Chapter 8: The Second Blue Night and Old Enemies

Few Months later... End of School Year

Ichigo trained his students once more in Hogwarts. Today was the last day, and surprisingly the students were showing more vigor than before in sparring each other.

Ichigo walked between the dual patrners that was scattered all across the DADA room, and once in a while, he encouraged them. He gave them better directions.

And then it was over.

The students stared at Ichigo.

He stared at them.

Then he smiled.

And they smiled back.

They all knew that it was enough.

"Good luck in life," Ichigo said.

When the students left his room, Ichigo looked at where they used to stand.

He was seriously having issues.

The pain was intensifying tenfold.

He wobbled his way around, back into his office. He climbed the stairs painstakingly slow. Then at the last step, the pain reached the peak and he screamed.

When he came back to consciousness, Ichigo found that he was lying on the bed deep within his secret home.

All his children were beside him.

Lust, Gluttony, Pride, Wrath, and some of their children.

Everyone except Envy and Greed at any rate.

He looked at their faces through his half-open eyes.

"What?" he asked with a weary smile.

Lust was the one to shout first.

"You strained yourself again!" she shouted. "You know that you need to rest if you want the Curse to stay dormant! Why did you push yourself?"

"I didn't push myself..." he muttered quietly. "The Curse just intensified..."

Lust flinched as did everyone else.

Curse of Abaddon had two part. The first part was the pain itself. Whenever Ichigo moved, it hurt him. The second part was the amplification. Whenever Ichigo killed, the Curse who roar with anger afterwards. Whatever the reason for the killing.

"You should've just told us to fight," Pride said.

"'Solaris,'" Ichigo muttered, calling Lust by her human name. "How are your ... grandchildren?"

She smiled. Technically, they weren't her grandchildren. They were her great-great-great-great-great-great ... great-great grandchildren of the only husband that she had, several thousand years ago. They all kept their contacts with her through Pride, and some of them were even here. One such child was Happy, or as his human name went Jacob. He was called Happy because he received a small portion of Ichigo's Happiness through Philosopher's Stone. The details are for later...

"They're fine, Father. But Happy is here," she said.

Ichigo turned his head side-to-side.

"Where is he?"

"He's managing the life-support system in the engineering room," Pride said as his eyes kept an eye-out for Happy. "It doesn't help that this place is so close to the mantle."

"Huh..." Ichigo muttered. Then he sighed. "I'm going back to sleep..."

With that he closed his eyes.

-W-

Elsewhere, the higher demons of Gehenna sat around in a council.

Satan stood at the head of the group but they all faced inward.

"That fuckin' Immortal killed my servant!" Duke Aim hissed as he threw another rock over his shoulder while his crow-like head continued to grief. "I'm going to-"

"Spare us of your curses, Aim. We've heard it for the last twenty days..." Satan muttered.

Aim growled but he backed down, resorting to grumbling.

"...But he is right about what we should do to this ... Immortal," Satan added a bit later. "He's a threat to what we can do until the Rapture, and I, for one, don't want to have such a powerful threat capable of entering both Heaven and Hell at will if he so wished."

There were murmurs of agreement.

"I suggest that you drive a wedge between his new True Cross allies and his 'family,'" a demon said. Everyone turned to the one who said it and were quite surprised.

"I thought you were a dumb ass, Ciiru."

The said demon, a man with a ass's head and lion's tail, glared at Satan. "Fuck you too, Satan."

The red-skinned, two-horned demon of hell only grinned back at him.

"...Perhaps a better idea," Leviathan, the one who will bring chaos during Rapture, began. "Is to make that Immortal turn against the humans that he has fought against us for. Then we will have him out of our way."

"The question is how, you idiots!" Satan abruptly screamed. That sent a wave of shock among the elite devils and the lower demons outside of the council pit. Though the place looked like a room, it was actually a pit in Hell.

The Devil's finest.

"Go, do something before I have to start looking for hosts to personally go... And that's not good for any of you," he glared.

They gave him a quizzical look.

"Ha! Don't hide from me, 'friends.' I know of your ... businesses that you hold with angels and other devils alike on the human world."

That made few of the devil immediately leave the pit of council and to the human world to plot against the Immortal.

But others stayed behind.

One of them was Amon.

"You don't?" Satan asked.

Amon shook his head. "I am not interested in the human world," he replied. "But the eventual outcome. My touch on the human world will not change that outcome, however the others believe."

Satan cringed and scowled.

"You-"

-W-

Two years later...

"This is ridiculously hard!" Harry groaned as he massaged his own shoulders while Hermoine kept an eye out for Ron while the said pureblood ran around in circles while a giant frog chased after him. "I don't know how Ron is managing that..."

"He's in better physical shape, Harry. It's only obvious the better thing that he can do."

"Oh? Is there something else that he can do better?"

"He can fight better," she added.

Harry shrugged. Harry only had few fighting experience, despite having face many enemies. That was because he was constantly helped by someone, and not all the time was his magic, courage, or fists required. Ron, on the other hand, had faced more fist-to-fit issues as of late, even before they came to True Cross Academy. This was mostly because of his friendships to Harry and Hermoine, friendships that he held very sacred.

"WAAAHHHH!" Ron erupted.

"Better go save him before he ends up dying..." Hermoine said as she dropped her towels and water to start running.

Harry grinned. He liked it here. It was obvious different from Hogwarts and its homely sense, but it was very close to it, and as such, held an appeal of its own.

"Ah, it's you again."

Harry looked up just as Ron came lying next to him.

It was Yukio, the first Japanese to have befriended them. They met before multiple times, but it was the first time that either of them weren't in a hurry to reach their classes.

"Hello, Okamura...-san?"

Yukio nodded. "What are you doing?"

"Well, we're training. Headmaster Mephisto said that we needed to significantly improve our physical endurance."

Yukio nodded again. "Yes, I was the one who suggested that to him." Ron glared at him.

Harry grinned, happy that someone was looking out for them, whether that person was their age or not.

"Well," Harry said as he looked at Hermoine. "Where we came from, physical fitness was not a issue. We mostly stayed inside and learned by books, and even when we had few fights, it was usually short."

"Ah. Yeah, you do need to run a lot around here."

Ron grinned albeit a bit exasperated and tired from the routine frog-run exercise. "Yeah..."

Yukio decided to put that awkward, repetitive talk aside by intorducing a new subject. "So, how have your studies been going?" he asked them all in general.

"Terrible," Harry and Ron replied. "You assign us too much homework."

Hermoine, who had finished her run, quickly climbed the steep stone slope and came next to Yukio. "Quite fine, actually," she said. "Although, I do have some problems regarding the ..."

And the two began to talk away again, leaving Ron and Harry to watch in silence.

They were so much like each other when it came to classes.

That night, the wizard trio was down in one of the basement that Mephisto had lend them. In it, they were practicing multiple skills.

Ron was practicing his offensive wizard magic with Harry while Harry, who despite magical talent, showed a more aggressive side by choosing a gun. In this exercise, he only used BB bullet. Hermoine sat away from the two, closer to the door in the wide, white chamber, memorizing endless lines within the Bible.

Pride watched them and his eyes narrowed in satisfaction.

They were going to grow strong and safe, he concluded. Father was right to have them move out of Hogwarts...

Then he began to think about all of the events that had occurred in England as of late.

-W-

Ten months ago...

The Wizarding World was in a disaster.

They were in a constant fight against the new forces of evil, the demons and devils of the biblical age and quality. Some like many of the dark lords and criminals, "wandered" over to the devils and their promises.

In the uderground city of the Northern European branch of True Cross Order, the fighting was as intense as it got.

Ichigo growled as one of the lower devils sweeped by him with spear and cut his him to pieces like sausages. Medics tried to approach him but even before they were anywhere near the frontlines, Pride and Greed sent them back to help the other Exorcists.

"Infernum Ventilabis!" he roared as he grabbed the devil that cut his arm off by the neck. Something sizzled for a second in his hand before the entire devil lit on fire. The devil screamed as it flailed its red wings and hooved legs while his arms, head, and body burned in the black fire. Thne slowly, it was reduced to a smoking corpse with a single floating orb, the Kuruk. He grabbed it and tossed it to Wrath, who took it and shoved it into a bag.

"Die, Immortal!" a demon roared as it charged at Ichigo with a giant bat in its hand.

Ichigo turned to block the blow, but the Curse acted up again and pain rushed all over his body. The world turned into a spiral of sizzling lines while Ichigo tried in vain to cope with the intense pain.

Cass, the first demon to pledge his allegiance to the Almighty and the Immortal shot forward to assist his master. He took the devastating hit and groaned. 'That cracked the skull at least!' he thought as his tail shot forward, wrapped around the troll-like demon's neck and snapped it like twig. He let it go and then turned Ichigo. "Are you okay, Master?" he shouted.

"Yeah, yeah," Ichigo muttered as Pride's shadow began to drag him away from the frontline; he had been out there, killing for the last day or so without rest.

"We're take care of it from here!" Cass shouted as his fellow demons and Exorcists turned back to the army of the devil's servants.

"D-Don't..." Ichigo muttered but his body gave up from the pain, and he fainted.

Pride felt so bad for Ichigo, his Father.

His Father was a kind man by heart. He wanted to save others, but his curse who not let him. His Curse was made to give him more pain whenever he hurt something whether it was kuruk, demons, devils, humans, or just a dog. But he fought against it and the devils because he knew that a few moments of his suffering in the frontline would eventually save at least another life of a Exorcist or a demon who waited for him to remove himself from battle.

Everyone who fought with him in the frontlines were grateful of his presence, and he would casually tell them to thank God that God didn't send him to Hell. Some laughed at it, and he laughed with them, not because it was funny, but because laughing helped the pain.

"We need a medic here!"

Pride looked back, and all of his eyes widened when he saw Lust trembling behind a boulder that had fallen from the ceiling before. She was using it as a shield from all of the ranged attacks from the demon side and there were several demons and Exorcists around her, trying to stop the profuse bleeding in her chest.

Pride knew that Lust was no longer absorbing any kuruk or human souls to supplment the power supply, but this was too fast of a run out!

"F-Father!" he began to shake him awake. "L-Lust is dying-!"

Even before he finished, Ichigo was up. He was barely conscious, standing on his will alone. He limped over to Lust, even as pain spiked all over his body.

Pride tried to assist him by bringing Lust over to Ichigo.

As soon as Pride brought Lust before them, Ichigo bent down and stabbed himself in the heart with a nearby broken glass. Suddenly the chest rolled open like how a multi-jointed wall does, revealing a crystalline heart, the cause of all of the Curses, the power, and the immortality. He grabbed his own heart, and squeezed it.

Veins popped open and blood fell out, blood which Ichigo fed the resisting Lust.

As soon as Father's blood was in her mouth, her body took advantage of it.

The bleeding stopped and Lust was fully healed.

"Stop being a human..." Ichigo almost whimpered. It was a close call.

Lust only gasped from the lack of breath. "... I am a human..."

Ichigo grinned as he stood up. "Pride, take her out..." he said as he took out rusty Zangetsu. "I'll lead the fight again..."

Thanks for pointing that out... Don't know what was in my head...

Also, I had to change a lot of the stuff in the past chapters because I realized that I introduced Fujimoto, Rin and Yukio's adoptive father, but I made that Rin appeared in the Academy. So I had to change that since I don't want to just kill Father Fujimoto as of yet. Perhaps in later chapter I'll have to do something about him. But that is subject to change.