Big Soul Energy!
Prologue: Boys like you are easily pleased, usually.
"Alright, next is… DxD, and One Piece!" The woman next to me chirps innocently.
I take a full second to register her words through the haze of alcohol and the playlist coming straight from the nineties blasting in the speakers, and can't help but let my head fall against the bar's counter with an audible 'thump' and a pained groan.
"Is something wrong?" She asks innocently.
Too innocently, in my opinion.
"O-Of course there is!" I slur my words, taking a sip of my beer before locking eyes - or at least
trying - with her.
Yet the lizard part of my brain makes it so I never succeed.
Oh, I managed to gaze at her when I walked into the bar earlier this evening. A shade of red hair so bright it veers toward pink of all things, yet still managed to look natural to me. Wide, expressive red-green eyes, carrying some kind of weight behind them, so much in fact that I can't help but avert mine. Elfin traits with a naturally puckered mouth, seemingly always quirked into an easygoing smile. Waifish, almost petite frame, which still manages to hint at her femininity in all the right ways.
Saying that she is a ten would be downplaying it. She is
at least a thirteen, and I'd bet she wouldn't manage to go under a twelve if she traded her white dress for the ugliest of rags.
Certainly makes one wonder why she's even wasting her evening with me, speaking about fanfiction of all things.
I look away from her, momentarily crossing eyes with the barmaid, apparently two seconds away from openly drooling too if the flush on her face is anything to go by, before answering.
"T-Two reasons." I blink away most of my drunkenness, ruefully shaking my head before taking another sip of my beer.
Liquid courage to endure her attention has been my go to since the beginning of the evening and I'm certainly not going to stop now. Especially after we started talking about hypothetical, fictional scenarios.
"Firstly, because I can't stomach the canon timeline. Yeah, Issei's bad in a vacuum, but what makes it even worse is how the rest of the cast - especially the female characters - gets uselesser and uselesser - if that's even a word - as the plot goes. Combine that with the ever-escalating threats, and you get a trap world barely hidden behind the boob jokes. One where you'll have to carry everyone else because one measley butterfly can fuck the golden timeline pretty hard and the original protagonist only pulled it off by flying by the seat of his pants
and being stupidly lucky. So, min-max it is.
"S-Secondly, because there's an optimal choice to make in this particular setting, and it's not the one I would make ninety nine percent of the time otherwise." I take an angry sip, "If you can have
one powerset from One Piece in Highschool DxD, you take Big Mom's anytime, and it pisses me off because it's not Baby 5's."
"And why's that?" I catch her tilt her head slightly to the side while intently looking at me through the corner of my eyes.
My heart
aches for some reason, even as the lizard part of my brain tells me I should be scared shitless.
I pay the second one no mind. The alcohol helps tremendously.
"Sacred Gear are soulbound artifacts, and the Soul-Soul Fruit gives conceptual power over, well, the soul." I answer with an annoyed scowl, "Even if you discount the fact that she's got the Conqueror and her bs half-giant constitution which allows her to straight-up
tank cannon balls before tacking Armament on it, the potential for munchkinery is just too big to pass up. Which is annoying, because I'm a rather big fan of the 'all the dakka fruit' personally."
"I see…" The woman muses, idly tapping a finger to her chin, "But what about her appearance?"
I snort a laugh at that before I can catch myself.
The lizard part of my brain tells me I made a mistake, but my mouth is already open.
"Well, it's lucky we only spoke about power sets, and not about insert. Because I sure as hell wouldn't want to have her ugly ass." I jeer into my drink.
"... Is appearance all that truly matters to you?" She eventually asks, her tone
far colder than before.
"... Nah, but if I'd have to deal with being a woman, I'd rather choose to be pretty than ugly. Different kinds of attention, sure, but both inevitably get some." I wistfully answer with a half-truth while taking another sip, before gesturing at myself humorlessly, "Not like I'd ever get it, eh."
With practiced ease, I ignore the pang of disappointment tightening my throat. I always get weird when I drink anyway, nothing new about it.
"... B-But yeah," I stumble upon my words a little in a bid to cast away the awkwardness of my previous statement, "Even if it meant dealing with the Curse of the Sea - admitting it follows through, since it's supposedly an in-universe fuckery - that'd be my first choice. The lack of mobility can easily be circumvented through raw stats, and the two easiest of the Six Powers to learn later on - Shave and Moonwalk are just variants of 'kicking real hard/fast' after all. Hell, even the early game isn't
that touch and go if you're clever about it and play a bit fast and loose."
I down the last of my drink, not-quite slamming down my empty glass on the counter.
That's apparently all I need to do to catch the attention of the barmaid, and she manages to tear away her attention from my interlocutor's figure long enough to see me waving her for another.
"... You know, that's possibly the most interesting combination you've proposed since we started this little game." The woman muses, tippy-tapping her fingers against her chin while looking at me through half-lidded eyelids.
"... Possibly." I echo, before snorting a laugh, "Poor sod would still have to deal with the whole stupid nonsense that is the DxD verse, though."
"... Indeed." A little smirk blossoms on her lips, and the lizard part of my brain whimpers, "You could even say it'd be a curse of sorts."
I give her a puzzled look, just as she apparently decides that she had enough spending her Saturday evening with the local geek as she positively
glides off the barstool.
"Well, I had a pleasant time." She gives me a dazzling smile, and my heart does a little flip-flop, "I doubt we'll meet again."
I take her statement in, watching as she turns away.
My mouth, once again, runs before my brain catches on.
My hands dart away, taking hold of her arm.
Two narrowed eyes lock on mine, and the lizard part of my brain begs for mercy.
I avert my own eyes, flapping my mouth a little.
"I-I'm sorry, it's just…" I release my grasp, "C-Could I have your name, if it isn't too presumptuous?"
"... My name? What of it?" She says.
I can only shrug at her question.
"Well, it's just I'd like to have something else to call you other than 'the woman' in my head. Too impersonal to my taste." I risk a look in her direction.
She seems to dissect me with her eyes alone, looking, seeking for something.
"Boys like you are easily pleased, usually." She hums, hiking up the strap of her purse in contemplation.
The sentence is dangerous, ringing warning bells in the primal part of my brain.
"Sorry, forget I asked." I sigh, before dipping my head a little, "Have a good evening, ma'am."
I turn myself back toward the counter after saying my piece, only to feel a hand grip my shoulder, halting my motion.
Two soft lips kiss my forehead, the contact almost
searing so intense it is, forcing me to blink as if I'd just stared into a lit spot.
"... Circé." I barely catch a quiet whisper in my ear as the hand leaves my shoulder.
I about-face on top of my barstool once again, but the woman has already reached the bar's exit and I barely catch her sashing away in the night.
"What a woman..." The barmaid sighs dreamily while dropping my refill next to me.
I take a sip, before mock-scowling her way.
"Down, girl, or I'm tattling to your girlfriend."
She giggles, before winking.
"It's not because I'm on a diet that I can't read the menu, kitten." Her grin is entirely too wide and self-satisfied.
I snort a laugh.
"Can't really fault you for that." I let out a sigh of my own, "What a woman indeed..."
I slowly stir awake, the softness of my bedsheets pleasantly gliding across my skin as I let out a muffled yawn, unclenching my grip from around my pillow. Eyes fluttering open, I instantly frown as my brain registers that my shutters are closed, making it so I have no idea what time it is.
I grumble a little, one hand extended in the direction of my bedside table, fingers hesitantly questing for my smartphone.
I don't quite manage to find it, forcing me to banish the last dregs of sleep by myself, worsening my mood on my sole day off of the week.
I half-rise, half-crawl closer to the left side of the beed, trying to find the switchlight instead, yet something makes it so the pillow follows the motion with me, to my befuddlement, and I not-quite faceplant on the bed.
"Oof!" I let out reflexively, and pause, hard.
Because that's sure as shit not my voice.
Fight and flight response kicks in, and I freeze like an absolute moron, laying still, which coincidentally gives me ample time to catalog everything wrong about the sensation.
The first being-
I slowly raise myself on my elbows, before slowly dipping my eyes down. It is quite difficult to see fuck all in the nearly-absolute darkness of the room, but I'd have to be blind to miss the two airbags hanging of my chest!
"What the fuck?!" I whisper-yell, before clamping a hand around my throat in reflex, failing to find any kind of Adam's apple, yet the pulse under my fingertips feels very real as it quickens rapidly.
I crash back against the bed, my fliailing increasing drastically as I try to find that stupid switchlight!
A resounding and abrupt 'crack' gets heard as I backhand something, jostling something else, making the kind of wobbly sound you sort-of expect of a bedside lamp a couple of seconds away before it falls and breaks. Luckily enough, the sound is enough to guide some manner of instincts, a weird synesthesia thing, screaming purple in my mind.
My hand darts forward, palm open up in reflex.
What can only be the lamp lands in my extended hand, and I clutch at it like a lifeline, a grinding sound rumbling in the silence of the room, but I finally manage to find the goddamn switch!
The light flips on, and I have to avert my eyes for a moment.
When I open those once more, I watch, a little befuddle, the indents my fingers left in the metallic lamp base, before zeroing on the bedside table and noticing the other indent my involuntary backhand ripped through.
"What the fuck?!" I whisper-yell for the second time, my heartbeat thundering in my ears and the edges of my vision blackening.
My eyes dart downward once again, yet the previously observed massive honkers have apparently failed to disappear when I was fumbling for some light, which, shocker.
I throw the bedsheets away, eyes darting this way and that, noticing two doors in the bedroom that I don't know, and I almost faceplant in my mad dash out of the bed.
I fling the first door open, which almost jostles it out of its hinges, my eyes landing on a functional yet without any sort of decoration living room, the sun shining merilly through an open window. A couch, a TV, what looks like an open kitchen.
Not the priority.
I open the second door, less forcefully this time around, and fumble for another lightswitch, and almost sigh in relief when I find the bathroom, before my breath hitches as my eyes land on a uniform I would recognize anywhere, hanging atop the sink.
I took a hesitant step forward, then another, before gingerly unhooking the crime against decency in front of my eyes, unveiling a mirror.
My heart stops, my mind blanks, I globally bluescreen.
Bubblegum pink hair stopping under the shoulderblades, amber eyes, sharp features.
Standard 'One Piece hourglass figure', with way too much both upside and downside to be truly feasibly human, the carpet definitely matching the drapes.
My jaw drops, the uniform too.
A post-it sticking at the top of the mirror choses this moment to flutter down for some reason, and my hands dart reflexively to catch it, the motion so fast I barely catch it in the mirror.
I bring the post-it at eye level.
Put up or shut up~
C.
My mind reboots.
"WHAT THE-"
On the last Sunday morning of the Japanese school holidays before the start of the school year 2011-2012, a certain meteorological phenomenon was observed. Despite it being a sunny day, dark clouds, usually synonymous with the beginning of a thunderstorm, were spotted in the Kuoh town's skyline for the span of a minute, between 10:13 and 10:14 am.
Various witnesses also testified that they heard someone - supposedly a female individual - yells extremely loudly the word 'Fuck' - in English - and feeling woozy afterward.
[AN: As I said, blame Aria, they shoveled just as much food to this plot-bun that I did. :3
Hope you enjoy, xoxo!]
