End Game: Ver R Chapter 3
Greatest Treasure
Disclaimer : Disclaimer : I don't own anything. Don't own Highschool Dragons of Dragons or Naruto. I do own the concepts and plots that I introduced into the story. Also, because of the connection between Highschool Dxd and multiple Relions and Myths, I am sorry if I have accidentally written something wrong and offended someone's belief/faith etc. I just did some basic research and filled the holes in by myself so it is only natural if I get something wrong.
Kishi: Note. I've received a few comments regarding our work resembling Crimson Lord's work, Demon amongst Devils. Personally I've never read his work, but after asking Kur0, she admitted that the work has given her some inspiration, so I guess you could say its thanks to him that we started working again. That said, I did ask him for permission to use some elements of his work. So yeah. Enjoy. Third chapter in 6 days.
Sound track List
Stephanie – Friends
Karuta – Ichiban no Takaramono
EGOIST – Euterpe
D-51 – Famiglia
Fairy Tail - Main Theme Slow
Yuna Ito – Alone Again
Fairy Tail - Shukumei
****End Game****
Play Stephanie – Friends
"Kukukuku…. Finally, the day has come." Purple concentric eyes widened madly and glowed with a deep, insane power, "This is the day I get my revenge. No one shall escape my wrath, even if I only have my teeth, I will tear you apart like the limp strings you are! You shall know MY WRATH!"
One golden eyebrow quirked lazily at the over the top rhetoric, "Those are just instant noodles you know."
He spooned some broth and noodles before feeding it to the overly dramatic head.
Madara slowly chewed and savored the juice before gulping it down.
"Hands up everybody here who HASN'T had anything to eat in days because you're too much an abusive asshole." The disembodied head pointed out snidely.
At the bottom of his neck, a lump of chewed mess plopped out.
"You don't have hands, Madara. Now open up. Ahhh…."
"I would if you weren't such a nosy bastard. Oh, and if you make aero plane noises, I swear I will kill you."
"How is that any different from all the other swears you've made about my gory, disturbing and inevitable death?" Naruto gave him a vaguely offended look, "Besides, I wasn't the sore loser who decided to blow everything up just because I was losing now was I? Now do you want this or not?" If you're not going to appreciate it, I'll just start feeding you raw earthworms. It's not like there's much difference, all you do is enjoy the taste before it falls out the bottom anyway so I might as well save some money."
"No! If you take my noodles away I'll-" The head coughed at the expectant look Naruto sent him, "I mean… Itadakimasu."
"Good head." The blond's thin smile widened excitedly, "Now in exchange, you get to teach me a new jutsu."
"What for?" Madara snorted and shot him a sneer, a white piece of limp noodle hanging limply from his nose, "It's not like you've got enough chakra to practice anything I can teach you."
"Just tell me the hand signs," Madara began to say something but Naruto cut him off with a calm smirk, "or I'll put you in the men's toilet again."
"No! ANYTHING BUT THAT! Oh God... the way they dangle with all that hair…" His flaking skin turned a little blue as a shiver ran down his imaginary back at the memory, "Urrp…"
"You puke that out right now, and you're not getting anything else for another month."
"Sorry." Madara hurriedly slurped down the broth before Naruto could change his mind.
After the large bowl had been emptied and the head was resting against the rock with a satisfied look on its face, "What kinda jutsu do you want this time?" It asked drowsily.
"A fire one would be nice." He couldn't stop the enthusiastic smile from spreading on his lips, "I still don't have any of those yet."
It took a lot of persuasion, bribery and more than a few threats, but getting the head to teach him something new was one of the few things he still looked forward to with a pure enthusiasm, and Madara had a lot of things to teach, some that he would've bet not even Kakashi knew about. He could feel the turgid flow of chakra stir in him at the thought of training, of strength flowing through his veins once more. Breathing in deeply, he quelled the stirring with an iron will. Even if he couldn't afford to practice it without wasting the precious bit of chakra he managed save away every day, just learning the hand signs were almost like a reminder that the world he had left behind wasn't just a hazy dream.
The slaughter, for it was no fight, because a fight implied they had a chance to survive, had taken a massive dent in what precious little he had managed to squirrel away, and he knew that it would be a while before his reserves reached that point again.
Of course, what the blond considered to be a small amount, was probably stupidly enormous for any other person.
But he did not regret it, it had been a long time since a battle had sung in his veins, heated his blood, and contrary to what he had been telling himself about enjoying peace, he had reveled in it. To be moving again, to feel the strength surging through him as chakra coursed powerfully, it gave him a certain assurance that his past had not been simply a twisted dream.
The disembodied head watched the blond run through the hand signs it had told him several times with an expression of intense concentration, before he finally nodded reluctantly, "Alright, you've sort of got the hand signs down, now you just need proper practical practice molding it. Just don't forget, when you finish the jutsu, make sure you put your arm on your hip and make a cool sneer as your enemies choke and burn to death around you. Wahaha!"
"Like this?"
"More detached. The way you're doing it just makes you look constipated. It has to be cool and filled with disdain."
"You mean like this? Oi, wait! What the hell are you trying to teach me?!"
"…. Pfft…. It just doesn't work; your face is too ugly, unlike us Uchiha…. Why are you looking at me like that? And why do I feel like I'm about to lose what's left of my dignity?"
As he walked to to school in a surprisingly good mood, Naruto hummed a upbeat tune to himself.
Though he supposed that had something to do with the nice, sunny weather and the cooling breeze that stopped it from getting to hot.
Well, that and the fact that he had just stuffed a certain head into a toilet bowl in the dirtiest public toilet he could find probably had something to do with his mood.
Then he saw exactly who was waiting at the school gates, with a wide grin on her face, Akeno standing nearby, with a neutral expression.
It would seem like the rest of the day would not be as nice.
Still, no reason not to have fun with them.
Fitting the widest, most welcoming smile he could manage on his face the moment they locked gazes, Naruto sped up a little as if he could move wait to be in her presence.
For a moment there, the sudden enthusiasm must have caught her off guard, because the smile wavered a little before it was fixed back in place.
As Naruto neared Rias, his smile widened as did hers and he spread his arms as if to embrace her.
Then he promptly breezed past her and swept a stunned Akeno off her feet, her long, graceful pony tail swinging to and fro with the sudden movement.
"Akeno~ I missed you!"
The utterly betrayed look Rias was shooting the raven haired girl was completely worth every bit of pain he was sure he would get from the girl who was currently in his arms.
"Oh you're here too Rias," He continued glibly as if he did not notice the glare, "It's almost time for class though, so you should hurry along."
Akeno's brow rose at his almost casual dismissal of one of the most influential people in the Academy like she was a child before a throaty snicker bubbled from her chest.
On the one hand, she had Rias who was not only her King, but also her best friend who had stayed, steadfastly loyal by her side.
On the other, teasing Rias with a low blow would not only be despicable, but it would also likely further invite her wrath.
"I'm afraid Naruto-kun is right, Rias," She added sweetly as Naruto set her down, "I'll see you at lunch."
She had not thought it possible, but the look of sheer betrayal on Rias' aristocratic features increased even more.
And it had been worth every second.
Beside her, Naruto blinked, then a slow smile spread on his face as Akeno discretely tugged at his sleeve.
Looping her arm through his elbow, she proceeded to lead him towards class, an amused Naruto merely ambling along with a quiet chuckle of his own.
"That was mean." Akeno commented blandly the moment she was sure Rias was out of sight, "I don't think she's had anyone brush her off like that before."
"I'm sure her ego will survive," The blond replied dryly, "If it doesn't you can always do something nice for her to make up for it."
"You speak as if you weren't involved."
"Technically speaking, I expected you to try and kick me between the legs before storming off." The blond admitted bluntly, "I didn't actually think you'd follow along."
"How could I not?" Naruto blinked at the suddenly sultry purr coming from somewhere below his right shoulder, her breath gently tickling his earlobe, "When you've finally admitted how much you missed me? In front of the whole school if I might add."
He blinked again and was suddenly very aware of the amount of killing intent flooding the hall the two of them were walking down, hand in hand.
"A public declaration of intent like that would make any girl... very... happy after all," Naruto almost winced at the way those seductive, honeyed, and so very audible words had echoed along the near silent hall filled with gaping students staring at the unlikely couple, "and I'm no exception."
The killing intent didn't just double, it quadrupled.
"Ah... Maybe if you let me my arm go?" the perplexed blond tried to weakly extract his elbow from her grasp, and failed miserably.
If anything, her grip tightened even more, pushing it deeper into a pillowy valley along with another melodious snicker.
"Your reputation is going to suffer you know?"
"As long as I have you by my side, my reputation means nothing to me," She declared.
Loudly.
Naruto very quickly came to the conclusion that the black haired devil currently attached to his right arm was trying to get him killed.
He was sure of it.
"You win this round." He finally said with a mildly forlorn sigh.
"I always do." Akeno commented happily, and then hugged his elbow to her bosom even tighter and leaned onto his bicep.
"Might as well enjoy my loss I suppose." Naruto remarked wryly.
"Oh? Does doing this please you?" another evil snicker rumbled in her throat, "Why don't we skip class? I can show you many things, far, FAR better than just this."
"I'll pass." Naruto instantly replied with a remarkably straight face as he bore the gazes filled with something close to pure hatred with resigned amusement.
Akeno pulled back with a small pout, "And here I thought you wanted to play."
"Oh I would love to play," the blond's eyes glinted as they stopped outside of their shared class room. Bending down a little so that they were almost face to face, he leaned in and brushed his lips against her neck, "I know how much you enjoy our play time after all."
The entire time, their little game had been restricted to innuendos and subtle teasing, so when he made such a obviously blatant, and possessive, move, Akeno was disappointed to admit that she had actually gone as stiff as a board in surprise.
"But I don't think they'd be able survive seeing how deliciously you writhe under me when we play."
Akeno blinked in a nonplussed manner.
"They?"
She followed his amused gaze until she realized that he had been looking at.
When they had arrived at the classroom, she had assumed it was empty because it was so quiet. Now it appeared that that particular assumption had been somewhat wrong because the classroom was already full. And every single occupant within was staring at the two of them with their mouths open. The resounding silence was so thick that Naruto was almost compelled to pull out a kunai and see if he could cut it.
Akeno leveled a wry look at the blond, she could almost feel the triumph leaking from that damnable grin, and sighed grudgingly, "You win this one."
Naruto winked at her and dropped himself into his desk at the back of the class.
As she sat herself down with as much dignity she could muster, she mentally noted that the blond wasn't such a bad person after all, or at least, it appeared that his defiant streak only appeared when they tried to get him to participate in the Peerage.
With a start, she realized that she had actually enjoyed their back and forth teasing, their attempts to make the other blush and their race to see who could annoy the other more.
With the student population, she had been forced to act the role of the perfect, elegant Onee-sama, and as much as she liked the adoration, it wore on her heavily. With the other devils in the school and the Occult Club who knew that she was very much not human, they had accepted her sensual taunting, they had tried to ignore her perverted teasing, and more often than not, they ran from her blatant sexuality.
Or in Ise's case, melted into a puddle of spluttering goo.
Even Kiba only reacted to her with nothing more than a genial smile, though she wasn't sure if that was because he preferred women at all given how much time the younger blond seemed to spend with swords or men.
Rias however had accepted her, encouraged her even. But trying to molest another girl and lure them into her bed just didn't have the same appeal as making a boy blush crimson.
Her best friend was one of the most compassionate people she knew, but sometimes, she felt that the crimson haired girl would be a lot more happier if she learnt how to ignore the rules and relax occasionally.
The rest of the Gremory house generally accepted her as well, and they treated her like one of the family, but she had no doubt that if she tried to flirt with Sirzechs, Grayfia would most likely do something drastic to her; probably freeze her butt to a chair with one of her coldest spells, followed by a long suffering sigh and an equally a long winded lecture on how noble ladies were supposed to carry themselves in front of others. As much as she loved Grayfia like a sister, the much too serious woman doted on her husband a little too much sometimes.
Akeno was a little disturbed to note that she didn't really have a lot of people that she rated as real friends outside that little circle, and none of them really had the balls or the personality to trade barbs and taunts with her like a certain frustrating blond.
So that was why when lunch had rolled around and she turned around to look for the blond, Akeno tried very hard to ignore that little stab of disappointment when she realized that he was no longer in class, his desk as clean and empty as if he had not even bothered to come to class at all.
****End Game****
It had not been hard to find out where she was.
Information and deception was the life blood of a shinobi or ninja after all.
Well not so much information gathering; that was more of this Godfather's forte. Though Naruto certainly didn't have any reservations about mimicking, or outright stealing, a few of the old Toad Sage's tricks. One of which involved using Sage Mode to merge with nature itself, rendering oneself invisible to almost any sort of sensor, save the ones that could see the strange way chakra was being molded.
As far as information gathering techniques went, it was an incredibly potent tool.
He also had no doubt whatsoever that Jiraiya had used it to peek in bathhouses more than once.
The one he had used however, was far less complicated since he doubted there were that many sensors around in this world anyway. A simple chameleon jutsu, and he had used to it to slip into the teacher's room and rifle around while keeping out a sharp ear to any interesting rumors.
He could almost imagine the old Toad's proud boasting despite the the jutsu not being that hard to do at all, but he immediately shoved that thought away ruthlessly.
He had no wish to be reminded of the things he had lost at the moment. Or at any moment really.
Stealth and deception however, was what he really excelled at.
Well, that and punching people's faces in, but that was beside the point.
That was why it had not been difficult at all to completely evade the occasionally doctor or nurse that occupied the infirmary where a private small room had been set aside specifically for the young priestess.
With one last sigh, he stepped out of the shadows and laid his eyes on the girl, her breathing was so weak it was almost papery. Her pallor was a deathly grey that put the uniform whiteness of the bed she was lying on and the room she was in to shame, her figure was so slight it almost seemed tiny in the standard hospital bed and it caused a strange, almost paternal, emotion to well up inside him and tug at his heartstrings.
His melancholy thoughts were interrupted when the girl suddenly broke out in a series of coughs and wheezing.
The blond carefully stepped forward and laid a glowing green palm on her chest, almost immediately the rash of coughing stopped and he could see her breathing ease somewhat again.
"I..se-k..kun?"
At that, he couldn't help the amused smile that spread across his lips as a little bit of redness seemed to seep in her cheeks again.
****End Game****
Play Karuta – Ichiban no Takaramono
Dying, as far as she could tell had not been very different from dreaming except for the absolute certainty that she would not woke up from this particular dream.
She had felt it, the almost physical pain when her Sacred Gear; her light; and for a good portion of her life, her reason to exist, had been torn out of her chest, before there was nothing but a sinking emptiness that stained her very soul.
Asia had struggled at first, she fought against it, she cried for it, but it had depressingly futile.
She had been left with no other choice but to accept it.
And so she had just hung there, stuck in the void, and watched sorrowfully as Death began its work, tearing away her dreams first, then it ripped away her memories one by one, starting from her earliest one.
Though she found that she didn't really care.
They were memories of loneliness and isolation, of her selflessly giving then receiving nothing.
It was almost relieving to see them leave.
One by one, those memories had left her grasp. The last one had been the sight of Ise, dear brave Ise, throwing himself against the Fallen Angels, breaking himself upon their shields, piercing himself on their spears. If only he had listened.
But even then, that last memory had left her grasp, and she sat there in the darkness. An empty shell consigned to oblivion.
Then she had felt it.
A strange, searing warmth.
With the warmth had come a light that seared away the darkness, chased them away, and it soothed her.
Invisible arms had lifted her up, and then it had dragged her from the darkness, her lost memories following behind like a trail of obedient puppies, torn from Death's grasp.
The first thing she had seen then, in that ruined cathedral where she had hung from the cross, was also the same person currently standing in front of her.
"Sorry," The man gave her a crooked smile as he continued to work on her lungs. She blinked at the palms that were giving off a soothing green glow that reminded her of the one that her Twilight Healing had put out, "I'm not Issei."
"Ah…" The girl flushed, more than a little embarrassed, "I'm sorry."
The strange blond nodded as the glow disappeared from his palms and he sagged into a chair, as if he was exhausted, "I healed you, as much as I dared anyway, so that we could have this conversation."
There was a long silence between them as the girl tried to figure out what to say, what conversation that he expected from her while the other blond seemed content to simply wait for her words.
Looking a little closer, she noted the lines that seemed much too old to be on someone her age.
"I died."
Seeing the blond's neutral nod, she took strength from it.
Her eyes met the gaze of one who had defied Death.
"And you... you were the one that brought me back."
His lips twitched a little, "I did."
All at once the almost smile faded.
"But not entirely."
Asia blinked, not completely understanding what he meant. She was here wasn't she? She was breathing, and she could feel. So why did he...
"I am not dead but I am dying." She realized with an absolutely certainty.
She had not thought it possible, but the lines on his face got even more pronounced, and it was only then that she realized that interspersed among his bright blond locks, were clumps of sickly white.
"I... am but a shade of the person I once was. A complete resurrection is beyond my abilities at this point of time." He said softly, almost apologetically.
"Then why?" There was no accusation in her tone, no recrimination, only a simple, puzzled curiosity.
If he was unable to bring her back completely, why bring her back at all?
"You don't look like you are the kind to bring me back to suffer, to taunt me with what I can never have.. so why?"
"I brought you back because you deserved a choice." the blond whose name she did not know answered truthfully.
"A choice?" Asia gave him a half smile, and he had to admire her for it. Even faced with the fact she was going to die again, she could still smile.
But then again, that was and would always be one of humanity's defining traits, to face adversity and smile despite it.
"You make it sound like I have an option other than going back to the grave."
The blond nodded slowly, solemnly, "I estimate you only have 3 days left, a week at most if you do nothing but sleep. At this moment, the only thing sustaining your body is the energy I fed to you and that will not last because I have almost none left. I was able to tear you from oblivion, but not completely. Even now it is still pulling you back into its embrace."
She nodded, she could feel it too.
"At the end of three days, you will have two options set before you. You can pass away, accept that your time is over." Her lips thinned and the resigned smile reappeared, "Or you can live again."
"The same way as Ise-kun?"
Naruto nodded, "Their resurrection is not like my own. It does not draw from them innately like mine does, and therefore depending on the situation, it can be much more effective. However, like all good things, there are conditions."
"I am aware of them." She replied slowly, "Gremory-san said that she would give me that option if I wished it, but before that, she made sure to sit down and explain to me what such a resurrection would entail and what would be expected from me should that happen." She said softly.
Naruto was mildly surprised, particularly since he had divined it on his own instead of being told by the Gremory heir.
"She would not force me to fight if I did not wish to. She only asked that I remained in her Peer, not because she wants my power, but because as a Stray Devil, I would face much hardship again. And either way I die as a human."
"It's not much of a choice, but then we don't always have that luxury." The taller blond agreed.
"I think I would much prefer to die as a human." Her voice was so soft that he could not be entirely sure she had actually said it.
Naruto shifted into a more comfortable position, "And that is the reason why I brought you back."
She looked up sharply, "I do not understand."
"If I had let you stay dead, I do not doubt that Rias would have resurrected you for Issei." He murmured somewhat cynically.
It was what Rias had done to him after all.
He could appreciate a good gesture when he saw one, but he would never thank her for it, "If that had happened, you would not even have this meager choice of dying as a human. You would have been resurrected as a devil whether you liked it or not. And you would not have been able to disagree either."
He nodded at her and continued to speak as honestly as he could, explaining what he had managed to glean from his conversations with Sona Sitri and the rest of the Occult Club about the Underworld's culture as whole, "As a general rule, I've noticed that Devils are not the malignant beings that their forebears, the Demons, the Heavens and the Fallen Angels fought against. They are mischievous where Demons were violent, tricking instead of mindlessly killing and liars instead of bloodthirsty monsters. But that does not change the fact that the contract would have enforced obedience onto you. You might have been able to regret that you are no longer a human for the first few days, but the contract would have progressively eroded that opinion until you thought it was a good thing as well. And that is why I have brought you back, given you time. So that you would have the option of choosing whether you wanted to die on your own terms, or if living as a devil is worth it."
The priestess looked ashen at his words, "That's… horrible. To violate free will…" Her eyes hardened, "Gremory-san did not tell me that."
Naruto did not bother to deny it.
"I did not think she would have, it's not something you tend to advertise after all. However, I will point out that through my personal interactions with her, I do not believe that Rias will force you to bend to her will. Yes, she has the authority to do it, but I doubt she is that kind of person."
"I want to live," She finally said after a moment. By her side, she was clutching at the bed spreads like it was a life line, "I want to be friends with Ise-kun, I want to see if Rias-san is as caring as he says she is, I want to keep eating ice cream and keep meeting new people, but I don't want to lose my humanity just to be able to do something like that..."
There was a long silence between the two and he could see the wetness in her eyes when he finally spoke again.
"Sometimes, we are asked to make choices that are really not choices at all." Their eyes met, and he kept talking in that gentle, even tone, "I knew a boy who had to make a choice like that once. He faced a situation where he either had to give his life up, for the sake for his friends, for his family, for his lover, or let them die. All he wanted to be able to do was to be with them, to go out on adventures, to eat ice cream, and to live like you wanted to. But for the people he loved to continue living and continue being able to do all those simple things that others take for granted, he had to die. It's unfair wasn't it?"
"Yes..." The frail girl, sitting on that bed whispered weakly, before she turned the full force of her compassionate gaze on him, and he had to smile, "Was he asked to give up his life?"
"He wasn't asked," Naruto corrected her blandly, "He volunteered."
Asia nodded, and they fell silent again. her aqua eyes closed as if bracing herself for something, "If I choose to become a devil, will you think any lower of me, Savior-san?"
He had to smile at the strange title, but then again he had never had the chance to introduce himself to her, did he?
Leaning forward, he placed a soothing hand on her forehead. Asia felt no rush of warmth she had begun to associate with the energy he unconsciously gave off, no pulsing healing from the blond who had saved her.
"No I will not. People have the right to choose whatever they want. It is that ability to choose, to rise above their own weakness, or fall prey to their own desires. That free will is mankind's greatest treasure."
His words were merely whispered, but she could feel it.
"It is also simultaneously their greatest weakness, and their greatest strength. What they do with that gift, with their lives; that is what that boy swore an oath to protect, regardless of the circumstances of their birth. He staked his life on humanity's potential to rise above their own petty weaknesses. Then he died, to make sure no one would be forced to make the same choice he did. He would not have judged you for your choices, and I will do no less. To judge you now would be to spit in the memory of that boy."
Feel that wonderful strength, a soothing heat that coursed through his words. A strength had absolutely nothing to do with his waning reserves, and everything to do with the strength of his belief. It was a radiant warmth that no amount of bitter self hate could entirely eradicate whether he acknowledged it or not. She listened to his words, let his benediction fill her and encourage her.
"If you choose to die, then I will mourn for a life lost, but I will not seek to degrade your choice. If you choose to be resurrected, then I will be there to accept you and offer you a hand of friendship. Along with a tub of ice cream."
She giggled despite herself and the taller blond let a faint smile touch his lips.
"That is my promise to you."
If he noticed the awe and reverence in her face, he said nothing about it.
"Now sleep."
****End Game****
He was not sure how long he stayed watching over the sleeping girl, but he was not surprised to see that the sky had gotten dark when he left her room.
What he was surprised by however, was the fact that there had been someone dozing in the chair outside the room.
A thin smile graced his rough features as he calmly threw a blanket that he had pulled from a nearby bed on to the lightly snoring Ise.
The boy was perverted beyond measure, even more so than Jiraiya had been, and that was no mean feat. But that night, he had shown his mettle, he had shown that for all his perverseness was a core of iron that was willing to extend a helping hand to someone he had just met for a brief, passing moment. He saw the injustice the world had heaped upon a priestess' fragile shoulders and even if he had not the words to express it, he had the heart to do something about it.
Even if Naruto suspected that the boy did not actually know that a relationship extended beyond mere pleasures of the flesh, he had shown Naruto that he had the potential to become someone he could respect, a person much like his Godfather whose perverted tendencies hid a man who still saw the world as it should have been despite the world weariness.
Though it was probably going to be a very long time before he reached that point, Naruto would not begrudge him that chance.
"He's been coming here every time he had a moment to spare, you know."
Naruto cocked his head as if he had known she was there all along, and at this point, Akeno was somewhat sure he did, "I expected it."
She had been leaning on the wall where the shadows enshrouded her form merely shrugged, "When he saw you were here already, rather than disturb, he chose to stay outside. He obviously didn't know what you wanted to say to her of course. But he figured it was something important." Akeno smiled briefly and gracefully walked over so she could pull the blanked and tuck it around Ise's slumbering form with a mildly exasperated expression since Naruto hadn't bothered with that. He had just thrown the blanket on the dark haired boy and left it at that.
Men.
"He respects you immensely you know."
The blond watching her ruffle Ise's hair somewhat affectionately simply nodded noncommittally.
"When he realized that you didn't tell anyone what happened in that church, he guessed you didn't want anyone to know. So he steadfastly refused to tell Rias what you did in there even though she threatened to punish him."
"He probably doesn't know much either." Naruto commented blandly, "He fainted shortly after I arrived."
Akeno shrugged, "It's not too hard to guess. A whole group that could beat him, Koneko and Kiba at the same time, yet when he woke up, they were all gone and you didn't even have a scratch on you. It was obvious you did something, even if we don't know exactly what that something is."
"Impressed them with my singularly good looks until they willingly left after I made them fall in love with me?" Naruto offered with a half hearted grin.
"About as likely as a meteor hitting us right about now." Akeno shot back dryly.
"So were you waiting here so that you could grill me about it?" The blond leaned back onto the wall with a blank expression.
Akeno took a deep breath.
"No."
His only reaction was to quirk an eyebrow at her.
"You've made it clear enough that you have an aversion about letting people know what you can do. My only question would be why, but then it's not my concern is it?" Akeno shrugged and delicately sat down on the nearest bed, allowing the silence to stretch between the two of them.
Idly, she waved a hand and Naruto curiously watched as a cactus in a corner of the room shook a bit before the green plant seemed to pull itself out of the pot. Happily squeaking, the tiny, thorny thing scampered over to the smiling young woman and hurled itself into her embrace.
The raven haired young woman smiled with pleasure as she petted what he had first taken to be a cactus, "It's my familiar." She told the man who was obviously curious, "A Chibi Oni. He's not particularly good at fighting, but because he's rather sensitive towards ill intent like most other oni are, Rias requested I place him here to alert us if anybody approached Asia-chan." Seeing his questioning look, Akeno shrugged and continued to pet her familiar as it squeaked happily, "We couldn't be sure if any of the Fallen Angels were still alive, so we decided to take precautions in case they wanted to abduct Asia again."
Naruto nodded in understanding, it was how she had figured out he was here.
"I assume you do not want Rias to know about this particular ability of yours?" She asked softly, and just for a brief moment, he thought he saw a fleeting look of near desperate longing being directed at him before it vanished, replaced by a challenging one.
"I would like that." Naruto replied stiffly.
There were a lot of things he didn't mind letting Rias and her peerage know.
This was not one of them.
"What would you do if I told her anyway?"
"None of you will ever see me again."
"Even if Asia wants to see you again?"
Naruto frowned, using his own promise against him had been a low blow, and the shamefaced expression on Akeno told her she was well aware of that, but it was certainly not enough to stop her from trying.
"Even then." He answered flatly.
The two of them locked gazes for a long moment, Akeno's was conflicted and his was carefully blank.
It was a long tense moment before she finally sagged and acquiesced with a nod.
Naruto smiled thinly as he made for the door.
"You're a good person." a faint whisper touched his hearing.
He stopped by the door frame and hesitated for a moment, glancing over his shoulders to see the young woman still sitting on the bed with her familiar, her gaze resolutely set on the moon hanging outside the window.
He sent her resolute form a cynical smile.
"I was a good person."
****End Game****
"Naruto-san!"
The bored looking blond who was sitting at the counter with a ladle spinning around his finger so fast that it looked like a windmill looked up with a faintly surprised expression, "Ise."
Hearing his name being called flatly, the brown haired boy grinned with a wave, "I thought it might have been you. I wasn't sure at first but hearing that disdainful voice confirmed it."
The blond who had an apron tied around his waist gave Ise a thin smile, "I'll consider that a compliment as long as you promise to buy something from me."
"We're going to the clubroom now though." Ise pointed out with a gesture to the girl behind him, "Why don't you come with us?"
"I'm working, and you can buy it later, as long as you buy something." The blond replied dryly.
Behind him, the priestess smiled at him with, almost adoringly so.
Then she clapped her hands together and started praying.
Naruto decided that his employer probably wouldn't be very happy if he started denting the wooden counter with his face, repeatedly. So he refrained from doing so, though it was a very narrow thing.
After he had met her in that infirmary, the priestess had lasted five days, exceeding his own predictions by two days through sheer stubbornness alone. The last time Naruto had seen her alive, the already small girl had been reduced to a mere skeleton, but she held on admirably and he would not fault her for her choice. So when he saw her again, healthy, smiling and very much a devil, he had been honestly happy for the priestess.
He would have been significantly more happy though, if she had not suddenly approached him in school and then knelt down at his feet and started praying to him in broad daylight and in front of dozens of shocked stupid students. Kiba, who had been escorting her at the time, apparently found it humorous because the Prince of Kuoh Academy had outright collapsed and started choking on his own laughter at the constipated expression on the older blond's face.
On a completely unrelated side note, Kiba had somehow managed to fall down a flight of stairs after that.
Three times.
And no one could blame him since he had dozens of students who would swear that he was nowhere near Kiba at the time, though most of them would also swear he had a strangely amused smile on each time Kiba managed to fall down a flight of stairs.
But either way, he had taken Asia aside right after that so he could try to convince Asia to stop doing that. She had then proceeded to explain that since she had become a Devil, she couldn't pray to her God anymore. Her solution to that had been to pray to him instead because he was somehow a Saint, so he would apparently intercede on her behalf.
He had no idea how that worked, and figured he probably didn't want to know either way.
Instead, he had used every technique they had taught in the Shinobi Academy short of the sexual ones to explain to her why exactly kneeling and praying to him in the middle of school was a spectacularly bad idea.
That had failed just as miserably as his first attempt.
"I understand, Saint-san." Asia had nodded with such a serious expression that he had almost let himself hope for a moment.
Said hope instantly shattered with her next sentence, "A Saint has to be humble and modest, that's why I won't pray to you in the hallways anymore."
He had almost strangled himself at that point.
"I'm a Devil too you know!"
That managed to stop Asia from going any further, but as she stood there with a perplexed pout, he felt a strange sinking feeling in the pits of his stomach.
His dread materialized a moment later when the blonde girl's innocent eyes had went impossibly wide, and her reverent expression got even more adoring.
"You are a far greater Saint than I had even imagined, Naruto-san," The girl had murmured reverentially, "My teachers has always taught me that modesty, and humility had been the traits of the Messiah himself... but to go this far... To fall on purpose, to sacrifice all your power until you are but a shadow of what your glory once was, just so you could descend and convince the Devils and Fallen Angels to return to the One True God..." She had clasped his hands with an absolutely determined expression, "I understand your wish to keep this quiet, Great Sain-san!"
For the love of...
He had come here to stop her from calling him a Saint.
Somehow, he had gotten promoted instead.
"You do not wish the Devils and Fallen Angels to know your true purpose. Therefore, I shall keep your secret in my hearts of hearts. I will be your ally in this!"
Naruto had given up at that point and just banged his head on the nearest wall.
Repeatedly.
It was easier than trying to understand the insane logic behind that statement.
And so, she had stopped kneeling and praying to him, in public at least.
It certainly didn't stop her from finding him at the oddest hours of the day and then doing it.
And somehow, no matter how hard he tried, how far he ran, or how stealthy he was, she always, ALWAYS, found him.
He had even gone as far as locking himself in the men's toilet once, and stayed there for approximately 3 hours.
Trying to explain to a couple of teachers why a girl had been kneeling in front of the toilet and praying had been a rather awkward affair.
Naturally, since subtlety wasn't exactly one of Asia's strongest suites, the rest of the Occult Club had eventually found out as well. And just as naturally, he had had to endure much teasing from them. Rias had simply proclaimed that she was proud to be the first person in history to have an actual Saint as an Evil Piece. Akeno on the other hand, had taken to draping herself all over him with a leer plastered to her face and asking if he didn't mind using his Holy Staff to purge her from her impure thoughts.
The particular emphasis on those words, and the significant look she had thrown at his crotch, left little doubt about exactly which staff the Devil had been referring to.
His response had been to lean in and suck at a sensitive spot on her neck, then describe to her, in lengthy loving detail, exactly how he was going to use that staff to purge her impure thoughts, and given the length and width of said staff, how she probably wouldn't survive having that much Holiness pumped into her.
Her flushed face had looked strangely adorable for someone as corrupted as her.
Koneko had simply her little gentle smile, and then asked for another cup of tea. Then she promptly spoiled all his goodwill for her by audibly wondering if he made such good tea because he was a Saint.
Ise had simply guffawed himself silly.
He fell down several staircases the next day.
Even Rias had expressed her amazement at how clumsy he had to be if he had somehow managed to hit every step down from the rooftop to the ground floor with his face and then tumble head first into the girls' toilet, where he was promptly beaten up by a horde of girls filled with righteous anger.
She was even more amazed when he managed to repeat that feat another two times.
Naruto allowed himself a moment of pride at that one.
Kiba had taken one look at the other blond's stormy expression and wisely decided to laugh somewhere else.
Preferably in a locked room.
Without windows.
Or staircases.
Naruto was jolted out of his fond reminiscing when a withered hand patted the blond's shoulder and lightly pushed him out of from behind the counter, "It's alright, Naruto-chan, why don't you go along with your friends? It doesn't look like there's going to be many customers today anyway, so you can go ahead."
Naruto made a strangely conflicted face, "If you're sure, Oya-san."
The old man smiled, showing of his toothless gums, "I'll be fine. Why don't you bring the rest back later for dinner?"
Naruto sighed, "You just want to see that nice girl with the tight skirt don't you?"
"Hehehehehe."
The blond rolled his eyes at the creepy laugh. Shrugging off his apron, Naruto spun the ladle out of his hand in a display of extreme dexterity and snatched it out of mid air before fluidly sliding it back into its case without even missing a beat, "Might as well. She gets huffy if I don't show my face every now and then." The blond muttered under his breath as he exited the shabby looking ramen shop tucked in between two much larger and much newer shops.
Falling in step beside a nervous looking Asia, he gave the golden haired girl with bright green eyes a warm smile, "How are you Asia-chan? I hear your staying with Ise now?"
The girl's face instantly turned a magnificent shade of red. So much so that Naruto almost expected her to faint on the spot, or scurry behind a corner.
"Ah..." She began to twiddle her thumbs and mumble under her breath, "its wrong isn't it? Ah what should I do? I want to stay with Ise-kun, but a young man and a young woman... Great Saint-san will be angry..."
It was a pity he couldn't strangle himself.
Sighing, he scratched the back of his head, "I don't mind if that's what you chose to do Asia-chan. As long as Ise treats you properly, I won't do anything. To him that is."
On Asia's other side, Ise's met Naruto's pointed gaze and instantly went pale at the threat implied within those blue orbs. Mutely Ise nodded his head as violently as possible.
"I'll treat her like a princess." The dark haired boy blurted out as sincerely as he could.
Beside him, Asia had gone an even deeper shade of red.
"Ah... I'm a princess to Ise-kun...?"
Apparently Ise had forgotten Asia was there because he instantly turned a bright crimson that easily rivaled the shade of red on Asia's own face.
Naruto chuckled lowly at the two red faced teenagers.
Ah, young love.
Stuffing his hands into his pocket, he began to walk slightly faster ahead to give them some time alone.
Behind him, Ise discretely shot Asia a guilty look. It had only been slightly more a week ago that the two of them had met in the house of a dead man, their respective factions clashing with each other bitterly. It was almost a miracle when he had met her again on that day, and on an impulse, had asked the soft spoken blonde nun to lunch. The two of them had spent the entire day, pretending to be two normal teenagers before he had go against Buchou AND fight his way through an army of Fallen Angels for her freedom, so he was still a little surprised that the crimson haired Princess had not punished him. Putting Asia in his house was a reward as far as the boy was concerned.
"Great Saint-san can be… very strange sometimes." Asia observed timidly as the blond began to pull ahead of them with a cheerful whistle.
"I guess. He's not very interested in getting strong or ranking up," Issei muttered with a mild shiver as a memory of getting booted down a staircase resurfaced, "but he sort of holds his own in fights with very weird and creative ways."
"You've fought him before?"
"Twice." Ise admitted, "The first time in a practice match for us to test out our new demonic bodies. Buchou forced him to participate. He wasn't very interested but he joined when she promised to leave him alone for a week if he could beat me."
"What did he do?"
Issei winced, "He just started screaming all of a sudden, and then while I was trying to figure out why he was yelling at me, he poked my eyes. When I could finally see again, he poked me another time. I managed to block him the third time but while my hands were busy he just kneed me between the legs."
Forget using his Sacred Gear, he barely had time to wonder how could there be SO MUCH PAIN.
"The second time we fought was after I managed to gather some energy by fulfilling desires. Rias wanted to show Naruto how much stronger I've gotten." Ise almost began crying, "He didn't even waste time trying to poke my eyes out. He just brained me from behind with a brick while I was talking to Buchou."
She couldn't help it; the cloud of despair hovering over Issei as he covered his junk from a phantom pain caused her to collapse into giggles.
Issei shot her a sour look, prompting her to clasp her hand over her mouth as she desperately suppressed her giggles. Sighing, Issei couldn't but grin crookedly. It was pretty amusing after all.
As long as you weren't on the receiving end that is.
"Outside of that, he's a pretty okay guy I guess, though he should just let Buchou pamper him the way she wants instead of being so obstinate."
Asia giggled, "You make him sound like a cat. Sly, stubborn and rebellious."
"Just don't mention that in front of him, I don't know how he'll take it."
"He won't hurt you right?" She asked him with concern.
"Nah. I'll be fine…. as long as Buchou doesn't promise to leave him alone for another week if he can beat me again."
The comical look of horror on his face sent her into giggles again.
****End Game****
"Yo."
"You don't come here for days and all you can say is 'yo'?" The girl sitting at the large ornate desk looked up with a faintly annoyed expression of her own at his sudden intrusion.
The blond merely shrugged with an impudent smirk, "Would you prefer if I asked you what panties you were wearing?"
She quirked an eyebrow at the question and sighed.
Beside her, Akeno put up her hand with an innocent expression, "Ask me. I know." Her innocent expression was replaced by an impish one, "I'll even tell you what I'm wearing as a bonus."
"Knowing you? Probably nothing." Naruto shot back dryly.
The raven haired princess leered at him, "You would like that wouldn't you?"
He winked at her, "Maybe later. I don't think Ise can afford to lose anymore blood."
Peripherally, he noted that Ise had already fainted, much to Asia's mild disappointment; even Kiba had a faint red dusting on his cheeks.
The blond mere chuckled as he collapsed into the couch beside Koneko who had been nibbling away on a piece of Japanese sweet. Silently, she offered him one then nodded with a satisfied expression.
"So why did you call everyone here today?"
Rias' eyebrow rose again, "What makes you think I did something like that?"
"Ise lives on the opposite side of town. There was absolutely no reason for them to pass by my shop unless it was intentional." Naruto pointed out dryly. He did not need to mention that if she had sent anybody other than Koneko or Asia, he would have simply ignored them. If she didn't know that by now, then she didn't deserve to be a King.
"True." She murmured, an amused glint in her eyes, "Who knows? Maybe I just wanted to see you running away from Asia again?"
Naruto growled, it wasn't his fault that ignoring Asia or Koneko felt remarkably like kicking a puppy and then setting it on fire for good measure.
"If you're trying to persuade me to participate more, you're doing an amazingly bad job at it."
"Wasn't trying," Rias countered succinctly, "But since you've mentioned it, you might as well join Ise's daily exercise."
Such an elegantly phrased order deserved an equally elegant answer.
"No."
Rias simply sighed, as if she had already expected this answer from him. Then Akeno leaned in and whispered something in her ear.
If the way the two of them kept glancing at him and giggling were any indication, he doubted he would like what she was going to say.
"Asia-chan?"
The priestess looked up from where she had taken a seat, running her hand through Ise's dark brown hair with an almost dreamy expression, "Hai. Buchou?"
Rias smiled kindly at her, "We've just decided to have a training session, why don't you take Naruto-san with you and show him how hard you've been trying to get stronger?"
The expression on the girl's face reminded him of a rising sun.
Now that was just plain unfair.
****End Game****
Play D-51 – Famiglia
"You know, if you're going to just stand here and watch her like a crazy stalker, why don't you go ahead and join her, Uzumaki-senpai?"
The third year student idly scratched his chin as he watched the huffing Bishop run laps around the Academy track, "There's no reason for me to do it." He admitted, "Plus Rias only asked Asia to show me how much she has improved since then, she didn't say I had to join her."
"Probably because she knew you'd outright walk out of the clubroom if she tried to do that." Kiba conceded with a grin.
"At least I only had to do it twice before she wised up." Naruto agreed with a smirk, waving at the girl as she jogged past. Said girl sent him a beaming smile in return and then started to run even harder as she felt pride well up in her chest, "That said, if it's just me giving moral support to Asia, then I don't mind standing here and watching her like a crazy stalker, as you put so nicely."
"Doesn't it make you feel a little… embarrassed? Someone like her working so hard while you just stand around?" Kiba asked carefully.
"It's not going to work Kiba," the Uzumaki noted dryly, "My skin got a little too thick for little things like shame and guilt trips years ago."
His cheeks went a little red at being caught so easily, "Ah…."
Naruto only smirked at the lame response, "Still, it was a good try, particularly since I can tell you're not used to doing it. If you want, I'll lie to Rias and tell her you managed to persuade me to train a little to save you the trouble."
The swordsman laughed softly and eyed the taller blond for a moment, "That's alright, Uzumaki-senpai. There's no need for you to do something like that; I won't ever improve if I don't acknowledge my own failures after all."
"Are you sure?" Something flashed in the older blond's eyes, but he wasn't sure what it was, "You don't want to let her down do you?"
"I do not." The second year admitted softly with a firm, almost dangerous expression.
Naruto absently wondered if the younger boy was even aware of the latent energy in his hands, the latent power seemed to fluctuate, coalescing into a vaguely stick shaped form and then rapidly dispersing, as if he wished to stab something as he spoke.
"But more than that, it's your choice. Unlike me, you seem like you have a place to go back to. I do not have that option. Or rather, I didn't want to die just like that, like a weed thrown and trodden into the ground on the road side. I still have something I needed to do. That is why, while I would be happy if you joined, while I would welcome you as a trusted comrade, I would not scorn your choice regardless of Buchou's opinion."
The boy seemed to realize what he had been doing with his hands and visibly calmed himself before smiling wanly at the Uzumaki's thoughtful expression, "But if you feel that badly about it, why don't we have a spar? Think of it as you paying me back for the nagging I will no doubt get, eh?"
Sky blue eyes glanced at the shorter boy beside him and asked a simple question, "Why?"
Kiba smiled faintly as he suppressed the urge to chuckle at the innocently curious stare coming from the third year, "Honestly? I'm not sure. But rest assured that this has nothing to do with Buchou's request. I simply feel like if I fight you, I could understand you more."
Naruto cocked his head with a faint grin, "Alright."
Kiba blinked.
"What? Just like that?"
Naruto quirked one brow lazily, "Does that mean you don't want to spar anymore?"
"No, no!" Kiba began to scratch his head with a perplexed expression. He had simply thrown the idea out there just to change the topic. He had expected the blond to ignore it as he usually did; he had expected his senior to simply make fun of him. He had not expected the blond to actually accept, "Ah… Would you be insulted if I said that I was expecting you to reject my request right off the bat?"
The boy who was one year Kiba's senior simply furrowed his brow as if the thought had not even occurred to him, "Why would I do that? You asked me for something, and then you gave me a perfectly logical, if somewhat emotional, reason for your request. There was no reason for me to disagree."
"But Buchou…"
"…Chose to send you, Akeno, and I'll bet that I'll be seeing Koneko-chan sometime soon, to not-so-subtly persuade me that joining her is my best option, instead of coming to me and honestly presenting her argument about why she needs me to join her little group." The apprentice ramen chef cut Kiba off before he could defend his King.
"I was going to say that she did tell you that it would be dangerous for an unaffiliated Devil to be walking around without any protection. Especially a newborn one." Kiba pointed out wryly.
"That is irrelevant," Naruto lazily waved as Asia ran by again, "I do not care what she thinks about me. I care only what she thinks of herself."
"I don't really see the difference." Kiba admitted slowly, "In fact, I would even go as far as to say that there's nothing wrong with wanting to help you grow stronger or worrying about you. It's called being a decent person."
Naruto smiled disdainfully as he patted the boy's shoulder in a condescending manner, "No. That's not called being a decent person. It's called being a busybody."
Kiba furrowed his brow at the Uzumaki's almost scathing tone. Truth be told, although he didn't mind if Naruto chose to do something else with his life even if it meant that Rias would be down a Piece for future Rating Games, it wasn't entirely out of a sense of compassion. After all those years staying by her side, he had to admit that there was a part of him that believed that he had more than enough offensive power to handle anything as long as he kept training.
"I see…" Kiba slowly spread his feet apart and a long curved blade of beautifully tempered steel appeared in his hands, "That spar… I believe I'm going to have to insist on it now."
That perked Naruto's interest as he smirked as the temperature dropped around them from the swordsman's chilly visage, "Oh?"
Kiba chuckled and caressed the long Dai-Katana he was gripping by the waist in a classic iai-jutsu stance, "The difference between a decent person and a busybody. Let me show it to you."
The blond simply peered at the newly formed blade with undisguised interest, "That's certainly useful."
"My Sacred Gear, Sword Birth, is far more than useful. Coupled with my speed as a Knight, even my mentor has to focus if he wants to defeat me."
Naruto sighed wistfully, much to Yuutou's ire. It seemed to him that the blond wasn't even taking him seriously, "Must be nice never having to worry about finding more weapons."
"That's not all it can do."
There was less than 2 meters between them. Even just simply swinging his katana would probably be enough to swiftly cut into the Uzumaki's neck and decapitate him.
"My swords are far more than simple blades one picks off the ground."
It took less than two tenths of a second to move into position behind the unwary third year, far faster than most humans could see.
It took another tenth of a second for the blade to leave his grip, its tempered blade shone brightly in the afternoon sun. The force within however, was anything but bright. The bloodlust howled in his ear and drove his arm to move even faster, it pumped him with enough strength to cleave whole walls into two and it sought the Uzumaki's neck on its own volition.
"Ah. I thought it felt weird. So it was alive after all."
[CLANG!]
The blond swordsman's eyebrow slowly rose as he stared at his blade.
Or at least what remained of his blade. His eyes slid along the sharp, wavy tempered line of his blade, keenly feeling the slowly receding demonic presence within howl in pain, in anger, until his eyes reached the part where it had been completely shattered by a single finger.
Perhaps shatter wasn't the right word.
His sword had impacted a finger.
Then instead of being wounded, the finger had plowed through demonic metal, his blade breaking itself on skin and flesh like waves crashing onto a stone wall.
This wasn't his best creation, it wasn't even average. He had wanted to test Naruto's capabilities only after all, and maybe scare him a little into taking his training more seriously by showing him a pale imitation of what he would have faced in the Rating Games, that Rias' concerns were very much valid, but certainly not behead him.
That said, each one of his swords were a creation of his soul, a crystallization of his belief, and a stark reminder of what he had lost. His pride in them was so absolute that even the mere thought of creating a faulty sword was abhorrent to the young swordsman. Even if this particular sword could not match the offensive potential contained within some of his better creations, it was still durable enough to take immense amounts of punishment before breaking, and it had been formed in the image of the long DaiKatana his own mentor had favored.
Then said appendage had poked him in the chest, its owner smiling faintly, and his chest exploded in a shower of blood, gore and bone.
Kiba Yuutou felt himself die that day.
Then he woke up with a gasp.
Panting heavily, he clutched at the phantom pain in his chest, only to find his torso in perfectly fine condition, standing exactly where he had been before the fight had started.
He stared at the blond, who had chosen to simply sit down on the grass, his legs folded as he played with a blade of grass.
The very picture of a non-threatening, harmless student.
"That… I.. I died?"
"Did you now?" Naruto replied easily as he continued to fiddle with the plant, "Must've been a nightmare."
"That's... an interesting technique…. When did you..." Then he blinked as realization hit him, "You touched my shoulder…."
"Not bad." The other person on that hill replied with an impish smile as he flicked the grass away, "You're quite smart aren't you. You still have to work on your durability though, most people usually only go down after two or three or those. You were only hit by one by you already have problems standing straight."
Kiba flushed, and proceeded to ignore the blond's assessment of him, "What you said… that was on purpose wasn't it? Why?"
Naruto cocked his head to one side with a measuring look, "I take that back. You're sharper than I thought. Not even Akeno noticed."
Kiba gently began to chuckle as he continued to stare at the blond, somewhat unsure about his new comrade, "Illusion-type Sacred Gears are absurdly rare," He said slowly, "But Akeno-sempai said you didn't have one."
"I don't" Naruto pointed out with another lazy wave at the cheery girl as she ran pass them, completely unaware of what had just happened. Thoughtfully, he plucked another grass and began to weave it around his fingers absent mindedly. Despite what he had said, most people only went down after two or three illusions because he wasn't particularly good at using them. Against people of Kakashi's level, it would probably considered an itch at best, but there had been a reason he had used it here. Mostly to see if his illusions worked at all, and to test the boy's reaction to being caught in one. So far, it appeared that illusionists were depressingly rare here, which was good since it meant that there was just as few counters, but he still had more tests to do before he could be absolutely sure genjutsu remained as potent as it once did.
Kiba glanced at the timer, as far as he could tell, not even a second had passed after he had been caught in an illusion.
"You would make a damn good Bishop if you weren't a Pawn." Kiba finally decided.
The other blond who had not moved an inch seemed to jerk a little as if he had been surprised. Then he calmly folded his arms again with an annoyed sigh as he cocked his head again.
"Whoever said I was a Pawn?"
"You're not?"
Naruto shrugged uncaringly, "No one bothered to tell me, and I couldn't be bothered to ask either. In fact, now that I think about it, that's probably a good thing. The less I know the better."
Kiba frowned as he tried to recall his conversations with his King. Now that he thought about it, it was obvious that Rias had never explicitly mentioned what Piece she had used to revive the older blond, and he had simply assumed that Naruto was a Pawn because he had been introduced at the same time as Ise. That the blond himself hadn't been bothered to display any of the innate abilities a Piece would have granted him, probably helped the charade alive, though Kiba suspected that that was mostly because he didn't need them to wreck Ise's face given the strange way he fought.
If you could call nailing someone's crotch with a kick from behind 'fighting' that is.
Kiba still winced at the memory.
Unable to come up with a response to his statement, Kiba decided to let the issue lie. There was no rush anyway; it would still be a number of years before they were actually required to participate actively in an official Rating Game, plenty of time to persuade the older blond of changing his mind. His eyes crinkled happily at the thought of having a good spar with his senior in the near future.
"Your teachers must've been very good. I would have loved to meet them."
"I doubt you would." Naruto shrugged with a grimace, but Kiba noted that the glint in his eyes suggested far more affection than his expression did, "Two of them were unrepentant perverts and the third was a crazy alcoholic with a temper to match. If I wasn't so tough, I probably would have died several times over before I learnt a thing. Actually, scratch that. I did die several times."
"Ah." Kiba said awkwardly.
What did someone say to that anyway?
Thankfully he was saved from saying anything more as both of them heard the light steps of someone small.
"…Yuutou-sempai… Uzumaki-sempai." The small silvery white haired girl stopped short of the tree they were standing under and bowed courteously.
Kiba vaguely heard the other blond mutter something about being a bloody prophet and he couldn't help it.
He began to laugh.
Waving at Asia cheerily, Kiba spun around and began to walk away with a happy whistle, pausing only murmur a quick good luck to the smaller girl.
"There is something seriously wrong with that guy." Naruto mumbled.
"…He wants to be friends." The slight white haired girl commented lightly.
"And I want to be left alone. But we don't always get what we want, do we?" Naruto dryly rebutted in return, "Incidentally, how can I help you?"
"I have a message for Argento-sempai." Her voice had a soft, lilting yet sleepy quality to it, and he couldn't help but pet her head with some affection. Said girl shot him a tiny pout, apparently not liking being treated like a child before approaching the puffing Bishop.
Naruto simply folded his arms again and sighed as he leaned against the tree, watching as the two girls quickly speak. The nun briefly looked down a little before Koneko said something else, then she perked right back up. Waving at him happily, she bounced away, much to Naruto's amusement.
"Buchou gave her an assignment as a Devil." Koneko murmured quietly by way of explanation, "She also said that Hyoudou-kun could go with her if she wanted."
"I didn't ask," Naruto pointed out wryly, "But thanks."
Nodding, she silently moved besides Naruto and daintily sat down on the grass next to him, much to his amusement. Unlike with Kiba who he noted liked to ask probing questions or Asia… who liked to pray, Koneko seemed more than content to simply watch the birds fly above them and let the silence reign between them, her eyes lost in thought. She didn't seem like the kind for idle chatter, preferring instead to choose her words carefully.
Naruto found that he preferred it much more over Ise's constant attempts to convert the blond into a believer of boobs, but that wasn't really saying much.
"Buchou asked me to persuade you to join me while I learn magic with HImejima-sempai." Koneko finally murmured, each word spilling from her lips sounding as if it had been mulled over at least three times before she finally chose it.
The blond glanced at the petite girl who had not spoken for maybe an hour, "And are you going to do that?"
The small girl expressionlessly lifted her eyes up to meet his, and then she slowly shook her head.
"Oh?" Naruto scratched his chin with a sly look at the small girl, "Why don't you tell her that you couldn't find me? I'm fairly sure I can hide from Akeno. That way you won't get scolded even if she finds out."
Her amber orbs flickered with slight amusement for a moment, and then she shrugged as if to say that she didn't care what he did about it.
"Come."
Slipping her tiny hand into his, she got up with a cat-like grace, and proceeded to pull him along with surprising strength.
The blond who did not seem unfazed at all by the sudden turn of events simply quirked one eyebrow as the small girl who didn't even come up to his chest led him along a few corridors. The thought that she might be leading him to where Akeno was didn't even cross his mind.
Their footsteps echoed through the empty corridor. It was already after school so there was no one left in the school, or so they had thought until Naruto's ears perked up at the sound of a little girl's giggling.
"Nee-san!" Somebody familiar called out tiredly, "Can you please stop playing around?"
A small black haired girl, tied into two pig tails that flounced as she appeared at the other end of the corridor and blew a raspberry at someone hidden outside their line of sight. Her lips were smeared with several different flavors of ice cream and she was holding yet another pink one, "I came here just to spend time with you, but you just want to talk about serious things. Souna no baka!"
A familiar looking girl appeared as she turned the same corner. Souna Sitri's posture was regal, but Naruto could see the slight slump of irritation in her shoulders while a hassled looking Saji tried to catch up with her, "Nee-san. Please stop running. I'll play with you, just promise to listen to me after that?"
Behind the two of them was a vaguely amused Rias. He was not sure why that surprised him.
"Serafall-san," She said with a tone far politer than anything he had ever heard from her, "What your sister makes sense, the sooner you finish your work, the sooner you can play of course."
"Yo."
All three of them stopped to look at the person who was waving at them from the floor, then did a classic double take.
"Naruto…?"
"Yes?"
"Why are you upside down?"
The blond who was doing a handstand lifted one hand to scratch his chin, "I was bored."
"You were... Of course you were." Rias rubbed her temples wearily.
"Yup." Naruto nodded casually before righting himself in one smooth motion and pointed at the small girl beside him who did not look surprised at all, "Chibi Neko didn't want to tell me where we were going, so I began to walk backwards so it would be a surprise. But that didn't work, so I tried to walk on my hands as well."
Sona leaned closer to her friend, "Is he always…. like that?"
"He's… usually fairly level headed." Rias stifled a sob, "Unless he gets bored. Then he tends to go off on weird tangents. On one such occasion, I caught him arguing with his nipples."
Sona blinked, she couldn't have heard that right.
"His… nipples?" She tried again unsurely.
"He was trying to convince them that they didn't exist, since male nipples had… no purpose."
Rias looked like she was about to cry now.
"Ah…"
"Who's that funny guy?" The small black haired girl with twin tails, apparently annoyed with being ignored, asked in an obnoxiously loud voice.
"Ah…" Rias flushed a little, "That's one of my Pieces, Serafall-san. His name is Naruto Uzumaki."
Naruto cocked his head as Rias talked to the small girl with respect, "Is that someone I should know?"
"…That is Serafall Leviathan, formerly Sitri." Koneko explained quietly as the three girls began to not-so-quietly argue again, "… Souna Sitri's older sister but she lost the right to be an heir of Sitri when she accepted the responsibility of being one of the Four Great Satans, taking the title of Leviathan in the process. She's a little carefree, even compared to you, but when she gets serious, she can easily destroy the whole of Japan several times over."
"I just wanted to play a bit, but you were being mean! Bleh!" the small girl ran over to the tallest person there and hid behind his legs.
"Play!?" Souna's eyes widened incredulously, "You were just taking the opportunity to skip out on work again!"
"Lovely. A sisterly quarrel." Naruto commented flatly as he ignored the small girl clinging to the back of his trousers, "And I'm stuck right in the middle. Do I need to duck when the two of you start throwing things at each other?"
"U-Uzumaki-san. I didn't notice you were here." Souna muttered with a faint flush at acting out so childishly in front of a near stranger.
"That's right! You tell her!" The small girl chirped from behind him.
"I'm telling BOTH of you to be quiet." The blond stated flatly. His hand seemed to automatically pluck the ice cream out of her hand.
"Hey! That's my-"
"Be quiet."
"Who do you think you're telling to be quiet?!"
"Be. Quiet."
Even Sona blinked at the unfamiliar note of steel in his command.
Almost subconsciously, Serafall's mouth shut with an audible click and she stood there with wide eyes as she stared at the strange, much taller blond.
Nodding, Naruto brought out a handkerchief and began to wipe away the smears on her lips. He didn't even seem like he realized what he was doing as he tucked her shirt into her skirt properly.
At the other end of the corridor, Rias just stared at the two of them disbelievingly, "Does he even know exactly who he's treating like a child?"
"… He probably wouldn't care even if he does know how powerful or influential the Four Great Satans are." Koneko noted.
"You know, it's probably wrong of me, but I find myself looking forward to being there so I can see his expression when he finds out that Serafall is not quite as little as she likes to appear as." The crimson haired girl murmured with a smirk.
Somebody urgently tugged on Rias' sleeve, "I want him." Souna whispered with a wild look in her eyes, "Give him to me. I don't care if he's a nut job, I'll even trade Saji for him."
"KAICHOU?!"
Koneko noted that the look of utter betrayal on both Rias' and the Pawn's faces were quite amusing.
"What?! No!"
"Why?! Why not? You'll get two Dragons and I'll get somebody who can make my sister listen with two words even if he does walk around backwards on his hands. As far I'm concerned, that's a good deal."
"KAICHOU!"
Both of them ignored Saji's chagrined cries.
Red eyebrows twitched at the desperate look in her friend's eyes, "No." She said resolutely, "You're not getting him even if you hand over your whole House. He's MY nut job!"
Behind them, they heard the blond and the small girl approaching, "Now, there's nothing wrong with having fun, but listen to your sister first. Once you've finished everything, you can play, but don't eat too much ice cream."
Serafall nodded mutely at the lecture, her wide eyed stare still on the blond boy as she held onto his sleeve.
Calmly, Naruto detached her grip on his sleeve, and handed the little girl to Souna, "Here you go Kaichou." He bowed politely, "Have a good day."
Then in front of the three of them, he flipped back onto his hands and started walking backwards again with a clearly amused Koneko trailing behind him.
As the strange duo left, Serafall's eyes stayed on the upside down blond the entire time until they rounded a corner.
****End Game****
"Wow." Naruto let out an amazed breath. He did not consider himself an easily surprised person everything he had gone through, but this was in a class of its own, "What is this place?"
As far as he could tell, it used to be a class room, situated right on the other end of the clubhouse that housed the Occult Club. Only it wasn't a class room anymore. The roof had been punched through and large sheets of tough glass moved into place. Walls and desks had been converted into pot holders that contained multiple plants that he had never even seen before, both here, and back home. Big, small, innocuous or otherwise, his first glance alone identified at least 20 twenty different ones.
Including one with tentacles.
There was barely a spot of cement left that could be seen by the naked eye.
A warm smile lit up the petite girl's face, the first he had seen on her stoic face today, as she watched the blond look around her own little secret garden of sorts, "Plants… I like them. Buchou and Himejima-sempai let me use this room… they even helped me build it."
"I don't think I've even seen some of these." Naruto muttered to himself absent mindedly as he let his feet carry him through the room.
"It would be strange if you had…" The small nekomata mumbled with a hint of embarrassment at the awed stare he was giving her plants. Although they weren't anywhere rare or exotic enough to evoke such emotions, it still gave her a sense of pride that someone would admire her work so much, "A lot of them come from the Devil world. Where I grew up."
All at once, a surprised Koneko jerked back as she suddenly found herself nose to nose with a rather dreamy eyed blond who she could have sworn had been standing on the other side of the room barely a moment ago, "Do you know how I can get my hands on some of these?" A massive shit eating grin spread his lips and his eyes glazed over dreamily, "The stuff I can make with these….heheh…."
Around the world, and in several others as well, several people felt a shiver of foreboding run down their spines and felt a sudden urge to pray to their own individual Gods to spare them from the misfortune of meeting a certain maniac who may or may not poison them for shits and giggles.
"… Ah…" Koneko gave him a small, uncertain smile, "If you don't mind, I have some shoots or seeds that you can use."
The dreamy gaze slowly faded away as the Uzumaki cast a curious eye on her, "And why would you do something like that? I do not imagine these were easy to come by."
"To thank you."
Naruto blinked. No one had actually thanked him in a while. It was a surprisingly strange alien concept to him.
"Oh."
He slowly knelt down so that he was eye level with the petite first year, no longer quite so flippant.
"And what did I do to deserve a thanks like this?"
"You saved me," She replied softly and deliberately met his eyes, "I underestimated that Exorcist. Under normal circumstances, my agility is one of my best advantages; to slip through a person's defense and then land a decisive hit with my strength as a Rook. That has always been the way I've fought, but his speed and experience far surpassed my own agility and strength."
Her sempai cocked his head. Neither speaking nor considering her words, he was simply paying attention to her words, something she was rather grateful for. Speaking this much was already hard enough for someone like her without another person interjecting all the time.
"I went in believing in my own abilities and they were proven to be severely lacking. That is no one's fault but my own for being so confident I could help my friend without support. It was only because of you that we all left that place hurt, but alive." She looked away with pink tinted cheeks, "So… thank you. For coming when you didn't need to."
Naruto nodded slowly and lifted one hand to pet her, "If I said that I only came because Rias forced me, would it make any difference?"
Her big amber orbs peered thoughtfully up at him, and then she shook her head.
"Why not?"
"Because you would have come regardless."
"Although… I think your faith is misplaced," He smiled crookedly as she pouted again, "I guess it would be impolite to accept your gift. Though I have to ask, how did you know I would like these?"
The petite girl flushed faintly, "Ah… You smell like herbs and flowers. So I knew you spent a lot of time with plants. If so, I figured you would probably appreciate a few new ones that are not native to this world."
The blond grinned widely, "So you were sniffing me all this time?"
The nekomata went as still as stone while a deep red blush crept up her cheeks.
"Eep."
And the blond went equally as still while he stared at the small girl who was covering her face with her palms.
Koneko squeaked again as the blond suddenly swept her up in a bear hug.
"What kind of pyjamas do you like?" He asked the girl dangling in mid air with a straight face.
The tiny girl stared back at him incredulously, "…. Fluffy ones?" She answered him uncertainly.
He nodded. "I see."
"Can… you let me down?"
"No."
"… Why?"
"I've decided I'm going to adopt you."
"Eh?"
"You're just too adorable to leave alone."
"Ehh?"
"You may now call me Onii-sama if you want to."
"Ehhh?"
"Though I prefer Onii-chan just as much."
"Ehhhh?"
****End Game****
Play EGOIST – Euterpe
Akeno looked up from her book as the door to her classroom slid open.
"In the end, they didn't come huh?"
She briefly glanced at her best friend who was leaning on the door frame with her arms folded then returned to her book and idly turned the page, "No they did not. Then again I didn't expect them to."
The raven haired princess felt her friend slide into the chair beside her with a heavy sigh.
"I take it that the meeting with Serafall-sama did not go very well?"
Rias grunted tiredly, "It went about as well as it could have. At least she didn't freeze the whole school again this time."
"The benefits of being someone important I suppose." Akeno simply hummed quietly in reply as her friend fidgeted restlessly.
"Important and annoying." The girl whose red hair covered her face like a blood soaked ghost grunted.
"I meant you, but now that I think about it, it fits just as well." Akeno affectionately snarked at her friend.
"Bitch." Rias threw a piece of stationery at the other girl who simply leaned out of the way and idly turned another page.
"Slut." She shot back just as amiably.
Rias rolled her eyes and stood up abruptly, knocking the chair back.
For her part, Akeno didn't even flinch as the girl began walking around the class room. She was well used to her friend's antics by now.
She was far more content to simply focus on her book. A day off with nothing to do was something of a rarity for her.
The red haired girl casually walked around the class room, letting her finger slide across the smooth wooden tops of the desks. She actually rarely came to this class, sometimes it was because of she was busy, but most of the time it was because Akeno was the one that came looking for her in the other class.
Her musings stopped when she came to the back of the class. It was standing by itself, alone, all the other desks had been pushed away as if the owner was particularly diseased. The top of the desk was heavily graffitied and dirty.
She placed one hand on the desk and she felt her anger flare at the almost lonely air hanging around the back of the room. Almost instinctively, she knew the desk, belonged to a certain blond.
Pursing her lips, she slowly rounded the desk, and graceful sat down.
To her left, was the class dustbin, to her right, the cupboard where all the dirty mops and brooms were stored.
From here, all she could see….
Were people turning their backs on him.
Her nostrils flared as her anger threatened to overtake her.
How dare they.
The wood under her progressively tightening grip cracked loudly and a book fell out of the table.
Akeno looked up as she heard her name being called.
"Hmm?"
"You mentioned that Naruto has pretty bad grades didn't you?"
"The worst."
"Ah…"
"Why do you ask?"
"Just… curious. Exactly what does he do in class?"
"Ignore the teacher for one. Or doze off. Or…"
"Or scribble in books?"
"Or scribble in books." Akeno agreed. Then she blinked, "Wait a minute. How did you know that?"
She placed her own book down and turned around to see the girl sitting at a desk, right at the very back of the class room.
"How did you touch that?" Akeno immediately asked warily.
Rias looked up with a confused furrow between her brows, "What do you mean? It's was just sitting here."
"He leaves it there on purpose because he knows they want to hurt him." The dark haired girl explained slowly as she approached the girl, "But no one has ever been able to touch that book without something strange happening to them. Plenty have tried. Just as many have gone to the hospital."
Rias glared at her.
Her best friend actually glared at her.
"And you let it happen?"
"I did not know myself until recently." The half angel, half demon frowned and looked away, "They don't exactly invite me to bully someone, though I did wonder why so many people kept going to the hospital for strange reasons. All I knew was that he didn't like to mix, so I left him alone unless there was something I needed from him. Besides, I figured if he could give as good as he could take, then there was no reason for me to interfere."
Rias rubbed her nose wearily.
Silently, she placed the thick book on the table and turned it to the later pages.
Her best friend quirked one brow and breathed out a half amused, half exasperated sigh.
She didn't even know he could draw a straight line, much less create the pencil and pen sketch splashed across two A4 sized pages.
It was typical of a high school boy she mused as she ran a finger along the exaggerated battle scene splashed on the two pages, like it had been plucked straight out of a manga. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the stick figure with yellow buzz lines for hair was meant to be the main character. Or that it was apparently as annoying as its creator. A fact that was currently being made known to a black haired boy with strange red eyes and a frown plastered onto his face if the dialogue bubbles filled with remarks about his lack of testicles was any indication.
She could sympathize with the black haired boy.
Akeno turned the pages backwards and frowned.
There were a lot of battles, she noted, almost of all of them were fantastical, almost imaginary. Fire, wind, earth and lightning were thrown around with impunity. And then there were silly, over the top characters that broke mountains and beat gigantic beasts with fists alone. Sometimes, there were notes at the bottom. Notes that led into long and more often than not, complicated calculations so far beyond even her ability to understand that they could not have been real; like the one where a grey haired man with a half mask was easily dodging another man in a spiral mask who threw orbs around. The notes below seemed to be an argument about how exactly one would go about breaking down a fighting style, along with a detailed, almost perfect diagram of a human's anatomy as well as how each muscle responds to a movement and more importantly, how to disable it.
The half fallen angel smiled faintly, if she didn't know any better, she would have said that the whimsical blond had actually been trying to replicate the techniques he had dreamed up in his own manga.
Then she turned the page to find, not a battle scene, but a surprisingly simple picture of a stick figure sitting on a tree trunk with a jolly looking old man with frizzy white hair, a big red hat and a wide warm smile as they shared a bowl of noodles.
Despite herself, she couldn't the faint smile at the sheer warmth radiating from the picture.
She turned the page again and followed the stick figure through the pages.
Sometimes, it was strange man with a half face mask and a familiar, lazy looking expression. Akeno realized with a start that she had seen that exact same lazy expression that very morning, along with the exact same casual hand wave.
Other times, it was a big, muscled old man. His white hair was frizzy and tied in a rough pony tail, with strange marks going down his face. His lips were stretched wide, as if he was sharing a joke with the stick figure beside him as they ate ice cream.
The third such sketch was different. Unlike the earlier three, it was a woman; yellow highlights ran down her long locks that did nothing to obscure her good looks. Though there was nothing good about her looks at that moment. Her face was twisted in a comically murderous rage as she chased after the obviously suicidal stick figure who seemed to be waving a bottle of sake at her like one would wave a red flag at a charging bull.
When she turned to the next page, it was with a start that she realized she had reached the first two pages. The first one seemed to be a sketch of a kindergarten of some sort, where a black haired boy and a pink haired girl was drawn prominently. Between them was the same stick figure with fuzzy yellow lines for hair with a huge slash across his face for a stupid grin.
Then she turned to the first page, and her breath caught.
It was a small city, splashed across two pages.
An ordinary one with buildings, a small but noticeable red tower in the middle, and all of it set to a background of a mountain, with five faces carved into its rocky surface.
But what stood wasn't those, it wasn't the sheer detail the blond had managed to add to the buildings, down to the last dirty smudge, or the beautiful sunset he had drawn.
It was the people littered around the picture, simple people going about their lives.
The look on their stenciled faces, no matter how minute, was as detailed, as bright, and as vibrant as the smiles on their faces. She could practically feel the sheer depth of emotions pouring from that one sketch.
Happiness.
Despair.
Hope.
Loneliness.
With one shaking hand, she touched the tower in the middle of the picture.
In the middle of it, sitting on the top of the red tower was a stick figure that stood out in that unearthly painting like a sore thumb precisely because it was nothing but a crudely drawn stick figure, the same one that had kept reappearing in his other works. The only indication of the stick figure's identity was the yellow buzz lines that probably signified hair.
She glanced at the top of the page, and realized that painting had been created on the first day she had entered this school.
The same day he had entered this school.
At first she had assumed that the stick character was probably his main character, and had only been drawn as such simply because he had not decided on a design.
Now she realized it was probably because he saw his main character in the mirror every day.
At first she had assumed he was simply ignoring the teacher so he could draw his manga for a lark.
Now she realized the blond had not just been drawing on a whim, but desperately imprinting his memories onto paper before they faded away.
Across from her, Rias was steadfastly staring out the window, biting her lower lip so hard it had began to bleed as she clutched the table's edges, as if to stop herself from going on a murderous rampage.
It did nothing to stop her tears.
Akeno felt a lump form in her throat.
Never had she hated herself more for being just another bystander right then.
****End Game****
"Ah, Naruto, you're here."
The third year who had been on his way to the courtyard heard the call and turned around. Seeing the two other third years of the Occult Club, he gave them a lazy wave as a greeting, "Yo."
The two of them stopped and stared at the blond who was carrying a blank faced Koneko on his shoulder like a sack of potatos.
"Buchou, can you please make Uzumaki-san put me down?" The girl on his shoulder politely requested, "It is… uncomfortable up here."
Anyone else would have laughed or chuckled at her straight face or the utterly deadpan tone in which her words had been delivered, but seeing as Koneko had been in Rias' family for nearly a decade now, she immediately picked up the warning signs, such as the minute twitching of her nose, and her slightly poofed up hair, like a cat raising its hackles.
If she had a tail as well, Rias had no doubt it would be waving around angrily.
Ignoring her completely, the tall man playfully tapped her nose, causing Koneko to quickly shrink away with a quiet hiss.
"Not Uzumaki-san. O-nii-chan. Say it."
Her blank stare intensified to murderous levels.
"No."
"Naruto, put her down." Rias said with a sigh as she tried to rub away the headache developing in her temples.
"You suck, Rias." The blond said with a pout as he let Koneko down.
Giving him one last subtle glare, the petite girl quickly ran away while Akeno tried, and failed, to smile at their antics.
The crimson haired girl sighed again and pierced him a stern glare, "And why exactly were you annoying my Rook?"
"Because it was amusing."
"That's it?"
"Mostly." Naruto cocked his head with a half smile, "She also talked more in that 5 minutes on my shoulder than I've heard her say in the few months I've been acquainted with her."
Then again, most of what she had said hadn't exactly been polite.
Rias pursed her lips at that. The blond actually had a decent point.
"Hmm?" The blond leaned a little closer when he saw her pursed lips, "What happened?"
"What do you mean?"
"Your eyes are red and your lips were bleeding." He narrowed his eyes. From the cut was shaped, he could tell that it had been self inflicted, but he decided to keep that to himself for now.
Rias pressed her lips together and peered up at him, a strange emotion she did not recognize bubbling up in her chest as she gave him a troubled look.
No matter how she tried to look at it, the carefree seeming blond simply didn't look like he had a single trouble in the world, much less….
Mentally shoving her own troubled thoughts aside, she suddenly slid closer and link the confused blond's elbow with hers.
"Let's go for dinner." She declared without any of the earlier uncertainty he had seen in her, "All of us."
"Don't wanna." He refused her instantly, "I'm broke."
"I'll pay."
"I got work."
"Then we'll have dinner where you're working."
A sweat drop ran down his temple.
"Can you at least let my arm go?"
"So you can run away? No."
"You… you're not letting this go are you?"
"Nope."
****End Game****
"Hai, 3 Miso Ramen and 3 Kitsunedon coming up." The blond declared as he expertly slid five bowls down the counter, each one arriving exactly in front of the person who had ordered. Wiping his hands on his apron, Naruto leaned against his side of the counter with an exasperated smile at them.
The whole occult club... all six of the annoying idiots.
"Hurry up and eat, then leave." The blond said shortly as they all dug in with various pleased expressions, "Except Koneko. She can stay."
The small girl edged further away from him with a wary look even as she guarded her own bowl of steaming noodles.
"Oi, oi, is that how you treat your customers?" The old man puffing on a cigarette behind him smacked Naruto's head.
"What customers? You're not even letting them pay so this is going to come out my pay either way." the blond grumbled, "Besides, the shop is empty other than them."
The bent and grey haired man chuckled, "You're lucky I pay you at all with the amount you eat. Six is nothing compared to what you put down in a day."
The blond flushed embarrassedly as the old man spooned out another bowl, "Here, you go ahead and eat with your friends. Don't worry about the shop."
Grunting, the blond circled the counter before sitting beside Issei with his bowl of Miso Ramen.
"A-Ano…" Asia twiddled with her thumbs as she tried to get to know the blond better, "Why don't you find another job instead of this ramen place if you don't get enough pay?"
"I did." He replied indifferently, "I tried to work at a convenience store once. But when my first customer came in, she was shouting at her two kids. The two of them looked so pitiful that I had to do something, so I followed the manual and greeted her, 'Good day and welcome to our store. You have very nice children, are they twins?' She replied, 'Hell no, are you blind or stupid? The brats are 9 and 7, how can they be twins?' The manual said to always be honest, so I told her what I thought, 'I'm not blind or stupid, I just couldn't believe someone was dumb enough to sleep with you twice.'"
He paused with a vaguely confused look, "My supervisor advised me to never try and work in the service industry ever again."
Ise who was between them, sweat dropped, "Yeah… that totally sounds like you."
"Eat your food Ise." The blond told him blithely as he mentally reminded himself to make a clone and bring his unwilling guest some of the ramen he had made.
"You're done ALREADY?! I WAS WATCHING YOU THE WHOLE TIME!"
A very clean, and very much empty bowl sat in front of Naruto who was relaxing at the counter smirked coyly, twirling a pair of chopsticks in one hand until they looked like miniature fans, "It's a trade secret."
On the other side of the counter, Rias and Akeno looked up as the old man approached them. Sliding a small plate of dumplings to them, he grinned at them, "The two of you pretty young ladies are his class mates arentcha? This is on the house then."
Rias nodded politely with a winning smile, "Thank you for your consideration, Ojii-san." She glanced down the table to where Yuuto and Issei were teasing the blond, "You seem to be much nicer than he makes you out to be."
The gnarled old man snorted, "He probably thinks I'm just being a pervert for asking him to bring you around, but I just wanted to see him mixing with other people for once. I've never seen him bring a single person from school over once."
Akeno's lips twisted as if she was uncertain how to approach the issue she had in mind, "Then you should talk to him about being more polite and courteous. In class, almost no one can stand him precisely because he's so…. prickly and uncaring, even if they want to make friends with him."
"Ma, ma," the old man patted her shoulder gently, "Maybe it was his fault and maybe it wasn't, but you see it a lot you know. Someone like you excels in school right? Even that brown haired boy knows how to handle it. Your biggest worry is probably grades and your future while he just wants to be a horny pervert or games or pocket money. The students at your school are probably worried about dates or grades, or even jobs, but Naruto-chan doesn't float that way. It's like those war vets you always see at the coffee shop in the corner."
The man's rolling Kobe dialect flowed thickly as he talked with a wise smile, "They've spent so much time worrying about how to deal with the battlefield they just don't know how to handle being normal again." He held up a hand to stem their questions before it came, "I'm not saying he was in a war or something. Maybe he was, or maybe it's something far more important than that, maybe its love, or even death. I don't know which one it is because he won't tell even me, but you can tell he doesn't have any idea why everyone else worries about those little problems anymore. So he doesn't know how to react."
A long moment of silence stretched as Rias played with her noodles thoughtfully, "Have you... known him for long, Ojii-san?"
"No, no," he waved one gnarled and liver spotted hand with a gummy smile, "Probably bout 4 years, give or take a few months. I still remember him then. It was Christmas Eve, and I was about to close the shop early because no one was coming to this old place. At the time I heard glass breaking so I went behind the back with an old broom just in case." He waved a hand around the tiny ramen hut with a self-depreciating smile, "As you can see, there's not much to steal here so I was wondering who was stupid enough to try."
The old man sucked on his cigarette before blowing a cloud of smoke away from them with a relaxed sigh, "That was when I found this lost looking thief running through my pantry. He was dirty and he looked like he hadn't eaten in days. Almost cried when I gave him a bowl of ramen instead, said he didn't want to steal but he had no money and no one wanted to help a foreign looking kid like him. Apparently he didn't have any identification or family and his dialect was so thick I could barely understand him then. I decided then to let him just work here, the pay's not much but at least it was something I could do to help the boy. He smiled then, and even though he filled out a little since then, sometimes I get the impression Naruto-chan never really recovered from what happened to him."
"But… he always seems so confident though," Rias said unsurely, her earlier problem making itself known again as she struggled to reconcile the Naruto the old man was describing to the one that had blown into her life with an unflappable smirk and an ever flat voice as if nothing ever surprised him, "like he always knows what to do, always aware of everything. He didn't even seem to regret going to school even though no one seems to like him there."
"And sometimes, it's the brightest of smiles that hides the darkest pasts." The old man replied wisely, "Even if he looks alright on the outside, there's this atmosphere around him that just screams that he doesn't know what to do with his life no more. So he decided to go through school and then work at a 9-5 job, but that's not what he should be doing. It would kill him; you can tell that he just doesn't belong to what we would consider a normal life. Naruto-chan says he doesn't care about that since there's nothing else to do. He didn't even worry or brood, just up and went at it like nobody's business but today's the first time since then that I've seen him smile like that again."
On the other side of the table, Naruto had a wry, crooked smile on his face as he booted Ise away from him and onto Kiba.
"How would you know?" Akeno suddenly said with a strange glint in her eyes, "He's always so unmotivated, so unwilling to put any effort into this, that it's hard to believe that he's actually taking us seriously."
"He's still here isn't he?"
The old man grinned, "If there's one thing I know about him, it's that you can't make him do something he doesn't want to no matter what you offer him. He'll just sort of meander around, making excuses to stay."
He blew out a cloud of grey smoke again.
"He's interested, make no mistake. But the question here is if you can motivate him enough to go beyond that."
****End Game****
Play Fairy Tail - Main Theme Slow
"Thanks for letting me stay for the night, Rias." The blond yawned as he took off his dress shirt in a changing room connected to the bedroom he had been given for the night, "It was getting late and walking back to that shed would have been a real pain in the ass."
"That's alright," The red haired girl called out from outside the changing room, "I needed to talk to you anyway."
'"Hmmm? What about?" Naruto called out lazily as he opened to the door to his room and instantly stopped short, his eyebrows shot up so high they were in danger of disappearing into his long bangs.
Sprawled out on his bed with her red hair fanning out around her like rivers of blood on the white linen, was Rias Gremory. Long creamy legs scythed tantalizingly as a simple white blanket hide her torso.
He liked red.
Rias gave him a sultry look, "Like what you see?"
He REALLY liked red.
"I certainly don't mind the view." The blond commented as his eyes dragged along her slender arms, the top of her shoulders were exposed and the look in her eyes was inviting.
Then his iron will snapped back into place and he sighed, a bit of regret tingeing his tone.
"However, I am sleepy, please get out."
"Join me."
"If you won't leave, I will."
"And why are you in such a hurry to leave?"
"…I'm late for a meeting."
"With?"
"With… my doctor…."
"Why?" the crimson haired girl sitting on his bunk asked placidly.
"Stress induced diarrhea." Naruto deadpanned, "Now can I go? I need to get away from the source of my stress."
"And what is that?"
"It's sitting on my bed and looking pretty at the moment while my stress levels hit the ceiling."
"Are you really going to run away from a weak, defenseless girl? Even if she's practically throwing herself at you?"
"I'm not sure if she realizes exactly the meaning of what she's throwing at me." Naruto said, the finality in his tone ended any further retorts.
As he turned around to leave, Rias made a mistake. Reaching out for him, she grabbed his shoulder when the blond reacted. Grasping her wrist in a steely grip, he pushed her onto the bed.
His blue eyes were burning as he loomed above her as he whispered, "I'm not like Issei, running away at the last second. If you're offering, make sure you damn well know what you are offering, or you might lose more than you gain."
"And I'm offering you everything. Take my body if you like it." Rias purred, her body writhing under his as his arm pinned hers above her.
"You don't really care about the value of your flesh do you?" Naruto observed with a burning gaze as he towered over the girl, his breath playing on her earlobe seductively, "Otherwise you wouldn't have tried the same thing on me that you did on Issei."
"Not particularly, I know that it does of course, but I've never understood why it's considered attractive." the crimson haired girl admitted huskily, her ruby red eyes were peering deep into his crystal blue ones, "but I might as well use it if I have it."
"And that is precisely why you don't have my loyalty."
The large, rough palm that pinned her hands above her suddenly let go with a light chuckle and back away, leaving Rias to feel strangely stranded and empty. Rias went a little wild eyed at the rejection and was about to protest when she felt him sinking into the downy bed beside her, hooking one arm around her waist to pull her back flush to his front.
The silk barrier that had kept them apart earlier was now gone and she could feel his very heartbeat drumming against her back, in time with her own as his breath tickled the back of her neck.
This was bad. She didn't know how, but she was losing control of negotiations.
Especially when she failed to suppress another small gasp at the way his voice tickled the shell of her ear as he continued to whisper in that same husky tone.
"If you yourself place so little value in your skin, so will everybody else. It doesn't matter to me if your skin is luscious and inviting but receiving that in return for my skills is no different from exchanging a well positioned Pawn for a caged Queen in chess terms if you will."
Another pleasurable shiver ran down her back she felt him lightly suck on her neck. Even though she didn't mind using her flesh to gain an advantage, she was ashamed to admit that seduction of this kind was quite beyond her current abilities.
"I'm not quite like Issei-san who can be easily persuaded by a mere flash of your skin nor am I as careless as bloodthirsty Vaizor who sacrificed her sanity for the instant burst of power that devouring humans would grant her." The way he lightly danced the fingers of one hand on her toned stomach while the other massaged her back wasn't exactly helping her argument.
Not that she had one anymore.
His fingers were doing a very effective job of rendering her speechless as she arched her back into his caress. Over the last few months, she had learnt how to deal with the Naruto that played around and made fun of everything but the one that was currently seducing her was an altogether different facet of Uzumaki Naruto.
"My loyalty and abilities are somewhat harder to purchase, Rias Gremory. If you want it, you are going to have to make a better offer."
She struggled to keep her voice light, "Like?"
His chuckle was somewhat predatory as it echoed deep in her soul, "Like your heart."
"N-No…"
"Not easy is it?" Yellow bangs tickled her back as he laughed softly, "Deciding which is more important to you. So far, you have found it easy to find a compromise since none of us have committed anything worth losing, but if you gave everything to me, you can no longer give the same attention to all your other Pieces, and it tears you up inside because you are so kind doesn't it? Don't worry, watching you struggle will be all the more interesting for me."
At that point Rias realized that, in some ways, the man behind her was more of a Devil than she was.
So when Grayfia appeared at the foot of their bed with a bright flash of power, the Gremory in Naruto's arms had no idea which one she wanted to do more.
Drop to her knees and thank Grayfia for her timeliness or blast her Sister in law out the window with extreme prejudice.
As the two of them had watched the very much naked Rias sweep out of the room with her nose in the air, Grayfia's attention had been inevitable drawn to the naked boy on the bed who simply eyed her neutrally.
Stormy grey eyes locked onto his crystalline blue orbs.
Given his interactions with his Godfather, Naruto was very much aware that he was in a somewhat precarious position. Even though he had not done anything, it did not change the fact that both of them had been very much naked when the woman who wore her authority like a majestic cloak had walked in on them, and he had expected her to begin wailing away at him in righteous fury as most women tended to do when presented with such a circumstance, whether or not the pervert in question was guilty.
"Rias is young, but she has a good head on her shoulders," She finally spoke, and Naruto was somewhat amused to note that her measured and polite cadence was just as noble as her bearing, "However, she is also very willful and every bit as stubborn as the rest of her family despite her compassion."
"None of which are bad things." The blond on the bed murmured, wishing he had something more substantial than a silk blanket to shield him from her penetrating gaze.
"Indeed, however, such traits should be tempered by wisdom and experience to make a meaningful impact." Grayfia agreed, then surprising him, she inclined his head in his direction with a tiny bit of respect reflected in her steel grey gaze, "That is why I thank you for not only refusing to take advantage of her offer, but also giving her a lesson which I doubt she will forget in the near future."
"By definition, experience takes time, and more often than not, mistakes, to build," Naruto observed amiably, "And as you have already said, she is still young."
"That she is," The snowy haired lady replied calmly, "However, due to her unique position of being the Heir of the Gremory House, Rias can ill afford the leniency to make the kind of mistakes other people of her age enjoy. Their mistakes do not endanger the lives and reputations of whole families. Her's does. Should she have succeeded in what she was attempting to do today, the consequences would have been…. dire."
"And isn't that what family and friends are for? To catch you when you make a mistake and fall? So that you can stand up and try again?" Naruto simply retorted mildly.
Grayfia shot him a disapproving look, "Which is why I am here. To stop her from making any further mistakes."
"You can't make her decisions for her," the blond replied, his eyes hardening, "And that is why I did not accept her offer tonight. All I will do, all I will EVER do, is make sure she understands the meaning of the choice she has to make. And if she still decides to make that same choice, I will not chastise her, I will not reprimand her and I will not punish her. I can only stay by her side and try to help her deal with the consequences."
"Even if the consequences include being expelled from her family and hunted down?" Grayfia questioned; her face a steel, icy mask.
"The rules remain the same. Her family can make whatever choice they want. They can choose to forgive her, they can choose to ignore her, they can even punish and expel her if they wish. However, if they decide to hunt her down because of something as insignificant as their reputation, for something as petty as not agreeing with her choice, then they will have to deal with something a lot more worrisome than their tarnished reputation and an errant daughter." His eyes hardened into gleaming chips of ice and his lips curled, "Me."
"You would defy us for her? Her own family?"
"I would not defy you for her," Naruto amended with a stony expression that matched hers, "I would defy you for her ability to choose for herself. The same applies to anyone in the same situation, regardless of whether or not I knew them personally."
Grayfia drew herself up to her full height and shot him a frigid stare as she flared her presence.
"You will not win."
Naruto stared at the woman who practically oozed authority and power despite her humble maid uniform as hoarfrost began to creep over every available surface in the room.
"I might not win,"
Then his presence swelled up to match hers easily, and her stormy grey eyes widened as a snarling shadow seemed to overlap with the blond's reclining figure, swallowing her frost and then melting it from sheer will alone.
"But I will make damn sure everyone you send bleeds for it."
His challenging gaze met her mildly curious one without hesitation.
Rias had spoken about him before of course.
In her regular communications home, she had told them about her new acquisitions. When she talked about Issei Hyoudou it had been with pride; an apparent failure, an obsessed pervert, and something of a simpleton, yet he apparently wielded one of the 13 Longinus Sacred Gears and was fast becoming one of her strongest Pieces with each passing day.
Then she had spoken about her other acquisition, Naruto Uzumaki, and none of them had failed to notice the way she had cycled through a myriad of expressions before settling on a strange mix of exasperation and, strangely enough, fondness. She had spoken about how he liked to goof off and poke fun at Issei, how he liked to tease Akeno and his general reluctance when it came to learning how to survive as a Devil, much to aforementioned Queen's amusement and frustration. Yet, he carried himself with an unshakable confidence that Rias had admitted to relying upon on a few times.
How he could be so confident without being ashamed about his own complete lack of anything that could even remotely be considered an asset in a Rating Game puzzled the Ice Queen.
She had known someday that Rias' compassion and inexperience would cause her to make a mistake too costly for them to rectify easily, and it had seemed that day had finally arrived in the shape of one Naruto Uzumaki who would be unable to contribute anything meaningful in a Match unless he trained himself to death to beyond. However, that would take time that Rias did not have.
In short, she had assumed him to be an ignorant fool and a costly one to boot.
She had assumed wrong.
The blond on the bed had looked goofy, he had looked incompetent, and he had looked defenseless.
Then she looked down and noted the 6 figures who had shimmered into existence beside her, each one were identical twins of the naked blond reclining on the bed, each one was carrying a sharp steel blade and everyone of those blades were currently pricking her vital points.
The blond, it would seem, wasn't as goofy, incompetent and defenseless as she had first assumed.
They were still toys, simple mortal instruments, and they would not have been able to pierce her skin even if she had been inclined to let them try.
But the ability to summon multiple clones was an interesting trick. Perhaps there was hope.
Then her eyes widened as she felt a drop of something leak from a slight scratch on her neck.
For the second time in as many minutes, she revised her opinion of him.
"You know..." She finally said after a long tense moment, "I had actually gone to the house of the Dragon wielder before this since I had expected him to be her first choice, if only because he would have been the much more malleable option. Now I see it might not have been quite so obvious after all." She nodded at him.
"Remember your words well, Uzumaki Naruto. I will hold you to them."
The icy aura of authority and power she carried about her like a mantle suddenly melted away and she flashed the blond a sudden, warm smile
It had been so sudden that none of the blonds seemed to know how to react to the sudden change in attitude and had been completely helpless to do anything about it when Grayfia turned abruptly and left the room, airily brushing past the savage daggers with a strangely cheerful hum.
"What the hell was that?" The original Naruto asked no one in particular.
He was not surprised when he did not receive an answer.
Clones in general did not make good conversationalists after all.
"That ass was hot."
There was a murmur of agreement from his comrades and the original face palmed.
See?
Terrible conversationalists.
Even if they did make excellent points.
****End Game****
Play Yuna Ito – Alone Again
In the week after that, he was not surprised to see Rias avoiding him like the plague.
He didn't mind, mostly because he was also avoiding her, almost religiously so.
The surprising thing however, was the fact that not one member of the Occult Club had come after him looking for an explanation. With the exception of Asia, who still managed to find him no matter where he went, though he noted that her attempts had lessened significantly for some reason. They seemed to walk around with focused expressions filled with a grim determination, barely acknowledging him with a nod.
He did not care.
Not a single bit.
He was also moping and Kurama made it it's personally mission to insult him with it every moment it was awake. There was something reassuring about that, knowing that even if the world ended, Kurama's insults would always be there for him, and he had told the old fox as much.
That had shut the fox up spectacularly well.
It had also left him with even more time to spend with his own admittedly gloomy thoughts.
That night, on the bed with Rias, he had been trying to make it clear to her that nothing she did would ever get on him on her side. He would never join their world, never interfere in their fights.
Instead he had teased her, taunted her, and then dangled a near impossible price in front of her. But near impossible did not mean completely impossible, and he, better than anyone else knew exactly what that meant.
He who had fought through near impossible odds on a regular basis and roared defiance at the mere thought of failing.
And it scared him.
To actively make his presence felt was to disturb the natural order of this world, to change the decisions they would have made otherwise without him present. Then there was the fact that every word he spoke, every action he made, and every bond he forged here made him more attached to this place.
It felt like betrayal.
Like the bonds he had made then had become so fragile a good blow would snap it, it felt like the sacrifices he had made for them would become less real and one day he would wake up and it would all be nothing more than a dream.
It was like he was losing everything that had made him the person he was.
So he rejected the world, and the world rejected him.
That was fine with him.
But somewhere deep inside him…
He could not deny the fact that he wanted Rias to succeed.
But enough time for recrimination later. He glanced at the clock with a sigh. With his morning chores done, it was time to go to school again. Throwing up his apron on a hanger, he gave the old second hand stove he had repaired last winter one last check to make sure that the food would stay warm until his guest got hungry enough to crawl out of bed. The night he had forgotten to come back and prepare her dinner because he had stayed overnight at Rias' place, Raynare had lambasted him close to an hour the next morning before he reminded her that she was always free to leave and find her own food.
As he trudged through the forest path, he half wondered why the hell he hadn't booted the singularly abrasive woman out yet.
As the large white building loomed up on him, he sighed and pushed it to the back of his mind.
With Rias and her Club avoiding him, he was determined to have at least one day to himself that was free of abnormal stuff.
Of course, given his current status as Fate's whipping boy, the moment he entered the corridor where his class was located, a frisson ran down his spine as rusty but well honed instincts kicked into high gear when he tasted killing intent floating in the air.
His eyes automatically scanned the crowd and zoned in on someone who was walking towards him from the other end of the corridor. To anyone else, he probably looked like every other student who liked to slouched, who was just another face in the crowd of flesh colored blobs, but to the blond's well practiced eyes, the way his muscles were bunched under his baggy clothes set him apart from the rest. His gait favored his right side, the rhythm clashing with all the other students around him. It also told him that the boy was already on the verge of springing on his prey.
Unbidden, his eyes sought out the boy's target and widened.
When the boy leapt, Naruto had already vanished.
It was only later that he realized that the thought of simply standing by had not even occurred to him.
****End Game****
Play Fairy Tail – Shukumei
She knew it had been a good idea.
That was why she had been chasing it the whole time, even going as far as asking her annoying sister for help in persuading their father to listen.
Said annoying sister was beside her as they walked down the hallways, chattering away a mile a minute, looking like a ten year old when she was probably about as old as Japan itself.
Still, she supposed everyone had to have at least one vice when you got that old.
Including their stubborn father.
It was not that their father didn't think it was a good idea; in fact the Head of House Sitri thought it was a great idea. The problem lay in the fact that her father was annoyingly competitive. While the idea of a scholarship was good, it was also second hand, coming from the Gremory family, his old rivals. So if they were going to do something, they were going to do it even better.
Sometimes, her father's idiotically competitive tendencies was rather... irritating.
So that was why she did not see the knife coming, she was too busy trying to think of an idea that was flashy enough to satisfy her sister enough to present it to their father, and good enough for him to accept it.
When she noticed it, it was probably already barely inches from her nose, and time almost seemed to slow down for her. Peripherally, she was somewhat aware of her Pieces darting into action, but even from here she could tell that they were going to be too late. By her side, her sister had gone pale, her palms thrown up and a blaze of arcane energy already gathering.
But she had hesitated and Souna knew why.
With this little room between them, even her sister's weakest spell would decimate her attacker, herself, her Peerage and then half the school.
In that order.
Mentally, she sighed even as the knife continued to creep towards her eyeball in slow motion. It was of Fallen Angel origin, of that she was sure; they had a tendency to make their weapons a little too exotic and spikier than absolutely necessary. In general, Fallen Angels usually used their Holy powers against Devils but those same powers were significantly less effective against their purer brethren who still resided in Heaven. That was why they had crafted daggers, swords and spears out of cold iron, and then liberally coat it with a special kind of poison only they could concoct.
The green, gleaming edge on this particular dagger told her that it had been given the same treatment.
That said, her observation probably wasn't going to make much of a difference in another second or so, she admitted to herself.
So, mentally regretful that she had so many things left to do, she had resigned herself to accepting the dagger in the eye.
Of course, someone had to catch the dagger.
She blinked and amended that statement.
Catch the dagger between two fingers and then stop it cold less than an inch away from her eye ball.
A yellow blur flashed by her.
Sona did not think she was an easily impressed person, though she supposed growing up in an environment where your sister was one of the strongest people alive, who put the fear of Hell into her numerous challengers and suitors on a fairly regular basis, would probably knock the bar a little higher than most after all, and it was the reason many people considered her a painfully blunt and stoic person. She simply did not see the point of blathering about and wasting her time.
The way the blond dismantled her attacker with careless efficiency met that mark, and then exceeded it.
She hadn't even known that elbows could bend that way.
He had calmly redirected the dagger, before snapping the boy's right elbow with a precise palm thrust to the joint. Then he had swung it around so that the arm almost tore off completely, soaking about half the hall in her almost-killer's blood in the process, and stabbed the assassin with his own dagger twice, once in the thigh, then again in the stomach, before slipping it neatly between his third and fourth rib.
Then Naruto had spun the boy around by his broken arm, and casually kicked the back of his knees so that the blond could calmly place his own knee on the back of the boy's neck execution style, calm as ice during the entire ordeal.
Then he had proceeded to land a short punch to the boy's uninjured side and the boy had screamed as his rib cracked.
"That was just an example of what I'm going to put you through, if you don't tell me exactly why I have to deal with an assassin inside my own school." He told the boy under his knees politely.
Then after a moment of thought and a sideways glance at Serafall, punched him again in the exact same spot.
"And that was for trying to do it in front of children."
"Da-GAAAH!"
Naruto interrupted whatever the boy was about to say, obviously he already knew it was going to be something rude, by punching him again.
"Don't bother wasting your breath to curse. You don't exactly have much left. At the rate you are currently losing blood, you have exactly 60 seconds before you suffocate and your heart stops assuming the poison doesn't kill you first." He paused and gave the boy a very friendly smile, "Unless I punch you again, at which point your left lung will be punctured by that rib I just broke, burying the dagger in your right lung directly into your heart. You have exactly 30 seconds before I do that."
The clinical and politely friendly tone in which his words had been delivered chilled even her.
Then he started counting down from 30.
"30."
"29."
"28."
"27."
"2-oh look. A 50 yen."
He picked up the coin, and then glanced down at the boy's terrified eyes, "You have 24 seconds remaining." Then he paused and added politely, "Please do not make me kill you in front of a young girl."
Her would-be-assassin broke down crying.
It was the absolutely polite, friendly tone, she decided. It was like listening to someone simply making conversation with an old friend he had not met in awhile. It told her that if he had to kill him, it would be done with no fuss whatsoever, not unlike squishing an ant.
And it was remarkably effective.
Around her, her Peerage was already doing damage control, setting up barriers and erasing memories, sneaking glances at the blond kneeling on the boy's back while said boy bled all over the floor from the gushing wound in his thigh and stomach, as well as the gaping hole that used to be his elbow.
With a flick of her hand, two of her members hurried to grab the sobbing boy, making sure not to go too near the blond, and haul him off so that he could be healed before extracting information from him.
"That was impressive."
"No." Naruto disagreed, "That was a waste of my time."
Souna sighed, "As much as I hate to admit it, it's not the first time someone has tried that, though the reason differs. Sometimes it's because I'm the Heir to the House of Sitri, and sometimes it's because my sister is the Leviathan." She shot him a wry look, "You should probably know that this has happened to Rias before as well. Many more times than me."
He gave her a brief look, "Then you might want to ask him about how he managed to get that past the security barriers. Someone inside the school helped him do it."
"You know about the barriers?"
Naruto merely gave her a faintly amused glance and Souna inclined her head with a mild flush, "Perhaps I may have misjudged you. Rias did not see fit to inform me of your capabilities."
"It would be hard for her to do that," Naruto murmured, "When she does not know herself."
She didn't know what her own Piece could do? Now that was something interesting.
"But you would show it to me?"
"You were about to be murdered. She was not." The blond simple's answer had her cocking a curious eyebrow as he regarded her neutrally, "I have a peculiar set of skills that does not lend itself well to what passes for normal life here. And I am not particularly proud of them."
Now she understood what he had meant when he said that his family business was, to borrow his own words, ass kicking.
"I think I want you even more now." Souna murmured.
"No."
The dark haired girl simply smiled faintly, but the glint in her eyes told him that this was probably not the last time he would hear about it. He was about to leave, when he felt someone tug at his sleeve.
The blond had to suppress a grimace.
He disliked taking lives.
He disliked it even more when there was someone young nearby.
Even if they weren't as young as they seemed.
He steeled himself and gently knelt beside the tiny Serafall, fully expecting to see fear and disgust reflected in her big black orbs.
Instead he only found a pair of knees.
Naruto blinked, then slowly looked up, past a pair of creamy white thighs, past a short frilly skirt, then a slim black bodice, and then past two very generous curves, to find Serafall's big glowing eyes.
A very much not-ten-year-old Serafall's eyes.
Well, that made it easier he supposed.
Naruto straightened again with a crooked smile, "I wonder if this is how every big brother feels when they realize that their tiny, innocent baby sister is no longer quite so tiny or quite so innocent for that matter."
"You do not seem surprised." The beautiful woman noted softly, "Why is that?"
"I have my own ways of looking beneath the surface." The blond said with a fond smile at woman who was nearly as tall as him now, "You hid it well, but I could tell from your energy that it did not belong to someone of your apparent size and age at the time."
"I see… that makes it easier for me to do this then." The elegant woman had gently said with a melodious voice as she gave him a small bow, "Thank you. House Sitri owes you a great debt for saving our Heir, and more importantly, my baby sister."
The blond acknowledged her bow with a slight incline of his own head with a wry smile, "As I have said, no secret is worth standing by and watching someone lose his or her life. Anyone in my position would have done the same."
Serafall had smiled softly even as she sent an affectionate look at her baby sister, "Somehow, I doubt that very much, Naruto-san. The debt still stands."
Then she had spoiled the effect by shooting him an impish smirk, "Aren't you going to give me a lollipop like last time, Naruto-nii sama?"
"You were ten years old then. And you acted like it. So I treated you like one." The blond shrugged casually, "Now you are acting like an adult, so I treat you like one."
"And what if I wanted to play?"
"Have you finished your homework yet?"
Serafall laughed happily and threw herself into the man's arms.
"Thank you." She whispered as she held him tightly, "My baby sister is annoying, she's too serious, and she's not much fun, but she's my only baby sister all the same. You saved her, when even I couldn't."
Behind her, Souna rolled her eyes, but even Naruto could see the faint red dusting on her cheeks and the slight wetness in her eyes, "Thank you, Naruto-nii chan."
Silently, the blond set the girl down.
"Excuse me for a moment."
They watched him stiffly turn around and pumped one fist, "Yosh, imouto is best."
The two sisters exchanged an amused look at the blond's quiet whisper.
Then the Uzumaki turned around again with the casual lazy smirk he usually wore, "Any time Sera-chan."
The blond waved once as he made to continue ambling down the hall on whatever errand he had been on as if nothing particularly weird had just happened.
"Wait."
Crystalline blue orbs landed on Souna, a curious look in them, "Yes?"
"I just realized, but why are you here?"
Naruto blinked at the student council president, "I am here because I study here." He said slowly as if trying to explain something to a particularly dim child.
Souna tilted her head with a perplexed expression, "No, I meant why are you here, when you should be training? Rias' match with Raiser is in less than 10 days isn't it?"
"Who the heck is Raiser?"
Both of Souna's eyes slowly rose until they hit her hairline, "She didn't tell you?"
"Should she have?"
"Raiser is Rias' fiancée." Souna tentatively continued, "It was something arranged by their parents. Long story short, she disagreed, so they agreed to bet their futures on a practice Match."
"An arranged wedding does not mean they will not be happy in time." He retorted stiffly.
"They may." The dark haired girl replied slowly, "Or they may not. I've seen how he looks at her, and she rejects him utterly despite her parents will. I've been friends with her for a long time, and I do not think a despicable person like him deserves her. If they get married, she would be chained, forced to act as a bed warmer at worst, and a tool at best, but I cannot interfere in a Rating Game, unofficial or otherwise. If anyone can help her, it is you. Especially now that I know what you are capable of."
The blond froze and indecision warred across his features.
"Is it really so hard to help?" Sona questioned mildly, "Since you are a part of her Peerage, helping her out should be a given already isn't it?"
He pierced her with an icy look.
"It's not quite that simple." He replied, his freezing gaze intensifying, "For instance. Let's say I do what I just did, in front of what would no doubt be a rather large audience. How many people do you think will begin to be wary of me?" he gestured sharply at Tsubaki who was still watching him stonily who was keeping one tense hand on her sword to prove his point, "How many people do you think will begin coming after me?"
Serafall pursed her lips thoughtfully as she placed one hand on her little sister to stop from blurting something sharp and probably hurtful as she usually did.
"That's not the real reason is it?" She said softly, "Strange and exotic Pieces are not exactly rare given how people like to collect strong Pieces. I know it sounds bad, Devils treating other living things like nothing but stamps for collection, but I knew someone who collects legendary beasts, even if they can't fight at all. So you are either overestimating yourself, or you are finding excuses not to get involved."
The third year sighed and rubbed his face with one palm.
He could not find it in himself to say no because she had been right.
Inside him Kurama stayed silent. He had been awake, and he had heard everything, however faintly they had been said. Perhaps it was an effect of coming here, the ancient fox did not know but in a way, his container still blamed himself for not being strong enough.
If I was stronger, maybe I would not have needed to come here.
If I was faster, I could have stopped him earlier.
If he had been able to say something, maybe he would not have failed.
Thoughts like that swirled around continuously.
Kurama closed his eyes and huffed.
He disliked 'ifs'.
But even he could not help but feel that had he not been completely frozen, entirely useless, and utterly blocked from the Uzumaki, he might have been able to say even a single reassuring word and Naruto would not have resorted to this.
The blond needed to blame something, so he blamed himself for not being a good enough shinobi.
He began to live by the old Shinobi code he had once disparaged, suppressing his own instincts to reach out. And by doing so, he had buried the part of him that had united five nations, that had brought together a hundred thousand men to fight at his command.
He had lost his greatest treasure.
But for what?
There was no point to doing that now that he was here, with nothing worth standing up for, was there?
The titanic fox shaped mass of chakra huffed uselessly.
Even now his voice did not always reach the blond's ears unless he exhausted himself in the process, and as sad as that sounded, it was still improvement.
All he could do now, was bide his time until the moment he could unleash their rage came.
Back with the Uzumaki and the Student Council President, the dark haired girl quirked one brow, "How about this? I'll make you a deal."
The blond blinked, "A deal?"
"The way you spoke about mercenaries and your family that day, you were a mercenary weren't you?"
The blond smiled faintly "It would seem that I am surrounded by people who are far sharper than they look."
"You are not the only who is good at wearing masks here." Serafall's lips twitched, "Think of it as Sona-chan hiring you. You don't have to actually go down to the battlefield. But I'm sure that particular set of skills you mentioned might come in handy if some of her Pieces learnt them. Help her win this, and I'll double what she's offering to pay you. Deal?"
"You know… when you two aren't fighting each other, the two of you make a pretty good combination. Sona blindsides me with her logic, and then Serafall distracts me with her beauty so I don't even have enough time to think up an argument." His lips twisted in a faintly resigned smile, "About that favor. I think I'm going to need it sooner than later."
"Oh?"
"Your house. Does it have a library?"
Souna drew herself up proudly, "One of the very best."
"Thanks to our overly competitive father of course." Serafall added blithely.
"Good. Can you take me there?"
She blinked, "What? You're just going to read?"
"No I'm going to throw books at him." Naruto deadpanned.
****End Game****
Ten days. Issei blew out a tired sigh as he continued to do pushups, trying to get in as much training as he could, even if his muscles tore at him, but he didn't complain. Raiser had condescendingly allowed Buchou ten days to prepare, it wasn't much but it was something. The way he had said it though, made it clear that the offer hadn't been made out of a sense of fair play or pity.
The fact that he had then proceeded to tongue fuck his Queen right in front of them only reinforced his opinion.
Raiser had simply wanted to let them struggle, to hope, and then despair, as they realized that not even ten days, or ten years would be enough for Rias and her Pieces to overcome them.
But that was fine with Issei, he would simply prove them wrong.
Though it would probably be somewhat easier if the last member of their motley group was here.
He knew something had happened between the aforementioned blond and Rias, especially when it had happened after some strange gray haired lady had popped into his room unannounced. But since she had not seen fit to tell them why, he had not asked.
Asking Naruto might have gone better.
Or it might have gotten him booted down more staircases again.
With the blond, he really couldn't tell sometimes.
Someone clapped loudly, and the dark haired boy looked up to see his King standing in the middle of the courtyard, "Hai, that's enough for today!"
"I can still do more Buchou!"
She gave Ise a affectionate look, "I know you can, Ise. But there is no point driving yourself into the ground before we even reach the day of the Game. It's much more important to make sure that you keep yourself in top shape, so you can absorb everything we can teach you with maximum efficiency. And to do that, you need to rest."
The brown haired pervert relented with a sigh, knowing logically that she was right, but the anger in him just wasn't quenched quite so easily.
Rias smiled affectionately at the people gathered around Koneko who had been on cooking duty today.
They weren't much, but they were hers.
But as much as she hated to admit it, even though half the time allotted to her by Raiser had already passed, she still couldn't see a clear path to victory. Even though every single one of her Pieces could individually match any of Raiser's pieces right now, the Phenex knew better than to give her that advantage.
She had no doubt that that the man would use his numbers against her, so she would have to plan around that. There were no other words for it; her situation was a dire one, but she could not let that doubt show and in that, her lessons to act as a queenly noble had come in handy.
Her team needed every advantage they could get their hands on, even if it was simple morale. They were going up against a more experienced team, a more balanced team, and one that outnumbered them significantly. Even Grayfia had said as much, making sure to mention that if she wanted even a sliver of hope of winning this match, she would need to employ every resource available to her.
The emphasis she had put on 'every' was not lost to Rias, though she didn't really understand why.
Then she cursed herself for being too proud to ask Naruto to join them.
She knew that every single one of her Pieces had doubted the logic in that, but she appreciated that they had not openly questioned her about it.
After that night, her pride had been wounded. Oh he had not said it, perhaps he had not even meant it, but the implications in his words stood out to her. By saying that her flesh was all she could offer, that she did not have the heart to go further; he had insulted her resolve to succeed, he had trampled her determination to climb out of her brother's shadow, and he had mocked her desire to be known as someone more than the Lucifer's leftovers.
She wanted to win this, not just for her future, but also to show him that she was strong even without him. Rias sighed from her spot under the tree; her sagging shoulders leaned against the cold and rough bark.
Bitterly, she noted that leaning against Naruto was much more comfortable.
"I hate you, you stupid idiot." She quietly mumbled to herself, "And for some stupid reason, I miss you."
"Then why didn't you just ask me to come?"
Rias sighed, "You wouldn't have come even if I did. And I wanted to show you that I'm not just a lump of flesh. I'll win this and show you….that I… have…." A dawning realization set in and she slowly looked up.
"Heart." She finished faintly.
"Probably." The blond sitting on the branch above her with his legs swinging in the air agreed. Then he smirked at her dumbfounded expression.
"You have good friends by the way."
"I am going to kill Sou-chan." Rias vowed lowly.
The carefree blond shrugged but didn't deny it before he easily leapt down from the tree, "I'm hungry. Walking here wasn't easy you know."
Tugging the disbelieving red head behind him, Naruto chuckled as he entered the clearing where the rest of them were eating.
"Yo."
As one, they blinked and looked up to see the blond and his familiar, lazy smile.
Ise cocked one eyebrow, "You're late." He said simply.
Beside him, Kiba shrugged, "Better late than never I suppose. Though you only have 5 days left to get ready now."
"Walking here wasn't easy you know." Naruto repeated again with a lazy grin.
Rias goggled at her Pawn and Knight; they were acting as if they had already expected him to show up.
Asia smiled widely, "Ah, Great Saint-san," The lazy smile was instantly replaced by a constipated expression as he backed away from the adoring nun like she was a rabid wolf, "Would you like to eat?"
"I'm not hungry, and I'd rather get started as soon as possible."
Rias blinked, "Wait, get started? With what?"
Naruto shrugged again, "I'm going to borrow your Pawn and your Knight for a few days."
"Wait, wait, wait! You don't get to just show up and take my Pawn and Knight like that! At least give me an explanation!"
The blond shot her a mock hurt look, "You don't believe me?"
"Ngh… You're not exactly reliable…"
"Reliable? Who cares about that?" He comically pointed to the sky with a wide grin, "Just believe in me because I'm the man who can make the impossible possible!"
The clearing went dead silent.
Everyone there shot him a dry look.
"That…. Was embarrassing." Koneko finally said.
The blond instantly retreated into a shadowed corner and began poking the ground with a cloud of gloom hanging around him, "You guys are so damn mean." He muttered gloomily under his breath, "I walk all the way here, and all you do is make fun of me."
Rias sighed, "At least tell me where you are going so I can find the three of you in case anything happens."
The blond instantly reappeared at her side with a grin, "We're going as far as we can. Probably the foot of that mountain over there."
"Ara, ara," Akeno giggled with that noble lady laugh of hers, "Three boys going into a deep forest somewhere, where no one can see them so they can clash each other with their sweaty bodies? I didn't know you swung that way, Naruto-san."
All three of them blanched and edged away from each other, hurriedly blurting that their preference was definitely with boobs and legs.
Asia on the hand tilted her head innocently, "Swing? Why would Great Saint-san want to swing in the forest with Ise-kun and Kiba-kun?"
"Fufufuf… Asia-chan…" Akeno leaned in and began to whisper something to her. She had barely gotten out a few sentences before Rias very firmly dragged an amused Akeno away from Asia.
But she was too late.
The priestess lit up like a bulb, glanced at the three of them and then began twiddling her thumbs.
Naruto barely heard her muttering something along the lines of, "Ah.. three of them… clashing sweaty bodies… in the forest.. Why does that make me feel good?"
He resolved to somehow murder Akeno the moment he was sure she was no longer necessary.
It would be slow and it would be painful.
****End Game****
It was shortly after Kiba and Ise had wolfed down their meals, very interested in exactly what the blond had planned for them. Ise looked around the thick forest and nudged a dead branch with a toe, "What exactly are we going to be doing here, Naruto?"
Beside him Kiba nodded with a genial smile.
"We're going to be training of course." Naruto replied as he looked around the clearing and determined it to be sufficient for his purposes, "Or rather, I'm going to be training you two."
"Oh?" the blond swordsman narrowed his eyes at him, "I was not aware you knew how to handle swords. Nor that you consider yourself skilled enough to train us."
"I don't, never really bothered to learn how to handle a sword," Naruto admitted, "But then I'm not exactly going to be teaching you."
"Then what exactly are we going to be doing here?"
The shark-like smile that graced the blond's features did not reassure him at all, "I'm going to be showing you how to survive."
He knelt and pressed one fist to the ground.
"Wha-"
Ise did not get any further than that before the world erupted around him in a torrent of earth and wood.
Spluttering dirt and sand, Kiba and Ise slowly pulled themselves out of the piles of earth that had buried them in a split second.
Then as one, their jaws dropped at the devastated clearing. Ever y tree, boulder and shrubbery within a 50 meter radius centered on the blond had been completely blown apart from one punch, leaving a cleared portion of the forest.
"This…" Kiba breathed at the sheer destruction around them, "This is.. NOT an illusion."
Naruto cocked his head and smiled faintly, the blond swordsman was quite observant; then again he had to be if he had managed to notice that the blond had severely held back against him.
Beside him, Ise pumped a fist, "Yes! I knew it!"
The two blonds blinked, "What exactly do you know?" Kiba asked unsurely. Given that the person he was talking to was an unrepentant pervert; he was not wrong to be wary.
"I told Buchou that you came to help us with a gun, but I didn't tell her about that shadow! I knew it was you!"
"Shadow?" Kiba perked up considerably and revised his earlier opinion about the shameless pervert, "What shadow are you talking about?"
"Before Raynare ah... knocked me out, there was a shadow in that church," Ise looked at the other blond excitedly, "Someone took out half of her entire group without them even seeing him there! Hell, even I didn't see a damn thing other than those idiots getting picked off one by one! I had a feeling it was you, but I wasn't sure.
Kiba glanced at the other blond who was futilely trying to rub away the headache developing in his temples with one hand, "Perhaps this training session may be even more interesting than I first thought."
"I hope you remember what you just said," Naruto replied dryly, "And I hesitate to call it something as... tame as training. People don't usually die while training after all." He supplied with a helpful grin, "It's a... program that my Grandmother developed. You see, she was one of the best battlefield medics of her time, and even though she was rated as one of the strongest people in my… clan, she lacked the same kind of massive reserves most people of her level had. So she had to improvise."
He was vaguely aware that the two boys had begun to back away from him with terrified expressions each time he hedged. Gesturing at the empty clearing, his grin widened, "As you can see around you, this is what she came up with; an offensive technique that granted her near insane bursts of strength in return for the most efficient use of her reserves."
Kiba and Ise paled.
If HE could do this, they did not want to know what his Grandmother could do.
Naruto smiled faintly, in his current state where keeping track of how much chakra he had left had become a necessity instead of a bother, this technique had automatically become one his default moves whenever he needed some firepower because of how efficient it was.
Ise's dark brown eyes landed on him with something nearing adoration but not quite, "Are you going to teach this to us?"
"Teach you how to do this?" Naruto retorted incredulously, "This is not something you can learn in a mere 5 days. What I AM going to do however, is make you go through the same program my grandmother put me through when she passed this technique on to me."
Kiba eyed the other blond curiously, "Why? What's so special about this not-exactly-a-training?"
"Remember what I told you that day after our training? Naruto asked with a sweet smile.
"Yeah…" the blond swordsman replied warily, "You said I need to work on my…. Oh shit."
The taller blond had already blurred out of view, nearly untraceable even to his own sharp eyes that were accustomed to high speeds, then reappeared between him and Ise, both fists hurtling towards their chests.
It was only their training before this day that enabled both of them to survive the first blow.
Both their reaction times had increased significantly, and Ise's summoning of his gauntlet was now near instinctual. He had crossed it over his chest, and braced himself for the blow.
Said blow landed a split second later and the gauntlet groaned and creaked, but held up admirably.
The arm inside said gauntlet however, was a whole different story.
Ise's right arm didn't just shatter.
It was pulped.
And that was before the force of the blow threw him 20 meters away.
Kiba on the hand had managed to summon the strongest broadsword he had in his arsenal.
The blond's fist plowed right through strengthened demonic steel before proceeding to pulverize his rib cage.
It was around that point when he realized that his earlier assumption that the blond would make a good Bishop was wrong.
The blond didn't specialize in illusions.
He only used them because he was too lazy to clean up after he broke someone in half.
Naruto scratched his head as he sweat dropped at the two screaming boys as they clutched at the stark white bone poking out of their arm and chest respectively while leaking copious amounts of blood all over the place.
"Well… at least you didn't outright die from the first punch. That's a lot more than I can say for most people."
"SOMETHING LIKE THAT ISN'T ASSURING AT ALL!"
Kneeling beside them, his hands glowed green and their wounds immediately began to repair themselves, "We do not have time for you to learn any new techniques, and even we did, I would not teach you any. Chances are, a newly learned, half assed technique would endanger you more than it would help."
Naruto smiled cheerfully, "That's why, for the next five days, we will be working on nothing but your foundation. And by working on your foundation, I mean that I will pound you into the ground, I will break your bodies, and then I will rebuild you from the ground up."
"Ddraig says he likes you." Ise whimpered.
"Oh shit." Kiba repeated.
"Oh shit indeed." Naruto smiled beatifically.
****End Game****
"What… did you do to them?"
Under the circumstances, Rias thought that she was being remarkably calm about the whole thing.
"We.. uh trained?"
"Trained?! Is that what they're calling torture these days?! I DIED FOUR TIMES, YOU ASSHOLE!" the boy attached to Rias' left leg like a limpet screeched at the blond.
"Your heart just stopped for a few moments Ise, that's not called dying, that's called being a pussy."
"YOU THREW ME OFF A CLIFF!" The one hugging her right leg agreed.
"Technically it was a waterfall. And on a completely unrelated side note, Kiba finally learned how to swim."
"Vulgar language aside, I lent you my Pawn and my Knight." She gestured to the two heavily bruised, shivering boys currently attached to her legs and literally hiding under her skirt, "and this is what you bring back to me?"
"I might have gone a little overboard." The blond admitted a little too happily.
"A LITTLE?! DDRAIG FUCKING LOVES YOU NOW! HE WANTS YOUR BABIES!"
"Raining boulders, exploding trees, pain… so much pain…. mommy… make it stop…"
You ah… might not want to make any loud noises near them in the next few months." Naruto gave her what could only be described as a massive shit eating grin, "They're a little… twitchy."
****End Game****
Chapter 3 End
