Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Highschool DxD and make no profit writing about them.
(AN): Not entirely sure how this chapter should go. Don't have a lot planned beyond the barebones.
Scrabbling against the bark with her tabi-covered toes, Kunou kicked off the trunk and finally managed to make it up to her favorite branch without tearing her absurdly expensive haori.
"'Never broke a rule in her life'. Shows how much you know, moron." She muttered rebelliously, crawling in a little circle until she managed to get her back against the maple tree's trunk.
Satisfied that she'd proven the stupid redhead wrong, she looked out over the compound walls and pointedly didn't look anywhere near where Naruto was seated by the tiny garden pond.
Soon enough her mother would come back from her meeting and tell Kunou to stop acting like a little kid, but until then she was going to enjoy her win.
Even if she couldn't outright rub it in his face without coming across as just doing it because he told her to.
But that was fine, sometimes the silent victory was enough.
Well that, and the wordless gloating looks she could give him.
She knew she was right, and now he knew it too. Or maybe not considering he'd been talking to himself when he'd called her a prissy princess, and he did it three weeks ago at that. He probably didn't even remember saying it.
But that was still fine. It was the principle of the thing.
"Nice view up there?" The object of her disdain spoke up suddenly, having abandoned his meditation by the pond to come chat her up.
Could he be any more obvious? The first session her mother is to busy to supervise and Naruto immediately gets right up in her face. He must think she was too stupid to catch on.
"It's acceptable." Kunou shot back, her tone just shy of spiteful. Her golden gaze was cool as she looked down at where Naruto was lurking with his hands in his pockets by the trunk of her tree. "Did you have a question?"
In a fair world she'd have been able to ask that out of a sense of contempt, using it as a way to mock him because he was totally useless at senjutsu and had to come begging to her for answers. Kunou had even been looking forward to it when her mother told her they'd be having a dumb devil boy coming around for a few months to try to learn the sage arts.
But the world wasn't fair, because the dumb devil boy wasn't dumb enough.
He was annoyingly good at senjutsu in fact. He wasn't a master by any means, but he seemed to know what he was doing right from the start. And then something had clicked in his head a month ago and he started throwing qi around like a maniac.
The memory of that one weekend he spent doing nothing but showing off by making the flowers bloom and wither and bloom again over and over still made her mad.
What a bigheaded idiot. In her opinion that kind of person was the worst.
So Kunou would answer his questions as a fellow student, but she wasn't exactly eager to do it.
Naruto shrugged, squinting up at her with an odd expression on his face before peering out over the carefully tended grounds of her mother's estate. "Not really. Just kind of bored, you know? It was fun doing a bit of magic gardening, but I was really hoping to learn how to use Kasha, or at least Touki."
Snorting at how ill-informed the devil was, Kunou decided that if she was going to have to talk to him she'd rather do it with her feet on the ground. It was beneath her dignity to hide like a cat in a tree when he was obviously waiting for her to come down.
She wasn't afraid of him.
The blonde swung her legs out and dropped to the ground smoothly, landing lightly on the balls of her feet with vulpine grace. "You are not going to learn how to generate Kasha. I'm not going to learn how to generate Kasha. It's a nekomata-only bloodline ability, and they were wiped out a long time ago."
A sheepish smile curled at Naruto's lips, and he chuckled awkwardly while scratching the back of his head. "I did read about that, but I was kind of hoping it was just a rumor rather than a known fact, yeah? At least I know that I can still learn Touki. My cousin can do it and he wasn't formally trained in anything."
"Your cousin?" Kunou's eyebrows climbed upward in reluctant curiosity as she studied the Gremory heir with new eyes.
Truth be told, she didn't actually know all that much about Naruto beyond the fact that he had an irritating level of natural talent and that he was part of a ridiculously obvious plot to marry her inheritance.
It wasn't that she was being deliberately ignorant, but she had other priorities. The Gremory clan was a relatively small fish in the pond that was East Asia. There were five separate youkai courts in Japan alone, and Kunou needed to know everything about them.
Toss in the Church in Korea, the dozen youkai would-be-warlords in China, and the Khaos Brigade running around India and she just didn't have the time to waste her attention on some boy that wouldn't be politically relevant for the next eighty years.
Still, if his cousins were managing to bumble their way into senjutsu then maybe the clan was worth another look. There had to be some talent there if they managed that much.
"Yeah, Sairaorg. He's a pretty good guy all-around. For a while I did think of asking him to give me a hand with the senjutsu stuff, but I figured it made more sense to look for a specialist. It might take a little more time to learn that way, but at least they could teach me a few cool spells or whatever."
"Forget about learning quickly." Kunou snapped, frowning at Naruto with a mix of shock and horror. Did he have no sense of self-preservation at all? Even if he was half-a-prodigy senjutsu wasn't something to be approached so recklessly.
It was a wonder his head hadn't already exploded if he was just trying to do everything as quickly as possible. "Do it right or not at all. Senjutsu is dangerous."
Holding up his hands defensively, Naruto grinned at her. "I know, I know. That's why I'm here, aren't I? To learn how to do things the right way."
"And you had better make sure your cousin does the same before he accidentally contaminates himself with polluted qi and goes on a massacre."
"Sure thing. Do you have any quick pointers for him? He doesn't have a master or anything, so every little bit helps in my mind."
Exhaling slowly, Kunou folded her arms over her chest and glanced up at the sky in thought. What a hopeless man. But she supposed that she couldn't just leave him hanging in the wind if someone might actually die from it. "Well…"
The blood pounded between her temples, throbbing in time with the seething stress headache that was seeping into her brain. "This is certain?" she demanded quietly, her nine long golden tails slowly twisting through the air behind her like agitated cobras.
Kagerou's hands twisted, and he visibly fought the urge to reach out and try to sooth her. In the end he managed to restrain himself, lowering his jade-green stare to the floorboards. "It hasn't been publicly verified, but when have we ever been wrong?"
"Very rarely." Yasaka admitted with a sigh, turning her back on the shishi youkai to stare out the window. "But this is one of the few times I would hope a mistake has been made." Incompetence was generally worth punishment, but she'd take a bout of ineptitude over the news that the Sapporo Court was very close to accepting an alliance with Edo.
Nurarihyon must be laughing his liver spots off; the wrinkled old fart.
The floorboards creaked as her purple-haired retainer and occasional lover shifted anxiously in place, suffocating his desire to treat her like his woman as opposed to his austere leader. But she'd trained him well enough that Kagerou managed to wait quietly for the long minutes while she was lost in contemplation.
"Were they that offended by a few trade deals with foreigners?" The kitsune priestess mused, pressing the tip of her manicured thumbnail against her bottom lip. She'd signed a few business agreements with the Gremory clan, but nothing concrete beyond that. Mere hearsay shouldn't be enough for such a dramatic shift.
Historically none of the youkai courts were friends, but there were certain understandings that were upheld. Kyoto and Sapporo contained Edo between them, while Edo played nice with Hiroshima and Matsuyama to keep Kyoto from becoming more powerful.
Kagerou coughed into his fist, drawing his mistress' attention back. "If I may, I feel like it's not a question of culture or loyalty. The whole country knows you still have the favour of Inari, Yasaka-sama. No one would dare to call you a traitor."
Which was true, Yasaka decided after mulling over his words and deciding her servant-cum-bedmate wasn't just being deliberately sycophantic. Maybe she hadn't ruled as long as Nurarihyon, but she was the one that fought Dangun on the mountainside and saved their defeated armies from annihilation all those centuries ago. She'd made the people respect her, not only through words but through deeds.
Yasaka had real reasons to be proud.
So Sapporo wasn't motivated by something as simple as nationalism. Nurarihyon must have offered them quite a hefty bribe indeed. Whatever it was would have to make up for so blatantly going against their own conventional interests.
That, or there was another player entering the game besides the five courts and Gehenna that was willing to muddy the water.
"Very well then. If Edo wants a show, we'll give them a show." Yasaka's eyes burned with amber fire as she stepped closer to Kagerou. "I'd like you to find a handful of your most trusted and have them trickle in small cities and towns around Touhoku over the next few months. Have them pose as Edo youkai."
"Edo?"
The apple at the base of Kagerou's throat bobbed as he swallowed reflexively, and the sight made her lips curve up into a pleased little smile. "Yes, I think it's probably time for a few of Nurarihyon's staunchest supporters to congratulate him on successfully persuading Sapporo to accept the overlordship of Edo. Can you do this for me?"
Yasaka traced the pads of her fingertips over the sharp curve of the green-eyed man's jaw, feeling the faint stubble that just barely darkened the hollows of his cheeks. She'd told him just last week offhandedly that she liked a man with a little bit of ruggedness to him, and lo and behold here he was ready to please.
They always were.
"Of course. Anything you need."
"No." Rias huffed into the phone, spinning on her heel and stalking back across the kitchen with an agitated bounce to her step. "Mark up the bid as needed until you succeed. Money isn't a concern; I'll cover the cost. Just make sure you expedite the delivery. I want that bottle here before Thursday. Remember – Müller Riesling and nothing else. The 1990 year if you can get it, the 2003 if you can't."
Pursing her lips at the effusive affirmative that crackled through the speaker, Rias ended the call with a vague farewell, snapping her mobile shut and finally turning to Sasuke. "Don't you start again."
The Uchiha looked back at her with a bland expression on his face, and only the tiny sarcastic twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed him. "I don't know what you're talking about. I just thought maybe you wouldn't want to throw away twenty-five thousand Euros on someone you don't even like."
Rias rolled her eyes. "We both know that's just pocket change. And even if it wasn't I'm hardly going to send the Head of the Himejima clan a bottle of bootleg sake that you managed to pickpocket from some back-alley bum. I'm trying to reward her, not kill her."
"From the stories I've heard about that family, I'd say they're the same thing." Sasuke muttered, pushing off the wall and sauntering over. "But whatever. Are you done greasing palms? We're an hour behind."
Rias' eyes flickered briefly towards the absolutely garish cuckoo clock Naruto had insisted on hanging above the stove, and she fought back the instinct to frown when she realized her Pawn was right. That was just what she needed. It was bad enough that her father so kindly 'suggested' that she make a trip up to Kuoh a few times a month just to 'supervise' the lower ranking clan members that had settled there, now she'd have to put up with their constant begging to 'grace' them with her presence for a night.
Strangely, she found herself almost glad that she wasn't the clan heir anymore. Rias couldn't even begin to imagine how pathetically sycophantic they'd all be then. The only one that didn't fall all over himself trying to kiss up to her was Silas, since he actually had some talent and wasn't just looking to ride her coattails to success.
But Silas had the potential to be a whole different kind of problem.
Smiling just to nettle him and hopefully transfer some of her own sense of rising irritation, Rias made a big show of patting down her clothes. She slipped her cell phone into the front pocket of her blue jeans, rattled her keys around in her purse, and fiddled with the collar of her shirt until it hung loose off one shoulder.
Sasuke tilted his head at the over-the-top preening, waiting until her teal eyes shifted away before making his move. Sidling up behind the redhead until his crotch was pressed suggestively against the smooth curve of her rear, he lowered his mouth to her ear and whispered huskily. "Very haute couture."
For half a heartbeat Rias stood frozen, and then very deliberately reached behind her to trail her fingers over the stiffening bulge at the front of Sasuke's pants. "It's a very long drive to Kuoh from here, my friend." She paused, and then gave Sasuke a final pat before moving away. "I hope you don't find it too uncomfortable, riding in the back all by yourself."
Groaning at the catty retort, Sasuke shoved his hands in his pockets and willed his half-hard cock to soften. "I deserved that one." He admitted, following his mistress out the side door and across the lawn to where a sleek red convertible was purring and ready to go.
"You did." Rias hummed, gathering up her long red hair into a loose ponytail to keep it from being blown about in the wind. "Now shut up and get in." And with that the woman slid into the driver set and crammed a pair of dark sunglasses onto her face.
"Blood and ashes, you're in a mood." The Uchiha complained, crossing behind the Ferrari and sliding in beside her. He barely managed to click his seatbelt into place before Rias hammered the gas pedal and sent them screeching out of the driveway with the squeal of rubber on pavement.
Sasuke endured her reckless driving in silence until they escaped the city limits. Then without saying he set one hand on her shoulder and squeezed once. It was hardly a dramatic gesture, but for Rias it was enough and she sagged slightly with a ragged exhale.
To be honest, she knew she was being unreasonable. Sasuke hadn't said or done anything unusual and she'd still gone off on him without warning. Two months ago that kind of flirtation would have amused her, and perhaps even given her the wicked urge to see what it was like giving road head. But that had been two months ago, before Suzaku.
Now she was just too on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Rias was glad for Akeno, really, but it was hard to go from having her best friend by her side every day for almost twenty years to just seeing her in passing. Objectively mending fences with Suzaku was a good thing for Akeno, but it still cut that the other girl was so enamored that she didn't have any time for Rias any longer.
No, that was unfair. Between her absentee father, dead mother, psychopathic elder sister, and murderous great uncle Suzaku was the only member of that screwed up family Akeno had. It made perfect sense.
Apparently, Rias was just the kind of person that turned into a bitch whenever things didn't go her way. Maybe she should work on that. The first thing she could do would be to take up on Sasuke's offer from the kitchen. She could pull the car over and fuck him in the back seat. Then they could spend the night in jail for public indecency so she could have a few hours to re-evaluate her existence.
Marvelous.
"You're thinking too hard again."
Rias clenched her fingers around the steering wheel, her knuckles turning white from the angry pressure. She held on for a long minute, the seething self-loathing forming a rapidly tightening tangled knot in her chest; and then let it go with a steady sigh.
"Thanks, Doctor Snakes." she commented dryly, the tension seeping out of her shoulders.
Beneath the jibes she really was grateful, because once again Sasuke had reminded her to back out of her spiral of negative thoughts. Rias had a tendency to self-flagellate when her mood turned sour, and Sasuke had taken it upon himself years ago to provide the proverbial slap to the face when she needed it.
Just like now.
It was entirely understandable that she'd be a little crabby after her best friend essentially went AWOL. If Rias could give Akeno a pass for that, then she could give herself one too. They were both imperfect people, objectively speaking. A bit of moodiness was a natural response.
"If you're going to call me that, then I guess I'm now your therapist. I'll be a rich man."
"Oh, you watched that one too?"
"Gasper made me watch them all."
"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Gasper asked skeptically, wringing his hands and glancing nervously towards the empty stairwell.
"Of course." Tosca replied cheerily, waving off the dhampir's concern with a lazy hand. "Now let's light it up. We should finish this before anyone else gets back and starts asking questions."
The blond boy spared a glare for the Knight and pointed out in a tone as dry as the Sahara "You know, usually if you have to hide something from other people that's a sign that you should consider maybe not doing that thing. Just a random thought that popped into my head."
"Yeah, but maybe you're not doing anything wrong, and you just keep things quiet because you know that certain people are totally irrational about the smallest things." Tosca shrugged, cocking a golden eyebrow at the shorter devil. "Now are we going to do this or are we just going to stand around looking like idiots until it drops dead of old age?"
"Like that would make a difference." Gasper muttered snidely, stepping up to the table with a groan when Tosca just gave him an exaggerated pout. "But sure. Whatever. One side of dead baby chicken coming right up."
"That's the spirit! I'll make a homicidal mad scientist out of you yet, young padawan."
"I don't think that's something I should aspire to."
"Of course it is, don't you want to join the cool kids' club?"
"Any club with you in it by definition can't be cool." Ever since Naruto decided let her know as much about their little conspiracy as Sona Sitri did, Tosca had really tried to take him under her wing. Gasper kind of enjoyed being roped into her shenanigans if he was being completely honest, but that didn't mean he wouldn't give as good as he got.
"Brat, just shut up and get it moving along."
Drawing the power of his Sacred Gear close to him, Gasper reached out and opened the pockmarked shoebox that Tosca had dropped in his lap two hours ago. A fluffy yellow chicken chirped back at him, blinking its beady black eyes innocently up at the Bishop that loomed over it.
"Starting now." He told his self-appointed scientific mentor, and then let Forbidden Balor View fall over his line of sight.
Most of the color bled out of the world, and the shadows seemed to be heavier and seething when Gasper peered through the eyes plucked from a dead god. The only thing that seemed to be exist properly was the chick he set his gaze on, with every detail of the little bird flush with pigment and hyperreal to him.
Which was a bit of a paradox, since it was suspended in time while the rest of the world still moved and lived despite the filter of corpse color that shaded everything else.
A faint ache bloomed in the back of his skull, barely present but throbbing in time with the slow beat of his pulse. "It's done." He told her, keeping his flaming pupils fixed on the frozen chick.
Tosca gave a grunt of acknowledgement, stepping around Gasper so she stood directly across the table from him.
"I'll go slow and steady." She warned him, placing her hands a good foot to either side of their suspended subject. Blue light sparked between her fingertips, and a transparent azure dome hummed into existence around the chick.
Gasper felt it when her Sacred Gear lined up in the same area of effect as his. It was like an off-key whistle blowing just out of the range of conscious hearing. He didn't experience the sound directly, but it set his subconscious mind on edge and the dhampir had to stop himself from grinding his teeth. If they could figure this out it would be worth the discomfort.
Two fields of suspended animation centered around the same subject was just redundant. But Tosca could find a way to tweak her Sacred Gear, to find a way to make it feed of the power of his and use that to direct the effects, they might be able to do more than just freeze time.
It wouldn't matter that he was a squishy wizard type if he could just age all his opponents into the grave as soon as he looked at them.
"Steady." Tosca breathed, the barrier beneath her hands flexing slightly and she forced her will on it and made it buzz on a different plane. It made the urge to clench his jaw stronger, but Gasper pushed that aside. They were playing with a Sacred Gear they barely understood and didn't even have a name for. A few growing pains were part of the package.
"Steady."
The burning blue shifted as red streaks seemed to just drift over the curved crystal, mixing as it passed until Tosca's barrier looked like half of some ridiculous Easter egg. Gasper almost laughed when a particularly runny splotch seemed to form what looked like a crooked frowny face. "Nice."
Then the chick exploded, tiny chunks of pink and grey intestines splattering in all directions. The only thing that saved Tosca from a face full of chicken liver and feces was that this time she'd been expecting it. She'd managed to keep her Sacred Gear engaged despite the sudden detonation.
"Two for science, and one for you." Gasper stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry, letting Forbidden Balor View fade away with a blink. "Do you think we can publish this in Xenobiotica?"
"You've been spending too much time with Sasuke." Tosca groused with a sour expression on her face. The white-haired young woman let her barrier drop with a growl, glaring at the bloody bits that hit the tabletop with a wet little slap. She was getting tired of failures. "You're an intolerable little prick lately, and you're not easy enough on the eyes to get away with it."
Rearing back with a gasp of false horror, Gasper placed his hand over his heart and blinked wetly at her. "Are you calling me ugly? But Ravel said I was a pretty princess! I even put on my brand-new striped stockings this morning." Then he cocked a hip, letting his skirt flutter freely at the motion.
Tosca was quiet for a long moment, staring unblinkingly at the cross-dressing dhampir with dull eyes. "Never. Do That. Again." She gave a full body shudder, holding her hands up in a futile attempt to ward off what she had more than once called pure androgynous evil.
Which was totally unfair as far as Gasper was concerned. He was one hundred percent pure androgynous fabulousness, if he was going to put a label on it. "No wonder Naruto tells you everything now. You'd bust his little balls if he put a toe outta line."
"Damn right." Tosca shot back, banishing the cooling bird guts away with a flash of smokeless sorcerous fire. "Speaking of which, I need to go make sure that Sitri is feeling all warm and welcomed by her graduating class. She got here twenty minutes ago but Naruto won't be back for another three hours, and Rias probably won't be back until tomorrow."
"Wait, you left Sona Sitri waiting up by herself in our house with all our private things for half an hour?"
Shrugging disdainfully, the Knight turned away,;waving one hand over her shoulder in farewell. "See you later, young grasshopper. Some of us actually have work to do around here. Have fun posting underage nude pictures on Tumblr or something."
"What did you even come down here for!" Gasper shouted after her. "And I don't do that ever, so stop bringing it up!"
Akeno hummed a tune she half-remembered overhearing on the radio earlier that day, practically skipped up the stone walkway to the front door. One of the guards hired by Grayfia when they'd moved in did a double tag as Akeno bounced by, but she didn't let that deter her.
The clock buzzed as she slid into the kitchen, and the sound was so strange it made her do a double take. "Huh." The Queen blinked, tilting her head slightly as she studied the absolutely gutted cuckoo bird figurine that should have been screeching to welcome eight o'clock. "Now which one did that?"
Rias was an immediate suspect, since her redhaired mistress was probably seething with anger at having to do all of the administration work of the clan heir with none of the respect. Sasuke was another possibility, since he'd probably do something like bust Naruto's pet clock just for the sadistic amusement of seeing the man's frustration.
Of course, maybe Valerie was sleeping with Naruto tonight. That might be enough to make Ravel finally snap and do fatal injury to the most grievous interior design monstrosity they'd seen since Marquis' Phenex's gold-plated 'ballroom' all those years ago.
Akeno didn't know, because no one bothered to tell her.
Frowning at the thought, she pulled her phone from her pocket and swiped away her lock screen with a newly-manicured finger. "Just one from Suzaku?" she muttered, opening her inbox and firing off a quick mishmash of happy face emojis at the invitation to go back out for lunch tomorrow.
Akeno switched over to the last message she'd gotten from Rias and found herself blinking down at a grocery list dated from a week and a half week ago. Chewing her lip against the faint tightness in her chest, she settled on sending Rias a single short line of text.
"8===D + (V)"
Smirking slightly, she didn't wait for a reply before pulling up Koneko on her contacts list and firing of a short message asking what happened to the clock. If she was out of the loop she'd just have to try to get back in it.
She didn't even manage to slide her phone back into her jeans before it started buzzing relentlessly, vibrating against her fingertips like a broken vibrator. Koneko, Yuuto, and even Naruto himself all showed up on her notifications.
Naruto only sent her a string of gibberish, with the odd word standing out here and there, like 'puddle' and 'hatesweetsugar'. Yuuto was only slightly more coherent, though ten messages in a row all saying 'HELP' didn't tell her much.
Koneko didn't even bother with words. The nekomata only sent a single blurred picture of Sona Sitri facedown on the library floor surrounded by cans of Pepsi and vodka mix.
A snort escaped her when suddenly a message from Sasuke showed up, and Akeno realized that Naruto had decided in his infinite wisdom to invite them all to a groupchat. The Uchiha sent another ':eyes:' emoji, and then Rias finally responded.
'I will kill you all.'
'u will have to CTHULU me FIRST' Naruto buzzed back ineptly, following up his botched autocorrect with 'cast', 'cats', and 'cock' before giving up and just spamming 'lol'.
When Gasper's annoyed swearing began to fill the lines between Naruto's intoxicated texts Akeno decided she should probably do something.
It wasn't exactly politically kosher to have a fellow clan heiress blackout drunk on their floor with what looked like a pair of Koneko's dirty socks on her head. So it was probably for the best to get them halfway decent before anyone important showed up.
"But first." She grinned, crossing the kitchen to root around in the drawers until she found what she was looking for with a diabolical gleam in her eyes. "I have to stick to tradition." Then armed with a red sharpie she stepped out into the hallway, whistling cheerily and twirling her marker between her fingers.
"Oh, I'm just a girl…"
(AN): Just passed the 5000 word mark. Tied up my ends, tilled my soil, and now tis time to drop the bricks. Oh Yasaka, my sweet summer childe…