. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Would you please die for me?"
*Thunk!*
Ben woke up with a start and sat upright in his bed, his breathing heavy and sweat covering his body from the nightmare he just woke up from.
He brought one hand up to feel the area around his stomach where he had been impaled in his nightmare while he ran the other one through his hair as he calmed himself down.
"What the fuck? I've never had a dream like that before," he muttered to himself as his dream played out again in his head. He hadn't been with the titanic creature this time. It had just been him on his own this time, and the fact that he had been attacked in the dream and it felt so real was what concerned him the most.
He looked over at his alarm clock and saw it was coming up to 8AM. He switched off his alarm which just so happened to be set to the same time and pulled himself out of bed. He put on a shirt and pair of trousers from his wardrobe and walked over to his desk where he sat down in his chair and pulled out a piece of paper and colouring pencils from one of the drawers in his desk.
Once he had all he needed, Ben started to draw the image he saw in his head as part of his coping mechanism for when he had such vivid dreams.
"Why was this one different?" he wondered as he sketched out the picture with his pencil. "Please God, don't let it mean–."
*ZAP!*
"Arrrggghhh!" Ben gasped at the sudden sharp blast of pain that just struck his head, clutching his head instinctively as the pain slowly subsided.
"What the fuck was that?!" he hissed as the pain slowly went away. It felt like a thousand hot knives just struck his brain for no apparent reason. Once the pain was gone, Ben glanced down at his drawing and groaned when he saw that, when he flinched at the sudden pain in his head, he had drawn a thick line across the entire image with his pencil which, incidentally, had also snapped off its nib from his minor spasm.
"Shit," he groaned as she scrunched up the ruined picture and threw it in his wastepaper bin and rummaged through his desk drawer again, this time for a pencil sharpener.
As he sharpened his pencil again and started drawing from scratch again, he tried to figure out what caused the sudden headache but couldn't figure out what caused it.
He started a new drawing and spent the rest of the morning working on it, putting more detail into this image than the others before. He couldn't explain it but this dream had been the most realistic one he'd ever had since they first started happening. Not only in that he wasn't following the gigantic green creature like he had done every single time before now, but when the dream played out in his head, it really felt like he had been impaled by the strange spear-like weapon.
His hand reached down to clutch the spot where he felt the phantom pain. To put it in comparison, Ben likened it to the phenomena he had read about amputees where they say they could feel the limb even though it wasn't there anymore.
He got so absorbed in his drawing that when he had finally it and added it to his 'scrapbook' of similar images, he next looked back at the clock and was surprised when he saw that it was already past noon.
"Talk about time flying, huh," he muttered to himself as he put everything back in his desk and left his room in search of the kitchen to get something to eat.
As he entered the kitchen/dining/living room he spotted his parents stretched out together on the sofa and watching a film on Netflix. He couldn't help but smile a little at the sight of his parents lying against each other, their arms wrapped each other as they enjoyed each other's company. They'd been married for just over twenty years now and they still loved each other as when they first met years ago at work.
His parents spotted him entering and paused the movie.
"Look who's finally up," his dad teased with a big grin on his face.
"We were starting to get worried about you," his mum added, a similar grin adorning her face.
"Har, har," Ben replied drolly as he made his way to the kitchenette, raided the fridge for sandwich ingredients, and started making his lunch.
"Did you have a good time yesterday, sweetie?" Sandra asked kindly from her spot on the sofa.
"Huh?" Ben replied in confusion.
'What was she talking about?'
"You know? Your day out in town with you not-girlfriend friend?" his dad chimed in.
As if being the magic words, as his dad said this, Ben was bombarded by images of yesterday and his day with Julie.
"Oh yeah," he responded, scratching his head as the images flicked through his mind; meeting Julie in front of the bus station, having a meal at a local fast-food restaurant and their walk around Kuoh where she showed him the sights as they passed them.
"Yeah, it was fun, I guess," he mumbled as he continued to play out yesterday in his head.
When he got to the part where they entered the park, though, his memory drew up a blank. He couldn't even remember how he got home last night.
"Hey, do you guys know when I got in last night? I didn't see what the time was," he asked them, hiding the fact he had a gap in his memory.
"I don't know, champ. Your mother and I went to bed early and were asleep by the time you got in," his dad replied with a shrug.
"I know it was sometime before ten though," his mum chimed in. "That's when I checked in on you when I was getting a glass of water from the kitchen.
"Argh, you still check on me?" Ben complained, his cheeks reddening slightly in embarrassment. After his accident which landed him in hospital, Sandra had taken it upon herself to check in on him nearly every night for the next few years. It was only in the last year, actually, that she agreed to stop doing it every night when he asked.
"I only did because I was passing by," his mum retorted with a tone of parental affection that Ben found impossible to argue with.
When he had finished making his lunch, he poured himself a drink and made his way back to his room.
"You don't want to stay and watch a movie with us?" his dad asked as he reached the door to the hallway.
Ben turned back to look at the TV and see the film they were watching, recognising it as a sappy romcom film.
"I think I'll give it a miss today, thanks. Besides, I've still got homework that I need to get done," he revealed even as he slowly backed up through the open door. "Hope you enjoy it though."
"Okay, good luck with your homework, sucker!" his dad chuckled behind him as he left them ascended the stairs.
As the door closed shut behind him, he could make out snippets of his parents following conversation.
"Don't you have work to do for a project at work?" his mum asked, turning the tables on his dad who grumbled at the reminder.
"Urgh, yes. But, come on! It's the weekend! I don't want to think about work right now."
"I'm just saying. Don't give Ben grief for doing his homework. He's being responsible, unlike somebody else I can think of."
"Are we watching this movie or what?" he heard his dad retort, quickly changing the subject.
Ben smirked at his parents' antics as he re-entered his room.
. . . . .
(A few hours later)
"Gah! What's wrong with me?" Ben groaned as he pinched the bridge of his nose – not for the first time – and pushed away the books and papers before him before leaning back in his chair.
In the last few hours since he returned back to his room, a headache had been growing to monstrous proportions and it was steadily making it harder and harder to concentrate on his homework.
He glanced over at his clock and saw that it had just gone half past four. He then looked out of his window and to see the mid-to-late afternoon sun still hanging in the sky.
"I need to get some air," he declared, rising from his desk, grabbing his jacket which was hanging off the back of it, and leaving his room and heading back downstairs. He popped his head back into the living room to see his parents had fallen asleep on the sofa while clearly in the middle of a binge-watching a Netflix series on TV.
Not wanting to wake them up, he pulled out his phone and sent his dad a message telling them he was heading out for a walk and would be back later and left them alone as he headed to the front door.
Once outside, he put in his headphones and played one of his favourite playlists on his phone as he headed off down the street.
Not heading anywhere in particular, Ben simply wandered around town, stopping off at a convenience store that was open and getting himself a snack which he quickly dealt with and a drink which he kept as he continued on with his stroll.
Before he realised it, Ben ended up at side entrance to Kuoh park. When he did realise it, his head exploded with partial memories of yesterday when he was last here. He could remember heading in with Julie but everything else after that was a blur, covered by a fog that he couldn't break through no matter how much he tried to remember.
He was only able to take a few steps into the park before his headache returned with a vengeance, startling him and forcing him to sit down on a nearby bench as the sharp wave of pain ran through him.
"Fuck!" he lowed as he took a large swig of his drink in hopes it would help him somehow. When it failed to do so, Ben resorted to leaning forward with his head in his hands as he waited for the pain to pass again.
While the pain did, indeed, dissipate eventually, it so at such a slow pace that Ben completely lost all track of time as he stayed in his current pose.
"There you are, babe!"
Ben jumped at the sudden voice and looked all around him in search of the origin of the voice but couldn't see anyone around him.
'Must be my imagination,' he thought to himself as he went to adopt his previous pose again.
"Where have you been? I've been waiting ages for you."
Ben's head snapped up quickly and he looked around again for the person he just heard.
"Sorry, hon. Got caught up at work," another voice replied in apology.
"Ok, what the fuck's going on?" Ben wondered, sitting upright to look for whoever was talking. There was absolutely nobody around him, and nobody who was close enough to speak so clearly. In fact, the only people in sight were a man and woman standing over 150ft away from him at the opposite park entrance that he had come through.
There was no way that….
"That's okay, babe. I was beginning to think I was in the wrong place," the man told the young woman with a sigh of relief.
Ben's eyes widened and stood up in shock as he watched the couple link arms and start walking away from him.
"How is that possible?" he whispered in disbelief as he ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to calm himself down.
"Come on, lets get going. I don't like being in the park when it's so dark," the young woman stated as they rounded the corner of the park entrance and disappeared from view.
'What's she talking about? It's only….' Ben glanced down at the time on his phone. He gasped at what he saw.
'Half past eight?!'
"That can't be right!" he gaped, looking around himself. He could still see everything so clearly.
He then looked up at the sky to see the rising moon slowly starting to emerge from behind a patch of clouds.
"What's happening to me?!" he demanded as he clutched the sides of his head with his hands and took several deep breaths as he struggle to calm himself down. He was so worked up by what he was experiencing that he completely failed to notice the sky turning purple around him.
*SWOOSH!*
A sudden feeling of dread washed over him, bringing him back to the present as he looked behind him to see a mysterious figure standing behind a few feet away from him, obstructing his route to the park exit. He wore a large pale grey trenchcoat over a white dress shirt with matching ascot, black trousers and shoes, a pair of black gloves, and a black fedora.
"Why are you still alive? Raynare was supposed to have taken care of you," the figure demanded as he slowly walked towards Ben.
Ben was startled by the intense hostility he felt originating from the figure and how it was being aimed directly at him.
"No matter. I'll correct her mistake," the figure declared darkly as he tugged the edge of the glove on his left hand with his right as he continued to approach Ben.
When Ben was finally able to return to his senses and move his body again, he spun around and ran as fast as he could from the figure, heading further into the park in a desperate bid to escape.
'What the fuck?! Why is that guy after me? And who's Raynare?!' he thought desperately as he continued to run away, not wanting to risk looking behind him. He reached the large fountain in the centre of the park and took a side path in the hopes of both escaping his pursuer and circling back to an entrance where he could then escape the park and get back home.
*WHOOSH!*
Ben heard the spear before it struck him.
*THUNK!*
"Hrrk!" Ben choked out as he fell to his hands and knees from the sudden, explosive pain hitting him in the back and sweeping throughout his entire body. Taking several shallow breaths, he looked down to see a blade protruding out of his chest, seemingly made of light. As he looked at it, the fog in his mind suddenly lifted and he recalled what happened to him yesterday.
"I-It wasn't a dream!" he gasped in realisation as blood began trickling down his cheek from the corner of his mouth.
'Why does it hurt so much?' Ben couldn't help but think as he recalled the last time he was struck by a similar weapon last night. It hurt like hell last time (as expected when someone is completely run through) but this time it felt so much worse. Unlike last time, it now felt his entire being was on fire and being burned from the inside out.
"I won't be making the same mistake she did," the figure called out in the darkness as his feet entered Ben's field of view. Falling back onto his shins, Ben forced himself up slowly to look at the man who had attacked him. Now that he was closer, Ben could see that he had the look of a middle-aged man with short black hair and dark blue eyes which were looking down at him with malice.
He also saw the pair of black-feathered wings protruding from his back.
He looked back down at the blade impaling him and took hold of the tip with his right hand. He didn't know why he did it; he didn't have the strength to do anything with it. It didn't matter why he touched the blade anyway, all that mattered was that it was an action he regretted immediately.
"Nngh!" Ben grunted at the burning sensation he felt in his hand and smell of burning flesh filling his nostrils. He quickly pulled his hand away to see the burn marks now covering the area where his hand had touched the blade.
"Hmm, so that's how you survived," the figure growled in annoyance. "Dammit! They weren't supposed to know we're here."
He snarled at the implications of their discovery and how it would affect the rest of their plans.
"I'd best deal with you now then before it's too late."
His decision made, he walked up to Ben and violently pulled the spear out of his back, though not before intentionally twisting it slowly in Ben's body, taking immense pleasure in the sounds of pain Ben made as the blade left his body. Once it was fully removed, the last of Ben's strength left him and he collapsed onto his left side where, though his darkening vision, he could still see the winged figure standing above him with the bloodied blade in his hands and pointed at his head.
The last thing Ben saw before succumbing to the darkness was the winged figure rearing back the blade in preparation to strike him.
"In the name of the Dark God, I sentence you to death!" he bellowed as he brought the spear down on his unconscious target.
Just before the blade struck Ben again, a blast of red light arced towards the figure and struck his arm wielding the Light spear, engulfing both the blade and his arm in a small explosion.
*BOOM!*
The light and smoke disappeared to reveal the weapon had been destroyed along with part of the right sleeve of the trenchcoat, leaving the figure's arm badly burned.
"Gah!" the figure grunted in pain as he spun around to face the one who attacked him. He found them when he saw them standing in the middle of a crimson magic circle that had teleported them to that spot.
"Leave him alone, fallen angel," Rias ordered fiercely as she raised her hand up to him, ready to fire another bolt if necessary. Standing beside her on her left was her queen and vice president, Akeno, and on her right was stood a short, white-haired girl who wielded a pair of black fighter's gloves.
The fallen angel collected himself and bent down to pick up his fedora which had been knocked off his head after Rias' attack, dusted it off with the back of his hand and placed it back on his head again.
"Good evening, lady Gremory," he quipped with a hollow smile and false politeness before looking down at Ben again. "I had no idea this boy was part of your household. Please accept my apologies, I stumbled upon him and, believing him to be a stray devil, I attacked him as it goes against my nature to let something as dangerous as one of those run loose around the place. You should take more care when it comes to controlling your servants, they may run into someone less considerate than myself and–."
"Silence!" Rias ordered as she walked towards Ben's unconscious form with Akeno and the white-haired girl beside her. As they approached Ben, the fallen angel had backed away from him, hiding his anger at their untimely interruption.
"You can stop spouting that nonsense, right now! I don't believe for a second that you just so happened to come across him. Now, what are fallen angels doing in my territory and what interest do they have with this boy?!" Rias barked firmly, determined to find out what they were scheming.
The fallen angel dropped their false smile and swapped it for a malicious sneer.
"why would I ever reveal our plans to the enemy?" he retorted as he unfurled his wings and took flight into the night sky. "The Dark God's will shall be carried out by the faithful! My name is Dohnaseek and you'd better stay out of our way!"
With a few flaps of his black wings, Dohnaseek was gone and the night sky returned to normal as the magic barrier was released. Once they were sure he was gone, Rias immediately knelt down beside Ben and began using magic to stabilise him while the other two stood guard.
She worked on him in silence for a few seconds before it was broken by Akeno.
"Dark God? You don't think he was talking about Azazel, do you?" she asked with concern in her voice. If the leader of the Fallen Angels was now claiming to be a god then it could start up another Great War between the factions.
"No," Rias answered with certainty and a slight shake of her head. "If it were true and Azazel was claiming to be a god then my brother would know about it. No, I do believe we are looking at a group of renegade fallen who have found a new master to serve."
"Great," the white-haired girl muttered dryly.
"But why do they want to kill him so much?" Akeno asked, gesturing to Ben who's breathing was slowly steadying from Rias' magic.
"I don't know yet," Rias admitted with a heavy sigh, wondering if their determination had anything to do with the shocking discovery she made during his resurrection process?
"We won't find anything out tonight anyway. Besides, he's going to need a lot of healing. Let's get him home; I'll be to patch him up better there."
. . . . .
Green flames.
That's what Ben found himself surrounded by. When he first found himself surrounded by the green flames, he'd been fearful at first until he discovered that, while the flames were close enough to lick his body as they burned brightly, he felt no pain from them. In fact, he couldn't feel any heat coming from the flames despite the size and intensity of the flames around him.
As he wondered why he was there, the huge flames before him parted to reveal a familiar creature; the gigantic, emerald-green being standing before him looking away at something that Ben couldn't see.
He'd never had this dream before and wondered where this dream would take him this time…that is until the huge creature turned its huge head and locked eyes with Ben. As he looked up at the beast, Ben felt his entire being vibrate intensely, as though he was staring into the eyes of something forbidden, something that no being should be able to see.
He continued to stare into its eyes, unable to look away, and watched as it opened its jaw widely and emitted a deafening roar that caused the huge flames to flicker and seemed to warp the whole of Ben's dreamscape.
[There isn't time to waste!] a powerful voice roared in his mind with such intensity that it forced him to cover his ears. [You must awaken!]
. . . . .
Ben's eyes opened and he winced at the thin line of bright early morning sunlight piercing though the side of his curtain and hitting him squarely in the eyes. Closing his eyes to shut out the blinding light, he reached over blindly and pulled the curtain closed, blocking out the invading light. When he opened his eyes again, he was relieved to see the light was gone and he could see again.
As he was now awake and his arm was already outstretched, he also reached over and turned off his alarm clock before it could start deafening him. Once he'd done that he released a sigh of content and lay back down in his comfortable bed, wiping the last remnants of sleep from his weary eyes as his mind played back the dream he just had.
'Is it strange to say I'm glad he's back?' he wondered internally, referring to the huge creature that had been absent from his last few vivid dreams. His mind particularly noted how the creature had looked directly at him.
'It's the first time you've looked directly at me, though,' he added as an afterthought, wondering what it meant…or even if it meant anything at all.
He absentmindedly brought both his arms up above him as he stretched before spawling them out beside him.
"Hmm," a contented sigh muttered beside him.
He slowly turned his head to his left, only now noticing the noticeable mound beside him. Sitting upright in his bed and steeling himself, Ben gently pulled off the duvet, his widening at what was underneath.
There were two things that he instantly registered at the sight before him. The first was that he was sharing his bed with a stunningly beautiful young woman with long red hair which fell across most of her upper body, highlighting her beauty even further, and fell across her large breasts in such a way that it looked like they'd been framed to highlight them.
The second thing that Ben immediately noted about his surprise sleeping companion was that she was wearing absolutely not a single scrap of clothing on her person. She was as naked as the day she was born and it took every ounce of willpower Ben had not to biologically react to her form as any other male teenager in his position would. This proved to be nigh on impossible though. The position she was in as she lay in his bed covered up her private area but the same couldn't be said for her breasts which seemed to glisten in the early morning light, her dark pink nipples resting on the huge mounds of light pink flesh like a buoy in the middle of a vast, pink ocean.
'Hang on a sec. That red hair looks familiar.'
As he tried to remember where he had seen that same red hair before, Ben didn't realise he had slowly brought his face a little closer to hers.
It suddenly dawned on him, though, when her eyes sprang open to stare back at him. His head snapped back with such force that the rest of his body followed after him and he ended up falling backwards off his bed and whacking his head on the floor with a dull *THUD*.
"Ouch," he groaned as he leant against the back of his desk chair and pressed his hand against the back of his head where he had hit the floor.
A light chuckle returned his attention back to the current occupant of his bed. He looked back to see the red-haired young woman was now lying down on her stomach, her legs arced up and slowly moving playfully in the air while she rested her chin in her hands while her elbows propped them up from his mattress.
"Good morning," the stunning red head chimed sweetly with a playful smile on her flawless face. "Did you sleep okay?"
"Uh…yeah," Ben mumbled, too shocked to think of anything else to say as he stared at her, unable to look away.
Her smile broadened and turned sincere.
"That's good to hear. After what you've experienced the last two days, I feared there would be lasting damage."
Ben slowly opened and closed his mouth a few times as he tried to think of what to say but every time he found himself unable to do so. He did this for a couple of seconds, much to the young woman's amusement, before he asked the only question that seemed best.
"Uh, I don't want to sound rude but, uh, who are you?"
The expression on her face turned to one of disbelief and disappointment, and if it wasn't for the playfulness that remained in her eyes he would've thought she was genuinely annoyed by his question.
"It's a bit late to ask for my name now, don't you think?" she sniffed with hollow indignantly.
"Especially after we've slept together with nothing to protect my virtue from your lethal weapon," she added coyly, glancing down between his legs for a very brief second.
It was only then that it suddenly dawned on Ben that he felt a slight breeze brush against his body. He looked down to see, to his horror and embarrassment, that he was on full display to the strange young woman.
"Fuck!" he gasped as he quickly cupped his manhood and frantically looked around his person in search of something – anything – which he could use to cover himself. He eventually ended up reaching for his pillow which had joined him on the floor when he initially fell off the bed.
"You need to be careful with that thing. It can cause serious damage if you're not careful," she teased him mercilessly, her playful smirk growing ever so slightly.
"Fuck! Sorry about that, uh. Shit! We didn't…uh…we didn't do it, did we?" he asked fearfully as he frantically tried to remember the last few hours and coming up with a really frustrating blank.
"Do what?" she asked innocently though her eyes told a very different story.
"You know, did we have…sex?" he asked, doing his best to ignore the deep shade of red his cheeks were turning as he asked her the question.
Thankfully, she seemed to decide to have mercy on him.
"I'm flattered but no, we didn't have sex. I'm still a virgin," she replied, tilting her head in her hands.
"By the way, my name is Rias Gremory," she added, answering his original question.
Ben recalled hearing that name mentioned somewhere in school and it suddenly came to him.
"The president of the Occult Research Club?"
"The one and only."
Ben took several deep breaths as he leaned his head against the back of his chair and held his forehead with his hand as he struggled to come to terms with what was going on right now.
"I'm dreaming," he stated, coming to the sudden realisation as it dawned on him. "That's the only logical explanation. Why else would the president of a school club be in my room and in my bed. Yeah, it's the only answer that makes sense–."
"Sorry to disappoint you but this is real," Rias announced, interrupting him. "And so was everything else that happened to you this weekend."
Ben just stared at Rias in silence for a second before reaching down and pinching himself, wincing slightly at the pain.
"It's real," he concluded slowly.
"Told ya."
"I'm awake."
"Yep."
"And Rias Gremory is in my bed."
"And she's also a Devil."
"And she's also a Dev–wait, what?!"
"I'm a Devil," Rias repeated slowly. "And, as of Saturday night, so are you."
"So…what happened to me Saturday night wasn't a dream?"
"Nope. Neither was last night."
"So…I didn't dream that I was killed by a black-winged, bondage-gear clad woman?"
"Nope. Unfortunately for you, all that really happened. I'm sorry that it did happen."
"Why are you sorry?" Ben couldn't help but ask. If what she was saying was true, did she have something to do with his 'murder'? "You weren't involved, were you?"
"Of course not. But still…it happened in my territory without me knowing about it. Fallen Angels were, somehow, able to enter Kuoh without my knowledge and your death was a result of my failure."
Ben simply nodded his head slowly, accepting her explanation, as his poor, battered brain fought furiously to keep track of everything going on right now.
"So, uh, you're an actual Devil, huh?"
"We both are, Benjamin," she countered with another, small smile.
"Uh, you can call me Ben."
"Hmm, Ben," she muttered as she ran the name through her head a few times before she nodded her head slightly. "I like it."
"Uh, thanks." He mumbled back as he fought to organise the multitude of questions begging to be asked.
"So, uh, when you say you're a Devil, what exactly do you–.
*KNOCK* *KNOCK* *KNOCK*
Ben's head snapped to his bedroom door but before he could do or say anything to stop them, whoever was on the other side of the door and turned its handle.
"Are you up yet, Ben? Breakfast's ready," his mother's voice called out from the other side of the door.
"Wait! Don't come in, mum!" he tried to say but it was already too late. His mother had already opened the door and poked her head inside to see her teenage son sitting naked on the floor with a discarded pillow being used to cover himself while a very beautiful, and very naked, red-haired young woman was lying comfortably on his bed.
"Uh…," Sandra trailed off, all trace of what she was going to say completely gone.
"Good morning," Rias smiled sweetly, turning her head to look at the Tennyson matriarch.
"Good morning," Sandra repeated slowly as she was still processing the sight before her.
"Uh, I just came up to tell you breakfast is ready," she muttered to her son after a moment of very awkward silence.
"Thanks. Please leave," Ben muttered, unable to look his mother in the eye.
"Would your…friend like to join us?" she asked awkwardly, unsure of what else to say in the current situation.
"Thank you very much, I'd love to," Rias answered happily.
"I'll, uh, set a place for you then. Don't take too long," Sandra said before slowly closing the door again and hurrying off back down the stairs to tell her husband exactly what she had just seen.
"Kill me. Can somebody please kill me?" Ben wondered, not minding a single bit if he was suddenly struck down by the heavens. When no such smiting came for him, he sighed heavily and pressed his face into his hands.
"After what I went through to save you, I must say you're being a little ungrateful right now," Rias quipped without any malic in her voice that told him she was genuinely upset by his request for death.
"Sorry," Ben mumbled instinctively.
"It's okay, you're still adapting to things," Rias stated understandingly as she changed her position on the bed until she was sitting on the edge of it with her legs crossed.
"You realise you're still naked, right? I can see everything."
"I know. Want to see more?" she teased mercilessly as she uncrossed her legs and stood up in front of him, giving him an uncensored view of her whole body.
Ben's entire face turned the same shade as Rias' hair when he realised what his eyesight was on the same level as and quickly clamped his hands down on the pillow again which had sprung upwards in reaction to the sudden of a certain part of his body at the sight before his eyes.
"AH, I'm so sorry!" he gasped as he fought to control his erection.
"Don't be, I'm flattered," Rias retorted coyly as she walked closely past him and stopped by the pile of neatly folded school uniform and black-laced lingerie which she slowly began to put on, though not before glancing over at Ben and keeping eye contact with him as she put on her panties and bra.
"Could you give me a hand with this, please?" Rias asked sweetly, moving her hair away from her back to show her unhooked bra resting against the flawless canvass that was her slender back.
"Uh, sure. Hang on a sec," Ben mumbled dumbly as he reached for the closest pair of boxers to him and quickly put them on. They did very little to hide his bulging erection but there was little he could do for it right now and simply pulled himself up off the floor and moved over to Rias where he fastened up her bra for her.
"By the way, how is your stomach?" she asked once he was done with her bra and she began putting on her school shirt.
"My stomach?" Ben asked in confusion, his mind short-circuiting and unable to work properly.
"Yeah, where you were stabbed twice in the course of two days," Rias clarified, looking over her shoulder as she asked.
Ben reached down and placed a hand on the area of his stomach where his memories told him he had been stabbed twice. He looked down to see there was no evidence at all that such violent acts had ever been performed on him.
"It feels…great actually. If what you say is true then there's no way I can tell."
"That's good to hear. It's amazing actually," Rias conceded as she moved on from her shirt to put on her skirt next.
"How come?"
"You were stabbed by a Light weapon twice; once when you were human, and again when you became a devil. By all accounts, it should've taken a lot longer to heal your body after that sort of damage…and even then, it would've still left a scar. For you, though, not only did only take a single night to heal you, but you also don't have a scar after being healed."
"Oh, that's good…right?"
"It's incredible, actually. If I didn't know my risk payed off when I resurrected you, then that ability alone made you worth it."
"Why, what happened when you resurrected me?" Ben asked as he pulled a fresh school shirt out of his wardrobe and started putting it on.
"Ah, ah, ah, that's a story for later," Rias teased as she finished fastening her uniform's black shoulder cape, the final part of her uniform, and turned back to face him. "For now, we'd best head downstair and join your parents."
"Shit, I forgot about that," Ben moaned at the prospect of the forthcoming conversation that was waiting for him downstairs.
"Hmm, that's not the only thing you forgot about," Rias added coyly, casting a quick glance downwards before turning back and leaving his room.
Confuse by her last comment, Ben looked down and cursed loudly when he saw that, not only had he not put on his trousers yet, but he was still sporting a huge erection from when he saw Rias in all her naked glory.
"Fuck!" he exclaimed as he reached into his wardrobe for a fresh pair of trousers and quickly put them on. He cursed again when they did little to hide his boner but there was nothing else he could do right now. As quick as he possibly could, Ben put on a pair of clean socks, picked up his schoolbag and rushed out of his bedroom to join Rias and his parents.
In the short journey between his bedroom and the kitchen, Ben wouldn't have minded a bit if he was struck down by whatever divine being was controlling his fate.
That way he wouldn't have to deal with his parents.
. . . . .
"I'm so sorry, my dear. What did you say your name was?" Ben's mother asked quietly, trying her absolute best to stay a hospitable host – even if it was to an unexpected guest – yet she couldn't help but ask her question as she must have misheard the answer she was given.
Needless to say, today's family breakfast gathering was an extremely awkward affair for Ben's parents and an incredibly embarrassing one for him. He entered the kitchen area to see his parents were sat down on one side of the table while Rias was sat opposite them and drinking a cup of refreshing morning tea with elegance that was only seen from nobility.
He awkwardly sat down next to Rias and glanced at his parents to see the expressions on their faces. From what he could make out from the outside, they were extremely shocked at the beautiful red-haired young woman sitting at their table. When his dad glanced over at him, Ben couldn't help but avert his eyes and concentrate fully on the plate of toast in front of him, doing his best to ignore the feeling of his dad's eyes boring into him.
The whole room was engulfed in this awkward silence for a good few seconds before Ben's mother couldn't take it anymore and had politely asked Rias for her name.
When Rias gave them her name, the reaction of his parents to it would have been very subtle for a human, but as a 'devil', Ben could see their strange reaction to her name as clear as day.
"I said my name was Rias Gremory," Rias repeated politely, smiling at his mother kindly.
His parent's shared a quick glance at each other before his dad spoke up, voicing his own question.
"You wouldn't, by any chance, be related to Zeoticus Gremory, would you?"
"He's my father," Rias replied warmly before taking another sip of her tea and sighing contently. "This is a wonderful cup of tea, Mrs Tennyson!"
"Thank…you," Sandra mumbled back slowly, her eyes as wide as her husband's at Rias' previous statement and its implications.
"How do you know her dad?" Ben asked, his curiosity getting the better of his desire to disappear and completely avoid the situation he found himself in.
"He's the CEO of the company your dad works for," she clarified for him. "Me too before I left to raise your sister and you."
Even Ben's eyes widened at this, joining his parents. He had just slept with the daughter of a huge international business magnate who just so happened to be his dad's boss.
"And, uh, how did you come to meet Ben?" his dad asked carefully, asking the next best question he could think of aside from "Why were you sleeping with my son?" to try and understand how things ended up as they were.
"It was by accident, actually," Rias revealed with a smile. "I was walking down the corridor to my next class with my friends and, all of a sudden, Ben came out of nowhere from another corridor and nearly ran into me. If he hadn't swerved out of the way at the last second to avoid me, we would've ended up in a very awkward position together."
"He apologised quickly and ran off before I could say anything to him, and I've been interested in him since then," she added with a light chuckle as she remembered their first encounter.
Sandra glared at Ben in a way that told him that, had Rias not been in the room with them, she would have smacked him in the back of the head to scold him for almost running into someone and knocking them over because he wasn't looking where he was going. As Rias was there, though, she was stuck simply glaring at him sternly.
"So, were you the young woman who showed him around town on Saturday?" she asked, changing the subject to try and connect the dots in the more recent events in her son's life.
Ben gulped subtly and glanced at Rias in the corner of his eye, wondering how she was going to explain away what happened on Saturday.
"I was," she replied instantly and without any tell that she had just lied. "I understood that he was a foreign student starting at a new school in a strange country. As someone who's been through that myself, I wanted to help him out where I could so I offered to show him around town and help him settle in easier.
"Oh, my dear. You are too kind," Ben's mother stated with a grateful smile crossing her face.
"It was no trouble at all," Rias retorted with a slight shake of her head as she placed her empty cup back onto the saucer in her other hand and placed it on the table. "I really enjoyed it."
"So…how did you end up, uh…," Carl started to say but trailed off, unsure how to correctly word his question.
"How did I end up spending the night here and sleeping naked together with your son?" Rias completed his question for him. Carl only nodded slightly in response.
"Well, yesterday evening, I bumped into Ben again when he was out on an evening stroll and offered to join him. He accepted and we explored the parts of Kuoh that we didn't get to see yesterday and, before we knew it, it was dark and we were on the completely wrong side of town from where I live," Rias began to explain, regaling an entirely false recollection of events.
"Ben offered to escort me home like a gentleman but I wouldn't hear of it as it would mean he would have to walk all the way back here from the other end of town. He then asked if I would like to stay the night at his house in the spare room which I accepted."
"But how did you end up naked and together?" Sandra asked, repeating the question that she and her husband wanted to know.
Ben glanced over at Rias with intrigue.
'How can she possibly explain that?' he wondered internally, missing how Rias' eyes glowed crimson-red for a split second as she used a magic spell.
"When we made it here, I explained to Ben that I can't sleep by myself in a strange place and asked if I could sleep with him in his bed. As for why we were naked. For me, it's simply that I prefer sleeping naked. I find sleepwear too constricting and uncomfortable. It seems that Ben feels the same way as I do," Rias explained coolly and confidently as Ben looked at her in shock.
'What?! How can she possibly think that my parents would accept that reasoning.'
"Of course, that makes perfect sense," Ben's dad mumbled in response, attracting Ben's attention with a sharp twist of his head. He looked at his dad to see his eyes were misted over ever so slightly and had a far-off look to them. He looked over at his mother to see she had a similar look in her eyes as she inclined her head at Rias' words.
"It couldn't be helped," she added faintly.
Leaning over to Rias, Ben whispered into her ear.
"What did you do to them?"
Turning her head slightly to look at him with a small smile on her face, Rias leant close to him and answered his question.
"Just a tiny little bit of magic to make them accept what I say as truth."
"Useful," Ben whispered back. "How long will they be like this?"
"Just for a couple of minutes. They won't even realise anything happened."
"He'd better have not done anything untoward to you, Rias," Sandra muttered, her eyes still glossed over slightly from the effects of Rias' spell. "I couldn't bear it if Ben turned out to be a massive pervert."
"I assure you, Mrs Tennyson, Ben was an absolute gentleman with me, just as I though he would be," Rias revealed as she placed her hand on top of his which was resting on the table.
"Oh, I knew he wouldn't let us down. We raised him right, after all," Sandra replied with a smile.
Rias glanced up at the clock on the wall and noted the time.
"Oh my, we'd best head off before we're late for school," she stated as she stood up from her seat and picked up her schoolbag which was resting against the table leg beside her. Ben joined her, picking up his own bag and finishing off his last piece of toast.
"Of course, sweetie. I was wonderful meeting you," Sandra remarked as she and her husband waved as the two teenagers made their way to head off.
"Likewise," Rias called back with a sincere smile and wave of her own.
"We'd love to see you again. Feel free to drop by with Ben if you wish."
"Thank you, I'll take you up on that offer in future," Rias added before she entered the hallway and made her way to the front door. Ben gave his parents a final wave goodbye before joining her, closing the door behind him.
"That went better than I expected," he found himself admitting as he joined Rias in the street outside his house.
"Your parents are wonderful people, Ben. You're very lucky to have them," Rias told him as she started to head towards school.
"I know," Ben replied in agreement, his mind far away as it finally registered that he had just managed to explain his way out of an unexplainable scenario with his parents.
"Let's get going then or we'll be late for school."
At Rias' words, a fresh wave of concern and apprehension washed over him.
'Shit. School. How the hell can I explain why I'm walking to school with someone as popular as Rias?'
. . . . .
Kuoh Academy main entrance
"Hey, there's Rias!"
"She's looking as spectacular as always."
"I'm so jealous of that hair of hers! It's so beautiful!"
"She's just perfect in every way!"
"Hey, who's that boy walking beside her?"
"I don't know. I don't think I've ever seen him before."
"Is he a new student?"
"No, I vaguely remember hearing that there was a foreign transfer student who started here last week. That must be him."
"She must be showing him around the place."
"That's Rias for you; absolutely flawless and willing to go the extra mile to help a new student."
"That lucky son of a bitch!"
"Yeah! How dare he get to spend time alone with Rias!"
"What I wouldn't give to be in his shoes."
Ben sighed and simply avoided the stares directed towards him and Rias as they passed through the school gates. He couldn't do anything to block out the voices thanks to his new, enhanced hearing but he could do something about the staring.
He could still hear their voices as the two of them entered the large double doors of the main building and make their way into the entrance plaza.
"Well, this is where we split up for now," Rias stated, turning back to look at him.
"Oh, okay," Ben muttered in response, unsure of what was going to happen now.
"I'll send someone to bring you to our clubroom for your formal introduction," she explained as she walked away from him towards the staircase which led to the floor above.
"Try not to get lured away by another woman," Rias called back to him with a playful smirk as she began ascending the stairs.
"Har, har," Ben laughed sarcastically, ignoring the fresh wave of stares and voices from students who heard what Rias had said and took it the wrong way. He simply sighed under his breath, steeled himself for the day ahead and headed off in the direction of his classroom.
As he disappeared down a corridor he failed to sense the two pairs of eyes staring own at him from the balcony above.
"So he's the newest member of your peerage," Sona Sitri stated as she leaned against the balcony railing.
"He sure is," Rias conceded to her oldest friend as she joined her in watching her newest servant make his way to class.
"I've never seen you act so impulsively when it comes to adding new members to your peerage. He must be special."
"He is. I don't know how exactly but there's definitely something about him that I've never seen before."
"What makes you say that?"
Rias turned away from watching Ben and leaned back against the railing.
"I almost failed in resurrecting him," she revealed, crossing her arms underneath her ample bosom.
"What?!" Sona exclaimed in a hushed whisper, snapping her head to look at Rias where she could see the truth in her eyes. "But that's never happened with a human before!"
"I know. I was just as shocked as you are. It was only after my brother gave me his Satan Piece that allowed me to successfully revive him," Rias continued, inclining her head slightly.
"He gave you his Satan Piece?!" Sona whispered, nearly losing her composure and voicing her shock loudly at Rias' revelation. "How did you manage that? Considering everything going on with your family right now, I would've imagined he demand you do as your family bids and go through with the engagement."
"I feared that was a possibility," Rias replied as she recalled her conversation with her brother. "I even thought he'd refuse to speak to me at all, but he did, and when he listened as I explained the issue I had, he was just as shocked as you were. He agreed to give me his Piece on the condition that if, when he saw the human it was being used on, he wasn't satisfied with what he saw, he would reclaim his Piece and pull it out of him."
Sona shook her head at Rias' story. Now she was curious as what made this human so special.
"I hope he's worth it," she muttered as the corridor was slowly filled up with other students making their way to class.
"I believe he is," Rias declared firmly. "I'll hopefully find out at the end of the day when he formally joins our group. I'll be sure to let you know what I learn."
"I appreciate that," Sona thanked as the two of them joined the crowd and headed off to class.
. . . . .
Ben released a loud sigh of relief as the sound of the school bell which signalled the end of the school day rang out throughout the school.
He remained sat at his desk as other students gathered their stuff together before either meeting up with their group of friends and heading off home or heading off to their clubrooms to take part in whatever activities their club usually did.
The amount of work he was actually able to do today had been greatly diminished, purely from the constant voices of students talking about him under their breath. If he was still human, he wouldn't have had to be concerned with the things they were saying as they spoke in such hushed tones that a normal human would never have been able to hear them.
Unfortunately for him, though, he was no longer human according to Rias, and had hear every word that had been said about him in class.
He wasn't entirely certain what had happened to him but there was no way he could deny that something had happened to him. His eyesight had drastically improved to the point that he could read the minuscule words written on the front of the books stacked up on the shelf on the other end of the classroom. His eyesight had already been proven to be greatly improved to by the gossip that he couldn't help but overhear throughout the school today. The fact that he had walked to school today beside one of the most, if not the most, popular girls at school had spread like wildfire throughout the student body and, by around lunchtime, that fact was known by the entire school.
He wasn't overly bothered by the things that were said about him. Most of the female students were simply curious as to why he had come to school with Rias, each group of friends coming up with their own theories, each more ludicrous than the last. The vast majority of hostility directed at him originated from the male students, most of whom were simply voicing their jealousy of Ben and how fortunate he was to be allowed so close someone as beautiful and perfect as Rias Gremory. During class, almost all of the hostility had come from the 'perverted duo' who just wouldn't shut up about it the entire day, much to his annoyance.
Hopefully, he would get some answers from Rias when he next saw her.
It wasn't long after he finished putting his stuff back into his bag that there was a commotion at the door. Looking over, Ben saw a gaggle of fawning girls surrounding a familiar blond-haired student who entered the classroom. He glanced around the classroom and quickly spotted Ben; their eyes locked together as he manoeuvred his way through the line of desks before coming to a stop in front of Ben.
"Hello again," Ben nodded in greeting as he stood up from his seat.
Kiba smiled back and nodded his head in greeting. "Hello to you too. If you're ready to go, I'll take you over to our clubroom."
"Sure, I'm ready to go."
"Splendid. Shall we?" Kiba offered, gesturing with his arm for Ben to follow him before leading the way out of the class, saying a final, polite goodbye to his all-female fan club before guiding Ben down a corridor in the opposite direction to the main entrance.
As they walked, Ben found himself unable to handle the silence that hung over them.
"So…you're a devil too, huh?" he asked awkwardly, unsure of what else to say.
Kiba merely smiled and nodded his head in acknowledgement.
"I sure am."
"Cool," Ben nodded his head dumbly as they fall back into an awkward silence.
Kiba continued to lead him through the now deserted school corridors until they left through a back door which led them to the football and baseball fields which they walked across and past the gymnasium where the old school building came into view. Walking across the last patch of grass and dirt, the two of them entered the dark building and meandered through the dark, empty corridors until they eventually came to a stop in front a set of large, oak doors.
2Welcome to the ORC clubroom," Kiba announced as he pushed open the doors and allowed Ben inside, closing them again once they were both inside.
The first thing that Ben noted was that the room was very sparsely lit, though with his new eyesight that didn't pose a problem. The walls were mainly bare, devoid of any decoration bar a few ornately framed paintings. Two long Victorian-style couches took up the majority of the centre of the room with similarly styled chairs lining the walls at irregular intervals. In between the two couches was a low, simple-yet-still-ornately-sculpted wooden table with a solitary triple-headed candlestick placed in its centre. Standing at the other end of the room was a large, ornately-decorated oak desk with a ornate chair behind it.
Ben couldn't help but be impressed by what he saw.
"Wow, this place looks amazing," he admitted as he took in his new surroundings.
"I'm glad you like it," Kiba replied in a friendly manner, a sincere smile on his face.
When Ben looked back to the centre of the room, he suddenly noted the short, white-haired girl sat on one of the couches and digging into a small bag of sweets that rested on her lap.
"Who's that?" Ben whispered to Kiba, leaning in close to him in an attempt to prevent the white-haired girl from hearing him. If she was a devil too, as he believed she might be, then whispering was a completely pointless endeavour but he did it all the same.
Kiba smirked and copied Ben by replying in a similarly quiet tone.
"That's Koneko Toujou. She's a first-year here at Kuoh and an extremely valued member of our little group."
As Kiba said this, Koneko looked up from her snacking and glanced over at Ben, blinked at him once as if appraising him, and then went straight back to eating her sweets.
Like the other members of the ORC, Ben recalled other students discussing Koneko and praising her for various reasons. Due to her cuteness and unique hair colour, nearly everyone referred to her as the school mascot and, seeing her with his own eyes now, he could get a sense of what they were getting at.
His ears then suddenly picked up the clear sound of a running shower coming from behind a pale shower curtain at the other end of the room from where he stood.
"You've got your own shower?" Ben mused, slightly impressed that they were able to get something like that in such a derelict building.
"I've left your clothes on the side for you, miss president," a delightful voice spoke up from behind the curtain.
"Thank you, Akeno. I'll be finished in a second," Rias' reply came from further in the separate room.
The curtain was pushed away slightly as a familiar face revealed herself to Ben. She noticed him standing beside Kiba and smiled sweetly.
"Oh, hello. It's nice to see you again," the raven-haired voluptuous beauty smiled with a polite wave.
"Uh likewise. Hi, I'm Ben Tennyson," Ben replied with a small wave in return.
"Hello, Ben. I'm Akeno Himejima, the vice-president of our club," Akeno announced, bowing her head slightly in greeting. "Our last encounter was too brief for my liking. I'm glad we have this opportunity to get to know each other better."
"Yeah, I feel the same way," Ben mumbled back, unable to respond with anything else.
"Would you like some tea?" Akeno asked as she walked over to a small tea trolley resting beside the other couch.
"Uh, sure, tea sounds great about now," Ben said as he took a seat on the couch opposite Koneko, accepting the cup when Akeno offered it to him.
"Ah, Ben. There you are. I'm so glad you could make it," Rias called out as she revealed herself from behind the curtain, fully dressed in a fresh school uniform and using a fluffy-looking towel to dry off the last bits of her long hair.
"Well, how could I resist the invitation?" Ben chuckled awkwardly as everyone except him gathered around the table and directed their attention to Rias who was leaning against the edge of her desk and smiling at Ben
"Now that everyone is here, I would like to officially start tonight's meeting by welcoming our newest member to our group. To start off, allow us to introduce ourselves properly," Rias declared as she pushed herself off her desk.
Almost in unison, a pair of black bat-like wings suddenly sprouted out from behind everyone's back except for Ben.
"My name is Yuuto Kiba. I'm a second-year student at Kuoh Academy and I'm a devil. It's very nice to meet you," Kiba announced with a smile and a wave.
"I'm Koneko Toujou and I'm a first-year here at Kuoh Academy. I'm also a devil. It's a pleasure," Koneko joined in, the tone of her voice as emotionless as the overall expression on her face.
Akeno chuckled cutely and spoke up next. "I'm Akeno Himejima, a third-year student and vice president of the Occult Research Club…and as you've probably guessed, I'm a devil too. I hope we get to know each other better from now on."
"And I'm their master, Rias Gremory. A third-year student here at Kuoh and next in line to the illustrious noble devil house of Gremory," Rias added with flair and a playful smile on her face.
"Welcome to the Occult Research Club, Ben Tennyson."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .