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Disclaimer: I do not own High School DxD. I only own the OC Damian Mammon-Lucifer.
"Everybody ready?" Damian asked as everyone was gearing up to go to Romania to, hopefully, complete the mission to find Erza. Irene looked the most hopeful out of them all. For nearly two months, Damian has been helping her search for Erza and they've come close only to come up with dead ends. If this turned out to be another false lead or a dead end, then Damian was worried for Irene's metal health.
"As ready as I'll ever be, I suppose." Tifa replied, locking the door of the Seventh Heaven bar from the inside. She'd decided to close the bar for the next few days while she was out in Romania, figuring that she could re-open and focus on hiring new staff with the money that Damian had promised from his family, once the mission was completed.
"Yup." Kuroka remarked, stretching.
Irene simply nodded, looking right ahead. She hadn't spoken much since breakfast.
Damian wanted to ask whether she was okay, but he got the feeling she didn't want to speak right now, with anyone. He himself didn't know what a mother's wrath was like when her child was in danger, but he had the feeling his mother would be exactly like Irene if he went missing or was taken from her.
"So, we teleport to Romania." Damian said as he unfolded the map of Romania to show the others. "We'll need to stop off somewhere and gain horses to ride as we can't just teleport here and there until we find something. We also don't want to gain the attention of the Vampires there, especially since most of Romania is Vampire-controlled, though the Humans don't know until they're being fed upon."
"Why is the Supernatural world hidden from humans?" Tifa asked with a frown.
"Humans kill which they don't understand nor can they control." Damian explained to her. "If they learned that everything they believed was supposed myths, made up in movies, then it would be total destruction and chaos. Humans lash out when they get scared, and some are known to resort to nuclear weapons to wipe out their enemies. Hell, from what my dad told me, it was thanks to a Devil with a clever silver tongue that gave the humans the idea for the Atomic Bomb."
"Seriously?!" Tifa's eyes widened.
"Yeah." Damian nodded. "The Devil was brought back and killed for doing so."
"I can understand why." Tifa sighed. "So, teleport?"
"Yup." Damian replied, casting a transportation-circle on the floor inside the bar, big enough for the four of them to easily fit inside, which he stepped into first. Irene silently stepped in after Damian, followed by Kuroka, with Tifa hesitantly bringing up the rear. "Teleport."
Snapping his fingers, Damian activated the transportation-circle, and the four of them disappeared from Seventh Heaven in a flash of dark light. They reappeared, in the amount of time that it would take one to blink, in an unseen alleyway off-shot from the middle of what looked like a busy street. Many humans, none of which seemed to even notice the light that announced the presence of the Devil, Dragon and two Devil servants, walked past in front of the four of them.
"Welcome to Romania." Damian said with a very bad Romanian accent.
"Don't ever do that again." irene said blankly, speaking for the first time in a couple of hours.
"That was so bad." Kuroka agreed.
"Killjoys." Damian sighed before looking at the street of people.
"How the heck did they not notice us appear?" Tifa asked as she looked out the alleyway. "Shouldn't that light have caught anyone's attention?"
"Humans are ignorant." Damian explained before looking at Tifa. "No offence, since you were human."
"None taken." Tifa said dryly, making him chuckle.
"Okay, so we split up and start asking the locals, though we better be subtle and not outright demanding of what we're here for. The people of Romania probably don't get strangers that much, especially up in Transylvania." Damian said, about to walk off and look for information when he heard one of the communication devices he had on him start to alert him. Curious, he took it out and frowned. He had only given this type of device to one other. He answered and a familiar face appeared. "Raven? Been a while."
"Damian?" Raven spoke, her voice being all that was needed to communicate that things weren't exactly going great on her side. "Hi, hey, are you able to come to the camp? Uh, now?"
"What's going on?" Damian asked, taking a step or two away from Irene, Kuroka and Tifa. "Are you okay?"
"Not really, no!" Raven replied, ducking over something unseen that flew over her head, and letting out a grunt of effort, followed by a couple of slashes of her sword. "I really don't have time to explain, just... come back here? Please? I need help!"
Damian looked over at Irene, who simply shrugged.
"I'm on my way." Damian replied, with Raven cutting the connection between them on her end.
"Who was that?" Tifa asked, as Damian cast a smaller transportation-circle, this one only large enough for one person: himself.
"A friend me and Irene met nearly two months back. We helped her out with some business and I gave her something to call me should she need us." Damian said as he stepped into the teleportation circle. "Right, ladies, I've got to go help her out. Raven wouldn't call unless it was an emergency and from the looks of it, things aren't going well on her end. While I'm gone, you three scour out for any information on the slavers that hold Erza and where they are located. I'll try to be back as quick as I can."
"Got it." Tifa nodded.
Damian nodded and soon teleported away to where the Branwen Tribe camp was located.
"Right, let's begin our search." Irene ordered sternly, causing Tifa and Kuroka to nod at her and they left the alleyway.
Meanwhile, as Damian arrived back at the camp in question, one thing was immediately obvious.
The place was in utter chaos. Everyone had a weapon of some kind out and was attacking someone else, the dead bodies of tribesmen and women lay strewn across the ground, blood poured from wounds coming from those both alive and dead, and at the centre of it all was Raven. Sword in hand, she was fighting off around seven-
"Aaaagh...!" one of the tribesmen, wielding a hatchet, screamed as Raven lunged at him, cutting his throat. He dropped his weapon and clutched for it, but dropped to the ground.
-six, tribesmen at once.
"Raven!" Damian called out, unsheathing Judgement and rushing over to where Raven was, shoving aside one of the tribesmen who thought he'd be an easy kill. "What the fuck is going on?!"
"You want a short version or the long one?" Raven remarked sarcastically as the two fought back to back, fending off the tribsemen as they came at them.
"Short version would be good!" Damian said, stabbing one tribesman in the gut before ducking as Raven spun and decapitated three of them.
"Tribesmen thought I was an unworthy leader after the mask got stolen, decided to replace me, and they're fighting to kill me and decide who should be leader." Raven remarked, firing an ice-spell out of her free hand at the feet of a tribesman who was advancing on her and Damian, before Damian chopped him off at the waist. "There's your short version."
"Damn." Damian replied. "That, uh... that sucks. I doubt there'll be anyone left by the time we're all done."
"To be honest, considering everyone in it now wants me dead, I'm a bit less concerned about the tribe and MORE concerned about my survival." Raven replied. "And the fact that I've had to call you back from whatever you were doing prior to this... I know what you'll ask of me in return, and in advance..." Raven dashed forward, slashing through three tribesmen that were trying to sneak up on Damian from behind without him noticing, leaving lethal wounds in all of them that they collapsed as a result of a few seconds later. "Yes."
Damian blinked, his gaze shifting from the dead tribesmen to Raven, before shrugging.
"Alright." he replied, before moving off to continue the fight with another couple of tribeswomen.
It didn't take Damian and Raven long to get rid of all the tribesmen, with not a single one still alive by the end of it all. Raven sighed as she sheathed her sword, looking around with a solemn look on her face at all the corpses around her, and what remained of their most recent- and last- camp.
"Well, I guess it's the end for the Branwen Tribe." she sighed, turning to Damian. "Do what you've got to do. Just make it quick."
"Are you sure?" Damian asked with a frown. "After all this.. your home, those you grew up with turning against you, are you sure you're in the right state of mind?"
"There's nothing left for me here." Raven said as she glanced around at what had been her home since she was a little girl with a look of sadness before she covered it up. "I told you I would think about your offer and I have. I'll join your Peerage, so get it over with."
Damian sighed and gave a small nod before he instructed Raven to lay down while he summoned his Evil Pieces and took out the Knight Piece. Crouching to a knee, he placed the Piece on Raven's chest, making sure to not put it on her breasts, and performed the ritual to make her his Knight.
"Alright, now that that's over with..." Damian remarked, as Raven got to her feet after being made into his Knight. "Hate to ask something of you so quickly, but would you mind coming with me, Raven? I was actually in the middle of something before you called me, and I think it'd be something that you can help me with."
"Sure." Raven shrugged, stretching for a moment. "Lead the way."
One transportation-circle later, Damian and Raven were back in the same Romanian alleyway as the former had been before. After checking to see that no humans had noticed the pair of them arriving, Damian opened a comms-circle at his ear.
"Irene? You there?"
It took a few seconds before Irene responded. "Yes. I'm here. Did you help Raven out?"
"Yeah, turns out her tribe betrayed her and we had to decimate every last one of them. She's taken me up on that offer to become my Knight." Damian said.
"So another one joins the Peerage." Irene remarked dryly, which made Damian frown as she sounded... annoyed or even jealous. He did offer her the choice to join but she refused and he respected her decision since he hasn't asked her again since.
"Yeah, anyway, we'll be arriving where you girls are soon. Any luck with the locals or finding the slavers?"
"A bit." Irene replied. "Managed to shake down some bastard who gave us a location to help us out with finding where those fuckers in this city are held up at. We'll be moving in on them once night hits."
"Good." Damian nodded. "I'll come find you, then we can talk all about it."
"Got it." Irene replied. "See you soon."
Irene then cut the comms-circle between her and Damian on her end, while Damian looked over at Raven, stretching.
"Still looking for Irene's daughter, huh?" Raven asked, folding her arms.
"Yes, our search led us quite a few places since we left you." Damian explained. "Now... now we've got a lead that she's been transferred to a slavers' place in Romania."
"Right into the Vampire's den." Raven remarked. "Oh well, nothing you can really do about that. Let's go."
Damian nodded, quickly fanning his power out across the city to try and find a certain group of two Devils and one Dragon. Once he found them, all it took was another transportation-circle to take him and his Knight straight to them.
"Hopefully we don't end up gaining the attention of the Council of Sisters while we're here searching for your daughter, Irene." Raven remarked, nodding to the scarlet-haired Dragoness by way of greeting. "Not unless you want your future boy-toy to become their sex slave while the rest of you get enslaved." She added, to the rest of the group at large, before getting a better look at the other two of Damian's group.
"Kuroka..." the former tribe-leader remarked under her breath, before her eyes met Tifa's. "And you are?"
"Tifa Lockhart... Rook." Tifa replied, putting out a hand that Raven took and shook.
"Raven Branwen, Knight." Raven replied, looking back over at Irene. "So the slavers that we're moving on tonight. Where are they?"
"From looking at the maps..." Damian withdrew the map of Romania and unfolded it for Raven to have a look at. "We've learned that the main slaver-group in Romania runs in Cluj-Napoca."
"Akasha Bloodriver controls that territory." Raven said with a sigh as she put a hand on her hip. "She's not one you'd want to piss off or make an enemy out of. Haven't met her but I've heard enough about her to not go and provoke her."
"Well, our goal here is to find the slaver group, rescue Erza and leave Romania without catching the attention of the Vampires." Damian said, causing Raven to snort.
"They'll have probably smelled us by now. A group of four Devils and a Dragon appearing in their country is bound to catch the attention of any local Vampires in the area." Raven said, glancing around for any signs of a Vampire. She's encountered a few weak, lesser Vampires so she knows what to look for when searching for one.
"So it's just a matter of time before one starts stalking us, at the very least." Damian remarked. "We'll be able to cover more ground in Cluj-Napoca if we split up into smaller groups, though all of said groups would have to have at least one person who's good at sensing or looking for Vampires."
"And there's five of us." Irene added. "I'll go alone, I'll call if I see or sense anything suspicious."
"Alright." Damian shrugged. "Kuroka, Tifa, you two can go together. Raven, you're with me. That okay?"
There were murmurs of ascent all around.
"Then let's go." Damian said, walking off in one direction with Raven. Tifa and Kuroka went off in another while Irene walked off on her own...
And that's it for this chapter everyone. Another big help from SlashFan2018 in the making of this chapter.
Harem: Rias Gremory, Akeno Himejima, Raynare, Kalawarner, Yubelluna, Xuelan, Karlamine, Tiamat, Yasaka, Kuroka, Gabriel, Grayfia Lucifuge, Serafall Leviathan, Venelana Gremory, Kiyome Abe, Seekvaira Agares, Esdeath (Akame Ga Kill).
Peerage:
King: Damian Mammon-Lucifer.
Queen: Unknown
Knight: Raven Branwen
Knight: Unknown
Rook: Tifa Lockhart
Rook: Unknown
Bishop: Kuroka
Bishop: Unknown
Pawn: Unknown
