Prologue: Misery and Gin
The Bookworm
It was a fairly slow day for Donald Angus Maxwell.
There were no emergency sirens going off. There were no appointments to be kept or turned away. The morning stack of paperwork only reached halfway to the ceiling. Hell, he was already going through the last few sheets, marking some for further consideration, stamping others and…
The expression of almost meditative focus that the seventeen-year-old had been sporting for an hour straight broke. A face pale enough to nearly glow in the dark twisted, and a hand marked with the discolourations of old corrosions and burns scratched at short, grey-white hair. The black look he gave the last sheet in the pile was only magnified by the charcoal-grey of his eyes, and the equally dark bags beneath them.
'Fucking Leraje again.'
This was the Pillar Heir's eighth attempt in three months to make humans permissible testing subjects for his bacterial research. Not that he outright said humans, but even if he took dozens of words to say it that was what he meant.
Screwing the paper up into a ball, Donald tossed it at the waste basket beside his desk with as much force as he could muster. Considering that he had slightly less muscle mass than the average house-cat, this only led to the offensive document bouncing off the rim and landing on the floor.
He considered just picking it up for a moment...then decided not to give it the satisfaction, and raised a hand instead.
"Sol. Solar. Solaris. Scouring light. Eternal bane of shadows. Cleanse my foe."
With his first word, the space in front of his palm began to glow - and with each one that followed, it brightened. The light was not formless, though; instead, it contained itself, constraining the luminescence to the form of a forest-green circle with a radius only slightly larger than the teen's palm. Greek letters and almost artistic lines filled the space within it as the design gently spun in place. Then, with his command, the circle unleashed a beam of light powerful enough to pierce eyelids, which fell on the paper and immediately incinerated it.
As the crumpled form of the paper collapsed into a pile of ash, Donald sighed happily and leaned back in his office chair.
The room he was sitting in was fairly large, and separated into distinct areas. Against the wall behind him were several bookcases, with a few large tomes of various kinds in evidence but most of the space taken up by sheafs and sheets of paper. In front of him was his desk, large enough for his full basically-six-foot frame to lie on with a couple of inches to spare at either end, which played host to a keyboard and mouse, a monitor, a stationary container and the In/Out trays.
To his right, a heavy-looking metal door with accompanying keypad and a thick window of transparent material indicated the presence of the volatile testing area; to his left, there were a series of metal workbenches with various containers arranged on and under them, some full and some not, while tools of all sorts hung from panels mounted to the wall.
Donald drummed his fingers on his desk as the background hum of air conditioning became slightly louder, a faint breeze rustling his lab-coat as the pile of ashes on the metal floor began to spiral into the air. The last remnants of the paper vanished into the metal ceiling's inset fans, set between recessed fluorescent lighting, and the teen was left staring at the far, metal wall of his workshop/laboratory/office. The door set into the wall directly opposite him was a recessed, sliding metal affair, with about as much personality as any of the other fixtures in the building.
The boss wasn't a great believer in interior design.
Then again, neither was Donald. His only real nod to the concept was the welcome mat laid out just inside the door. It was upside down from where he was sitting, but he knew what it said anyway.
Wizards Welcome
(Muggles Tolerated)
Glancing at the In-tray once more just to make sure he hadn't missed anything, he shrugged and stood up. There was a while to go yet before the clock struck noon, and the boss wasn't due back until late afternoon. With the paperwork out of the way, he could get to work on his project…
...Or not, as the case may be.
A soothing, bell-like tone resounded through the room just as Donald had reached his feet. Not quiet enough to miss or ignore, but not loud enough to startle or annoy, it drew the listener's attention entirely without effort.
Blinking in mild surprise, Donald's attention re-focussed on the door, where the luminescent outline of a circle was just fading. It took a few seconds and about a dozen steps, but once he was close enough to the door it opened of its own accord, revealing the man behind it.
The man on the other side was dressed in a long-sleeved emerald shirt over black cargo trousers and plain trainers, with several pouches and holsters on the belt around his waist and a lab-coat topping the entire assembly. It was much the same fashion that Donald himself wore, though the teen preferred a white shirt with khaki trousers and rather heavy black boots. Still, except for those distinctions the two could have been wearing a uniform.
Their features, however, were anything but uniform.
The man stood at least a full head above Donald in height, placing him well over the six-foot barrier. His skin was pale, yes, but unmarked by the various burn scars and other damage visible on the teen's hands, or even by bags under his eyes. Those eyes were a bright shade of sky-blue, with a certain endless quality to them that seemed to absorb everything in their sight, and set below a head of hair the colour of grass, slicked back in a series of wave-like spikes.
He looked like the kind of man women would dare each other to approach in a bar, giggling to themselves if he looked their way. Donald knew this mostly because the man tended to complain about it whenever his friends dragged him out drinking.
"Good morning, Donald," the man greeted, his voice a fairly soft, slightly airy sound that nonetheless enunciated every word with care and precision.
"Good morning Ajuka," Donald replied. "I thought your meeting was meant to last until early afternoon?"
"Sirzechs and Serafall derailed it," Ajuka sighed, walking into the laboratory-cum-office as Donald stepped out of the doorway. "They couldn't focus on anything but the resumption of their siblings' school year. It devolved into another contest of whose baby pictures were cuter, and I decided my time was better spent working."
Donald hummed, walking past the back of his desk to snag his office chair and bring it around to the front. By the time he'd done so, Ajuka had sunk into a similar chair that wasn't there a few seconds prior - and, in fact, may not have existed at all prior to his desiring it to.
Donald swallowed a certain measure of jealousy, as he always did when his 'employer' so casually demonstrated things that he himself may never accomplish. Over the entirety of the Devil race, the creation of true matter from nothing but magic was a power unique to The Beelzebub. Besides him, the power tended to only appear in certain Gods and Goddesses. Donald was better served focussing on the goals he could reach for now.
Taking a seat himself, Donald reached for the Out-tray. "Only a couple of new items today," he told the Satan as he hefted the chunk of paperwork with slightly-shaking arms. "Mostly it's reports on ongoing projects. There are a couple of propositions for new studies though."
It would be a lie to say that the relationship between Donald and Ajuka was simple. However, it did showcase certain easily-identified characteristics: specifically, those of the secretary, and the intern.
Which is to say, Donald did any paperwork that didn't need Ajuka's personal signature (using the Satan's seal on a stamp, which was an investiture of trust that the teen was still slightly baffled about) or deserve his attention, and Ajuka paid Donald for it with the opportunity to do as much work as he wanted to.
Ajuka took the paperwork with casual ease, a pale-green magic circle forming above it without any obvious input on his part. Unlike Donald's circles, Ajuka's circles possessed little to no symbology. Instead, they contained an intricate series of lines and shapes, somewhere between circuitry and artwork, arranged around the symbol of the Astaroth family - the family from which he came, and the name he had laid down when he became The Beelzebub.
The few sheets of paper Donald had marked for attention slipped from the sheaf, hovering to Ajuka's side as the rest of the paperwork flashed the same green as his magic and then sank through another magic circle that formed between the paper and Ajuka's hand. "Thank you, Donald."
"Not a problem Ajuka."
"How is your project proceeding? I believe you stated the deadline is this week - the day before your weekend off, in fact."
"All according to schedule," Donald replied, keeping a straight face. It was perfectly normal that he would want to finish his work before he took a break and lost any momentum. There was certainly nothing to read into there. "Nothing's gone wrong so far and at this point I don't expect it to."
"And you do not require any additional materials?"
"No, I should have plenty left; even if I don't, my resource budget still has plenty of wiggle room left for this month."
"I am pleased to hear it."
Not that Ajuka was the type to read into things in any case.
The room fell silent for a few moments, but it wasn't an awkward silence. Perhaps it would have been two years ago, but Donald and Ajuka had adjusted to one another now—the former, perhaps, more than the latter—and the pause was companionable as Ajuka flicked through the sheets of paper set aside by his bureaucratic buffer.
"Hmm. For what reason does Mister Mendoza wish to research the effects of long-term isolated sensory deprivation on Reincarnated Devils?" the Satan asked, having set aside the other propositions.
"I'm fairly sure he and his wife are having another of their spats," Donald replied. "Missus Mendoza filed a most...innovative design for a terror weapon yesterday." He paused, shuddering slightly. "Well. A terror weapon from the male perspective, at least."
"I see," Ajuka said.
Donald knew that he didn't. Not really. Ajuka had never had a relationship more intimate than that of a close friend, and in a life that had lasted several hundred years so far he had only managed to gather three of those. He also didn't quite understand why people got into heated arguments when reasoned debate was much more effective at conveying a point, why otherwise brilliant scientists could become hopelessly distracted by a colleague in a miniskirt or tight trousers, and what the attraction was to entering confined spaces with large numbers of people and imbibing toxic substances until you fell over.
But he made an effort.
"I will be in the Spatio-Temporal Lab until sixteen-thirty," Ajuka continued after a moment. "I believe that I will soon be able to make substantial improvements to the Dimensional Gap Fluctuation Predictor based on the models currently being simulated, but I wish to test it under more strenuous circumstances. Please ensure I am not disturbed."
That alone told Donald that it wasn't just him having a slow day; the DGFP had been a pet project of Ajuka's since the late nineteen-twenties, and it was no closer to doing its job now than it had been then. Though he never seemed to discard the project, Ajuka only tended to work on it when he hadn't had any better ideas to focus on and no-one was asking him to make them something.
Still, it wasn't Donald's place to comment, and so he didn't. "Alright, Ajuka."
Ajuka inclined his head slightly, then stood and left the room, his chair disappearing into a gentle luminescence behind him. By the time the door closed behind the Satan, the light had faded, leaving behind nothing at all.
Sighing softly, Donald wheeled himself back behind his desk, shaking his mouse to wake the monitor. The fairly generic Underworld Technology Department screensaver disappeared, and a quick double-click opened an app labelled 'Isolation Protocol'. The fairly plain window thus opened displayed several buttons, ranging from a white one labelled 'No Alert' to a red one with the black silhouette of a dragon, labelled 'Inverse Contingency'.
One more click, and the grey-shaded 'Deflector Mode' was highlighted in blue, leaving Donald free to get up from his chair and head towards the testing area. He hoped no one dropped by to speak to Ajuka today; with Deflector Mode on, every visitor would be directed to his room, the door to which would now bear a brass plate engraved with 'Reception'. It was an irritation, but one he could deal with, especially when no one should be appearing.
On the assumption that someone would anyway, however, it would be better to start working sooner rather than later.
-x-x-x-
"Nihil. Nihilo. Nihilus. Darkness between lights. Nothing between everything. Potential unfulfilled. Come alive."
The words, in and of themselves, weren't important. They weren't quite a mnemonic, weren't quite a focussing exercise, but incorporated facets of both. As he spoke them, numbers flashed across his mind - hundreds of variables, dozens of equations, calculations that may as well have been engraved on the inside of his skull.
The words sheathed those numbers, like insulation for a wire, and at Donald's final command that conduit was filled.
An energy unlike any other in the universe flowed briefly through his being, carried by the numbers and directed by the words, alighting in that space between spaces that he was focusing on. There, though he couldn't see it happen, the energy expressed itself in reality, taking the form of a glowing circle filled with more lines and symbols than any other in his repertoire.
The circle, though, was really just a side-effect.
The circle pulsed, and the energy Donald had given it flowed to the nearest atom before attacking it. Electrons, protons and neutrons were all ripped away from one another in an act of violence that unbound the potential energy keeping the particle together…
And then, that energy was devoured.
The circle hummed in a manner only detectable at its level, a slight vibration of surrounding atoms, as it drew in the energy it created and grew a bit larger. Then, it pulsed once more, and some of the particles—indeed, most of them—reversed course. They came together a second time, forming a new atom. A different atom.
The next time the circle pulsed, two atoms were torn apart. A hum, a slightly larger growth, and there were two more of the new atoms.
From three to seven. From seven to fifteen. From fifteen to thirty-one.
The circle grew ever larger as the process continued, atoms flying apart and coming back together in an outward wave that, if it were visible, might resemble the shockwave of a particularly high-yield bomb in a swimming pool.
It only took five seconds for the process to complete. The circle was more than large enough to see with the naked eye now, a full meter across and spinning gently in the air above what was, until seconds before, a slightly larger chunk of solid lead.
Now, it gleamed.
Looking through the observation window into the testing area, Donald considered the roughly five-hundred kilograms of gold sitting on the table within. At that morning's price (which he received as a text from an automatic service during breakfast, as he did every morning), it was worth roughly eleven million, two-hundred-thousand US dollars. That was far more money than he'd ever had in his life; enough to live comfortably until his dying day, and go out in a gold-plated coffin to boot.
But it's not like he'd ever find a use for that much money, assuming he even got all of it; taxes would probably take a bite out of that, and there'd most assuredly be some very serious men and women asking some very serious questions about where he'd gotten his hands on so much gold. That could very well lead to a very different group of serious men and women having to pay the first group visits because they'd learned more than was allowed, and then coming to talk to him about how they'd come to know it.
Then, to top it all off, none of those possibilities even considered what effect dumping large amounts of gold into the market might have on the economy, which could range from 'absolutely nothing' to 'kick-started the 2008 financial crisis a whole year and a half early'. The idea that he could create gold from pretty much anything else with a few words and a miniscule time investment, in particular, would probably overshadow the latter in the economic calamity it could bring. Never mind the fact that it would work for anything else on the Periodic Table too.
In truth, not being a lawyer, an economist or a businessman, Donald had no idea what exactly would happen...but one way or another, he wasn't particularly eager to find out.
He shook his head, partly in amusement and partly to clear it. Something about the lustre of gold always engendered thoughts like that; it was far from his first time handling the material, but he still couldn't bring himself to cancel the text service.
He supposed it was just part of the price of being human.
A very, very hefty part of the price.
Shaking his head again, Donald dismissed the circle floating above the metal, the light which composed it dissipating. Tracing a circle on the window with a finger, he summoned a magic circle. This one hummed for a moment as it rotated, then began to glow brighter at the centre, projecting an opaque rectangle in the air before the transparent surface which quickly filled with information.
All excess subatomic particles accounted for. Room temperature normal. No extraneous electromagnetic radiation.
A perfect transmutation.
Allowing himself a little grin, Donald tapped a code into the keypad and the heavy door slid open, granting him access to the testing room. Reaching into his coat, he produced a pair of blacksmith's tongs, gripping the golden cube with them. It wasn't that large, despite its mass; barely more than thirty centimetres to a side, though it was already slumping under its own weight. Still, it was five-hundred kilograms of metal, and quite beyond the teen's ability to lift normally.
Using the tongs, he easily plucked it from the table and carted it across the room to one of the workbenches, where he placed it on a fairly deep tray. Placing the tongs back in his coat, Donald then crouched, taking hold of a metal container that had been placed beneath the table. Visibly bracing himself, he took several quick breaths before standing again, straining to lift the box up and causing the table to groan slightly as he more or less dropped it onto the surface.
Panting slightly, he reached into the container to produce a fairly large cube of dark metal. A seam divided it vertically into two parts, beginning and ending at a hole in the top, while hinges and a latch sit opposite of one another further down the box. Filling the rest of the container were two-dozen golden spheres about two-thirds the size of tennis balls, with the design of a magic circle engraved on each of them largely enough to encompass precisely one hemisphere.
Placing the box at the centre of the workbench, Donald produced a pair of gloves, a balaclava, a surgical mask and a pair of safety goggles from inside his coat.
The balaclava went on first, then the mask, then the goggles over the top; face covered, he buttoned up the lab-coat, which seemed to lose its opening when the final button is closed, and pulled up a hood that it hadn't possessed until that final button was done with. As the hood settled around his face, the neck of the coat seemed to creep up as the fabric of the hood contracted to tighten around his head. Finally, he pulled on the gloves, and they seemed to merge with the sleeves of his coat, leaving him wearing something that best resembled a level-C hazmat suit.
Thus prepared, Donald held his hands to either side of the golden cube with a good few inches of separation, and began to speak.
"Ignem. Igni. Ignis. Flame of renewal. All-consuming blaze. Arise here."
It wasn't just one circle that appeared, this time; it was six, each one appearing to sprout from one of the cube's faces. The cube itself lifted slightly into the air, getting maybe a centimetre of clearance from the floor of the tray...and then caught fire.
Or so it appeared. The flames that sprang into being around it filled the space between the circles and the metal, constrained to that space; which was really for the best, because they burned with a searing white light that had liquid gold dripping from the cube's surface into the tray only seconds after Donald had finished speaking. Enclosed in his coat, with his goggles filtering the glare, he squinted through the flames until the entire cube had melted into the tray, then flicked his wrists towards the tray itself.
All the circles but one died away, the flames they were producing dissipating at the same time. Left behind was a single circle that sank into the gold, continuing to burn though the flames themselves didn't appear above the surface.
Letting out a quiet breath, Donald opened a drawer in the workbench and produced something rather like a large syringe with a very fat needle, which he pressed into the liquid before pulling back on the plunger. The device quickly filled with metal, and he stopped when the plunger was level with a penned-on mark before moving the needle over to the box. A depression of the plunger and the molten gold went flowing into the hole, vanishing into the box until every last drop had been swallowed.
Once the syringe was empty, Donald placed it aside and held his hands to either side of the box, much as he had for the golden cube.
"Glaciei. Glaciem. Glacies. Ice of preservation. All-encompassing chill. Descend here."
A circle formed, barely larger than a fingertip, and as soon as it appeared it descended into the box. A moment later, the glow of molten metal, visible on the walls of that hole, disappeared – and so too did the light of the circle.
Donald tapped out the passage of several seconds on the workbench, then undid the latch on the box and started pulling the two sides away from one another. It took some effort, but eventually it swung open, revealing a golden ball identical to the ones in the container, nestled in the left-hand side of the mould. A traced circle in the air before the ball and another projected screen showed a temperature barely distinguishable from the rest of the workshop, then vanished as he reached through it to retrieve the sphere.
A couple of seconds later, it joined its elder siblings in the container, the mould was closed and latched, and Donald reached for his syringe again.
He needed forty-nine spheres to finally have all the parts for his project. He had put together the launcher the previous month, woven and plated the net the previous week, and had spent two months prior to both of those designing, testing and refining the magic circle that was now printed on the spheres. It didn't have to be perfect—nothing was perfect—but it had to be as good as Donald could possibly make it.
There were lives on the line, after all – and one of them was his own.
It was April Ninth, two-thousand-and-seven anno domini, and in six days he was going to change the course of the future. Perhaps in such a minor way that it was barely noted, perhaps enough to shake the firmament of all reality; one way or another, the name Donald Angus Maxwell was going to go down in the history books.
He hoped it would happen more than once though.
As he pulled open the mould once again, the Magician buried a certain dreadful anxiety beneath the surety of his plan. Even if it was based on the memories of a different life, a different name, a different world...those memories hadn't failed him yet, and so he held onto the recollections of Donne Gibbs just as he clung to his own identity.
All variables had been accounted for, all processes were in place, all contingencies were readied.
Whether it was the best possible outcome or the worst-case scenario, he could at least be sure that he knew what was going to happen next.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
The Nephalist
It was with restless energy that Junichiro Yamamoto walked onto the grounds of Kuoh Academy.
He scratched at the collar of the uniform he'd shoved himself into; even with the slight alterations he'd made to the uniform (he'd wear a cravat the day his body was put into a casket and not a moment sooner), the damn thing was uncomfortable.
Ah, well. At least the tiny pins holding down his collar and the cufflinks fastening the wrists of his dress shirt were permitted. All four were in the same shape: an upended crimson gourd, the liquid pouring forth from its lip forming the shape of a mountain.
It wouldn't feel right to go into public without the crest of his clan visible somewhere on his person, and Kuoh Academy drew the line at male ear piercings, it seemed.
He glanced around the campus absently; unsurprisingly, there was nobody to be seen. After all he'd arrived forty minutes before orientation was scheduled to begin for returning students, as he was not only transferring in, but was also in possession of rather...questionable credentials – from an academic perspective at least. Waking up early enough that he could squeeze in his training beforehand had been a pain in the ass, but that was life.
Early rising aside, were it not for those odd memories he had inherited, he probably would've had far more trouble completing the entry examination (not that it had been easy in the slightest). His clan was far from the most academically inclined group of people in the world. If knowledge wasn't of practical use to kin and clan, it was usually ignored.
But every flock had its black sheep…even if Junichiro was more of a sheepdog than anything else…
Okay, that metaphor ran away from him, but he was out of his depth, dammit!
Shaking his head to clear it of nonsense, Junichiro meandered onto the campus, taking mental note of both the tingling he had felt upon crossing the threshold of the property and of the twin points of concentrated magic energy he sensed from the school.
The point within the main school building was distinctly aligned with Water, while the one in the older-looking building to the back of the grounds was harder to decipher. However, he was able to sense that this unknown element had a strong connection to Void, due to his own affinity for the element. Neat...
Junichiro's attention was pulled from the metaphysical by the physical; to be precise, by the sound of wood striking wood, coming from a building off to one side. He found himself drawn towards the building by the noise, and after glancing at his watch, decided to investigate.
Upon entering the building and following the sounds to their source, Junichiro came across a sight familiar to him: a dojo. Within, two young women dressed in the baggy hakama pants and white gi of kendo practitioners squared off, bamboo training swords clashing against one another in a rhythmic tempo. The brunette of the pair seemed more aggressive, pressing the attack more often than not, while the other, a girl with strawberry blonde hair that bordered on cherry blossom pink, maintained a calm, even-tempered defense.
Stepping silently into the dojo, he leaned against a wall and quietly observed their form, his own fingers unconsciously curling around a pair of hilts that weren't there.
…
It wasn't that the two weren't good at what they were doing, they were, it was just…
What they were doing wasn't the same as live combat, was it? The training blades he could accept; most people didn't have to teach their children restraint by having them use live steel in training.
Junichiro rubbed at his arms absently, the scars hidden by his uniform twinging at the memories.
No, what felt off to him had to be the rigidity of their movements, the adherence to forms. Now, he knew that forms had their place when it came to teaching one how to use a blade, but to his eyes, and the eyes of his clan, they were just that: a teaching aid. If you stuck completely to a set of forms during live combat, then your opponent would more easily be able to predict what you would do next.
...Bah! He was overthinking this; these students were normal humans, living normal lives. If the time came that even they had to pick up a blade to defend themselves, there'd be bigger things to worry about than overreliance on forms.
It was at that moment that the two students lowered their weapons, and almost as one seemed to register his presence.
He knew he was an odd sight, what with his forge-tanned skin and six feet of height, so their shock upon seeing him was unsurprising.
The brunette's scowl as she all but stalked over to him was a bit surprising, however.
"Who are you and why are you in our dojo this early in the morning?" she demanded with more than a little heat, her training blade lowered but held in a firm, ready grip.
Junichiro ran a hand through his short, black hair as a sheepish look crossed his face. "I'm transferrin' in, so I came in early. Heard the spar from outside and figured I'd see what it was." He gave a shallow bow, noticing as he raised his head that both girls seemed surprised about something. Probably his accent, come to think of it.
"Junichiro Yamamoto. Sorry for interruptin'; I'll let y'all get back to trainin'." As he spoke, he turned and left, waving absently as he went. Hopefully he hadn't left too bad an impression on them.
After another brief glance at his watch, Junichiro pulled a booklet from one of his blazer's pockets, and flipped through it rapidly before finding what he needed: a map of the campus.
He quickly found his way to the faculty room, where he was surprised to see another student conversing seriously with a teacher. Her black hair was neatly trimmed into a bob cut, her unusual violet eyes flashing behind black-rimmed spectacles as she spoke quietly but firmly to the teacher. Based on the young woman's assertive body language and the teacher's submissive mannerisms, it quickly became clear to him that the power balance here was inverse to the typical student-teacher relationship.
Of course, this wasn't all that terribly surprising; the same aura of Water that he sensed coming from a few doors down also encircled the young woman, though in a far more tightly-controlled form. No doubt about it; this was one of the Devils entrusted with the management of Kuoh.
'Sona Sitri', whispered a voice both utterly foreign and intimately familiar. Junichiro was long used to these interruptions, knowing them to be nothing more than his mind interpreting the extant memories it housed as best it could.
At that moment, the door clicked shut behind him, prompting both the teacher and…Sona to look towards him in surprise. The latter seemed to almost double-take, no doubt realizing that he was not all that he appeared at first glance.
Before either of them could speak, Junichiro took the initiative. "Sorry for interruptin'; I'm transferrin' today, and the book said to arrive early." He waved the handbook in indication. "Didn't say how early, tho; hope I ain't late." He gave a lopsided but friendly grin, only showing a bare flash of his teeth. "Name's Junichiro Yamamoto."
Sona's eyes narrowed, fixing him with a calculating gaze for a moment, then she turned to the teacher. "We will continue this conversation at a later date, Professor Yamada. For now, however, I must assist this new student." She smiled. It was not a kind smile, but the smile of a shark with blood on its tongue and prey in its sights. "Have a pleasant first day of classes."
Without waiting for a reply, she turned on her heel and strode towards the door. Junichiro stepped to the side, and she exited the room, Junichiro not so much following her as being pulled along in her wake.
His grin widened a fraction as he stuffed his hands in his pockets, regained his metaphorical feet, and lengthened his stride to walk beside her. 'For a Water user, she's got fire in her. Ma would love her.'
Sona's eyes flickered towards him as he matched her brisk pace with ease, both due to the six inches of height he had on her and to his physical conditioning. They landed briefly on his pins and cufflinks before returning to the hallway before her.
Abruptly, she stopped in front of a particular door, one to the very room housing the concentration of Sona's magic. She turned to face Junichiro. "This is the Student Council room. I, Souna Shitori, am Student Council President."
Unable to contain himself, Junichiro remarked, "That's gotta be the worst fake name I've ever heard, Miss Sitri."
Sona's eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed, her gaze becoming calculating. After a moment of silence, though, she relaxed and sighed, replying "I am well aware. Unfortunately, Sister Dearest filled out the paperwork when I was not paying attention, and Father found it tremendously amusing, so here we are."
Junichiro nodded sagely, a hand pressed to his chin. "Ya' don't gotta tell me anything else; Ma loves messin' with me."
The two briefly shared a look of mutual commiseration, before Sona opened the door and invited him inside. "In truth," she said, "you are the only transfer required to arrive early, simply because we wanted to find out just who the 'surprise guest' our siblings approved was."
As he entered the dark room, Junichiro mused aloud. "We?"
The moment the words left his mouth, he realized his mistake, but by then it was too late. The light switched on at precisely that moment, and behind a desk, a swivel chair spun around to reveal another young woman. A mane of crimson hair cascaded down her back as she tented her hands and rested her elbows on the desk, azure eyes glinting with glee.
"We," she affirmed darkly.
A sound of a flesh impacting flesh broke the tension of the scene over its knee as Sona removed her glasses specifically to palm her face. "Must you, Rias?"
'Rias Gremory', the voice supplied helpfully.
'Rias' unclasped her hands and let out a light chuckle as she rose from the chair in a way so deliberately sensual that it was unmistakably practiced. Junichiro chuckled internally; she was stunning, there was no mistaking that, but there was no substitute for experience.
She was also unmistakably a Devil, and just as Sona's magical signature was one and the same with the concentration of magic in this room, so too was Rias' magic a twin to the concentration housed towards the edge of the campus.
"Do not be so serious, Sona dear," Rias all but purred. "It was just a joke."
Sona sighed the long-suffering sigh of someone who has put up with poppycock and shenanigans for much of her life, and has somehow yet to become inured to such things.
Once more seizing the initiative, Junichiro cleared his throat, drawing the gaze of both women. "Miss Sitri told me that neither of ya' know who I am or why I'm here, right?"
Rias nodded. "Big Brother only told me that we would be hosting an 'Important Special Guest' for the foreseeable future, and refused to tell me anything else." She shook her head in exasperation.
Junichiro nodded, then scratched the back of his head. "Well, I already know who ya' both are; Rias Gremory and Sona Sitri, heiresses of both of your Devil...Clans? Tribes?"
"Houses," Sona offered affably.
"...Right. Houses. Aaaanyways, it's only fair I tell ya' both who am...or show ya', I guess." He shucked off his blazer and motioned for Sona to give him a bit of space. She obliged, and…
He.
Let.
Go.
His skin began to darken with heat once more, going from a light tan to an almost unnatural reddish-copper. The sound of creaking joints and straining tendons could be heard as his muscles bunched and writhed beneath his skin, becoming far more dense. His short, spiky black hair rapidly lengthened to reach his shoulders, dyeing itself a darker crimson than Rias' as it did so. The tips of his ears lengthened and narrowed, becoming almost elven and poking out from beneath the curtain of red.
Finally, the most drastic and identifying change occured. As Junichiro closed his eyes in focus, the front of his skull erupted, twin spires of flesh-colored keratin spearing a full six inches up from his forehead. The viciously pointed tips rapidly became cherry-red as they filled with heat and chakra.
Junichiro faced the heiresses and reopened his eyes, giving them a wolfish smile that seemed all the more feral for the fact that his canines had become full-fledged fangs, and that his eyes had become yellow-gold, slit-pupiled lamps.
"Lemme reintroduce myself," Junichiro said. "Name's Junichiro Yamamoto, son of Homura Yamamoto, warrior of the Ooe Clan, and unofficial envoy of Kyoto's Lady Yasaka."
He glanced upwards to his horns as though noticing them for the first time, then grinned. "Oh, and I'm the first half-Oni, half-human born in a couple centuries. Nice to meet ya'!"
-x-x-x-
By comparison to his introduction to Rias and Sona, his introduction to his peers at the beginning of classes was a lot less remarkable. He got a number of odd looks from various sources, and could practically feel the gazes on his back when he took his seat. He hoped it subsided soon; even if he could be outgoing and spontaneous at times, being the center of attention tired Junichiro rather fast.
He took note of the pair of classmates from whom he could sense the particular flavor of magical energy he was quickly learning to associate with Devils; namely a princely blond who carried the faintest scent of Metal and who seemed to bear the brunt of a lot of female attraction, and a peppy brunette who had a vaguely familiar energy to her. It took a bit of thought, but Junichiro eventually realized that she carried the faintest traces of energy commonly used by demon-exorcising swordsmen.
Junichiro would have ordinarily been worried; after all, the 'demons' these swordsmen would hunt usually were not the extra-planar Devils like Rias or Sona, but rogue yokai, especially rogue Oni. However, the fact that this young woman was herself a Devil indicated to him that she was either from a defunct clan of swordsmen or was reasonable enough to differentiate between benevolent and malevolent demons.
Either way, he was optimistic.
Class passed slowly, as it was wont to do, but eventually lunchtime rolled around. Lacking any prepared meal, Junichiro decided to purchase lunch from the cafeteria. He was pleasantly surprised to see that Kuoh Academy's prestigious reputation not only extended to its classes, but to its amenities as well.
Of course, the meal paled in comparison to anything his mother could have cooked, but that was simply the nature of home cooking.
As he rose to dispose of his tray after he was finished with his meal, Junichiro was...approached? Accosted? Assaulted?
…
He was exposed to a trio of young men. The first had his brown hair pulled back into a rat-tail, while the second had darker hair and thick glasses, and the third was bald but in possession of a truly prodigiously large pair of ears. They were not in his class, but the voice recognized them and whispered their names to him all the same.
'Issei. Motohama. Matsuda. Pervert Trio.'
He internally questioned the apparent title, but his confusion was swiftly and brutally dispelled with a mere eight words.
"Hey, new guy!" the brunet all but shouted. "You got any good porn?"
Junichiro blinked, slowly and carefully, as he set down his tray – as though he was standing before a large, feral animal.
…
And in a way, he was.
As the three eagerly waited for him to reply, he slowly backed away until roughly three meters were between him and them, then turned on his heel and walked away.
'Not today, Satan.'
-x-x-x-
It wasn't until later that Junichiro realised how appropriate his passing thought actually was.
-x-x-x-
The rest of the school day passed without much else of note occurring, though after school let out he was approached by the blond and brunette from his class, whose names he learned to be Yuuto Kiba and Tomoe Meguri respectively. They had pulled him aside into a nearby empty classroom to talk.
Yuuto was the first to speak, a placid smile painted onto his face. "Lady Rias and Lady Sitri informed us of your particular...circumstances, and instructed us to pass something along to you."
Both he and Tomoe offered Junichiro a flier, bearing similar sigils he recognized to be miniature magic circles. The one Yuuto turned over was festively decorated with hearts and a cutesy succubus surrounding the crimson sigil. The phrase "Your wish will come true!" was written on it in bubbly, cartoonish English letters.
By contrast, the one Tomoe handed him was straightforward and undecorated, sharing more traits with a business ledger than any sort of flier. The sole spot of color on the black and white document was the magic glyph at the top, deep blue and roughly the size of a thumbprint.
"If anything particularly urgent should occur," Yuuto continued, "or should you need immediate assistance with something time-sensitive or dangerous, please feel free to use these filers. You simply need to focus on a need or desire, and Lady Rias and Lady Sitri will know."
"And if you need anything that isn't super urgent," Tomoe added cheerfully, "just come on down to the StuCo office; Lady Sona will get you sorted out in a jiffy. We're open before, between, and after classes, Monday to Saturday."
Junichiro offered an amicable grin as he pocketed the fliers. "Pass on the message that I appreciate the hospitality, would ya'?" His grin faded into a smaller, sincere smile. "I didn't know what to expect, comin' here to Kuoh, but so far...I've felt welcome."
Tomoe gave an energetic thumbs up and wink, while the more stoic Yuuto merely inclined his head, a more genuine smile than before on his face. "I am sure that Lady Rias and Lady Sitri will be pleased to hear it," he remarked, then glances at a clock hanging on a nearby wall. "Oh dear, is it that late already? I apologise for cutting our conversation short so abruptly, mister Yamamoto—"
"Junichiro, please. That goes for both of ya'."
Yuuto blinked, then nodded and continued, "Very well, Junichiro. Again, I apologise for the abrupt conclusion to our conversation, but Meguri and I both have responsibilities with our respective Peerages."
Junichiro waved dismissively. "Don't think on it. Was good to meet ya' both, Kiba, Meguri."
Tomoe extended her index finger at him and shook it in a mock-stern manner. "Now, now, Juni. If you're going to let us call you by your given name, you're going to return the favor, you hear?"
Yuuto, for his part, merely shrugged and offered, "Most people call me Kiba anyways, but you may refer to me as Yuuto if it pleases you."
Junichiro chuckled at Tomoe's apparent nickname for him, then nodded. "'Right then. Lemme say it right this time. Was nice to meet ya' both, Yuuto, Tomoe."
Tomoe planted her hands on her hips triumphantly and gavea satisfied nod, before turning to go. Over her shoulder, she called, "Much better. See you later, Juni!"
Yuuto shook his head with amusement. "Have a pleasant evening, Junichiro," he said, before following Tomoe from the classroom.
As Junichiro himself left, he chuckled to himself. 'What a pair.'
-x-x-x-
Once Junichiro left Kuoh Academy, he took a bit of time to wander the city's commercial areas, spotting a few places of interest; namely, a couple of restaurants, a used bookstore, and an arcade. He made a mental note of their locations and then headed homeward.
He paused briefly at the base of a hill and looked up to its summit. A faint tingle of energy was emanating from a derelict church at the top of the hill, though between distance and a lack of familiarity, he could not put his finger on what it was.
All of a sudden, the voice returned, not whispering but shouting, images flashing in his head.
Images of that Issei boy holding hands with an unfamiliar black-haired girl. Images of that same girl facing Issei in a park, now a woman bearing coal-black wings.
Images of Issei being run through by a lance of corrupted violet light, and bleeding out on the ground while the woman stood above him and laughed.
Through it all, the voice cried out. 'Fallen Angel! Raynare! Murderess!' it hissed.
Junichiro clutched his head, squeezing his eyes shut as he forced the memories down. It took more than a minute, but he managed to regain his composure. Shooting one last measuring glance at the ill-maintained church atop the hill, he turned and walked home, mind working furiously.
By the time Junichiro reached his house, the sun was beginning to set, and the beginnings of a plan had taken shape in his mind.
All throughout dinner and his evening exercise his mind continued to work, and he found himself too focused on the issue at hand to even begin to pay attention to a book.
By the time the day was done and he laid in his futon, he was still uncertain. There were simply too many unknowns to judge the situation for certain. However, one thing stood out to him as clear: the memories of the man known as 'Johan Lewis', presumably his past life, had always proven to be useful in his past, and he trusted them to not steer him wrong on something this serious.
Junichiro sighed, closing his eyes. If nothing else, he could take comfort in the fact that he did some of his best planning in the heat of the moment. After all, that giddy sense of excitement and terror that came from plunging headfirst into the unknown?
It energised him; despite his tendency to overthink things and try to plan things in advance, he was never more at home than working on the fly.
What would come, would come. He simply had to be ready to stand up when it did.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
Authors' Note
Tenin: Well here we fucking go again.
Xan: Not even doing the "Ah, shit. Here we go again." meme? Smh my head.
So yeah. This is a reboot of "Of Gods and...Men?", and as you may have noticed, there've been some changes. Hope you all enjoy!