Chapter 10

The student council room remained silent for a few minutes after Junichiro's departure. No one knew what to say to make Sona feel better, though Tsubaki did eventually try, "Just give me the word and I'll make him pay for his disrespect."

Sona waved her off while slumping into her chair. There were hints of tears in the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall, "There's no point. He's completely right. I thought expelling those three within weeks of opening the school to male students would cause a scandal that hurt Kuoh Academy's reputation. It surely would have, but at the same time, it would have also boosted our reputation for only having the best students. It would have shown a zero-tolerance policy for their behavior. Instead, I did just as Arai-san said, I poisoned the hearts of hundreds of students against the Academy."

She leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling while letting out a long sigh, "My short shortsightedness will likely lead to a full generation of students going to different schools and causing a sharp decline in applications for the Academy. The damage might take more than a decade and a half to show, but it will show and will be permanent. Once enrollment drastically drops, support for the school will dry up. This current batch of students won't help the school as alumni because they will only remember how badly they were treated. It's human nature to more easily remember the negatives."

Sona sat forward and focused with a fire lit inside of her. Her tears dried up as she reaffirmed her conviction in her dream, "Hopefully it's not too late to fix this mistake." She addressed her peerage, "I want all of you to spread the word that I want the female students to file complaints against the perverted trio once again. I need fresh complaints to begin disciplinary procedures. Just make sure that they know the difference between accidentally seeing someone's panties due to a gust of wind and leaning over until their head almost touches the ground to catch a peek. I want real complaints, not imaginary ones."

Her entire peerage enthusiastically answered her with, "Yes, Kaichou!"

Sona showed a rare smile of gratitude and swore to learn her lesson from this. Sometimes it took someone from the outside to point out what was clearly wrong with a situation. The whole school had become so numb to the situation that they all just thought of it as normal. Something like this situation couldn't be allowed to happen again and Sona swore to herself that she would be even more vigilant in the future.

Junichiro smiled to himself as he walked home from his meeting with Sona. He felt better having got his complaint off of his chest. No matter how much of an ecchi comedy the source material for this universe had been, Sona's behavior had always rubbed him the wrong way. Peeping was a straight-up crime, not to mention the blatant sexual harassment and pedophilia of the group. It might be funny in an anime, but in the real world, it was pretty disgusting.

That's not to say that he thought of himself as not perverted or something, he knew he was a pervert. All high school kids, male or female, were perverts to one degree or another. Hormones demanded it! There was a difference though. Junichiro didn't run around screaming about breasts at the top of his lungs because it was just plain rude and the exact opposite of the way a gentleman should behave. He didn't drill holes in walls to peep at girls changing. He planned to remain a gentleman pervert and save his thoughts for a proper partner when the time came.

Rias found herself annoyed once more. That had been happening a lot since the school year started. First, the dead fallen. Second, the huge spike of magic. Now, third, Sona swooped in and got to Arai-san before she could. The fact that he blew off Kiba and stated he had no interest in the occult was almost personally offensive to her. Still, she wouldn't give up. Arai-san was growing magically stronger each day, and while not all that powerful, it left little doubt that he had a sacred gear awakening. Possibly one she could use to save her peerage and herself.

She thought about sending Kiba to get Arai-san tomorrow and see if he'd joined the student council or not. She wasn't worried about Sona having turned him into a devil yet. Unlike herself, Sona would take her sweet time making sure he was really someone she would want in her peerage. Sona was nowhere near as desperate as Rias was for more peerage members with good strength. However, she decided that sending Kiba again wasn't for the best.

Instead, she looked at her cute little Koneko while the white-haired girl munched on her snacks. Koneko already had a bit of a rapport with Arai-san so it seemed like a good idea to have her invite him up to the clubhouse. Perhaps for lunch? It seemed like a good idea, "Koneko."

When the tiny powerhouse focused on Rias, the redhead asked, "If possible, I would like you to invite Arai-san to come up here and have lunch with us tomorrow."

For a brief moment, Rias was certain that Koneko had a petulant pout but it was gone so fast she wasn't sure. Did her little rook have a crush on the boy? Unlikely. Rias was more than certain Koneko just wanted to keep the food he brought to herself, the adorable little glutton. As for her request, Koneko gave a little nod as she said, "I'll try."

Koneko would try, just not very hard. The longer she had his delicious food to herself the better!

After a productive Saturday morning of training and still getting used to his new, stronger, physique, Junichiro answered his door. As could be expected, Koneko was standing at his threshold with a look of anticipation on her face. Though, it was clouded with a slight bit of reluctance. She looked away for a moment before firming up and speaking to him in a soft voice, "Sempai, Rias-buchou wanted me to invite you to the ORC clubhouse for lunch today."

Junichiro snorted in response and stepped further into his apartment, "Pass. Like I told that pretty boy Yuuto-san, I have no interest in the occult. Besides, if Gremory-san really wanted to invite me to lunch or to speak, she should do it herself."

Was making Rias come to him and not doing the same to Sona hypocritical of him? Not at all! Sona was in charge of the student council and therefore had some legitimate authority within the school. Rias, meanwhile, is only the president of a school club which only gives her authority over the club members. So blowing off Sona and forcing her to come to him would have been seen as extremely rude to the entire student body. Blowing off a club president? Not so much.

Koneko happily followed him into the apartment and made her way to the kitchen table where their lunch was already waiting. So far Koneko had come over at the exact same time on the weekends so it wasn't hard to have something ready for her. He also hadn't made the mistake of feeding her food worth hundreds of thousands of yen again. He actually put a limit on the value of the food the replicator could provide for his lunches. Breakfast and dinner didn't matter since he ate those alone.

They both ate in silence until he decided to try and engage Koneko in a little conversation. They really didn't talk all that much during their lunches together and he honestly wanted to know the real Koneko better. Sure, he knew a fair bit about her through the anime, but she was a real person now and he wanted to make sure what he knew meshed with reality, "What's up with Gremory-san wanting to invite me to her clubroom so much? It's honestly a bit odd."

Koneko paused with a piece of kaarage a bit away from her mouth to answer, "Rias-buchou wants to recruit more people."

Junichiro snorted at that, "So she picks the guy not interested in the occult? Excellent recruitment plan!" He eyed Koneko a bit while smiling playfully, "It's because you told her how good my food is and now she wants some too, right?"

Koneko suddenly scowled, which just looked adorable as hell on her, and shook her head, "I don't want to share!"

Despite how firm her declaration was, she said it in such a soft voice that he barely heard her. He just nodded in understanding, "That's okay. I don't want to share my lunches with anyone else anyway."

His statement caused Koneko to blush a little and look away from him. He didn't really mean for that to come out as flirty as it had. He only meant that he enjoyed the companionable silence of their lunches. There was just something so soothing about sitting with her in silence while she happily munched away on something. It made him want to pat her head and spoil her rotten.

Once lunch was finished and Koneko left, Junichiro returned to his training and creating. He was honestly stumped about what gem he could possibly make next. He currently had a dozen of them, literally, and felt like he had almost every base covered in the magic department. He even made a bunch of fun toys that, while not hugely powerful, would be fun to play with. His armor was always with him so he had his defenses covered. Especially since he had the house's system summoning various devices to blast him with fire, water, lighting, and so on to improve the armor. As it was, he was immune to any damage from elemental attacks below a certain threshold. The nanites swarming around his body kept him in excellent health and could heal just about anything, if much more slowly than Phenex regeneration.

He'd been on the lookout for a stray devil to see if he could capture and experiment on it, but they seemed to be pretty rare. He knew one would be in the area in the future, but that was at least several weeks away and Rias was already after him. It seemed like turning himself into a devil alone was unlikely to happen. He would likely end up being a servant to Rias. Not that he cared. Rias would never really treat him as such and given that she was coming to him, it also put him in a position to negotiate. Something he fully planned to take advantage of.

Offense, covered. Defense, covered. Utility, covered. Healing, covered. Devil physiology, failed. Hell, he'd even upgraded Ddraig's little dragon body with requests from Ddraig. It was now as close as it could possibly be to a living body while being made of metal. The damn thing could even bleed! Sort of. It wasn't actually blood but was instead liquid mana flowing through veins in the body to give it a ridiculous amount of power. For giggles, he'd even given the body an infinite mana generator like he currently had in his body. When Ddraig possessed the body he was literally an immortal with infinite power. It was like he was the horrifyingly powerful offspring of Great Red and Ophis.

Speaking of Ddraig, he remembered something he did need to make and prepare Ddraig for, "Hey buddy, you awake?"

The small dragon's body came to life as Ddraig transferred his mind to it, "What?"

"There's something I've been meaning to tell you about. With Rias bugging me it's only a matter of time until she makes the offer to turn me into a devil. With how weak she is compared to us, I have to do something to limit our power to make it possible for the Evil Pieces to work. I'm planning on making a temporary seal to completely hide the majority of our power from the Evil Pieces. I'll have to completely seal you away for a short time. As soon as the change is complete, I'll release you and all of my power."

Ddraig was silent as he thought over what Junichiro had to say. But the moment he saw what Junichiro had planned within his mind, he started laughing. Not just laughing, but full-on whole body shaking laughter, "Do it! The look on her face when you release your full power! I want to see it!"

Junichiro grinned brightly. Ddraig had gained access to his mind and memories a few days ago and had gone through his entire life up to that point. At least, his second life. For some unknown reason, there was a wall in Junichiro's mind that Ddraig couldn't gain access past. All of his memories from his first life were behind that wall hidden from Ddraig, even when he was thinking about them. It was disconcerting for the dragon's soul to have part of his host's mind hidden from him.

However, the existence of the wall and Junichiro's recent memories were enough proof for Ddraig. There was simply no other way the dragon could fathom that would explain how Junichiro went from a one hundred percent normal human to an extremely knowledgeable sacred gear wielder in a single night. There was nothing in the memories Ddraig could access that showed where he got the information he had from. But, while he was within Junichiro, he could tell truth from lies and Junichiro had never lied to him. Though, Ddraig was no fool and was certain that some things had definitely been hidden from him.

Now that he had Ddraig's permission, because there was no way he was sealing away his partner without it, he got to work. Bits and pieces of scrap, he still hadn't run out, fell onto the floor. He knelt down and focused his mind, something that was getting easier with each passing day. He pictured exactly what he wanted the item to look like and then spent the majority of his focus on what it should do. It couldn't simply disable the Boosted Gear, it had to completely and utterly hide it as if it wasn't even there. Further, it had to hide the majority of his own magical power. It needed to hide everything but a small part of his mana and his original sacred gear The Workshop.

Slowly the materials came together under the green glow of his hand. The red sparks flowed around the materials and changed their structure and shape into what he desired. Power rippled out of him in huge waves that seemed to warp the very air around the item he was creating. It was going to take an item of extreme power to hide almost all of who he was so completely that an item attached to his very soul wouldn't be able to even notice. Not a small task.

When he finally stopped he was left with a rather small item, in comparison to the task it was meant to perform. He picked up the black choker and ran his fingers over it. The choker was made of interlocking metallic plates that fit together so well that they looked like one solid piece. When wrapped around his neck it would lock away all but a small portion of his power and The Workshop from any possible method of detecting them. It should prove to be more than enough to trick the evil piece system.

Then once he was fully transformed into a devil, he could remove the choker and release his full power for the first time, ever. He couldn't wait to see the look on Rias's face when he did so right in front of her, or when she found out he had two sacred gears. The Boosted Gear was a Longinus, period. The Workshop was a Longinus in his hands and would be able to do things for her that she'd never dreamed of.

A wicked grin grew on his face, he would be the most powerful devil in any world, eventually. New ideas flooded his mind as he thought of things he could make to make him untouchable. Physical power, magical power, political power, all of it would mean nothing before him. He would do what the four Satans should have done and truly take out the old satan faction.

He planned to become the top dog in the universe. Ophis? Great Red? They would be nothing before him, in time.

Ddraig, now fully connected to Junichiro, could hear his thoughts and let out another roaring laugh, "That's right Partner! There's only one place The Dragon of Domination should aim for, THE TOP!"

Junichiro chuckled as he got over his megalomania for a bit, "Yeah, I just wish it was as simple as it seems. I really only want to be strong enough to take on Trihexia and win. Though that means being even stronger than the biblical god by a huge margin. It's truly daunting, but I will succeed."

"We have time Partner. It's only been two weeks and you're already fairly strong. With all of your plans, we will only get stronger. There's nothing we can't overcome together."

"We're the Red Dragon Emperor, The Dragon of Domination, and soon we will make our debut and show the world why it took all three biblical factions to take you on."

Ddraig's excited laughter rang through his entire apartment.

Koneko walked into the ORC clubroom and instantly had the attention of her king. Seeing how long it took Koneko to return and a distinct lack of company told Rias all she needed to know. Once more Arai-san had blown her off. She wanted to know more so she waited patiently for Koneko to tell her what happened.

For a moment, Koneko considered rewording what Junichiro said into something more polite. Deciding against it, she relayed her words with minimal modification, "He said if you really want to invite him to lunch or to speak to do it yourself."

Rias really wanted to complain about that but didn't have a leg to stand on. He might be living in her territory but that didn't really give her any authority over him. It wasn't like she could just walk up to random people in the street and tell them what to do. He might be unaffiliated with any faction, leaving him vulnerable, but it wasn't in her nature to take advantage of that. It wasn't as if she would ever force someone to join her peerage, no matter how desperate she was. Bringing someone near death, or recently dead, back to life as a member of her peerage didn't count as forcing. After all, she was saving their lives in the process and making their lifespan tens of thousands of years longer.

Rias let out a sigh and leaned back in her chair, "I guess I'll just have to approach him myself on Monday." She bit her lip a little, "I also need to find out what happened in his meeting with Sona. She refused to talk to me about it earlier."

She really wanted to know if Arai-san had joined the student council or not, she believed not given what information she had. Whatever had happened in the meeting was being kept quiet for some reason. Neither Sona nor any member of her peerage would speak about what happened. When she'd asked Sona about it, Sona had looked both angry and depressed. So Rias assumed it didn't go well, she just had no details.

She looked at Koneko, "On Monday, I want you to come here for lunch. I'll invite Arai-san here and explain you are waiting for him here. Hopefully, that will be enough to get him to come so I can speak with him. I just hope he's worth all this effort."

Koneko looked a little put out by the order but nodded her acceptance. She just hoped Arai-sempai would be willing to come here for such a flimsy reason. She really didn't want to miss one of his meals. She didn't know how he made them so delicious but missing even one chance to eat his food was a crime in her opinion. No matter how suspiciously delicious, or expensive, those meals might be.

Deep in a hidden and dark room within the underworld a certain 'magical girl' sat in front of a computer monitor. It was time to watch her favorite show! The Sona-tan show! Serafall Leviathan, one of the four strongest devils in the underworld and one of the main leaders of the devil faction, was an unrepentant sis-con. She had hundreds of hidden cameras covering every area of the human world where Sona might possibly venture on a normal day. If she could she would spend all day sitting in front of the monitor watching her Sona-tan avidly. Sadly, her work made that impossible so she had to settle for recording things and reviewing them later. It was her job as a big sister to make sure her precious little Sona-tan was growing properly!

She was especially excited about today's episode of the Sona-tan show! Technically, it all happened yesterday since she couldn't get to her super secret lair sooner. Sona was going to try recruiting that plain-looking boy that seemed to have a sacred gear of some sort. Details were sparse and she didn't care about the boy in the least anyway. What was important was Sona getting another member of her peerage, even if it was a boy. She'd have to pay more attention to him to make sure he didn't have designs on her Sona-tan!

"I refuse."

Serafall's eyes narrowed at the sudden, unexpected, and blunt refusal. That plain-looking boy should be on his knees thanking Sona-tan for even giving him the time of day! He dared refuse her?! Ice covered her chair and crackled beneath her hands as she gripped it tightly when the boy started tearing into Sona. When he unintentionally spat on Sona-tan's dream, Serafall had to force herself not to tear out of her secret room and head to the human world to utterly annihilate him! How dare the little pissant nearly make her precious Sona-tan cry?!

Only two things initially stopped her from finding and slaughtering the boy. First, if she ran up to the human world without permission and started killing humans, even if it was just one, it would cause issues. Beings at her level had some restrictions they had to follow if they didn't want to create incidents that could strain relationships. With the growing desire for peace between the Abrahamic factions, her action of killing a random kid would look pretty bad. Second, it would reveal her super duper secret hidden cameras. She routinely left cameras that Sona-tan was meant to find to give Sona-tan a false sense of security. Let her find the more visible ones, assume that was all of them, and never find the truly hidden ones. Her rushing out would reveal she still had an eye on Sona-tan and she would tear everything apart to find them! That would be a disaster!

Unfortunately, she was given a third reason to not rush out to the human world shortly after the boy left. She could see the determination brimming in Sona-tan's eyes as she started ordering her peerage around and prepared for change. Serafall could only smile as she watched Sona-tan come back from her disappointment even stronger than before.

Maybe she would spare the boy... for now. However! She would have to think of something to do to punish him at least a little when they met for the first time...

AN

For those interested, I did write up two chapters for a Cyberpunk 2077 story. If you like Cyberpunk in any of its forms, give the story a look and let me know what you think. Thanks!