Don't Own the DXD or whatever other nonsense I eventually add in this fic, Only The Oc
'thought'
"Speech"
"Tvs, Radios, and Text via book or newspaper... when those are around..."

"You... want us to send our son to boarding school?" My mother asks slowly.

"I do." The blonde banged man smiles. "I feel that normal school would squander his potential. he is incredibly intelligent and I feel like my school may be the best to truly capitalize on that."

"I don't know..." My father slowly mutters as he looks to me. "Do... you want to go?"

I slowly nod once.

"Dear, how will we afford it?" I hear my mother quietly whisper to my father.

"You don't have to worry about that." Azazel waves off. "I'm giving him a scholarship because of how impressed I was of what he has done."

My parents blink slowly, seemingly confused about what he means.

"He built a functioning computer out of scrap and used parts." Azazel elaborates.

""WHAT?!""

"This is where you will be staying for the foreseeable future."

"I see." I slowly state as I look around the apartment. "Bigger than my room."

"Allow me to tell you what you are going to be doing here... you, along with one other person are Research and Development team seventy two. I won't be forcing you two to do much, but the other research teams get a little arrogant if you don't put out something about once a year, they complain that we don't need you, then it's just annoying, so please just try to make one 'discovery' every year or so."

"What are we supposed to research?" I ask with a slow blink.

"I don't know, kid, just whatever you feel like. People adore weapons so you could do that, or you could make medicine, enchant stuff, it's up to you."

"Oh. Okay." I slowly state.

We fall into an awkward silence.

"So, kid, I've got to know... what's that thing you do with your eyes?"

"Hm?" I hum as I look over to the blond banged man.

"And what about those projections? I've never heard of an ocular sacred gear that lets you create faux items and hurl light spears like an angel."

"Oh... that? I have a special power that lets me build, save, and generate blueprints all in my head... recently I've gained the ability to see the... 'blueprint' of my surroundings... I can see the path of attacks before they happen, and see distortions like that strange illusion thing you were doing when we first met. When I can see a bunch of blue lines over everything, I can also make my blueprints real for a short time."

"Wait... you made a device that lets you control light like an angel?"

"yeeees?" I slowly blink.

"If you make that you'll probably get the other research divisions off your back for at least a decade or two."

"Noted."

"I should probably talk about the other person in research division seventy two... frankly she's brilliant, but recently, she has been growing... bored? Burnt out might be a better way to describe it."

"You hope I can reignite that spark?" I ask.

"Pretty much, yeah." He nods.

After a couple minutes of walking, we reach a door.

"Here we are." He states as he gestures to the door which has the number Seventy Two on it.

He opens it and gestures inside.

On the inside I see a table with parts of machinery strewn across it, a girl in a black hoodie and lime skirt sits on a chair blankly looking through it, putting it together slowly.

She hears the door open and glances over with a frown.

"Ah yes, Mittelt, this will be your co-researcher." Azazel introduces as he gestures to me.

'huh? That one two bit first arc villain that only had like one line of dialogue and died... never to be mentioned again?'

Her eyes slide towards me.

"A human?" She asks.

"Yep." Azazel nods. "Pretty brilliant one, though. He should be able to keep up with you."

"…"

"Suzutsu, this is Mittelt, one of the most brilliant people in the Grigori despite her age. Mittelt, this is Suzutsu Hyoudou, he apparently managed to build something that lets anyone wield light as if they were an angel."

Her eyes widen briefly at that. "Huh?"

She frowns and narrows her eyes slightly. "Proof or it didn't happen."

"Hm. That's fair." I mutter as I walk over to the table, I close my eyes and hold out a hand towards the side.

A blue piece of paper winks into existence and flutters onto the table.

"There. Proof."

She snatches the blueprint paper, eyes quickly scanning over it.

A smile slowly spreads across her face as she looks up. "Okay. Maybe you can keep up with me. Don't you dare hold me back or I'll kick you out."

"Okay." I shrug.

The paper disappears into motes of blue light as my eyes gleam.

"So. What are you working on?" I ask.

"Healing tank." She answers.

"Oh cool, like Dragon ball?"

"EXACTLY!" The girl exclaims while standing up.

"I'll just... let myself out."

I idly note that he leaves, but I don't even think the girl in front of me even notices.

"Did you figure out some sort of healing substance? The tank itself is a little worthless without the heal-y stuff, right?"

"Eh, I just thought I'd do the easy stuff first. Make the tank itself, hook it up with a specialized oxygen mask." The girl states. "Wanna help?"

"Sure." I shrug as my eyes glow blue, I sit down as she pulls out a chair beside her, then hold out my hands, and shove the air, causing a blue screen to shoot from my palms and stick to the wall across from us, it looks like it's made of paper, white marks quickly sketch out a circle. "This look good?"

Her eyes widen briefly at the screen, but she quickly reins in her surprise and looks over the design.

"Metal? I sort of wanted it to be glass."

"Glass is a little impractical, right? It'd break far too easy."

"Not if it's magically tempered."

"Oh. I wasn't aware it could do that... please forgive me if I'm a little ignorant of all this supernatural nonsense... I wasn't aware the supernatural even existed until like last month when I was forced to kill some toothy abomination horse thing that attacked me in the park near my home."

"…"

"It's fine. I'll teach you all you need to know as long as we can keep using your ability to design stuff."

The design shifts, changing from my original orb shape with a small rectangular window to the upper half of a large glass orb sat within a metal base.

"This any better?" I ask.

She nods twice. "Yep! Much closer to what I had envisioned!"

I draw a line in the metal part below the orb. "I was thinking that maybe the front could open up to let people get in and out easier."

"oooh! It'd be a little impractical to get in if you had to jump in like it was a bathtub. If you are really hurt, that might make your wounds worse!" She agrees.

I wordlessly tap away on the keyboard with sunglasses as Mittelt welds in the background. "Allllllright. It should be done?"

"Now we just need to figure out what to put in it." I state as I continue tapping away.

"What... are you doing?" She asks as she slowly looks over to me.

"Me?" I ask as I point to myself. "Oh, I'm just working on my dream."

"Your dream?" She echoes.

"Yeah." I nod once. "I have a grand dream... I want to create a single object that will change not only the supernatural landscape, but the human one as well."

"…"

"annnd that is?"

"I want to make the world's very first TRUE Vr gaming system and a Virtual Reality MMO-RPG to go with it!"

Her eyes widen slightly. "Huh?"

"Just think, Mittelt!" I grin. "Everyone around the world, communicating, playing, and even fighting in a world I have created!"

I smile briefly. "That is my dream."

She blinks slowly as she looks back to the healing tank. "Screw this! Let's do your idea!"

"That's the problem... I don't exactly know where to start." I mutter as I sheepishly scratch the back of my head.

There's a tiny gleam in her eye. "We can do it together!"

"We'll need to balance actual discoveries and our overarching goal, though." I mutter as I scratch my chin.

She sits down beside me as she looks to the computer screen in front of me.

"This could be big, Suzutsu! If this works out we could raise the power of humanity by severalfold! They'd keep their muscle memory from the game, right?"

"They would." I nod.

"Awesome!" She grins. "That'd give the world more blacksmiths, chefs, craftsmen, and swordsmen right?"

"That's the plan!" I nod.

"Let's get to work, then!"

She has a spark I've never seen in her before... is this what Azazel meant when he said that she was growing bored?

I quietly flick through a book with a frown on my face.

Mittelt has her head down on the table to the left of me.

A completed jetpack sits in front of her.

That is our research contribution of the day.

I gave them the schematic for my jetpack.

They'll probably leave us alone for a while.

Azazel told us that the other research divisions where getting a bit uppity over how we are cutting into their funding despite the fact that we have made nothing of note, sooo we made that so they'd stop harassing us.

I flip the page as I boredly sketch a world map with my other hand.

In front of us sits a large repurposed healing pod... or rather just a fancy chair that opens and closes and can seal you inside.

Still no idea on how to make a Vr game... my best guess is developing some form of suspended animation technology that forces people to 'dream' of the game.

That's my best guess so far...

I scratch my head with my other hand. Why is everything so difficult!

Mittelt looks up slowly. "Any ideas?"

"Nope, sorry." I sigh. "right now I'm looking up frequencies, I'm thinking that maybe we could have some sort of helmet that puts people into a 'dream applicable state' or something."

"A frequency that puts people to sleep? Hn... I'll take a walk down to the library shortly to see if they have anything on that."

"We could use sleep magic, though." She points out.

"Nah." I state. "We'd have to develop some form of spell that can be charged with simple nonmagical electricity... plus it'd have to be more or less continuous instead of a one time use like most spells."

The blonde nods slowly. "Then there's the problem that with magic, every supernatural on the planet would get annoyed by all the magical signatures."

"Also that." I agree. "We also should prioritize safety. With this sort of tech, being put in a catatonic state might be pretty common."

"But what sort of safety features should we add?" She mutters.

"Well, firstly, a battery, so someone turning off the power doesn't immediately shut down the system, maybe a water level detector and a smoke detector just in case." I shrug as I lean back in my chair.

"What, are we going to make it bullet proof as well?" My partner asks.

"Good idea." I nod.

"I was being sarcastic." Mittelt deadpans.

"We'll also probably want it to be able to sustain a great weight, just in case of a building collapsing."

Mittelt lets out a quiet sigh. "Alright, I think we should wait a bit to implement all of this."

Another boring day sitting around doing nothing... about the same as it always is-

There's a flash of red deep within my mind and a... roaring noise?

My eyes widen as I stand up, a plan quickly is sketched out in my head.

Mittelt hears the squeaking chair and looks up, a confused expression on her face.

I throw my hands forwards and project the plan onto the wall.

"I've got something!" I grin.

Her eyes quickly scan the plan, quickly widening. "Holy shit! Would that actually work?!"

"There's only one way to find out!"

It has been roughly a year since I had my little brain blast of an idea... and hey! It works!

Or rather, it worked in a sense that it could successfully pull someone into and out of a Vr-Applicable state.

The problem right now, is that we don't exactly have any Vr system to test to see if it works...

I smile and look up at the ceiling.

It was the correct choice to go to the Grigori...

In a mere three years, I met a friend who could keep up with me, gained tools I couldn't have even DREAMED of at home!

I tilt my head as I look to the screen in front of me, scratching my chin as I let out a low hum.

The world is coming along nicely. It's about at where I'd consider a basic MMO's world.

But that's not good enough.

Every branch must move and be breakable, every blade of grass must sway in the wind... it must be perfect.

I've got an AI working on everything, so the world is going to swiftly grow larger and larger, gaining more and more detail.

I'm thinking for the base game I'll only have one area, that being the peninsula of Ishgar.

Oh, right, I'm thinking about making the MMO fairy tail based, but with like, a bunch of things from other animes. I'm thinking about slapping the Meito from one piece in there, maybe add in some supernatural martial arts so people who forsake magic have something to do?

"So, Mittelt, we've got something that feasibly works... now we just need to figure out if it actually works."

"Well, it's definitely not safe enough for me to allow one of us to test it, so... why don't we ask Azazel for criminals?" Mittelt asks.

"Hn. That's a little morbid but sounds good." I nod. "I'll whip up a flat plain of existence, and we can begin the safety tests. Then the stress tests, then we can-"

I pause as I notice something.

"…"

"My computer is running out of memory swiftly, and it has a data capacity larger than most server rooms. I think if we are going to proceed with the game, we'll need some form of large off-shore data storage. Perhaps underground?"

"We'd need more funding for something like that." Mittelt points out.

"That's true... we'll need a reason to gain said funding."

I scratch my chin and look up at the ceiling. "Most people would see this as a waste of time as well."

I gain a quick idea and smile brightly. "Ohoho. I have an idea."

"What is it?" The girl beside me asks.

"We explain the game as a way to monitor sacred gear users across the world." I smirk.

"…"

"Oooooh!" She gasps, eyes growing wide. "That'd definitely get some people off our backs. If we include a built-in supernatural sensor, we could tag sacred gear wielders, devils, yokai, and others without even leaving the Grigori! Then we could cross check their play data to determine if they could be a potential threat or not! If they play like a psycho, if they unlocked their sacred gear, they'd probably be a psycho after all."

"Exactly!" I smile.

She points at me. "I think I can cover creating a flat testing plane of existence, you work on that sacred gear detector. Oh. Make sure there's no magic in it. Just purely technological."

"I plan on it." I nod slowly. "I just need to take a few measurements to see if I can determine a Sacred gear's aura... but it should realistically be manageable."

"He died." Mittelt deadpans.

"Huh?" I blink as I look up from my work in soldering electronics into place.

"Test dude number five snuffed it." She repeats.

"How?!" I ask with wide eyes. "That psychopathic pedophile was doing so well, too!"

"The pain transfer worked far too well and he died of shock after I detonated him." She sheepishly mutters as she scratches the back of her head.

"We definitely need to limit that to like ten percent max." I slowly state.

"Yep." She nods slowly. "I'll contact Azazel and see if we can get ourselves another death row inmate."

"Shame." I sigh as I shake my head. "Looks like we'll have to put off work on that for a while."

"How's your side going?" She suddenly asks as she looks down to the car battery sized device I am working on.

"According to my balance breaker this does technically work to detect sacred gears and magic. It just doesn't exactly differentiate between the types yet... by that, I mean it will see magic and know its magic, and it'll see sacred gears and know it's a sacred gear, but it wouldn't be able to tell Longinus from mook-tier sacred gear, nor could it really tell how skilled someone is at magic... just that they have it 'awakened'."

"That honestly doesn't matter." She shrugs. "If we get a ping for a sacred gear, we could always send a field agent to check it out."

"The aspect about it being able to tell race, however, is much easier and thus working at full capacity." I admit before moving onto another topic. "You check on the world map lately?"

"Yeah." The blonde nods. "It's definitely being filled; Magnolia is being fleshed out nicely. It has restaurants, inns, stores, buildings for purchase, it's starting to look like a real city. There are a few imperfections here and there, but the Ais are buffing those out rapidly."

"Oh, that's good." I smile as I finish one last little bit of the soldering and place a metal plate over the wiring, I grab a nearby cordless drill and use it to quickly screw in the bolts.

I crack my neck and let out a long breath. "Well then. That's this done... should we send it to Azazel for approval?"

"Mnnn yeah. We should." The girl slowly nods. "I heard one of the other groups have made a sacred gear detector though, and they are probably going to cause a fuss."

"Did they use magic?" I ask with a half-lidded glare.

"Yeah." She slowly mutters.

"Then ours is completely different and far more useful." I deadpan. "You can't detect technology the same way you can magic."

"That's true. These are sort of different applications." My blonde lab partner nods. "We could probably get Azazel to put these in train stations, Airports, and subways, it'd really be a boon to our espionage and information gathering divisions... let's keep it for now and only release it when the other research divisions start being annoying."

"Soooo." The girl slowly mutters. "Wanna help me with the world?"

"Sure." I shrug. "I'm feeling like a little dungeon design will do wonders... plus we should start thinking about an 'overarching story'."

"'Overarching Story'?" The girl repeats.

"Yeah. An overarching story. I'm thinking about implementing several things... firstly, quests that both require you to find an Npc to trigger a quest, and a sort of 'Sudden' quest where several nearby people can join in at a moment's notice. Like, the first one, it's a quest for a homeless shelter where you have to gather food ingredients, but for the second, a small dragon woke up and is about to torch a village unless the nearby players help out."

"How does this apply to an 'overarching story'?" The blonde girl questions.

"I was getting to that." I scoff with an eyeroll.

"Above those two quests types, there are two more. The Event quests, in which we, as 'game masters' basically toss meteors at our world to create chaos, be it an infestation of rapidly evolving man-eating insects, or a portal to the underworld opening, these events will change the face of... insert game name here... for a small time... a month or two... but some may even permanently change some things about the world... say for instance, the addition of Demons allowing a mad wizard to develop an evil version of the celestial spirit keys... the second quest option, is what I'd like to call the 'main story'."

"Alright." The girl nods slowly, gesturing for me to continue.

"When you create your character, you select some 'character traits' from a small list. They'll be something for role players to look to when they want to act 'in character', what we don't tell anyone, is that once you reach a certain level, you unlock your 'personal quest' which creates a small instance dungeon that tries to tell you a story... for example, you choose a human character, and for your backstory you pick something like 'Escaped Magical Experiment' you may get an instance dungeon where you have to fight off a bunch of people trying to 'reclaim' you."

"oooooh. Interesting." She mutters.

"I'm thinking about having several options, let's say, level twenty is for 'part one' of your personal quest, in which something happens relating to your characters childhood, perhaps a childhood friend going missing and you have to find a serial killer or something, then after some more levels you can initiate your 'stolen family relic' quest. Then maybe a 'village torched by a wyvern' quest at even higher levels."

"Would these personal quests be forced solo?" My partner questions.

"No, I was thinking about limiting it to a single party." I answer with a small shrug.

"Ah, I see. That makes sense. What sort of rewards could they be expecting from these things?" She asks, now fully invested in the idea.

"Eh, it's hard to say, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it... I was primarily thinking experience, maybe some stat points, items relating to the 'backstory' maybe? Possibly even skills."

"Even skills?!"

"Well, maybe for a 'final' quest, they get a skill based on each final choice... it'd create some unoptimized characters, certainly, but newer players could abuse the information of personal quests to make an optimized character that could potentially stand up to people who have been playing since day one."

"Ehhhh skills are probably a bit much." She shrugs.

"You're probably right." I relent with a small sigh. "We really shouldn't worry about this quite yet. We've still got, what, ten years or so before this game is theoretically possible?"

"We might be able to knock off a couple years if we get some additional help!"

"We need animations." I point out slowly. "They could help with that."

She lets out a low click. "Fuck. They probably won't like us keeping them out of the main project."

I let out a long yawn as I rub my eyes. "is it stable?"

"Yep. The clock has been a little wonky recently, it keeps swapping time zones, but that hasn't really been a high priority." The girl states.

Three years of polishing. But finally, we managed to fix the larger bugs and are inching closer and closer to the final project.

I let out another yawn.

Azazel has been marketing our new gaming system since early last year... to not only supernatural, but humans as well.

He was so impressed by what we did, he forced another ten research divisions to begin working on the project as well.

They do meager tasks, such as getting a person to walk around in a camera room with a bunch of white balls taped to his body, research the effects of magic and how to duplicate those magical abilities, then they compile it all into a nice little flash drive and send it over for us to implement it into the game.

We've almost entirely started relying on Ai's to flesh out our maps and dungeons.

Just by drawing a cube with some circles on it, the Ai's drape vines along the walls, turn the circles into beautiful columns of marble.

Toss a few hidden dungeons here and there, and bam! We've got a game!

We haven't even had a death in more than a year!

That's progress baby!

Ah fuck, we're getting a little close to 'canon' aren't we?

I turn to my partner. "Hey, Mittelt... how old am I again?"

"…"

She shoots me a half lidded stare. "Did you... forget?"

"I mean, time is an illusion when all you do is work, work, work."

"Fif...teen?" The girl mutters in confusion, likely just as unsure as I am.

"Six years... I've been doing this shit for six years." I sigh wistfully.

"Crazy, right?" The girl hums.

I look over to the screen in front of her. "How's the test version of the game?"

"About ninty... nine? Percent done?" She shrugs. "All that's left is altering the safety function to kick them out after only five out of game minutes, and a few other things here and there."

"That time dilation is pretty nifty." She notes.

I roll my eyes, letting out a small snort. "And you said that we needed to fix it."

"Hey." She frowns. "It would have made admin-ing quite hard with everyone inside moving four times as fast as the people outside."

"Which is why I got Ais to do it." I hum.

"Whatever." She scoffs with a small eyeroll. "So. All we need to do now is give each character a brief tutorial on how to cast a few spells along with visual aids. We've got... three weeks till the next gamescon? We should be able to easily be finished by then. Are we sure about the roster?"

"Yeah, letting everyone create their own character would take far too long, so we'll be sticking with the six NPCs we've selected."

"Some of them just seem... pretty advanced."

"Jellal- or rather... Siegrain is probably the most advanced, being capable of wide ranged attacks and also flight. After him, it would be... possibly be Jura... this makes sense as they are some of the more powerful Npcs. These two will really show the possibilities of our game, plus, it should really up the hype to see just what heights a person can reach. Grey has a comparably simpler magic, but still something that is quite interesting."

"On the female side." I continue. "Erza has a wide range of armors with interesting effects, Juvia's water body would allow players to see some more exotic uses of magic, and Jenny with her Machina soul should also pose an interesting contrast to the other caster magics."

"Don't you think we shouldn't show powerhouses like Jura and Jellal yet?" The girl questions.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"You said that they are basically some of the strongest wizards on the continent, right?" She continues.

"Yeah?" I mutter.

"Why should we show what is basically the peak of what a wizard can do? Wouldn't that be less impressive, they'd think 'oh. So this is the limit, huh'. But if we show average wizards... or maybe even weak wizards, just enough to wet their apatite of what magic is capable of in this game... wouldn't it make them even more ravenous to find the limit?"

"…" I stare ahead for a moment. "Fair point. In which case, we should take out Jura and Jellal."

"What about Erza?"

"Oh, she's far from the most powerful person in the game. S Class, sure, but we should keep her in as her magic is a little tame in comparison. She's more a method to show off armor sets and weapons than anything else." I wave off.

"Who should replace Jura and Jellal, then?" Mittelt questions.

"Hm." I mutely hum as I ponder for a moment. "Jet, as the sheer speed he can reach might interest people, then... Dobengal."

"Who?" Mittelt asks.

"Speed wizard, and light wizard that looks like a ninja." I explain blandly. "Also, I should like to mention. We still have no official title for the game."

"Eden?"

"That's the name of the system." I sigh.

"Magic Online?" She tries.

"That sucks." I shut down instantly.

"Fiore online?"

"We'll be letting them move outside of Fiore in future updates."

"What's the planet called?" She questions.

"…"

"Earthland." I sigh.

"That's shit! We need to change that ASAP!" The blonde exclaims.

"Later." I roll my eyes. "A name is more important than lore things at the moment."

She stares at me for a long moment.

"What about Arcane Adventures?" She questions.

"Egh... Tales of the Arcane." I reply.

"Magic: The Gathering."

"I'm pretty sure that's a card game." I point out.

"Arcane Battlegrounds."

"That's more of a free-for-all sounding game." I sigh.

"Age of Magic."

"Once more. Pretty sure that's copywrited." I deny again.

"My research partner is a bitch: online." The petite fallen glares pointedly at me. "I don't see YOU giving any more ideas."

"…" I am silent for a moment as I get an actual good idea. "Domain... Of Magic."

Mittelt stares into my eyes for a long moment. "Fuck. That's pretty good."

Well, Well. It appears our Fallen and Hume are FINALLY making some progress... soon, we can get to the real meat and bones of this... VRMMO content!