- Sona -
How was this possible?
Just a few days ago he was just a normal human, now, he is still a human…a human with magic!
Looking at Lucas as he casually waltzed into the school building, her mind ran a mile a second thinking about how it could have happened.
She'd done a background check on Lucas when he transferred in and found nothing special. No relation to any historic family or supernatural event.
The only reason she could think of was that he awakened a sacred gear. Probably a decent one judging by what she was feeling from him.
That would explain his absences for the past few days; he was probably freaked out by it. Her eyes widened as Lucas glanced up and directly at her.
Adjusting her glasses, she contemplated what to do.
- Lucas -
While he would love to stay stashed away and continue tinkering, he didn't know how many absences it would take before the school would contact his parents about it.
He would rather not have to deal with that.
'It seems I've been missed.' He thought sarcastically as he caught sight of Sona staring at him from upstairs.
He'd briefly contemplated making something to hide his magic and sacred gear but he decided otherwise. What was the point? The fallen already knew he wasn't ordinary.
Speaking of that, he had to do something about them. With Dohnaseek missing(dead), they were bound to try something, it's only a matter of time.
His thoughts were interrupted as Issei stumbled into class with Motohama and Matsuda on each side, all of them mumbling excitedly.
"Did you see it?! Did you see it?!"
"That creamy flesh, those heavenly curves…"
He shouldn't have been surprised but he barely held himself from facepalming. It was one thing watching it on screen and another thing to see it in real life.
The looks of disgust that were thrown at them by their other classmates didn't stop them as they continued discussing animatedly until the teacher arrived.
He barely stopped himself from running out of class the moment the bell rang. He'd underestimated how boring the classes would be when he had a better understanding of sciences than the ones teaching the subjects.
Unfortunately, his exit route was blocked by a familiar face.
"Lucas Taylor," the blond he recognized as Saji, Sona's pawn, said as he stood in front of him. "The student council would like to speak with you."
"I think I'll pass." he retorted without missing a beat.
Stepping to the side, he frowned as Saji moved to block him once again. "I insist."
He could ignore them. He really could but then they would just get more annoying. Besides, why not have a little fun?
"Very well then. Lead the way." Lucas said in a clearly sarcastic tone.
He ignored Saji's frown as the blond led him to the student council room, not that he didn't know where it was.
It didn't take long before they arrived, entering after a soft knock.
Sona sat behind her table with an ever serious face, Tsubaki standing silently behind her. "Please, have a seat."
"If you don't mind me asking, what is the reason for calling this meeting?" Lucas asked as he sat down rather comfortably.
"I apologize for the abruptness but it is of utmost importance." the devil heiress said, not sound all that sorry. "Do you believe in the supernatural?"
He fought the urge to roll his eye at the cliché opening question. "Yes I do actually. Why don't we skip all of that."
Suppressing the smirk that tried to emerge on his face as they frowned, Saji especially, he continued. "I already know you are devils."
Sona's eyes narrowed at that. "I see. May I ask how you knew that?"
"You may not." he refused, immediately feeling Saji's hand grip his shoulder firmly. Too firmly to be anything but threatening.
"Be careful how you talk to the president." the boy warned.
"Resorting to threats when things don't go your way, I can't say I'm surprised." Lucas said, nonplussed.
"You-!"
"Saji!" Sona called out before the blond could continue. "Please leave us."
The confusion on his face was comical as well as his clear displeasure as he quietly left the room.
"There was no need to antagonize him." Sona said, getting a raised brow in return.
"I did no such thing." Lucas denied with a small smile.
There was a pregnant pause in the room as they stared each other down.
"Would you care for a game of chess?" She offered, in an attempt to diffuse the tension that was slowly rising.
He shook his head. "I'll pass."
"I insist."
"Simply because you insist isn't a reason for me to agree. I would prefer for us to get to the point of this meeting as soon as possible. I have other things to do." he urged.
He really did have other things to do.
Though a bit put off by his refusal, she quickly composed herself. "Since you are aware of our nature, you're most likely aware of the peerage system."
At his nod, she continued. "I'll be blunt. Would you like to join my peerage?"
"No."
"Is there any particular reason?" she asked.
"There are many reasons, one of them being that I'm not interested in joining a war between the three factions." he explained as she nodded.
"And the other?"
"No matter how well you treat it, a slave is still a slave. Becoming a devil would put me entirely at your mercy so forgive me if I don't want to spend the next thousands of years being treated as a second class citizen." his words put a frown on both their faces.
"You have a rather interesting view of our hierarchy system." she said, not denying it
She knew he wasn't wrong. He didn't know what others were thinking, accepting a deal that essentially meant selling their soul.
"I don't suppose there's any way I could convince you." she asked, getting a shake of his head. "Then I can only ask that you don't cause trouble in my territory."
Lucas' inner jovial mood dimmed at her words. "Territory? What exactly gives you the right to just claim a place and its people like we're sheep? You don't own Kuoh."
That was one thing that always bugged him when he thought about it. The city belonged to mankind yet devils and supernatural beings just claim those places on a whim.
"I don't believe this is a productive direction for this discussion." Sona interjected.
Scoffing, he dusted himself as he got to his feet. "Of course you don't. I'll see myself out."
As he exited the room, he found Saji waiting outside with an angry expression on his face. Devils have supernatural hearing so of course he heard everything.
He looked like he wanted to do something but a look from Sona stopped him.
Good.
- Sona -
Watching Lucas leave the office, she could feel the lingering tension that his presence and words brought.
His attempts to rile Saji up, for whatever reasons, were annoying but she hadn't expected him to be so hostile.
"Tsubaki, keep an eye on him." she said to her queen who was equally as troubled as her.
"Of course."
"President, how could you let him talk to you like that?!" Saji questioned in confusion.
"What would you have me do? Threaten him? That would only prove his point." she rebutted.
"B-but you can't just…" he struggled with his words for a moment, causing her to sigh.
"Sadly, he has a point. The discrimination between reincarnated devils and pure blood devils is still present. The satans have been trying to do away with the laws that allow that but progress is slow in a society of ancient beings." she explained somberly.
They wouldn't allow laws to be abolished especially when those laws allowed them to keep the power they jealously relished.
Her explanation seemed to have gotten to the blond. His heart was in the right place but Saji could be very impulsive and hotheaded.
"Saji," she said, pulling his attention. "I want you to stay away from him for the time being."
- Lucas -
He smirked as he listened to their discussion through his phone. He'd planted a listening device under Sona's desk in the student council room, which was his main goal for going there in the first place.
Now he could keep an ear out on whatever they were doing. Batman would be proud, especially of what came next.
Due to his recent experience with Dohnaseek, he decided that the junkyard was too open and unsafe for his comfort.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out what looked like a small remote. A small, very very highly advanced remote.
A few taps later, the space in front of him tore as a portal opened up to his delight. Grinning, he stepped into the portal, coming out in a very spacious cave with numerous human shaped robots moving around performing various duties.
Who needed humans when you could make worker robots who didn't need sleep? Sure, a decent portion of the junkyard was now empty due to him needing a lot of materials but it was for the greater good.
Nobody was using them anyway. Plus, who wouldn't want their own batcave?
The bots had spent the entire night and day burrowing and hollowing out the area underneath the junkyard. The only way in would be to teleport and since he hadn't figured out how to do that with magic, he did the next best thing.
He'd gotten the idea from a few sources, namely; Cisco's extrapolator and Motherboxes, both from DC.
'Next on the list, a cloaking device to hide any magic activity in this area.' He thought, reading off a mental list.
Thankfully, his magic reserves had been growing with how much strain he put it under, allowing him to spend more time and energy playing around with his gear.
'It's good to be me sometimes.'
- Rias -
"What do you mean we can't do anything?" Rias asked/complained, causing Sona to sigh once more.
"He heavily dislikes devils. He made that quite clear during our meeting." Sona explained.
"We just have to convince him otherwise." She argued.
How could she expect her to just sit down and do nothing when a person, who very likely had a sacred gear, was in their own school? It would be a massive boost to her peerage.
With her father still trying to push the deadline closer, she needed everything she could get.
"Rias, I know you're in a tight spot but I believe it would be best to hold off on any plans to recruit until we at least know what he's capable of." Sona said, knowingly. "In addition to that, it is possible that the fallen are responsible for this. It could also be why they're flocking around the Hyoudou boy."
That was quite an assumption but it kind of made sense. It wasn't a secret that Azazel liked to tinker so it wasn't a stretch that they'd found a way to detect sacred gears.
She'd noticed the fallen around him but she thought nothing of it. This changes things. If Lucas was off the table then she'd try and recruit Hyoudou.
His perversion and libido would make it quite easy.
- Lucas -
Kidnapping wasn't a crime, right? Fallen angels did it, devils do it a lot too.
Looking at Issei's limp body that was propped up in a tube, he couldn't help but smile at his handiwork.
He was quite ticked off by Sona's 'territory' comment and pettiness was very underrated.
Rias hadn't recruited Issei yet so he was free meat as far as he was concerned. So no satans banging on his door because he kidna- borrowed someone in their little sibling's peerage.
Grabbing Issei wasn't too difficult. He had a tiny spider bot follow him home in his bag and simply opened up a portal underneath him when he fell asleep.
A local hospital might be missing some anesthetics but they'd be fine.
In the first tube lay an unconscious Issei and in a few tubes beside it lay an unconscious Dohnaseek. More like a Dohnaseek clone.
He spent a long while thinking about what to do with Dohnaseek's corpse until he had the brilliant idea to take a page from Cadmus's book; make a clone.
While they spent years perfecting their cloning technology and process, he had a cheat of a sacred gear that allowed him to skip all of that.
As usual, no success is without its failures. Unfortunately, the clone was human. Physically, there was no difference between the two but the clone possessed no light energy magic so he wouldn't be fooling anyone.
Issei on the other hand was completely human at the moment, thus eliminating that problem. The machine worked by copying their DNA and mapping their brain and memory engrams. Using that DNA, a living clone body is assembled by nano machines through a rapid process of binary fission. The mapped and recorded memory engrams are then downloaded into the clone.
The tube beside Dohnaseek contained Issei's clone, a paper labeled 'Clone' taped to the tube. It was a long four hours but he got through it.
'I need to get a more professional labeling method.' He idly mused as he picked up a scanner from a nearby table.
Waving it in front of the clone, it made no sound. He then turned to Issei, causing it to quickly start beeping.
"Sacred gears are bound to the soul, I'm not exactly surprised that the machine can't replicate sacred gears." He muttered to himself, snapping his finger.
A moment later, two robots in black butler suits approached him.
"Lock this one in a stasis pod next to Donnelly's corpse." He ordered as the tube opened up, allowing the boy to fall limply to the floor before being dragged out by one robot butler.
No boosted gear for Rias.
"You, get me my portal remote." He ordered the second one who swiftly brought the desired item.
One portal later, the clone was tossed on Issei's bed and nobody would ever know.
'Now back to my fallen angel problem.' He thought as he moved to another section of the cave.
He had a number of robots dedicated to expanding the cave while the rest ran maintenance and moved his stuff in. His RV was already parked comfortably in the cave.
Also important, he had another fraction of robots who were in charge of gathering metals and other materials for him to use in his machine crafting.
Now in a room filled with scrap metal, he rolled his sleeves and began thinking of how he would respond to the fallen angel's attempt on his life.
'I could blow up the church.' He pondered. 'Nah that'll get too much attention. Micheal would probably hunt me down if I do that.'
With a sigh, he crossed high powered grenades off his mental list to think of other ideas that didn't involve tossing around a mini nuke into the church.