"You are angry, aren't you?" Ruby asked while making sure not to make eye contact with Sona. "In my defense, it probably wasn't my fault!"
"Oh? So an official complaint from Hokkaido, reviewed and signed by goddess Amaterasu, about excessive damage that was inexplicably tracked back to Kuoh came to be because of somebody else?"
"...okaaay, but I was just helping them out with some pest control! And it was still a better idea than trying out new spells here!"
"So I've read. The problem was not that you decided to engage in combat on a foreign territory- although if Shinto pantheon wanted to be petty about it, they definitely could- but that you set the place on fire and ran away without cleaning after yourself!" Fricking hypocrite… Sona had to hear quite a few times from Ruby about how much unnecessary collateral damage Rias was causing and now this…
"So everything is alright?" Ruby shyly asked.
Sona fixed her with a hard glare. "You should be really happy that you didn't cause an international incident… In that regard, so that you would learn to be more responsible, you will write an apology, give it to me for review and we will send it back. Understood?"
Ruby wanted to smash her own head against a wall.
-WoR-
"Lord Beelzebub is here to see you." His secretary called in. Sirzechs quickly replied to let him in. Seconds later, a bright green mandala lit up above a chair opposite of his desk and Ajuka quite literally dropped in.
"You took your sweet time." Sirzechs sarcastically commented after they were done with the normal greetings.
Ajuka only shrugged. "You didn't exactly give me a lot to work with." He summoned a small containment box. "There was barely anything to begin with and you wanted me to find out who it was… Really, I'm good but I can't create miracles."
"So you don't know who it was." His bishop was able to collect some traces of energy from Kuoh and he quickly gave it to Ajuka so that he could figure out the identity of girls visiting god.
"Well, there is nothing that matches in our archives and a certain someone blew up most of Old Satan's library." He replied with a small teasing smirk. "But I must say, you are right to worry." Sirzechs waved for him to go on. "It's a light element but quite different from angels. It's…more aggressive, if you understand. I'm pretty sure that if our wayward deity shows up in person, lower and middle class devils would probably die of exposure. I'm honestly not sure how that hybrid girl can stand meeting up with her. Sure, she is only a quarter devil but it probably still must feel like entering the Vatican just to stand next to it."
The meeting ended quickly after and they both went back to their respective work.
Sirzechs sighed. It was slowly becoming more and more messy.
Usually, if something like this was happening, Okita or Grayfia would act as mediators or at worst, enforce the peace until he or Serafall could deal with it. But the issue right now was hitting too close to home. Rias was right in the middle of it all and he had to thread carefully not only to prevent upsetting her over subverting her authority in the territory but also to make sure that she wouldn't be caught in any fight she wouldn't be able to handle. And sending Grayfia to have a chat with a god had a large possibility to end in exactly that.
Then there was Sona, which meant that each and every move had to be consulted with Serafall. If anything, the Sitri heiress was the one better off. While Rias' relationship with the hybrid magician was strained, Sona was treating her as her contract magician in all but name. The money transfers from Sitri coffers that Serafall provided also supported that. Thus putting Ruby under scrutiny would be seen as Satans targeting a Sitri interest, moreso, Serafall would never allow that because Sona would probably be sad about it. Even if she herself had some questions for her sister's new friend.
He actually felt a little bad for the girl. She was getting it from all sides just for being too close to the sisters of Satans despite being just a pawn, a knight at best, in someone else's scheme.
On the sidenote, apparently, they weren't the only ones looking for a runaway god. Serafall had been subtly (for her) inquiring about it from other pantheons. And to their surprise, Tuatha De Danann had been quite sketchy, for lack of a better word, during the inquiry. Lugh knew nothing, like everybody they had asked before but Morrigan definitely knew more and to the surprise and worry of the Irish gods, the godslayer was for some reason around, standing in the back and listening in.
-WoR-
*thud*
"...still too informal…"
*thud*
"And somehow your grammar got even worse compared to the previous draft."
*thud* Ruby groaned and paused her previous activity, smashing her head against the table, and glared at Sona.
"Well, I suppose you've learned your lesson." Sona smirked.
"My what?"
"Do you really think anybody would really care about an apology from some random magician? At worst, you would get chewed on by some local miko. I just wanted to show you that you wouldn't be able to run away from doing something dumb and irresponsible."
"So all of this crap was for nothing!?" Ruby shot up from her chair and screamed.
"Pretty much." Sona calmly replied and looked up at her friend with a satisfied smile.
She also believed that Ruby wouldn't be petty enough for some misplaced revenge. She was the one who got herself into trouble to begin with so she should just accept that she got away easy.
/
"I-*pant*pant*-hate-*pant*-you so much right now." Sona barely managed to say out loud.
Currently, she was sprawled on the floor of the closed off gymnasium after a very, very, VERY long sparring session with Ruby. Magic, hand-to-hand, non-lethal weapons and everything in between that her tormentor could come up with.
It was their most expensive training yet. Not because Ruby was charging extra out of spite, but because Sona had used three whole vials of phoenix tears to deal with all the injuries that she was sustaining. At least those came from Ruby, not that she told them where she got those to begin with.
She didn't know whether she was just that soft or Ruby was a complete psycho.
"Oh, get over yourself." Ruby replied with a slightly too wide smile. "Now, go lie down somewhere else. I have the rest of your guys to have some fun with." She turned around and watched as the student council was slowly filling in after their classes ended. Each one pausing, looking around at the damaged walls and floor. Then getting very worried at the sight of their beat up leader limping towards the edge of the room.
/
Going through the stances could be very boring.
But there was nobody who could give him a proper swordfight around here anyway. Well…there were two people Kiba didn't fight yet but those two could be slightly problematic. Maria would probably agree but she was usually neck deep in the school council duty, with how much the devil part was spending on stray hunts and training. There was also the problem with Buchou being in a one-sided cold war with the girl over stealing her title of the most beautiful/popular female in the school.
Then there was Ruby. Somehow, after Buchou's victory over Riser they…didn't exactly become friends but were treating each other much better. Ruby wasn't trying to poke and prod his king at every opportunity and Rias wasn't so quick to get angry at her. Issei was also spending quite a bit of time with the witch. Training he told them but when asked about specifics, he couldn't really answer and usually just ended with Ruby doing something with Boosted Gear.
Before, he consciously decided not to approach her out of loyalty because it would seem wrong to be too friendly with a person who held animosity towards Buchou. It definitely wasn't because he was still slightly peeved over her weapon and overall mindset when it came to combat. He was a knight, someone chivalrous and with honor even if he was now a devil. He heard how she fought when it came to strays or even some theoretical scenarios she presented to Sitri-san's peerage. Not to mention her proposition to capture Riser and keep him prisoner until he would agree not to pursue Rias Gremory. Her entire ideology could be summed up in "if the fight is fair, something went wrong".
Still, it would do him good to diversify his practice.
On the autopilot, he reached the gymnasium. Quietly opening the door he took a look inside.
In what he assumed was the resting spot, Sona's pawns and the knight were in various states of recovery as their king was gradually healing them. In the far corner, the two bishops were putting their heads together while working on a complicated spell that consisted of about a dozen interlocked mandalas. He didn't even bother to try and understand what that thing was.
And in the middle was his target, currently wielding a halberd made up of a pure red light as she was being ganged up by the rook and the queen. Mostly the queen, Tsubasa, lacking the speed enhancement compared to the other two was spending all of her time either chasing Ruby around or desperately defending from her assault whenever she managed to catch up.
Noticing that they had a new guest, Ruby batted Tsubasa away, sending her flying across half of the room with the shaft of her weapon while casually catching Tsubaki's naginata by the blade.
"Enjoying the show?" She casually called out to Kiba.
"Quite a bit actually." He answered with a polite smile and fully stepped inside.
Kaichou would have probably scolded him for interrupting their training but they all were obviously too tired to either continue or even complain about it.
"So…what's the occasion? Did Rias need something?" Ruby asked, stopping the spar and letting Tsubaki have a breather.
"I wanted to spar with you myself." Kiba admitted. "But if you are already occupied…"
"Hmm…" Ruby rubbed her chin before smirking. "I have a different idea! You two-" She shot a quick look at Kiba and Tsubaki. "-against me. No magic or any enhancement. Just muscles and skill!"
The halbert shortened and thinned out to form a spear. In her left hand, a bright red, dulled energy scythe appeared. Tsubaki's weapon was also coated so that it wouldn't be as sharp.
The two challenged devils shared a look. Tsubaki was slightly shaking her head, trying to say that it was absolutely not worth it. Kiba just shrugged and produced a blunt longsword.
/
During the fight, they had discovered that Ruby's weapon coating served a different function than just blunting it. It would also leave a bright red mark upon contact.
And thus, twenty minutes later, both Tsubaki and Kiba were covered in red lines and dots. Almost all of them on the neck, joints and right above the important organs.
Sona's queen was only barely conscious, which after today's training was a personal surprise for her.
Kiba was fairing slightly better. Mostly thanks to the fact that he joined up later on. Even then, he was on his knees, leaning on a sword to keep himself from falling completely.
And Ruby only had a small layer of sweat on her but was overall untouched and was positively beaming at them.
They thought that by putting a ban on using magic would make them have the advantage, even reincarnated, devils had simply superior physical capabilities to humans. Seems like nobody told Ruby about that. If anything, she expected them to be confident just so she could beat all of it out of them.
For Kiba it almost reminded his training with Okita-sensei. A person who intentionally slowed himself down to be only a bit faster than him and then proceeded to pick apart his fighting style strike by strike. Not to mention the lethality of the fight. All of the strikes landed at either immediately lethal places or ones that would lead to death within a couple minutes. He was also pretty sure that his ribs were at least cracked from repeated spear strikes right at his heart.
Something both of them also could agree was that whoever came up with an idea to use scythes in combat should go and fuck themselves. It was just so unbelievably annoying to fight.
Fight it like a war axe? No, it had much greater reach and was significantly more mobile.
Like a normal polearm? Nope, it was heavier and hit harder, not to mention the absolutely atrocious angles of attack.
And the ferocity of her attacks was nothing compared to their more refined fighting styles. No balanced stances, no studying your opponent. At least not before the battle.
Always moving, always building up her momentum and keeping them under pressure even if it was two on one. They were sure that at some point she started to mock them. Leading them on and then having them hit each other gave that away.
/
Pyrrha had dragged Ruby into the empty classroom. Rias did the same for Sona.
After throwing both of them behind desks, they glared down at them.
"You need to chill out!" Rias commanded. "Both of you!"
Sona had mentioned that she intended to play a small prank on the witch for her to learn not to poke her nose into trouble.
She apparently did.
Then Ruby retaliated.
Then Sona 'randomly' chose her as a model for the art club.
The next day Koneko found Sona, tied up, gagged, stripped down to the underwear and glued down to the ceiling of the boy's changing room.
Two days later, the district Ruby lived in was flash flooded.
So, before it could escalate into Ruby blowing up Sona's mansion, or something like that, the two redheads put their heads together and decided to intervene.
"It's her fault!" The two idiots pointed at each other.
-WoR-
She was floating, surrounded by a sphere of pink petals.
Rias was getting really angry, not only Ruby didn't tell her how the hell was she able to use her bloodline, now she was also messing with her with those stupid illusions of hers.
Suddenly, she was unceremoniously dropped onto the grassy ground. Petals around her scattering and revealing a dark surroundings with only the stars in the sky being anything visible.
Ominous… Rias just crossed her arms and waited for Ruby to get her fill of being annoying and then apologize for getting her involved.
Her heart skipped a beat as a bright gold streak flew past her.
And another.
And one more. Each barely missing her head, neck and torso.
Before she could recover or try to break the illusion, something shot up into the sky in the distance.
It was only a silhouette, long flowing hair and most prominently, five pairs of bird-like wings.
It raised a hand, light spear several times larger than her, forming above it.
Red eyes glared at her as the spear was thrown and her vision was filled with light.
…
*Thud* Rias woke up with a gasp, accidentally throwing Issei out of the bed. Her breathing was ragged and she was covered in cold sweat.
"Buchou! Is something wrong?" Issei jumped up from the floor and asked her with worry.
She thought about it but… she didn't even know herself. "Sorry…just a nightmare."
/
Sona finished her third cup of coffee. In two hours. And it wasn't even that late yet.
She blamed the stupid nightmare, which caused her to lose about three hours of sleep.
Half an hour later she made herself another cup.
She put it on a small table near the couch. When she sat down and reached for it, it was gone.
Somehow she missed Rias walking into the council room and stealing her coffee.
She gave her a glare but judging by her appearance, they were both having a bad day.
"Next time make one yourself." Sona commented after Rias returned the cup.
"Maybe…ugh, couldn't sleep last night." Rias plopped down on the couch next to her and massaged her forehead.
"Issei was being too eager?" Sona smirked as Rias' face matched her hair.
"W-we didn't even get thereyet!" Rias shouted in defense. Sona just memorized the 'yet' part. "Just had a weird dream and couldn't fall asleep afterwards."
"Huh." Sona raised an eyebrow. "That's what happened to me too."
Rias was also surprised at the coincidence. "So…what was yours about?"
/
"You do realize that any sort of premonic visions are very vague and genuinely only a step above a horoscope?" Ruby asked towards the assembled peerages.
For whatever reason, both Sona and Rias had the same nightmare at the same time and their first reaction was to call a meeting and discuss what it meant. Usually, having weird dreams didn't mean that they were getting glimpses from the future. Although…she herself did technically run all around the world because she heard the voice of god once. Said goddess was now inside Pyrrha in the room with them and probably considered all of this a waste of time. Knowing her own luck, things would get worse soon enough.
They had already heard two recounts of what was in the dream but… Either some things were very obvious, too much for an usual divination, or they just missed some smaller details that were probably somewhere in there.
After ten minutes of a confused arguing, they all managed to agree that Ruby would put them all in an illusion, bind it to the caster's memory and then pass the control over to Sona. She would then focus on the memory of the dream and they would all see the same thing.
Two seconds in, the girls interrupted the casting and, for some reason, glared at her.
"What's the problem now?" Ruby asked, sounding a bit more annoyed than she intended.
"All of this!" Rias waved her hand at the surroundings that looked like a curtain made of rose petals. "This thing looks almost identical! And I thought that you weren't messing with us for once!"
"I wasn't even in the town at the time!" Ruby protested.
"I can confirm that." Pyrrha also joined. "Ruby was teaching me how to teleport properly. Among other things." She didn't know what was worse. Her complete inability to teleport to the exact location, always messing up the attitude of the target location, or what Ruby did to that chimera thing. At least it helped Ruby to get over their stupid spat with Sona and start acting her actual age.
Sufficiently calmed down, girls let Ruby proceed.
As soon as she handed over the control of the spell, the curtain changed to a swirling pink sphere.
Once they all saw the recreation of the dream, they took a couple of minutes to think about it.
"Okay, does anybody have anything to say?" Rias proclaimed with a clap of hands to get everyone's attention.
Issei was the first to answer. "Well, Ddraig says that it reminded him of someone but he can't remember who it was. And I'm not sure if he meant the flowery thing or the guy that was throwing stuff at us." It was honestly very annoying, listening to the voice in his head yell into the nothing about an asshole, Ddraig's words, he couldn't recall. "The flower thing. He was talking about that."
"Good, if he remembers, we might know something." Rias gave him a wide smile that almost made his heart jump out.
Ruby was on the other hand skeptical. Premonition was one thing but sending those directly into someone's head… That required a lot of both knowledge and power to pull off. In the end you would need to be either connected to the very concept of dreams, like Great Red or any god of sleep, dreams and maybe some overspecialized powerful casters, or you'd need to be a strong god in general with a powerful supply of faith to partially circumvent the connection and brute-force your way in.
Then it was Kiba's turn. "Those three things that were thrown first. They weren't normal light spears or anything."
Maria nodded along. "They looked more like uneven pieces of shining metal."
"Hmm… So we are looking for some sort of broken, presumably holy, weapon." Sona noted it down. "Five pairs of wings and light weapons are pretty obvious. Either a pure or fallen angel."
"Something has to do with the stars. Everything was so dark so if the stars were still there it would have meant something." Akeno supplied.
"On a more metaphorical side, the spear was thrown from the front, directly at you. Whatever is going to happen, it would be rather straightforward, no cloak and dagger BS." Ruby added.
"Anything else?" Sona asked after writing down their opinions. "The red eyes?"
"Considering all the ways one can alter their appearance and the amount of different meaning the color red has, we would be shooting in the dark." Ruby grumbled.
"What now?" Rias asked.
"I'd start looking for suspects." Sona answered. "There can't be that many ten wing angels, fallen or pure, that are somewhat active."
/
"Do you think something bad will happen?" Pyrrha asked Ruby after the meeting was over and everybody went to their usual business.
"Probably." Ruby shrugged. "The problem with prophecies is that unless there is some sort of timeframe, then you are out of luck and it can happen tomorrow or in a century or two."
"So still at square one, train and prepare for the worst…" Pyrrha lamented with a sigh.
"Only that this time Rhongo won't be able to help you."
"Why? Do you think she will refuse because it's not a 'threat to the world' thing?"
"No, but pulling out a holy lance that's on the same level as the original Excalibur while surrounded by rather weak devils and siblings of satans… I'm willing to bet anything that Sirzechs and Serafall would flip." Ruby explained. She then looked up so their eyes could meet and she smirked. "But don't worry! I have something in mind, now just to see if you can make it work."
-WoR-
Ruby woke up at 2 am as the barrier around the city tingled into her control mandala.
One entry, a significant amount of light element. A few seconds later, before she could even leave the room to investigate further, another twenty much weaker signals crossed into the city from the same direction. With a small frown on her face, Ruby teleported on top of a building overlooking the area out there.
When she arrived, she expected an invasion force, the commander charging in first and the rest following after.
To her surprise, the strongest wasn't the leader, he was the target.
Some distance away from her, a rather one-sided fight was taking place. The lone swordsman with a manic grin on his face and a familiar kris was running circles around the group of twenty, presumably, exorcists and was slowly bleeding them dry. It was rather obvious that instead of trying to deal with them properly, he was intentionally prolonging the fight by not killing them but causing as much suffering.
At least it meant that most of them were still alive when Ruby decided to intervene.
"Sunovabitch!" Good lungs… Ruby thought after putting a hole through his foot. She was half a mile away and she still heard him curse. She debated whether she should have gone for the kill but… with the exception of Griselda, all her interactions with the church were passively aggressive at best, actively at worst. And even if the guy was obviously wrong in the head, putting somebody down without knowing anything would leave a very bad taste in her mouth.
She pulled out her phone.
"Mhm…*yawn* what is it?" A very sleepy Rias picked up.
"Morning." Ruby dryly greeted. "I have a bit over a dozen exorcists in need of an interrogation and medical help, so get Asia and go to the southwest edge of the city, a bit away from Toyota parking lot. I'm going after the runaway psycho." Not waiting for a reply or confirmation, she ended the call and leapt from the building.
At last, somebody was having worse luck than her! The psycho, by some stroke of karmic justice, ran into Kiba. She didn't question why he was out but it helped.
Too bad he completely lost his shit and went berserk at the maniac, thus somehow still losing against a tired and wounded opponent.
"Die you shitty devil!" The holy blade rose into the air. Kiba glared back in defiance.
Neither noticed silver glint or the red blur emerge from the shadows and jump behind Freed.
"Aarh! You little bi-ugh." He screamed out as his arm was severed just above his elbow. Then Ruby kicked him into the wall.
She was about to ask some very important question but then his body gained a pale yellow sheen and disappeared. Somebody forcefully teleported him away. A good extraction. Didn't mean she wasn't angry.
"Come on, let's get you patched up." She turned around and levitated Kiba in the air.
He only gave a grunt in response.
"First, you will tell everyone what happened. Then I'm going to tell you everything I think about losing your head in a fight, okay?" Despite being a question, it didn't sound like he would be given a choice.
Hopefully Asia and Rias would still be with the exorcists and she wouldn't need to chase them around the city.
/
/
/
News:
I've got an idea for a cover art, so if any of you want to get involved by actually making it, write me a message and we can bounce some ideas. I myself am completely useless when it comes to drawing so maybe at some point I'll simply make a proper commission.
Speaking of spending money. I've made myself a pat`reon, acc name same nick as here. No idea how to use it and there won't be any extra stuff bcs I don't really have like 3 chaps prewritten. Do whatever you want with that information.
Btw, lol, the site censors the word pat`reon if written normally xD
/
Replies:
To ahsoei and KazuTFahrenhir: I probably could have worded it better… Yes, Ruval is currently the heir and Riser being called the third heir means that he is third in line.