I wake to pain shooting throughout my body. When I open my eyes I see that my arms are being held up by a rope that is connected to the ceiling and my legs are shackled. With the way I am being binded I can barely make any movements at all. "So you are awake then are you?" The man taunts me. "You look so pitiful right now, did you know that? Now I am only going to ask you this once, how about you remember your past? Do that and I will stop hurting you, does that sound good?"
"Look no matter how hard I try my memories will not come back to me so if that is what you want then you are out of luck," I quietly reply.
"Hm. That is just not good enough for me," He counters. He starts walking closer to me and I see him pull something out of his pocket. Wait, no that isn't a knife is it? He grabs the knife and thrusts it deep into my left side causing me to scream out in pain. Blood starts coming out of my mouth and I start losing consciousness. As if that was not enough he plunges his knife in the same exact way into my right side causing me to scream out in pain again. "Now now, there is no need to get upset. All you have to do is answer my questions about the past. Once you do that all of this will stop. We are done for now, but this will continue to happen until you stop hiding from your past." With that he starts to walk away and I finally lose consciousness.
I wake up at some point later on in the day. I have no way to indicate time so it might have only been a few minutes or maybe I was out for hours already. My wounds healed up due to the fact that I am a devil but the pain is still excruciating. For some reason the nerves that he severed in my arms still haven't healed so I am stuck for now. Seriously though who is this guy? Why is he after me? Does he know that I am a devil?
I hear the sound of footsteps approaching me so I look up to see that he is back. "So how are you feeling? You look pretty terrible to me. If you just talk about your past I will let you go. I know that your memories back because I have seen you talking with Akeno."
"Akeno? What does she have to do with my past?" I ask in confusion. I only met her recently so why would he say something like that?
Reading my facial expressions he starts to cackle like a mad crazy person. "Oh this is too much! She hasn't told you has she? This is just great!" He exclaims in glee.
"What do you mean? Do you know her? What has she not told me?" I throw the questions out one after another.
"This school year was not the first time you met Akeno," He starts.
"What does that mean? I met her on my first day of school for the first time." I counter.
"That is not true though is it. She is one of the people you forgot when you lost you memories just like you forgot me," He tells me in a superior tone. He walks away before I can ask anything else. He questioned me and then stabbed me the same way on three separate occasions when I could not remember my past. He was slowly killing my spirit and my will to live. The pain was too much and at this point I was almost at the point where I was begging for death. At least if I was dead then I would not be in pain.
"I think I figured out where they went," I stated. "He would want to go somewhere with meaning right? Which means that the most likely place he took Issei is where it all began."
"Okay we will look there, but if he is not there then what next? We have been looking for him for the past three days with no results. If he is not there then where should we look? We need a backup plan," Rias explained. I know that she is right but I need to find him. He has to be there right? Where else could he be?
Within an hour the two of us arrived at my old daycare. "You stand guard as the lookout in case he is not in there right now while I go inside," I order Rias.
"Sounds good, bring him back alive," Rias replies with a smile.
I made my way to the basement doors and I cautiously opened them as quietly as I possibly could. If he was down there with Issei then making him aware of my presence would endanger Issei. The lights were on which made it easier for me to move around. I started making my way into each and every room to check and see if Issei was there. The only room left was his old room when he used to live here. Issei and I visited here from time to time so it was also the most likely place for him to be. I slowly turned the door knob and pushed the door open as quietly as I could. Once there was enough space for me to enter I snuck inside and quietly closed the door behind me. The lights were off in this room so I turned them on and was met with a horrific sight. Issei was in front of me strung up by his hand and shackled to the floor by his feet and there was blood everywhere. He must have been stabbed repeatedly. Any human would have died from blood loss by now. "Ise, it's me Akeno wake up," I utter as my voice cracks.
"So you came for him?" A voice muttered from behind me. I turned around and saw that it was in fact him after all. His hair had grown far longer than before as it covered his face but other than that he still looked like the same boy that used to be my friend. "It was fun crushing his spirit you know."
"What?" I ask in disbelief.
"I said that it was fun crushing his spirit. He even started begging me to end his life so the suffering would stop. It was amusing to watch the life drain out of his eyes. Now he is just a shell of the person that he used to be," He taunted. No that can't be true Ise is the most spirited person that I know. There is no way that he could have fallen so far. "I can tell from the look in your eyes that you don't believe me, so why don't you take a good long look into his eyes for me?" Wanting to prove him wrong I pulled Ise's face up so that he was looking at me and what I saw in return broke my heart. He was right, Ise looked dead inside and he had not even said a word since waking up.
"What the hell did you do to him?" I scream.
"Obviously I tortured him you can see the blood. But I also did some psychological torture which I am pretty proud of if I do say so myself," He sneered at me.
"Psychological torture? What do you mean by that?" I ask.
"Well I just so happen to be a magician now so I was able to use my magic to mess with his mind and break him. But you would know all about magicians already right? When I asked the other magicians about your lighting they told me you must be a fallen angel," He states.
I turn to face him so that I can unleash enough lighting to fry him to ashes but he isn't there anymore. He must have used magic to teleport away. Not wanting to waste any time I hurried up and undid all of Ise's restraints so that he was free to move. He collapsed to the ground and remained there motionless. I needed to get him out of here fast so I picked him up in my arms and made my way up the stairs to outside.
Once Rias saw us she rushed over and asked what happened but I told her we needed to portal away for now. I promised her I would tell her when once we were back to the club room. She understood the seriousness of the situation and did as I asked without question. Finishing the circle did not take long at all, when she finished I picked up Issei and made my way into the circle. Once all three of us were in the circle we were teleported back to the school.