Anything became normal given enough time, which was something Alfred noticed with a slight laugh as he prepared himself to go fight monsters all night. It was just a part of his job description at this point, handling the moon cycles. Tonight just so happens to be a New Moon, the worst of the two. On the upside, it was a Friday which meant he wouldn't need to go to class tired from having stayed up all night. So, that was cool.

Finishing off another smoothie, he tossed it into a nearby garbage and waited for the others to arrive. On moon duty (as he liked to call it) it was usually only two or three of them at a time. Despite the size of the city, the demons tended to flock towards wherever the strongest power was. Their aggression made them prioritize the most obvious target over any other, which made it easier to take care of large chunks of the city on your own. That, and the Veil masked the scent of humans to keep those resting inside their homes safe.

Tonight, however, was different. The entirety of Rias' peerage save the redhead herself was showing up, though not because it was necessary. Apparently, she decided it was a good idea to have them babysit their newer members while also getting a little training in themselves. Good idea, and one he was somewhat ripping off.

"You just going to stay up there, Raynare?"

Of the fallen, only Raynare seemed eager to continue fighting. The other two had decided that perhaps a less violent career path would suit them best and took to studying under Kiyome. Though right now, his favorite problem student refused to move away from a building a good hundred feet from the academy entrance.

"I'd rather not have to talk to the devils."

The rock comm on his ear vibrated with her voice, the device being used to maintain contact with each other. He understood her reasoning, and honestly it was probably for the best. While the devils were able to get over his choice to rehabilitate the fallen, none of them had liked the idea. Well, Kiba was somewhat of an exception. He loathed the idea but agreed with his reasoning for doing it. Asia had also agreed, though the girl hardly counted. She was much too nice to count, even believing her own killer to be worth redemption.

"Fair enough. You still on, Kiyome?"

"As if I wouldn't be."

Stubborn woman, though he had no place to judge there. No matter how many times he insisted on her going to sleep while he worked, she was just as insistent on staying up and working on surveillance while he was out on the field. Though this time, he was certain it was to test out a certain little thing she had made him help her with.

"Does it control well?"

A small bird-like creature made of stone with red wings flew in front of him, the mixture of fairy magic and his own creating a rather strange hybrid as a voice came from it.

"Like my own hand. We did wonderful work on this."

Ever since she had studied the lizards he had made, she had been eager to test his abilities. The first thing they had managed to create was a sort of scout drone, combining Threat's mass with the stone the fairies used. It had taken a while to get the control aspects working, but now she had a small army of drones patrolling the city that she could take remote control of whenever. The fairies had been rather upset at the loss of work at first, but the promise of being able to spend more time doing magic had sold them on it.

Adjusting his tie solely out of habit, Alfred gave a wave as Kiba led the Gremory peerage to the front gate. "How have you guys been?"

He hadn't seen most of them outside of classes the last few days, mostly due to how much they were training. It wasn't unusual to see them look completely haggard sometimes, though now they seemed rather well-rested. Guess they didn't want to be too tired for this.

"Well, though training has been quite the effort."

Kiba clasped arms with him, the two sharing a brief nod before Alfred realized that of the five peerage members that would be showing up, only four were in front of him.

The two men sighed as Kiba stepped to the side, Alfred tilting his head as a heel brushed past his face. Grabbing her leg, he spun around and tossed Akeno off balance before rushing in and grabbing her arm. Twisting it behind her, he raised an eyebrow as he spoke into her ear. "Hand-to-hand? That's unlike you."

Even when under the deep influence of Malice, she tended to prefer her magic over anything else. Of course, he soon got his answer as to why as she pressed against him and hummed. "Perhaps I just wanted a pre-battle domming? For luck of course."

He rolled his eyes, letting her go as Koneko glared daggers at him. "Well, maybe another time."

Her teasing was beginning to normalize to him, something she noted with a pout. "Foo, it seems like you're getting bored of me. Looks like I'll have to up my game."

"Please don't."

She cackled as Kiyome's bird lowered itself to glare at him, his hands raising as he silently pleaded the fifth. Of course, Akeno noticed this immediately and pounced on the opportunity. "My oh my, is Miss Abe jealous? You shouldn't worry too much. After all, I'd never let you escape me~"

The bird stared at Akeno before flying away, an intelligent move even if it did give the devil a laugh.

"Ugh, are you two done flirting or are we going to have to watch you guys start making out and- actually, nevermind. Keep going."

Isami butted in with her own two cents, eyeing the two of them with enough lust to make a nun cry. Well, a nun that wasn't Asia. The girl somehow managed to be completely immune to it, likely the power of being too nice to be offended.

"Aren't you a lesbian?"

She laughed as she slapped her knee, leaning against him as she gestured to nothing. "I am a connoisseur of sexy people. Sure, most of those people are women. But every now and again a guy comes along and reminds me why bisexuality is the best. Plus, can't get a futa without a little cock, know what I'm saying?"

"…Please get off me."

Kiba finally stepped in, amused at his terrible luck as the blond set order to the chaotic group. "As much fun as it is to watch Alfred get intimidated by a woman a foot shorter than him-"

"I'm not intimidated!"

"I'm not that short!"

"-we should probably get to work soon. The sun is setting."

That reminder of their limited time was enough to sober everyone up, the group naturally forming groups as Kiba took charge. "Akeno, Koneko, you two take the shanties. It'll be the most dangerous, so you two should benefit the most from it."

The two nodded, immediately taking off to get there before the sun set. Kiba then turned to him, gesturing to Isami as he paired the two of them together. "Alfred, normally I know you'd take suburbia and the river area, but I'd like it if I could take that section tonight. It's more peaceful, so I was hoping that perhaps Asia could get a sense of how combat feels in a safer environment."

It wasn't even a thought to him. "Go ahead. I'm assuming Isami and I will be taking the center then?"

"That's right. Are you okay with that?"

The question, though addressed to him, was for the both of them. They were all aware that Raynare would be with him, and Isami had some rather touchy history with the fallen. Luckily, she didn't seem to have too much of an issue. "So long as you don't expect me to be nice to the bitch, I'm game."

"Excellent. Good luck, and I'll see you two in the morning."

Kiba and Asia immediately took off, jogging lightly as they made their way to suburbia, as they called it. Stretching in place for a bit, Alfred felt a gust of wind nearby him as Isami suddenly scowled. Looks like his plus one had arrived. "Raynare."

"Boss."

The fallen had taken to calling him that, which wasn't that bad. Much better than Master. "I trust you'll be on your best behavior?"

"You act like I'm some dog."

Raynare cocked her hips as she raised an eyebrow. She was wearing her ridiculously revealing combat attire, the straps of leather covering just the essentials. She had even turned the arms he had given her back into the gloves she had apparently originally worn before her forearms were cut off. One would think they had never even gone.

Isami, however, wasn't going to forget that easily. "At least a dog would've had a less annoying bark."

"Why you-"

"Enough."

Both girls shut up immediately, Raynare out of a mix of fear and loyalty, and Isami because she respected him enough to listen. Crossing his arms, Alfred did his best to lay down the law. "We're all going to be working together, and I'd rather not have to spend the next nine hours listening to you bickering like children."

Rarely was he ever stern, not much caring to be that kind of person. However, his time with both Kiyome and Kiba had taught him enough to carry a sense of authority even if he wasn't confident in it. Thankfully, it seemed to work here as while both girls grumbled, they did nod in agreement. Little victories.

"Thank you. Now, Raynare, I want you in the air taking care of anything you see up there and taking shots from above. If it looks humanoid or has human characteristics, point me towards it and let me deal with it. Same goes for you, Isami, though you'll be with me on the ground. Everyone got that."

Another nod from both of them, neither eager to talk while in the other's presence. It would have to do.

The three of them began making their way to the furthest edge of their patrol area, Raynare taking to the sky as she hid herself from what few people remained outside. The lowering of the Veil over Kuoh was never a sudden thing, but instead a gradual increase in presence that slowly compelled those unable to resist its magic to go inside. Even the 24/7 stores would close during times of the full or new moons, having decided that perhaps it would be best to just leave the store for the night and have a nice rest.

"Think we can stop by Milkies before it closes?"

Alfred could feel his face twitch at the burger joint's absurd name but ignored it. "Afraid not. They've likely closed by now, and if they aren't, us being there would delay them. No point in doing that."

"Damn."

Their walk took a while, neither of them eager to rush and waste energy as they sparked up short conversations every now and again. It wasn't long until they were the only things out and about on the streets, eventually reaching the end of the city where a forest bordered civilization. Forests bordered the entirety of Kuoh really, save for the main road which led out of the city. It was an isolated place, one where news hardly came in or out save for the internet. And even then, the internet never seemed to be able to hold onto news about the city for long. Mentions of it just slipped between the cracks, disappearing forever as if they had never been there at all.

Strange that.

"So, are they just going to pop out of nowhere or…?"

He gave a peek to the flying magic drone hovering around his head, watching as it moved more organically than if it were being controlled remotely. "Tears will open randomly around the city, all throughout the night. They get more common as the night progresses, until the moon is at its peak. From there, they happen less frequently until the sun begins to rise."

"Geez, this feels like an event in an MMO."

His brow creased as he looked at Isami. "What's an MMO?"

She gestured wildly with her hands, throwing them out wide as she tried to explain the concept to him. "It's a game that's online but like, with a shitload of people all at once. So, you could be playing it and randomly seeing another player walk by or something. Anyway, sometimes there are events in the world that you can participate in and get loot and shit."

Huh, neat. Video games weren't really his thing, but neat. "If it helps you understand it, then sure. Like an MMO."

"Are there any ways to close it?"

He shook his head, watching the moon as it rose up from the horizon. "Not unless you know any dimensional magic. They'll close on their own, though. The barrier between this layer of reality and the other is sort of alive in a way, and it heals like we do."

"Freaky."

It really was. Getting to grips with the knowledge that their world was overlapping with several other worlds was one thing, but then realizing that reality itself had its own sort of consciousness was another. Though as far as he was aware, it wasn't alive in the traditional sense. It just had its own rules and behaviors that it followed rather extremely and was very similar to being alive because of it. That was how Kiyome had explained it to him at any rate.

"So, how has your training been-"

Several new creatures tickled at his ki-sense, their aura's much more malevolent than that of a normal human. Demons then, though whether or not they were cambions or not was hard to say. It was actually a shame he couldn't get monsters to catch on with the others, seeing as it was too vague a term. But calling the demon-human hybrids cambions seemed to catch on a bit, which was a slight relief to him.

"Pretty good! I actually evolved my gear a little, though Balance Breaker is still being a bitch. Seriously, how am I supposed to-"

Alfred held a hand out, pointing to the street in front of them as several ogres began to walk over to their direction. Their thick green hide and horrendously ugly faces were almost as awful as their stench, which he could get a whiff of even from here. To Isami, whose senses were much stronger than his due to her devil physiology, well…

"Ugh, who the hell shit themselves and died?"

She then noticed the ogres, making a face as her Boosted Gear appeared on her arm and boosted her once. "Those guys are… big."

Grunting out an agreement, he stirred his core and felt his power rise as the ogres began to charge. "Yeah. What's your plan?"

Watching her give him a panicked look was fun, in a somewhat mean way, but she managed to get over it quickly enough as her gear boosted a second time. "Hit them really hard?"

"Then give 'em hell."

Giving her a pat on the back, Alfred watched as she charged ahead to meet them in the middle, another boost coming from her gear as they clashed. Biting the inside of his cheek, he suppressed a chuckle as she was bounced off one of their clubs and sent flying back to him.

"…That didn't work."

No, it hadn't. "Boost a little more, then give it a second go. I'll leave one alive for you."

"Are you sure you can-"

Magic pooled by his hand, a golden sword as long as her appearing in his hand as crimson destruction energy ran along the inside of the blade, glowing with power. The blade was heavy, but to him it was as if it were air in his palm. One of the perks of the blade being the Goetia of Destruction, as it actively worked with him. "Yeah, I'm sure."

"Oh fuck that's cool."

The blade he dubbed Cataclysm roared to life as the first of the ogres met him on the empty street, club swinging down to slam him into the concrete only for his sword to slice through both it and the ogre's arm in one fell swoop. The ogre stumbled back, arm bleeding from the stump as Alfred held the blade parallel to the ground and placed his other palm on the pommel. He thrust the blade into the demon's chest, a burst of destruction tearing through the flesh as the entire upper body evaporated, as did the upper bodies of the three ogres behind it.

Destruction, it seemed, was his most overtly destructive Goetia. Who would have thought it?

He dismissed the blade back to his mindscape, not wanting to decimate his foes before Isami had the chance to fight. Something she seemed especially eager to do, as the sound of yet another boost came to his left as she lunged forward with a fist.

"I'm not about to let you one up me!"

How she planned on doing that, he had no idea. But her fist burying its way into an ogre's stomach and sending it flying back was a good way to start. The brunette ducked under a clumsy swing from another one of the ogre's, their large size not comfortably allowing them to easily fight in the relatively small street. She took clear advantage of it, sliding beside their legs as she punched her attacker's knee from the front, causing it to bend backwards with a crack.

Ouch.

Of course, they weren't only targeting her. Alfred raised his hand as an ogre attempted to punch him, a magic circle of holy fire forming in front of him as the ogre burst into white flames just as it touched the circle. He had yet to find a way to make a physical shield using his magic alone, but he had managed to make something close: a magic circle which exploded at an attacker when hit.

Not what he wanted, but he did enjoy its effects.

He ducked and weaved between the demons, too used to the motions to be invested in the action. Fire and lightning jumped from his hands as he scorched and electrocuted anything that got near him, falling back on his magic to practice his least polished skills.

The small band of ogres fell quickly enough, only one left as he charged a fireball only for a small blast of demonic energy to make its head explode into a gory paste.

"HA! I took down three, how about you?"

Flicking an eyeball off of his coat, he tried not to damper her mood as he gave his answer. "Twelve, though three is a great number for someone still in training."

That didn't seem to stop her mood from turning sour as she groaned, apparently not satisfied with her own power. "Ugh, you've only been doing this a few days longer than me! How are you so strong!?"

"I train constantly, both in the real world and in my mindscape."

The time dilation of the mindscape was yet again his favorite part of that skill. It helped him refine his control over his abilities much faster than an ordinary person would be able to, after all.

Bowing his head, Alfred let an arrow whiz right past him as he glanced at a nearby roof. The fact his attacker had used a weapon rather than any other kind of inborn ability was promising, especially one as skill-based as a bow. Perhaps they were simply a cambion? "I'm going to take care of whoever just shot me. You, are going to patrol the streets."

"By myself?"

Her nervousness was quickly pushed aside as she forced a confident smirk, boosting once more as she shot him a thumbs up. "I mean, totally. I got this."

Giving her a nod, he sprinted up the side of the building as he tapped the side of his comm. "Raynare, keep an eye on Isami. If you see she's in trouble, take care of it."

"Whatever."

They both knew she'd do as he asked, both because she had to and because the arms he had given her wouldn't let her kill Isami. So, with that a non-issue, he reached the top of the building and twisted his body around as another arrow shot past him. He landed, eyes locking onto a harpy who chirped some sort of signal. It didn't matter much to him, his eyes glowing as he reached out and-

His body bent at the waist as he narrowly dodged a feather, the dainty looking thing digging into the concrete as a large flock of griffins began to circle around. The harpy had retreated, likely having orchestrated the ambush in the first place. Smart one.

Not wanting to waste any time, Alfred summoned one of the more potent Goetia he had made over the last few days onto his back. Two large black wings formed on his back, blades acting as feathers as holy magic thrummed between them. They flapped as he launched himself into the air, spears of red light forming around him and shooting down onto half of the griffins.

The Goetia of Holy Light, Lightbringer, was a pretty nifty one against demons. Though it did have one downside, that being that wings made of metal were really bad at flying. Each flap of the wings acted more as a boost into the air than actual flight, forcing him to use his momentum in order to make use of the wings properly.

He grabbed onto one of the griffins, yanking on its main as he steered it around to crash into another. A half-dozen came rushing him from all sides, his wings furling together before throwing themselves open and releasing a hail of light-infused blades into all six of them.

The bodies fell as several of Kiyome's drones flew around him, fairies accompanying them as the odd fey used their even stranger magic to teleport the bodies away. Likely for Kiyome to extract some sort of material from.

It helped clean up the mess, so he wasn't complaining.

Desummoning his wings, Alfred scanned the area for the harpy's ki. It wasn't too hard to find her, as cambions had a different feel than regular demons. She was flying towards the Last Chance Casino, something that Rias' family owned and used to ambiently extract sin from those who frequented it. Slow, apparently, but effective.

Swinging towards the harpy while using the occasional burst of fire to pick up speed, he swore as she spun to the left, making him overshoot. Briefly summoning Lightbringer, he used the wings to reverse his momentum and grab onto the harpy's legs. She squawked, surprised by his maneuver as his added weight brought the both of them falling to the ground. Pulling her closer to him, his eyes flashed as he ripped the malice out of her, absorbing it and sending out a tendril from his hand to catch them.

The harpy blinked, the madness clearing from her eyes as they were slowly replaced by awe. Landing on the side of the roof, he took advantage of the translator Kiyome had modified into his comm and spoke to the harpy. "Are there any others like you? A tribe of some sort?"

"A-Ah, yes! They've made their nest atop the casino, but we are enslaved by hell knights!"

He had no idea what that was, but he assumed it was bad news. "I'll take care of it. You just need to follow this bird to safety, understood?"

She squawked in agreement, flying off as she followed one of the drones. Refocusing his attention onto the casino, he placed his hand against the comm. "You get all that, Kiyome?"

"Yeah. Hell knights are bad news, some of the more powerful lesser demons in the Underworld. One shouldn't be a problem, but multiple? Be careful."

"As careful as I can be."

Switching to his phone, he gave Isami a ring and quietly cursed at the annoyance of it. This would be a lot easier if they all had comms, but he had been made aware that the whole peerage would be coming only an hour beforehand. Kiyome was fast, but she wasn't a miracle worker and so only he, Akeno, and Kiba had one.

"Yo, kinda busy- EAT FIST YOU OVERGROWN FUCK!"

Nestling the phone between his shoulder and cheek, he began to swing off to the casino. "Just got a tip on some demons on top of the casino. I'm going to check it out, you good on your own?"

"Yeah, sure I- NOT TODAY DICKHEAD!"

Letting out a sigh, he stopped on the closest roof he could find and hung up. Summoning Searing Whisper to his hand, he let the spear float on his own as fire began to form a shape. A hand grasped the spear, a lamia-like creature having manifested made solely out of armor and fire. It was a neat trick, and one that he was glad he had decided to experiment with after digging into his whole "creating life" thing a bit more.

"You know what to do."

Searing Whisper nodded, turning into pure flame as the spear rocketed away from him and to Isami. He expected to get a very excited phone call soon.

Leaping off of the roof, he made his way to the casino, scowling as wyverns flew around the sky alongside several harpies. On the roof itself he could spy several demonic-looking knights keeping guard on the roof, a few harpies dead and… used in the center.

"These guys look organized, more so than any other demon I've seen."

"That's because the more powerful demons get, the smarter they tend to be. Cambions are the exception, as they are always rather intelligent though their demonic power is much weaker than actual demons, which is why they're often enslaved."

Eyeing the harpies once more, he frowned as he noticed something else. "And why are all cambions so far women?"

"Because male cambions are killed when they're infants by their demonic parent. The women are spared because demons like having their toys."

…Yeah, he figured.

Sending a text to the groupchat he was in with the rest of the Gremory Peerage, he leapt off of the building he was on and landed on the side of the casino. Threat's Berserker Form covered him as his strength multiplied, the wyverns screeching as they saw him and began to dive straight towards him.

He threw himself up the casino's side, letting the wyverns crash into the wall. Silently reminding himself to apologize to Rias for the damage, he pushed off the wall and shot two bladed tendrils into a wyvern's hide, pulling himself feet first into its head and shattering its neck. One of the crashed wyverns pulled itself from the wall, screeching as it tried to breathe fire at him only for a blast of holy light to blow its head off.

Jumping up the wall, he began to scale the wall while making it a point to ignore the wyverns. They would just slow him down. Instead, he reached the edge and leapt up into the air, avoiding a fireball as Lightbringer manifested itself on his back. He used the wings to rocket himself into the closest hell knight, holy magic brimming around him as it burnt the knight's infernal flesh.

Finishing off the knight, Alfred found himself facing off against seven others. Flexing his metal wings, he summoned a dozen spears and launched them at the knights to throw them off their guard. Tensing his legs, he-

A harpy suddenly swooped in from above, forcing him to dismiss his wings lest he accidentally kill her. Her clawed bird hands swiped at his face, a few feathers falling as her winged arms moved. He hopped back, the rest of the harpies circling around as the hell knights barked orders at them.

It would be easy to just remove their curse, he'd gotten very good at it after all. However, doing that would put them in harm's way as the wyverns and hell knights likely wouldn't let them go. Unless…

His core burned, as his lesser used but still powerful Goetia manipulation ability sprang to life. He reached into the harpies, ripping the curse from their souls before turning to the demons around him. Unlike the cambions, there was no curse to remove. It was simply their own putrid souls which relished in the bloodshed. But that didn't mean he couldn't do anything. After all, he had quite a bit of malice to play around with now.

He sharpened the curses he had taken from the harpies, metaphorically harpooning them into the hell knights and the wyverns as they froze from the shock of "his" hatred. He held them in place, the perceived threat of his presence making them second guess attacking him.

"Follow…magic…bird."

Holding over twenty demons like this was taxing, especially considering his own inexperience with this particular trick. Thankfully, the harpies understood the situation quickly enough and began to fly off. He waited until they were over a mile away, letting go of the demons in his grasp as he slouched forward.

That had taken more out of him than he thought, but it wasn't going to be enough to put him down.

Cataclysm formed in his hands as the hell knights shook off their fear-based paralysis, their crudely made infernal iron swords clashing with his more refined blade. The lamiae had been rather eager to make his weapons, and their craftsmanship showed in comparison to the shoddy work of the hell knights. His blade sliced through that of the first knight, coming back down as he decapitated the demon before parrying the attack of another.

Destruction burned within the sword as he blocked and parried the hell knights, waves of pure crimson magic occasionally being swung out to deal with any of the wyverns which thought he was distracted enough to kill. The blade was powerful, more than enough to allow his core to recover while it handled the demons, bisecting a hell knight before lopping off the head of a greedy wyvern.

"…Shit."

Letting the Goetia fade back into his mindscape, Alfred took a knee as he caught his breath. Handling the wyvern and hell knights, though not hard, was taxing on his stamina. No matter how strong he got, his body was still human. It had limits that, unlike devils, were a lot harder to break. And unfortunately, he hadn't found any magic to cure that.

"…Damn it, still seven and a half hours to go."

Getting back up to a knee, he ran off the roof and began to head back to Isami.

… … …

You could stand to be a little more conservative with energy.

Isami couldn't quite disagree, sweat running down her forehead as she punched an orc through its head. The big green things were like weaker ogres, but there were more of them.

It's been three hours. You should try and take a moment to rest.

She would've liked to, but it was kind of hard to do that when demons were attacking you from every which way. It was within the first hour that she had quickly realized that stressing her body by building up boosts and letting them stay in her was going to tire her out too quickly, which would be bad since she was currently only a third of the way through the night. So, she started storing them in her Boosted Gear, using the [Explosion] feature to release them all at once into some of her more powerful dragon shots, her cool name for the explosive blasts of demonic energy she'd been shooting.

"On your left!"

Her body obeyed the warning as she moved to the right, a bolt of red electricity shocking an orc before she followed up with a punch to its chest. Its ribs caved in, crushing its heart as she spun around and landed a kick on some other orc that tried to sneak attack her.

It really was just like an MMO with all these fantasy monsters.

They eventually cleared the street, Isami leaning against a wall as she wiped her brow. One of those drones that Kiyome flew around stopped by her, offering a bottle of water which she greedily yanked from the bird-like thing and downed in a single gulp.

"Gah, how do you do this shit?"

Alfred leaned next to her, not acting as tired but still visibly sweating as his mask peeled itself back. "With great difficulty. We should be good for a while. The tears tend to come in waves at a time, sort of like the ocean on a beach."

Fucking MMO like universe, the monsters even came in waves. Tossing the bottle into a nearby recycling bin, she grabbed at her uniform and groaned. "Those bastards keep aiming at my clothes. How the hell am I going to explain this to Mom and Dad?"

"Yeah, apparently they target the clothes of woman to make it easier to ra-"

He stopped himself, but it was all too easy to finish his sentence. It made her nose crinkle in disgust, suddenly more concerned with her state of dress than just having to explain it later. "Any way to fix this?"

"Akeno knows some magic for that, but I'm afraid I don't have anything to help fix them."

Ugh, great. She found herself wishing she could convince Ddraig to let her ask the guy if he had any more of those Goetia things to lend, both because they looked strong and because she liked the idea of self-repairing clothes. But alas, the dragon was stubborn in being the only sentient thing attached to her. Asshole.

I'm not apologizing.

"If it makes you feel any better, after the moon begins to descend things tend to go by a lot faster. It's just that middle of the night wave that you have to be weary of. With how chaotic this night has been so far, I have a feeling we're going to be in for quite the surprise."

His tone was cheery, though only in a fake way. She tried to push off the wall but was forced to abandon that pursuit as her legs quivered like jelly. "I don't know if I've got another six hours in me. Boosted Gear takes a lot of stamina, and I've never had to use it for this long at a time."

Never at this intensity either. She had thought her training before this was brutal, but tonight made the last month feel like a roll in the hay. "Do you really do this every two weeks?"

The idea felt impossible to her, as if tonight was the biggest challenge of her life and even the notion that it was a biweekly event made her body feel weak.

"Full moons aren't as bad, funnily enough. Something about the lack of light given off by the moon during new moons just makes these incursions several times more dangerous because of it. Full moons are walks in the park by comparison."

Well, at least it was only every four weeks rather than two. Still, that was much too often for her liking. "How are you less tired than me? Like, even with my gear draining my stamina, I should still have way more than you do."

He raised an eyebrow, sipping from his own bottle of water as he almost laughed in her face. "There are a couple of reasons. One, I tend to carbo-load right before these begin to help with energy. Two, senjutsu helps ease the stress a little as it heals my sore muscles. And three-"

Tossing the now empty bottle of water in a straight line directly into the recycling bin, he finished his list. "-I train my body to the breaking point almost every other day. Not the healthiest way to get stronger, but it's fast. Wouldn't recommend it though, since it tends to leave you in a lot of pain afterwards and can easily injure you if you aren't careful. I tend to just push my limits one day, and then rest the next to try and ease the strain, but it's still a bit unhealthy."

"Then why do you do it?"

Pushing off the wall in a way she wished she could, he shrugged and stretched his arms. "Because my body is my biggest limit. I can push my magic leaps and bounds using my mindscape, but if my body can't handle it then what's the point? My flesh is still human, and it has some harsh limits that devils don't."

Her lips pursed as she thought about it, the slow realization that her friend was still human at the end of the day hitting her properly. Sure, she always knew it, but she didn't really bother to understand it. He was just always strong, so she didn't think anything of it. But the idea that his strength was in spite of his humanity was never thought of until now.

The boy has a point. Supernatural beings have much more elastic bodies, allowing them to grow further than a human's more rigid body can. Humans are not inherently magical, and the ones that are usually only have magical souls. No matter how powerful the soul, it is bound by the limitations of the flesh.

Damn. Isami looked at Alfred with a newfound respect, if only because the sheer extent to which he was able to manifest his power in such a short amount of time was insane. But as she saw the sweat bead down his face, cheeks slightly red from the exertion of the night, she could see a distinct weakness in him that had never been so visible before. At the same time, he had never been so strong in her eyes.

"…You're crazy, dude."

Standing on her own legs, she slapped his back and followed his lead, stretching her arms as the growling of demons began to surround them. Her Boosted Gear manifested on her arm, gems glowing as it boosted her once. "Wonder what that makes me then, eh?"

He chuckled, mask enveloping his head as a big fucking sword burst into existence in his hand. "What you've always been; an irredeemable pervert."

The two of them rushed forward side by side, a grin on her face as she slammed her fist into a demon's face. Yeah, she was a pervert, just as he was a madman for grinding himself to the dust just to keep up. But to be honest?

She wouldn't have it any other way.

… … …

A bit of a short chapter with not much in the way of stakes or overarching plot, but I figured it'd be better to leave on that note since I likely won't be able to update for… a week? Let's say a week to be generous with time. I didn't want to start some sort of interesting plot and then be forced to let it stay on a cliffhanger for a while, so I wrote something a bit lighter for today. A shame my streak has to end so soon, but it is what it is. Either way, I hoped y'all enjoyed a shorter chapter. Next one will likely jump ahead a week or two, and maybe revolve around Sona's group? I don't know. I just know it'll be more plot focused than this action focused chapter.

This has been A Decent Hoonter, and I'm certain this week long dry spell will be as agonizing for me as it is you.