest in me was largely because of my unique nature and status as technically a member of his faction.

And my nature was unique. There had been quite a few half-Fallen, half-Human children; Akeno Himejima was a good example of that. But they were human first, and Fallen second. Mortals with some of the Fallen's abilities.

I was the reverse - the only one of my kind.

And that was what put me in danger.

"Well, well, well," came a sneering voice, "if it isn't the trash trying to pretend it's people."

...Though, 'danger' could be a fairly relative term.

I sighed, glancing sideways to a figure that had become quite familiar in recent days. "Hello, Mittelt; you need help finding your barbie or something?"

The Fallen Angel Mittelt had the appearance of a young girl, with her three-and-three-quarter foot frame and twintail hairstyle. Said hair was a flaxen blonde to go with her crystal blue eyes, styled using a black bow with white ruffles that fit with her 'gothic lolita' dress theme. She looked rather like a child playing dress-up - but in reality, she was at least three-thousand years old and a sadistic, cynical bitch who enjoyed messing with people.

And despite what she liked to say, I was apparently 'people' enough.

"Fuck you, trashbag!" She spat back.

"I ascribe firmly to the belief that you shouldn't stick your dick in crazy." I replied with my best deadpan. "Besides, you're not exactly attractive, y'know."

"Hah!" She scoffed. "I suppose you'd think so; how is your quest to get into Lord Azazel's pants going, anyway?"

"About as well as your attempt to get a rise of any kind out of me." I told her, walking down the corridor away from the Fallen.

Unfortunately, she followed - apparently she wasn't willing to let things lie for the day yet. "So you're not denying there's a quest then?"

I glanced over my shoulder at her. "Well if I keep having to see you every day, I wouldn't be surprised if I somehow flipped sexualities before I can get out of here."

I could hear her grinding her teeth as we kept walking, and I timed the sideways tilt of my head just well enough to avoid losing anything more than a couple of hairs to the light spear which shot through the space where my head used to be.

"Man, your throw's almost as lousy as your material." I noted, ignoring the crack sound as the magical weapon buried itself a foot into the wall at the end of the corridor. "You should probably go back to the Fallen Kindergarten; maybe they'll even wash your mouth out with enough soap to make your presence bearable."

I had to sidestep the next light spear, spin away from the third, and as the fourth came in I raised my right hand in front of me and focussed.

Fallen Angels, as I now technically am, are purely magical beings. I've stated that already. What this means is that using magic comes as naturally to them - more naturally - than breathing comes to a human.

A few years ago, if I'd been put in this situation, I might have taken ages learning how to unlock that same kind of mastery. But since I'd gone to University, I had learned a type of meditation that worked wonders for self-evaluation.

Namely, Descartes' Meditations.

I borrowed a copy of The Meditations from Azazel, whose library sneered at its younger Alexandrian relative (and, thinking about it, probably contained more than a few texts from that building. It was Azazel's library, after all), then simply sat down in the small room I had been given on Azazel's order and lost myself in the process.

I may not have agreed with all Descartes' ideas, but his Meditations were very useful in my situation.

By the time I emerged, I was able to will away that day's aches and pains with the simple reminder that I didn't actually have muscles or nerves any more. After all, without those, why should I be feeling pain?

And with two extra days of practice under my belt, I was more than capable of forming a curving pane of golden light in front of me that deflected Mittelt's pink spear. Its tip was a fairly standard spear-head, but it fed back into a pair of backward-swept curves like wings, which in turn sprouted from a flat-headed arrow shape that grew from the main shaft.

The colour of magic among the Fallen, as well as the designs of their light spears, was largely a personal choice. A lot of the older, more powerful Fallen preferred to stick with the basic golden-yellow colouration as a reminder of their days in Heaven or for other reasons. But colours ranging across the entire spectrum between black and white could be found among the Grigori.

Mittelt chose a reddish-pink, while I myself chose not to tint my magic any particular colour. Or, not yet, anyway - maybe my mind would change in time.

Either way, my shield rang like a crystal bell when the spear rebounded from it, the weapon shattering into its constituent light as it hit the ground, and Mittelt spat on the ground beside her. "So you conned Lord Azazel into teaching you how to use those powers you stole, huh?"

"Hardly." I shook my head. "This stuff's really easy; though that's rather obvious, since even you can do it."

Another light spear appeared in Mittelt's right hand, and I took a moment to focus on the light still emanating from my raised hand and reshape it.

The shield swirled like a vortex, funnelling down into the palm of my hand as a sphere before it grew vertically, forming a long shaft. I didn't make spears - or rather, I was yet to do so. Instead, I stuck with a simple staff design, something equally useful for swatting things out of the air and getting some reach on a swing.

Plus, I had some ideas already rooted which I probably would need help from Azazel to implement - or at least, I'd need some of his books.

A twirl of the staff in my hand intercepted Mittelt's latest projectile and knocked it from the air, the staff in my hand lighter and more a part of me than any other weapon could be.

I might not have been a skilled fighter, but with the abilities of a Fallen Angel, I didn't necessarily have to be; superpowers could make up a pretty big gap in skill, after all. That was how I could take Mittelt's first strike on my staff as she swiped at me with a new spear, the weapons colliding with a noise of glass-on-glass.

"Don't act like you know what you're fucking talking about!" Mittelt hissed at me, our weapons locked together; she'd have looked ridiculous with her tiny form, if not for the genuine anger in her eyes. "You're just a human who got lucky and stole Malachi's Light; where do you get off acting like you're so much better than us?!"

The spear came around for another swipe and I interposed my staff, taking the hit with braced legs and arms. "Oh, I don't think I'm better than you." I told her, before pushing our combined weapons forward and hooking my right foot behind her left ankle, then pulling.

Her much lighter form went over backwards as I levered my staff sideways, flipping her spear away.

Mittelt backflipped to her feet, seemingly uncaring of the fact that she was wearing a skirt and I was standing right in front of her. Then again, I didn't really care either. I wasn't kidding about her child-like stature effectively killing any physical attraction I might've felt towards her (and her personality having killed any other kind of attraction or affection).

And thus, when she was facing me once again, she found herself doing it along the length of my staff, the tip of which was only inches from her nose. In other words, directly within the reach of any spearhead I might choose to add to my weapon.

"I don't know you, Mittelt." I told her bluntly. "I don't know your history, whether you have friends, what your likes and dislikes are or anything besides the fact that you're a bitch of a First Level Fallen with an axe to grind.

"So no - I don't know anything about you, so I don't think I'm better than you."

I retracted my staff, placing its butt on the ground and leaning on the solid-light construct, my eyes still fixed on the other Fallen. "But Malachi? The Fallen who was exiled from the Grigori to learn compassion, but who killed me when I interrupted his attempt to rape and then likely murder a woman in a back-alley?"

I pushed off the ground with my staff, using the momentum to turn away and get me up to walking momentum as I headed down the corridor, then dispersing the weapon as I went. "If there ever comes a time when I'm not better than him, I'll storm Heaven myself and ask them to put me out of my misery."

And with those parting words, I turned the corner at the corridor's end…

And let the shivers break out. 'Holy fucking shit, I just came within an inch of dying again.' I thought to myself, tightening a fist and taking deep breaths to try and calm down. 'If magic sensing wasn't a basic supernatural ability in this universe, that first spear would have killed me.'

I'd gotten incredibly lucky there. Apparently, even a First Level Fallen or a Low-Class Devil was capable of sensing when magic was used. It was a skill like any other, with some talented practitioners who got a head-start but which could always be honed with practice. As such, I had a functioning version myself, despite being only a few days old in Fallen terms.

But if it weren't for that and my new Fallen 'physiology', Mittelt would have splattered my brains all over the corridor back there.

'I need to get better.' I considered as I walked on, focussing on putting one foot in front of another to distract myself. 'If a character whose sole purpose in the series was to die a horrible death in the early episodes can come that close to killing me, I can't afford not to get better.'

There was a storm coming; Issei Hyoudou and his damn breast obsession were going to start turning the world on its head at some point in the quite possibly near future, and I didn't trust in my own ability to stay out of the fight when there was going to be so much damn upheaval.

My survival was going to hinge on my being strong enough to deal with the shitstorm reality was going to become in rather short order. So, I needed to make use of the one advantage I really had.

Human ingenuity - or, the ability to bullshit my way through life.

And I could start by exploiting the hell out of the magic I had been given. Because after all - if I could already make a spear and a shield…

Who was to say I couldn't make other things, too?

Azazel wandered along a corridor in the Grigori headquarters, once more shirking his paperwork duties as he went to track down his newest project.

Drew was an interesting addition to the Grigori. Indeed, he was an interesting addition to the world itself. An extra-dimensional human whose soul remained sacrosanct despite his becoming a Fallen Angel in almost every other way...in the past, Azazel wouldn't have hesitated to open him up on an operating table and see what made him tick.

Those days, however, were long gone. Now, he was content to observe what the hybrid got up to, making various notes to himself and idly wondering if maybe he could present Drew to Michael and Sirzechs as concrete evidence of the Grigori's ability to function benevolently towards and alongside humans.

Of course, to do that he'd have to reach a point where Fallen like Mittelt wouldn't try to assassinate the boy mere rooms away from Azazel himself.

The Fallen Governor had been observing the two from behind an illusion of his own weaving as they fought, keeping a close eye on both. Knowing Mittelt as he did, he understood why she would hound Drew in such a fashion - but it was the young man's response he hadn't been sure of and had wanted to observe.

It had been...enlightening.

Drew held himself to a standard, that was clear to see. He had morals that he wanted to uphold - but at least since his death, his ethics seemed a bit less rigid than Azazel might have expected them to be.

He had no hesitation in a fight. There was no pause to consider before he acted against Mittelt, maneuvering her into a position where he could well have killed her. Azazel's best guess was that whatever part of himself Drew had pulled out when he killed Malachi in self-defense, it hadn't gone back into its box yet - and quite possibly never would.

Maybe the hybrid would come down from his hair-trigger at some point...but the Fallen Governor resided over an entire race of beings that had, in many cases, been hand-made for war and combat. He knew a thing or two about killers.

The first time was the hardest, and every time after grew easier. It was a slippery slope in many cases, but in Drew at the very least that first time had been enough to shake him loose. Being willing to strike first and disregard moral consideration or someone's appearance - that was an attitude many would see as reprehensible. But to Azazel, it was the exact kind of attitude that Drew would need to survive in their world.

He knew the way the world worked far better than almost anyone else, and he gave Drew enough credit to consider him intelligent enough to have reached the same conclusion as Azazel himself. Once the world knew about him, he'd be an object of curiosity, hate and avarice. He would be something people wanted dead or under their thumb in one way or another.

That was why he had made sure to leave the hybrid with easy instructions for how to reach one of the space-expanded multi-purpose training areas near his room. A room that Drew was making use at that very moment, and which Azazel was wandering along to visit.

He reached the door, the label along the top written in Aramaic, which was the preferred written language for the Abrahamic Factions. Seraphic was an extremely magical language due to it being of divine origin, and the art of writing it without causing magical effects either random or pre-determined was one that only Azazel himself could be said to have mastered.

It had made a decent hobby for a couple of centuries, with plenty of entertaining explosions and random effects that took up an entire shelf of journals in his library, opening new avenues to research in his spare time.

Shaking off the thoughts, the Fallen Governor debated entering the door like a normal person - then dropped the thought at 'normal person' and kicked the portal open with a wave. "Yo-!"

He then promptly ducked, something small and very, very fast blowing a hole in his golden bangs as they failed to descend at the same rate as the rest of his body.

Azazel stood up from his crouch, turning to look at the hole in the wall behind where he was standing, before returning his gaze to where Drew was standing in a firing stance with what looked to the Fallen's eyes like a Light-element construct of a Webley Mk. VI revolver. One which was now aimed at the floor, but which had moments ago been aimed at the Fallen Governor's head.

"Man, that's an itchy trigger finger." Azazel noted with a whistle. "If it wasn't me coming through that door you might've killed someone, you know?"

Drew nodded with a grimace, eyeing the weapon in his hands for a moment. "Yeah…" He glanced back up. "Sorry, Azazel; I guess I'm...a bit jumpy, at the moment."

"That'd be because of the thing with Mittelt, right?" The Governor asked, getting a sharp look from the hybrid. "Oh c'mon, you don't expect me to hear about one of my subordinates getting into a fight with my newest pet project?"

"I'm not sure what I find more disturbing in that description - the 'pet' or the 'project'." Drew riposted.

Oh, if he only knew what had become of Azazel's 'projects' in darker times, he certainly wouldn't have been saying that. "Oh relax," Azazel waved him off, "I prefer my pets pretty and with big-"

"I GET IT!" Drew cut him off emphatically, swiping a hand sideways - the one not currently holding the revolver construct. "I don't need to be hearing about your habits."

The Fallen Governor blew out a dramatic breath. "It's a sad day when society has produced such a repressed young man…" He sighed. "To think, a whole glorious world of bountiful women and he chooses to abstain from all the pleasures on offer…"

"What can I say, I like to play hard to get." Drew deadpanned, before sighing. "So, did you want something, Azazel?"

"Well, Shem was getting on at me to do my paperwork again, so I figured I'd come and see what you were up to." The Governor admitted shamelessly, drawing a twitch from Drew's eye.

"One day, that man is going to snap and beat the hell out of you. I kinda hope I'll be there to see it."

"Nah, Shem likes me way too much for that." Azazel denied, neither of them mentioning the fact that any serious fight between the two Fallen could only ever have one outcome.

Azazel had many contemporaries and peers among the various factions of the Moonlit World, as he'd once heard the supernatural side of reality referred to - but Shemhazai, while a good friend and a trusted confidant, wasn't one of them.

A Sixth Level Fallen existed on almost a completely different plane than a Fifth Level Fallen. That was simply the way reality worked, how it had always worked, how it would always work. A universal constant set down by the Creator himself.

"But anyway," he continued, "I see you've been playing around with your Light element."

"Yeah." Drew admitted, looking at the weapon hanging from his right hand once again. "Earlier...Mittelt almost killed me. One thrown spear and, if I hadn't been able to feel it coming, I'd have been dead. Again."

Azazel grew slightly more somber as he considered the young man before him, whose knuckles whitened as his grip tightened around the revolver's grip. "I don't really want to die again." Drew admitted softly. "I mean, I was kinda fuzzy when it happened that first time, but it was still pretty bad. And if it happens again…"

The revolver's barrel was shaking now, and Azazel thought he could hear the young man's teeth grinding together even from where he was standing.

"I don't want to waste this second chance." Drew declared, looking up and meeting Azazel's eyes. "I think that I can go at least a lot of the way with this…" He continued, lifting up the revolver - which became little more than a suggestion of a glowing shape for a moment, before re-solidifying as a Desert Eagle, then a Colt Single Action, then a combat knife, then a frag grenade before the hybrid closed his hand into a fist, the light glowing from between his fingers for a moment before it died. "But will and imagination can only go so far in a world ruled by Dreams and the Infinite."

Royal purple eyes met Azazel's ancient lavender. "I owe you already." Drew told the Fallen Governor. "More than I think I could ever repay. But still...I have to ask."

The hybrid inclined his head until his chin was almost on his chest, looking to the floor. "Please help me get strong enough to survive."

Azazel considered the young man with his head bowed, looking through millennia of experience. Through the eyes of a being who had looked upon the face of God, who had walked the fields of the greatest war in the world's history and been seen as nothing less than a monster, who had delved into the deepest and darkest corners of the universe in a fanatical search for answers and further knowledge, who had single-handedly held the Fallen Angels together in the millennia since the end of the Great War.

And he smiled a little. "Alright kid - but you know this won't come cheap, right?"

"I know."

Azazel believed him. The kid already knew what his life was worth, after all.

"Then we'll start now." He declared, striding forward into the room. As he went, he gave into his mischievous streak and re-wove his conjured yukata into a purple-and-maroon haori over a dark-blue shirt and pants, while his shoes became geta sandals. He held out his hand and thin air deposited a lavender-and-white striped bucket hat into the appendage, which he promptly placed on his own head. Finally, he turned to face Drew, a golden cane of Light-element magic forming in his hand for him to lean on.

"You've already got the idea that the vast majority of Fallen never quite catch on to." He declared, enjoying the look of flabbergasted dread growing on Drew's face. "Light-element magic, our birthright, if you will, is primarily a power of creation; it translates well into conjuring solid objects, crafting illusions and forming the spears and other weapons that we use so often.

"That means that it can be used to form just about anything you can imagine."

Azazel sighed. "Sadly, a lot of my kinsmen are rather lacking in the imagination department; if they don't kill something immediately, they just think 'More spears!' or 'Bigger spears!' or 'More bigger spears!'" He made sure to put on a squeaky voice for the examples, before grinning at Drew. "But you - you're different.

"You've got a human soul; a human point of view; a human imagination." Azazel tapped the side of his own my head. "You've got just what you need to make the most of our magic; but right now, you don't have the power you need."

Azazel's wings appeared in a flurry of feathers, stretching up behind him like the abstract radiance of a black sun. "You've said it yourself before; a First Level Fallen is among the weakest creatures in our world." He said seriously. "That's where you're starting - that's what you have to work with.

"So what I'm going to do, is help you gain more of that power, until you truly can translate anything you can imagine into a weapon you can wield."

"That...sounds good." Drew said slowly, still transfixed by the back wings. "But...how exactly?"

Azazel's grin spread across his entire face and took on a decidedly savage cast. "A soul grows most quickly when it's in danger of being destroyed." He recited, the cane he was resting his hand on reshaping itself into a medium-sized, almost rectangular blade with a razor-like angular point instead of a proper tip. "They actually got that part just about right."

Drew gulped...then abruptly spun around and brought his hand up, the Webley forming there and discharging in almost the same second. A condensed bullet of Light magic shot from the weapon's mouth with a crack of displaced air, meeting the light spear coming the other way and sending it spinning off course.

"So for the next twenty-four hours," Azazel continued, levelling his sword at Drew, "I'm going to try to kill you. If you survive, then we'll take things to the next level. If you don't, well…"

He shrugged. "It's no skin off my nose."

Drew's pupils were somewhat dilated, and he was breathing in and out quickly - apparently he'd yet to drop those little placebos. "I know I'm going to regret this," he said, "but fuck you, Azazel."

"Your opinion has been noted and disregarded." The Fallen Governor told him cheerfully. "Now - DODGE!"

And that was about the time the room's ceiling was replaced with light spears.

As the rain of solid (but pointy) golden light began, Azazel grinned to himself beneath his rather stylish bucket hat (if he did think so himself). This was definitely more entertaining than doing all that paperwork...Vali had so little time to spend with his old man these days, it was good to get back into the old habit.

Ah, the faces his adoptive son would make when Azazel gave him his daily 'wake-up call'...

Good times.

Twenty-Four Hours Later…

"Aaand that's time." Azazel noted, observing the stopwatch he'd conjured at the beginning of the training session before he idly returned it to magic. "Congratulations, you're still in one piece."

"It doesn't really feel like it." Drew commented from where he was lying on the floor of the room, staring blankly at the ceiling with the kind of thousand-yard stare which could only come with trauma.

"Oh, stop being such a wuss." Azazel scolded him. "The pain's all in your mind now, you can turn it off if you want to."

"I did." Drew replied, his voice somewhat distant. "Several hours ago. I'm fairly certain that I'm never quite going to get over the trauma from this training session. Not even if I live to be older than dirt like you."

"You're just jealous because I look better for my age than you do for yours." Azazel sniffed, tilting up the brim of his hat and looking around with a grin. "Still...old age and treachery might be more my thing, but you've certainly got the exuberance part down."

The Fallen Governor idly kicked an asphalt fragment by his foot, watching it skip off into the several-foot-deep maze of craters that were all that really remained of the room's floor.

The room would repair itself in time, but in the direct aftermath of their training, the concrete-equivalent walls, floor and ceiling were all covered in burn-marks, dents, craters, slashes and punctures of a dozen varieties. The craters themselves were almost universally covered in the puncture-marks of light spears, which sometimes deepened the craters by twice their original amount.

"Yay." Drew deadpanned, before pushing himself to his feet with the use of his wings, which were currently deployed.

Azazel eyed them for a moment, taking in the almost inky-blue colouration that was dominant among the feathers but which gave way in places to bands of silver-grey. He'd never seen wings quite like them before, but assumed it was in some way an indicator of Drew's nature as a hybrid. Maybe he'd 'appropriate' a couple of feathers for study…

The somewhat battered-looking wings withdrew themselves into Drew's back, unimpeded by any clothing considering his shirt had given up the ghost some hours previously, and the hybrid let out a long groan as he stretched, eyes closed as he blew out a deep breath. "I feel like I need to sleep…"

"Well, you can try if you want." Azazel commented. "But I'm not sure what will happen. Fallen can usually reach a state of low thought activity for a few hours at a time which is close to sleep, but we don't dream and it doesn't serve any purpose for us." He shrugged. "Still, do what you want, no need to listen to the wisdom of millennia when it's freely offered."

"No need at all." Drew agreed, eyeing his bare arms and torso with a frown.

A second later, a golden glow suffused the bare skin before seeming to be extruded, solidifying into the shape of a long coat that rolled down to his knees.

Seemingly happy with the glowing but opaque item of clothing, Drew made his way carefully over the pockmarked terrain to the door, pausing as he had a hand on its handle. "Azazel...thank you for this."

The Fallen Governor gave a genuine smile, removing his hat as he did so. "It was fun, kid - let me know if you want to do something like this again, it's a hell of a lot more entertaining than my paperwork."

Drew snorted and shook his head, turning the doorknob and stepping out before closing the door behind him, leaving Azazel alone in the training room.

Azazel, still grinning, idly cast his eyes around before alighting on what he was looking for and making his own careful away across the floor.

Crouching down, he lifted the two feathers to eye-level; one an inky, shimmering colour that could have been a midnight blue or an abyssal black, the other an almost softly-glowing shade of silvery-grey.

"Shem can wait a little while longer…" Azazel murmured to himself, tucking the feathers into a pocket on the inside of his haori which hadn't existed until he needed it. "He'll understand."

Then, with a momentary flash of golden light, he vanished from the training room, leaving the devastated area to begin reforming itself.

I wandered along the corridors toward my room barely conscious of the world around me, caught up as I was in the whirlwind of my own thoughts.

Azazel hadn't been kidding about the twenty-four hours. I had felt every minute, probably every second, of that time, as I learned from every incoming attack and every dodge or counter I had surprised myself with producing.

Shaping the Light element had been fairly easy before - now, it came to me just as easily as turning my head or moving my fingers, and it had become just as second-nature to extend or retract my wings, which were much closer to a second set of arms with the way I could maneuver them.

They might not have had fingers (or at least, not without forming them from Light), but with the way they could grow so long as I focussed on them, and with the range of motion they had available, they could provide a shield or attack in almost any direction - behind me in particular.

Batfink didn't have shit on me.

The Light coat I had conjured shifted with quiet chimes around my shins as I walked, a somewhat calming noise that helped to slow my brain after it had been stuck on full-throttle reaction for so long.

I had developed more combat-related instincts in the past day than in the whole rest of my life, martial arts lessons included, combined. I felt more in control of myself, fully aware of my body and my magic. It was a feeling of confidence I hadn't experienced before, and I found myself enjoying it as I turned onto the corridor where my room was located.

It was the start of a new day, and things were going my way.

"Ah! Hello, Drew! What a coincidence seeing you here!"

My eyebrow twitched, and I sighed. 'Of course she's here.'

Leaning on the window-side wall of the corridor with a smirk and a glint in her eye was someone who I wished I could avoid just as much, if not more, than Mittelt.

Standing about a head shorter than me, with black hair down to her waist and true purple eyes, she had the kind of figure that made people want to sell their souls - and it was very easy to tell, since her clothing consisted of black, strap-like objects that almost resembled leather. They wrapped over and under her breasts and formed a thong-like piece held around her hips by three thin straps, gloves that ran right up her arms with small lengths of chains hanging from them, shoulder guard-like objects on her shoulders with three large spikes sprouting from her right shoulder and black thigh-high heel boots.

It was like an inversion of modesty, covering a lot of what would normally be shown and uncovering most of what would normally be hidden. A classic Fallen look, honestly - one that I'd have to admit was at least physically attractive...

But knowing the kind of rotten, putrid soul lay behind the appealing human veneer overshadowed the physical attractiveness like Batman looming over a common street thug.

"Raynare." I replied, striving to keep my tone civil but unsure if I really managed - or if I managed to keep my expression neutral.

"I see you've gone with a new look." She commented, blatantly eyeing me up and down with a grin that was frankly sultry. "Very nice…"

My stomach twisted unpleasantly. "It's just until I can find a new shirt." I grumbled, fighting the urge to take my hands out of my pockets and close my coat against her eyes. "My last one's dust in the wind."

"Oh, I'm sure I can help you there." Raynare remarked, pushing off the wall and taking a step closer to me. "I'm really rather good at conjuring clothes; I make these myself, you know?"

She gestured to herself with a sweep of the arm, a gesture that would have been more than enough to distract Issei Hyoudou from the fact that he was dying, probably cause him to not summon Rias and get reincarnated, and therefore give the Khaos Brigade and all that came with them a much easier job.

I kept my eyes on hers. I'd almost been gutted the first time I broke eye-contact with a Fallen in an isolated place; the second time I almost got my head taken off. I liked to think I wasn't stupid enough to need a third lesson.

"I think our sizes would be rather different." I tried, which only seemed to widen Raynare's smirk.

"Well, I suppose I'd just have to...measure you, then."

She licked her lips, and the small, gibbering voice in the back of my head telling me to deploy my wings and jump out the nearest window came a bit closer to the forefront of my mind.

"Thanks, but no thanks." I denied bluntly, not seeing any more civil or subtle way to break the way the conversation was moving. "I really need to learn how to do these things myself after all."

A displeased look flickered across Raynare's features, but she started smiling again quite quickly, taking another step forward. "Well then, how about I teach you?" She mused, now close enough to be looking more directly up at me, leaving me with a steeper angle to look down at in order to maintain eye contact.

That also put certain other things more obviously in my field of view, which told me she was probably getting too close.

"I'll consider it." I told her. 'When Hell freezes over.'

I took a step back and to the side to give me a clear shot along the corridor. "Now if you'll excuse me, I just got out of a long training session and I could use some time to rest…"

I took a step forward, but came to a standstill when Raynare's right hand latched onto the elbow of my left arm, the Fallen herself looking at me with an entirely different glint in her eye than the one she had been using before. "A training session?" She echoed. "Then you must have been with Lord Azazel all day, right?"

I grimaced, fighting the urge to just project a shield between us and run from the conversation, but apparently my lack of a response was taken as confirmation.

"You're so lucky…" Raynare whispered, the light of fanaticism taking hold in her eyes. "Spending a whole day with Lord Azazel himself, having his whole attention on you, speaking with him, doing things with him…"

I had the distinct impression that Raynare's definition of 'doing things' was a whole hell of a lot different than mine, or at least in the context of Azazel and I - but before I could voice anything like that, she turned to wrap her other arm around mine as well, sandwiching my limb in her chest and becoming far, far too close for comfort.

"Well, if you're going for a rest, how about I help you relax~?" She drawled, sinking back into the act she'd put on before - but the fanatical light in her eyes hadn't gone out yet, and I knew the whole facade was hollow in any case.

Raynare was among the group of Fallen who had a somewhat different view of me than Mittelt and her group - namely that, rather than truly being a human who had been effectively stuffed into a Fallen's 'body', I was Azazel's illegitimate child who he was covering for.

Fallen Angels are immortal, purely magical beings hand-sculpted by God himself.

They are also, in many cases, total fucking idiots - and gossip lovers, to boot.

A certain division of the Fallen truly believed that little rumour. A division largely made up of Azazel's more...enthusiastic...underlings. He had a real cult of personality among the Grigori, it being a large part of why he was the Governor, but Raynare's type were borderline creepy-online-stalker yandere archetypes, who would do anything and everything for their lord and saviour Azazel.

Including trying to get closer to him through his 'son' - something which must have failed quite miserably with Vali (and oh man, but this environment couldn't have been good for his judgement or sanity), but which they seemed perfectly willing to try with me.

Not all of them took Raynare's approach. Some made overblown efforts to befriend me which came closer to treating me like a VIP; others were somewhat more subtle, but slipped up if I ever mentioned Azazel himself (which had frankly become akin to an item on a checklist for meeting a new Fallen; wait for insult or introduction, turn and walk away or shake hand, name-drop Azazel and see what they do).

Raynare, however, was by far the most over-the-top. Or at least in terms of how ridiculous, disturbing and irritating her actions managed to be simultaneously.

I didn't follow her logic, seeing no way in which seducing the man's illegitimate child could somehow bring Raynare closer to relationship with the Fallen Governor outside of some really awful, convoluted porno plotline involving incest and netorare…

'And suddenly, I feel like I understand something very important about Fallen thought-processes.'

"Not the kind of relaxation I had in mind." I declared, managing to retrieve my arm with a quick step forward and a twist. "And I really need to rest, so, if you'll excuse me…"

I started walking briskly away, stiff-backed and almost waiting for her to try grabbing me again.

I breathed a sigh of relief when she didn't...then was struck by the realisation that I could hear her boots clicking on the stone floor as we walked. 'She's following me. Is she going to try something like Mittelt? No, probably not - not with her previous behaviour. It'd be too big a leap.

'So what's she trying to d-'

I was almost to my room's door when a horrid thought entered my mind. 'She's following me to my room.'

I considered the possibility of Raynare knowing where my room was.

I considered the fact that one way or another, that information would get out.

So I was forced to consider the possibility of the entire Grigori knowing where my room was.

And that was when I made an executive decision...

"Fuck today."

And jumped head-first out the nearest window, spreading my wings and curving up into the sky and away from the bullshit my life had become.

"Drew! Wait for meeee!"

I glanced over my shoulder and caught sight of Raynare jumping out the same window.

"Hey, trash! I wasn't finished with you yesterday!"

Looking over my other shoulder, I caught sight of Mittelt, rising into the air from one of the many balcony/launch-pads the headquarters had incorporated into its design, a pink spear already in her hands.

Then I faced forward with a perfectly empty expression on my face, feeling as if some kind of internal limit was drawing rapidly closer.

'96%...97%...98%…'

A pink spear went whizzing past my ear, and I heard Raynare yelling "You flat-chested bitch, don't you dare ruin my chance to get closer to Lord Azazel!" before the sounds of light spears clashing began to echo through the skies over the Grigori Headquarters - sounds which grew increasingly louder as more and more Fallen joined the conflict, the fight-happy race using the excuse to take a swing at anyone they had the vaguest grudge against or even just someone who was in swinging distance.

I heard all of this, and experienced the curious sensation of something fraying in my mind.

'99%...'

"...If I don't kill something soon," I considered, "I'm not going to be held responsible for what happens."

Azazel looked out the window of his tower-top laboratory, pushing his goggles away from his eyes to rest on his forehead, and observed the massive tangle of wings, bodies, spears and limbs that had formed in the air over his headquarters.

He sighed, rubbing the back of his head with one gloved hand. "Four days since he arrived and he's already got most of the Grigori chasing after him…"

Abruptly, he threw his head back and laughed, clutching his chest with his other hand. "Oh, this kid's too much - I haven't had this much entertainment in decades!"

He continued laughing for a few moments longer, until a whistling sound began to emanate from behind him and he blinked. "Oh yeah...I didn't turn off th-"

My eyebrow twitched as one of the towers exploded for no apparent reason.

'100.'

Sirzechs Lucifer, who was spending the day staring morosely at his desk of paperwork as he sat in his office, blinked and sat up a bit as he turned towards his window, which overlooked the Devil Capital of Lilith. "Was that a scream?"

(PSIness11): I'm so excited for people to see my OC.

To be fair, a great deal of care, attention to detail and…*snort*

Dammit, I can't even finish typing that with a straight face.

(PSIness11): I put hours (45 minutes) of work into making that character bio.

And I spent five minutes correcting the grammar, spelling and punctuation. But I know for a fact that you took about three seconds to conceive the character off the top of your head.

(PSIness11): Three seconds to think of the greatest OC I've ever made. I'll be honest, that OC is such a bizarre mix of abilities and personality traits. Thinking of a Sacred Gear for him was challenging and fun.

Well, he's really fun to write, so I'm not complaining.

Now, on to the Reviews!

-Mzr90, Ch. 1 - Thanks!

-The Ultimate Balance Chaos, Ch. 1 - Well, here's some more for you.

-RevansStories, Ch. 1 - Hopefully you enjoyed it.

-'Ibn', Ch. 1 - Le gasp; I'd never have guessed! Yeah, I honestly wasn't expecting this story instead of an update either but *shrug* watcha gonna do? Anyway, hopefully Drew will prove to have some worth as a character, and I'll look forward to playing with this new sandbox I've been given. :)

(PSIness11): Teninshigen wanted to play around in the sandbox that is this story, only for a few minutes. I'm the man who slammed his head into the sand, and told him he ain't leaving.

-Fat Future Cat, Ch. 1 - There are a depressingly large number of stories like that, aren't there? I swear, all the even vaguely Fallen-centric stories in the archive seem to be OC x Akeno angst-fests… Still, I hope I can give some depth to the Fallen in this story. Their characters, their history, their existences, their organisation...all that stuff.

(PSIness11): Many DxD fics are so fucking edgy I can feel my eyes bleeding just looking at them.

-'Guest', Ch. 1 - Well now you don't have to :)

(PSIness11): We've pre-written a good bit.

-RadioPoisoning, Ch. 1 - A lot of fanfic writers like to stick to their chosen show's guns; so it was inevitable that an opening like that would become cliché. Still, I had an idea I found more interesting, so I'm rolling with it. As you already guessed, being a 'perfect' Fallen-Human hybrid effectively grants that human spark to the mix, which in this story is going to be a pretty big deal in the end. It's not some kind of Sacred Gear-esque insta-boost...but it means the ability to use willpower and bullshit as tools or weapons, which is all one of my character should ever need. Fallen (or the rank and file at least) won't necessarily be all that more powerful, but I'll be exploring the abilities of a Fallen as I feel they can be extrapolated from what we're shown, and not just in Drew's case. And, as far as romance in this story is concerned...well, Drew already said it. 'Don't stick your dick in crazy.' Finding one decently-sane character to pair him with would be difficult enough; finding more than one? Hercules would quit before he finished that task.

(PSIness11): Ah yes, the human spirit. The driving spark that motivates us all, and gives humanity an edge in the DxD world. This is what I think makes Drew's character so interesting. He is a human, with essentially the power to shape and bend holy light to his will. Not to mention Drew has prior knowledge, and knows a ton about other mediums of fiction. You'll see how he manipulates and develops his power, far above the lower level fallen.

-Narutu-Uzu-Uchiha, Ch. 1 - Thanks for your support; I hope you enjoy this story as it progresses. I have much the same opinion, so I'm going to have some fun with this fic :)

-xanothos, Ch. 1 - Holy shit, this might be the first time I've had someone following a story of mine whose story I also follow; I've been enjoying Not Playing With A Full Deck, just so you know :) Thanks for your support; I hope I can keep your interest.

-Awayuki, Ch. 1 - I'll keep it in mind; I hope not to end up with legions of OCs, but for a show which considers the existence of every mythos, the core DxD cast is...kinda limited. So, I might end up needing more ideas than Ness and I can come up with.

(PSIness11): I have plenty of ideas… Many of them bad.

-'Guest', Ch. 1 - Romance in this story is not even a consideration thus far, and would largely depend on there existing a sane, stable, reasonable girl in Highschool DxD.

(PSIness11): And with the OC I created? NO NO NO! You'll see why next chapter.

End of Reviews

(PSIness11): I think I've legitimately outdone myself with character creation. There will be nothing better.

You know what? I think you're right.

Well, that's this chapter done with; we'll see you all next time, where Drew makes a new friend in the ancient manner of the shounen genre.

(PSIness11): Like how you and I became friends. Although with a considerably lower body count.

Indeed. May God have mercy on his soul.

...Oh, wait-

[{Ness's Corner}]

TFW you make a character that is a mix of DIO, Hol Horse, Rudol Von Stroheim, and pure, unadulterated, american nationalism.

My life is complete.