"All right, I think I've been patient enough." Sona says aggressively, hands on hips, once we've reached the school again. Both peerages have congregated in the student council room for a change. Sona has largely regained her composure, or at least she appears to have. I can still smell the edges of panic on her though, "I want an explanation!"

"What does Ericka sensei have to explain?" Kiba asks slowly. Clearly uncertain about the rather emotional edge that the usually stoic devil king is displaying.

"She has wings!" Sona squeaks, pointing at me.

There's a long moment of silence, then almost as one every devil in the room turns to look at me.

I stare back at them. For a moment I'm tempted to just keep the staring contest going until one of them actually asks a question. That wouldn't really be helpful though. So instead, with a sigh, I do the reverse of what Tsubaki had talked me through to put my new wings away in the first place.

No matter what it looks like, the wings don't actually fold up into my body somehow. When not visible, they actually cease to be. At least physically. I'm sure that when I get home and can run an analysis Script on myself I'll find them written out in my Script, even when not apparently there. Still, manifesting them is a feeling of extension. Of spreading my new limbs out from my back.

It takes me a little while to get the mental action right, but then my huge, feathered, black and blood tipped wings spread out from my back, my armor automatically adjusting to allow them out and protect them. One of them also immediately smacks into the wall I'm closer to, which almost knocks me over, pushing me in the opposite direction.

This leads to a bit of flailing, nearly smacking one of Sona's pawns, but after a bit of awkwardness I manage to get them folded properly on my back. The... wrist I guess, of the wings, extending past my head, and the tips of the feathers nearly dragging on the ground. After getting them settled, I glance up at the devils to gauge their reactions.

Most of them are just staring at them wide eyed, but there are a few more specific reactions. Shirone is staring at them the same way I've seen her staring at an especially soft pillow in a spot of sunlight. Akeno's face is twisted up into a grimace, like she doesn't really know what to make of what she's seeing. Rias has paled slightly but seems to be holding it together, more or less.

The first of them to recover is Shirone. Before any of the other's in the room can start demanding answers or freaking out, she gets to the important questions, "Are they soft?"

"I..." I hesitate and glance over my shoulder at my right wing, which I also extend slightly so I can see it easier, "I don't know." With my armor on I can't exactly touch them to check even if I'd thought of it, which I hadn't.

"Can I find out?" Shirone's tails are whipping back and forth in feline excitement.

"Um... Sure?"

The nekoshu devil scampers forward, and face plants/head butts straight into my right wing, which is still slightly extended from my examining it. There's a moment's pause, then an extremely loud rumbling purr fills the air. With no hesitation Shirone reaches out and grabs the armored edge of my wing and pulls it around her like a blanket, completely vanishing into the feathered mass.

The room is silent, the only sound being Shirone's purring and a murmured, "Warm." That I'm pretty sure nobody else could hear.

I cough, and turn back to the rest of the room, "Well... that just happened."

"Why do you have wings." Akeno gets out through gritted teeth.

I sigh. Some part of me doesn't really want to explain this. I can't help but think that the devils with unique abilities will be nervous around me afterwards. Granted most of those are in Rias' peerage so I don't care over much. But Shirone or Kiba refusing to have anything to do with me would hurt.

Another part of me is sort of amazed that I've managed to live here this long and not explained it. I mean, sure, right at first I wouldn't have answered any questions. But after a while, Sona could have had at least a basic explanation of my oddities for the asking. She never asked though. Which I have to admit endeared her to me a little bit.

Now though, "I stole them." All the devils look at me blankly, "From the fallen angel I just killed? Surely you must have wondered how I, as a human, can keep up with all of you." Kiba snorts when I say 'keep up', but otherwise doesn't comment, "This is how. I steal things from what I kill. I can't take skills or knowledge, but any inherent trait is fair game."

"Your strength?" One of Sona's pawn's asks.

"Took it from a troll." I say with a shrug. Interestingly my wings move along with the motion of my shoulders. Something that gets an irritated noise from Shirone, who's still hidden in my right wing.

"That's how you recover so quickly, as well." Tsubaki comments slowly, like she's finally been shown the picture on the box of a puzzle she's been working on for months.

I nod to show she got that right.

"Your senses?" Kiba asks, having been frustrated more than once by my ability to keep track of everything he does in a spar, no matter what he tries.

"Mostly taken from mundane animals."

"Is that how you got so good at fighting?" Tsubaki asks.

"Sort of." I hedge, "Remember when I said I rescued Yasaka's daughter from a kidnapping attempt and a coup?" They all nod except for Issei who's looking increasingly confused. I do my best to ignore him, "My reward for that was being allowed to take the physical talent of every tengu involved in the incident." The silence I get from that revelation is deafening. I just keep talking through it though, the last thing I want to do is answer questions about how many tengu that was, "That being said, I started training at the age of five, and worked at it obsessively for my entire life. That, and I've had some really good teachers."

Rias finally joins the conversation, looking at me suspiciously. Something I'm confused about, until she asks her question, "Like who exactly?"

"Um... Ku'uaki Ke'Kua'Okolani."

Kiba drops into his seat like his legs just gave out, and the other martially inclined devils are having similar reactions of disbelief and envy. I manage to not smirk at their reactions.

"Then the therapist you said you could recommend...?" Rias asks, sounding faint.

"Is his sister, Pua Ke'Kua'Okolani, yes." Now the magically inclined devils are giving me similar looks.

"Um... who are these guys?" Issei asks into the silence. Which fortunately starts people up again.

Before they can get into that though, I cut in, "Speaking of teachers I'm going to need somebody to teach me how to use these things." I twitch my wings slightly, earning myself another disgruntled cat noise.

"I can..." Rias starts, and then abruptly stops from the sheer amount of venom in the glare that Sona sends her. I can't hold back the smirk at that point either. I'd say that who my teacher would be for flying isn't really in doubt.

The meeting wraps up pretty quickly at that point. I leave, and the devils stay behind. I catch a bit of Rias explaining who Pua and Ku are to Issei. I miss most of it, but I do catch her saying that if her brother had any choice at all, he would avoid fighting the Ke'Kua'Okolani siblings together. Especially if it involved fighting them on Hawaii itself.

Getting home, I'm almost giddy.

This is finally a chance I've been waiting for for a while. I let myself in and, as expected, Mia is sitting on the couch.

"So, how did it go?" She asks me, without turning away from her current singing show.

"Pretty well, actually. There were a few hiccups, but largely went without a hitch. The worst part was having to explain my trait stealing to them. I left them to talk about me behind my back so they can work things out. I did get a prize though." I tell her, moving in front of the couch between her and the TV.

Mia looks a little annoyed with me for blocking the TV but plays along, "All right, what did you get."

With no warning I extend my wings as far as I can in the confines of my living room as fast as I can.

Mia squawks and goes backwards over the back of the couch.

I can't help it, I start laughing hard enough to double over clutching my stomach.

"What the fuck!?" Mia shrieks, peaking over the tipped over couch.

I just laugh harder.

I win!

###

I so regret winning.

I hit the ground with a crash. It takes a moment to get my breath back, so for a few moments all I can do is glare at Mia as she laughs at me. Getting a win on the person who's about to be your flight and aerial combat instructor, was perhaps not my greatest idea ever.

Learning the way angel wings can enable one to fly by basically... just willing it to happen, isn't a difficult lesson to learn. It's really just apply power and go. They're even amazingly efficient at it. Not so efficient that I won't largely be relying on mechanical flight though. Still that means that I don't spend a lot of time as Sona's student, and quickly enough I'm handed off to Mia.

Proper aerial maneuvering and mechanical flight tengu style is somewhat more difficult. By which I mean insanely more difficult. Well, basic flight isn't that hard. Harder than the angel version, but not insanely difficult. Learning how to maneuver in the air for combat, especially close quarters combat, is an entirely different story. I don't know why I'm surprised, but it's very much like learning footwork for fighting on the ground.

Just in three dimensions.

So before Mia lets me even so much as flap, she starts me drilling wing positions. Standing on the ground she has me snapping through wing positions for banking, juking, sliding, rising, falling, barrel rolling, alion rolling, hovering, back winging, and a dozen other maneuvers that I have to get to the point of instinct before anything else can happen.

Getting to the point where Mia would let me into the air only took a couple of weeks. Thank you massively stacked tengu physical talent. Of course, all that means is that I could start actually performing the maneuvers in the air.

Which is why I'm crashing now.

Mia tells me that I should just be glad that, thanks to my troll muscle and mana network, I don't have to do exercises to make sure my wings are strong enough to actually lift me, never mind perform complex maneuvers. Apparently wing ups are a thing. She makes sure that I know all the proper exercises, what they work on, and when and how to do them. Just in case I have to teach some other newly winged being how to fly at some point I guess? But I don't have to do them myself.

With a groan, I drag myself to my feet and stretch my wings out as far as I can, just to make sure I didn't injure them with my litho breaking. The wealth of sensations that I get from my wings is still new, and a little overwhelming.

The day after getting my wings, after taking pictures and sending them to Pua, Ku, and Sarah, I ran an analysis Script on myself. Pua's convinced me that I should run one after every trait acquisition if I can find any way to at all. At least I'm getting very familiar with my own Script, that's got to be useful for something.

Still, calling what angels, and now I, have growing out of our backs 'wings', almost seems insulting. Feathered appendages for flight is the least of what they are. Almost like it's a function added as an afterthought. Like Yahweh was designing the angels, and finished designing these and just said, 'You know, since they're going to be back there anyway...'.

And what are they?

A giant energy collection and filtering system.

Holy magic is created by faith. It's why it's so rare, and generally only gods can use it, angels being a huge exception. Which leads back to the wings. An angel's wings' purpose is to collect holy magic and faith directed at them, and pull it into themselves.

This is why angels seem to get stronger the more wings they have extended. They are. They're literally collecting more power.

It's also why Heaven and the Church freak out so hard on anybody who knows that god is dead. As long as this isn't known, people keep praying. Keep generating faith and holy magic. Which at this point is probably all that's keeping the angels going.

Suddenly, what I thought was a giant overreaction by the church anytime anybody even hints at knowing the truth, seems a lot more reasonable.

Of course, none of this means anything to me. Nobody is praying to me, nor am a member of a group that is prayed to in general. To me they really are just wings. That doesn't change the fact that when they're spread, I can feel every bit of mana that isn't what they're supposed to collect slide through them.

It was a little distracting... okay, really distracting at first. But by now I've largely learned to tune it out. For a little while, I entertained the idea that if I could find a way to adjust them slightly I could have found a better method of collecting mana than my pressure Script.

The things are so god damned complicated though, that I wouldn't know where to start. Not to mention that there are still large parts of them that I can't make heads or tails of. Like where do they go when I put them away?

I don't know.

I mean, I found the Script that describes what happens, but I don't know what most of those symbols even are! Never mind figuring out what they do all together, and how that interacts with the rest of it. Until I know exactly what everything is and how it works I'm not touching any of it.

Besides, my ritual only applies to adding new traits. If I screw up something that's already there, I'm pretty sure I'm on my own. Just thinking about trying sets off a little voice screaming in my head. A voice that sounds a lot like an irate Pua.

"Ready to give it another go?" Mia asks, having finally contained her laughter. Mostly at least.

I check the time and shake my head, "I think we're done for the day. We've been at it for four hours already, and it's almost time for Shirone and Kiba to get here."

"How long do you think Kiba's going to take to lose his temper this time?" Mia asks with a smirk.

The only answer I can give her is a groan.

###

Kiba's practice sword swishes past my head as I lean out of the way, prompting a growl of frustration from the devil knight. His next swing I just step back from. The follow up thrust is better, coming unexpectedly from the middle of the slash, but all I have to do is turn sideways to avoid it.

Today's exercise serves two purposes. Their job is to attack me, however they like, for five minutes while I do nothing but defend. The purpose is to get them to start thinking ahead. To plan out attacks that will prevent me from avoiding them. Thus, why I'm only defending, so they can fully concentrate on planning their attack.

The second purpose is to remove Kiba's favorite tactic for trying to get a hit in. That is to take a hit to land one. Something that I've been trying to break him of, for almost as long as he's been my student. I'm pretty sure it's this that's driving him nuts right now.

He is getting better though.

His next swing comes in diagonally at my head, which I evade by sliding my foot and leaning. Then he twists his hips, and cuts at me parallel to the ground. Too high to jump over from my current position, and the only way I can just get under it would leave me flat on the ground.

Not a good place to be.

Fortunately I'm not limited to just dodging. A twist of my hips lets me plant the palm of my hand against the flat of his blade, boosting it high enough that I can get under it without leaving myself vulnerable. Even if that does require a 360 degree spin with my torso parallel to the ground. A move that looks like something straight out of an action movie, and yet is a totally legitimate technique. Since I have control of his sword at that point, and my feet never leave the ground.

Kiba stares at me as I return to an upright posture, letting his sword drop, "Is this even possible?"

I sigh. Instead of answering him, I feint a low kick to his forward leg. He lifts his foot to avoid it, which means he's not exactly capable of evading when I lunge forward instead of finishing the kick, and plant a hand on his chest gently pushing him over.

He lands on his back, and goes limp, "Right." He sighs, "Can I take a breath to think about this, Sensei?"

"Sure thing, Kiba. Take a break. You almost had me with that last one though." One of the things I really like about Kiba, is that while he may get frustrated, and even lose his temper on occasion, he never gets really angry. He always calms quickly, listens to what I say, and tries to apply my advice. He doesn't always do it well, but that's more from the rigidity of his thinking than any lack of talent on his part.

I'm pretty sure that's a problem caused by his survivor's guilt. But he hasn't opened up to me about his past at all, so there's not a lot I can do about it. He's improved a lot though. I'm pretty sure that the trick that I used the first time we fought, punching him while he's saluting, wouldn't work now. And not just because he wouldn't salute like that outside of a formal duel any more.

Leaving Kiba to his thoughts, I turn to my other student with a smile. While I'm proud of Kiba, and I think I've succeeded in splitting my attention evenly between the two of them evenly, Shirone is my favorite. The fact that I find her adorable as she takes up the pseudo boxing stance she's found she likes, is good evidence of this. She squares up with me, and immediately goes on the attack. For some reason I find fists much harder to avoid than swords.

Might just be a mental thing.

My problem... sort of problem, is that now with some actual technique to her, Shirone hits a lot harder than I can take. Kiba with a wooden sword is bruising, which my regen makes not an issue.

I'm kind of worried that Shirone will break something if she lands a hit.

The little cat dances. Her fists fly from every direction and every angle. She bounces in and out of range. Everything I taught her to do, she does. Sure her combinations are too simplistic, she's falling into patterns with her foot work, and we'll need to work on getting her to remember that she's got elbows, knees, and feet. But there's always going to be things to work on.

Still, after the first few punches, this serves as excellent training for the strength nullifying defense that Ku taught me. Which says more about how she's improved than anything else.

I'm proud of her.

Both of them really.

###

We go, switching back and forth between my two students, long enough that by the time I get home the sun is going down. Mia is in the kitchen when I get in. She's going through the cabinets looking for something to snack on, I assume.

I roll my eyes, and head for my workshop, "If you eat my chocolate I'm making you cook your own food for a week."

I hear her freeze in the kitchen in the middle of opening a cupboard. I assume she's trying to decide if the reward is worth the punishment.

"Will I be cooking for both of us?" Mia calls, sounding uncertain.

"No. Only you will suffer your cooking." The whine and her slouching walk out of the kitchen tells me I've successfully defended my chocolate stash.

This time.

I unlock the door to my workshop and re-lock it behind me. Locking the door is a new thing. Previously I didn't worry too much about anybody getting in. Anybody who did would first have to get through the house wards, then be able to make sense of the Script all over the papers. And anybody who could make sense of the Script lying around would know that it would probably be easier to make their own from scratch than trying to adapt mine.

So really no point in keeping the door locked.

Now though...

I've cleared the center of the workshop, and set down a new table for what's probably the most important, and dangerous, experiment that I've never done. The new table is round and painstakingly carved with Script and inlaid with silver. With the carefully regulated power gathering Scripts, emphasis on the plural, to ensure nothing burns out. This is a Script that I've spent an inordinate amount of time making sure will never fail.

Hovering over the table is a globe sized sphere of Gap.

Realizing that the Gap isn't a presence, but an absence, was really kind of mind blowing. The Gap isn't something that I can draw in and contain. That doesn't mean I can't get a controlled and isolated sample of it to work with. The purpose of the Script on the table is to drive back the Script defining the universe, to create a small space that imitates the larger Gap by being a place where reality isn't. And keep anything not deliberately pushed into it out.

Now I have something I can work with.

Granted, I've made no progress on getting anything to survive in my mini-Gap. So far everything I've stuck in there has just... come apart. In an area where the fundamental forces of the universe don't apply. Where the very idea of matter, even down to the smallest quarks, is absent.

Everything that enters the globe just seems to cease. I can't even examine what's happening in there, because light fares no better than anything else.

That's okay though. I didn't really expect this to be easy, and I'm just getting started. I'll figure something out.

Moving around the table I carefully examine the Script to make sure it shows no signs of burning out. Sure, theoretically, if the script fails reality will rush back into the 'vacuum', causing no problems or damage.

Theoretically.

Not a chance I'm willing to take, though.

After making sure that the table has no problems, I move on to the next part of the experiment. A stack of wooden dowels, each covered in a different Script intended to keep them intact when exposed to my mini-Gap. Next to those, is a pile of dowel stubs of already failed tries.

I don't really expect any of these to work fully, but if I can get something that is just destroyed slightly less. Or in a different way. Or really any reaction at all, it would at least give me a starting place.

So far nothing though.

With a sigh I grab the next dowel, double checking the number I've written on the end that will survive, so I can keep track of which Script is which. Noting which I've got, I insert the other end of the dowel into the mini-Gap. Checking the damage I find again that every part of it that touched the sphere is just gone. I can't even really describe what the edge of the now shorter dowel looks like. It's... fuzzy? Hazy? If I look really close and squint, I can almost convince myself that I can see the Script that defines the dowel unraveling into the air from where it's existence has been frayed.

It'll solidify, or recover, or whatever it does, in the next few minutes. After it settles the new edge of the dowel will be rough, almost like smoke that froze. Which is an interesting effect, but not something useful in the slightest.

I toss the new dowel stub onto the pile of the previous ones, and reach for the next when I pause.

I could swear I heard something.

A moment later I hear it again. A soft scratching sound. Turning my head, I quickly narrow down the source of the noise to the curtained window.

I blink for a moment, only moving when the scratching comes again louder this time. Moving to the window, I push the curtain aside, and find myself slightly stunned at what I see through the glass.

A slightly larger than normal house cat, with something carried carefully in its mouth sitting on the window sill. Looking up at me through the window, the cat reaches out a fore paw and scratches at the window frame again.

Feeling slightly numb, I unlatch the window and pull it open. The cat saunters through the window and looks up at me, waiting. I hold out a hand, and the cat drops what's in her mouth into my hand. Giving her a scratch behind the ears and a few pats, the cat head butts my chest and meows. A meow that I try to convince myself doesn't sound like the word, "Princess." Then she turns and vanishes back out the window.

I pull the window closed behind her and turn back to my chair. Rolling away from the central table to the desk where I actually write out my Scripts, I take a closer look at what the cat delivered to me. Carefully, I uncrumple what appears to be a wadded up piece of toilet paper.

Written in what smells like blood on the paper are the words, Hide your aura.

...

Cait?