Chapter 12
DxD Universe 18
The members of Issei´s team who had staid behind where the battle took place were still dealing with their own issues.
Asia and Murayama – the two who were not injured – were trying to help the others.
"Yuuto," Asia said desperately.
Kiba was the first she was trying to heal, simply because his injuries were the worst.
And also because Xenovia - who was the closest by, but her injuries were much lighter - had insisted on it. Xenovia herself could barely walk and was holding her right arm. But in opposite to her boyfriend´s her injuries at least didn´t seem life-threatening.
Aside from the stab wound through his chest – that alone was already life-threatening - one of his arms was nearly torn off. Blood was flowing both from his open wounds and also out of his mouth, suggestion internal injuries as well.
He had also several other broken bones and damaged organs. Several ribs were cracked and he had burn wounds all over his body.
xxxx
While Asia was using her powers, Murayama was standing behind and guarding her.
Just in case there were some enemies left in this place. They didn´t know yet how necessary this precaution would turn out to be.
They realized it as Murayama saw such an enemy suddenly appearing and running towards them. She moved into a defensive stance.
It was Raiser´s Rook Isabella, who Issei had mentally knocked out earlier and who had obviously woke up again far earlier than they had expected.
Murayama realized that they had made a grave mistake here. They had allowed her anger over Gaeriel´s death and everything else what happened to cloud their judgement.
Raiser-20 had goaded Issei into following him somewhere else and this divided their team.
Nobody had even thought about the guys Issei had knocked out earlier.
Damn it. They had messed up here.
Isabella was charging at them with drawn weapon.
Murayama knew she herself was outmatched in raw power, just like Asia was. And Raiser´s Rook obviously realized that too.
Xenovia was in no state to fight and Kiba, who was still clinging to his life, even less. She was trying to take them out before Asia could heal either of them,
And the others had not returned from their fights yet.
Murayama knew her best chance.
When Issei-kun had saved her life those years ago – or you could say literally brought her back to life – she had automatically inherited some of his abilities.
That meant in this case actually powers from Ddraig through his Sacred Gear – and from Darien which Issei had inherited from him as he had brought him back in a similar way like Issei had with her… like telepathy.
Murayama lowered her sword. For a moment it looked like she was giving up.
While Isabella raised hers for the strike. She did not intend to show any mercy. No matter what her surrendering opponent maybe hoped.
But giving up was not what was on Murayama´s mind. She had to concentrate.
In the moment the Rook Isabella was ready to made the move to strike her down, she – remembering all she had learned - send out an telepathic attack… right into Raiser-20 Rook´s mind – similar like Issei did earlier.
That made her freeze in her movement. The telepathy penetrated her mind and manipulated her consciousness, making her think she were somewhere else.
The fact that her mind was still weakened from Issei´s attack earlier and that she plainly underestimated Murayama, only made this easier.
Murayama in turn used this chance to raise her sword again and ramm it straight through Isabella´s body. She as well did not show any mercy. In her case because she could simply not afford it.
Her life and the ones of her friends were at stake here.
In the last moment Isabella´s mind returned to normal and a look of understanding appeared on her face, before she sank down dieing.
Murayama looked down at the dead body before her. She had done it.
"Good job," Xenovia said quietly.
Then she turned back around to Asia and the injured Kiba.
xxxx
Asia was meanwhile still doing everything she could to save Kiba, who would have been long dead without her.
No – actually he had been dead. His heart had stopped at one point and only beating again because of Asia´s treatment.
She was using the full potential of her Twilight Healing.
In addition to the usual green light, there were now also greenish shimmering flames surrounding her. The sign of the Pheonex Fire that had been combined with her Sacred Gear by the Guardians.
Yuuto´s mostly ripped of arm was reattaching and growing back together, the broken bones were mending and correcting themselves. The stab-wound in his chest disappeared.
It was far beyond simple healing at this point – more comparible to Regeneration.
There was however also something else happening that was completely unexpected. A small pillar of silvery light rose up from Kiba´s chest.
And then something - a small object - was falling down from his body.
Kiba finally opened his eyes.
"Yuuto – you are okay,"Xenovia said smiling. "For a moment I thought we lost you too," she told him. "Asia – you did it."
Kiba remembered what had happened to him.
"Asia," he said as well. "Thank you."
She nodded smiling.
Their eyes fell on the small object that had just fallen down.
It was Rias Knightpiece. Somehow his body must had ejected it when it had healed.
They were starring at it in complete surprise. Why did this happen?
"It looks like I am not a Devil anymore," he said in disbelief.
"You know that this is not necessarely a bad thing to me, right?" Xenovia commented. "But how did this happen?"
"M-maybe Yuuto was technically dead for a moment and my Twilight Healing, with the Phoenix Fire they combined it with, had somehow brought him back?" Asia speculated.
But this was not all of it. They had seen Yuuto´s body practically absorbing the light of the light and the green Phoenix Fire. Had it somehow changed him? They would have to deal with this later. At least he was alive.
"I am just glad that you are okay Yuuto," Asia said.
She went silent for a few seconds, thinking about Gaeriel and looked downwards.
By that time their two teammates Kuroka-06 and Raiser-01 had reunited with them. Both were also not in a good state after their fights.
In fact when they arrived, Raiser had been carrying Kuroka. His own injuries had regenerated after a short time. But he was still quite exhausted.
Kuroka however was in need of some healing. She was not nearly as bad off as Kiba and would recover on her own.
But why did you have the Weilder of the Twilight Healing in your team if you didn´t let her use it?
xxxxxxx
The Broken DxD Universe
Meanwhile in the bizarre and twisted world where Issei, Rias and Irina had followed Raiser-20 to.
It was a broken and twisted reality were the borders between Earth and the Underworld had broken and had been collapsing for centuries.
They had just been left behind by two other Agents of the Dark Order who had just shown up at the end of their battle – one of them a counterpart of nobody else than Rias cousin Sairaorg.
These two however had no intention to attack them. At least not at this point in time.
It was over, they realized. They had won.
Raiser-20 was dead, most of his Peerage was dead…
His manical double Issei-13 was dead.
One thing was clear, the number of their enemies was much lower as it had been at this morning.
Even if two potential new one had just appeared. But that was a worry for another day.
Issei carefully laid his arms around Rias. He was still not completely sure how well she was after all what happened.
Rias however just threw herself at him wildly and wrapped her own arms tight around his body… and kissed him directly on the mouth.
After a short moment he returned both the embrace and the kiss.
"I-… I am sorry about Gaeriel," she said. "If you didn´t have to protect me, you could have finished this bastard off earlier and…"
"It was not your fault," he told her. "It was my decision not to kill Raiser when I had the chance and run to you instead. I – I could have possibly just transfered more power to you. Or – I don´t know… anything else..."
"You did all you could," Rias replied.
"Neither of you is to blame," Irina told them. "It was all the fault of this lunatic who had kidnapped you. Nobody would blame you for her death, least of all Gaeriel herself. In fact she would probably give both of you a piece of her mind for talking like that."
"I guess you are right," Issei said. "Let us return to the others. Maybe they need us."
For a few moments he was looking upwards, into the reddish shimmering sky, where in this moment a supernatural storm was raging, caused by the clashing different energies in the air. If this reality proved one thing, then that sometimes powerful enemies and threats were not needed to ruin a world. Sometimes cosmic accidents and disasters were already enough.
Then they stepped through the portal and left this bizarre world behind... at least for now.
xxxxxxx
Back in DxD Universe 18 - (Dark Riser´s World)
When they returned a few moments later, they saw that Issei´s worry had been warranted.
As they saw the state their friends were in.
Xenovia´s and Kuroka´s injuries were by now healed as well. But the blood on them and their ragged and ripped apart clothes told all one needed to know.
The full realization of whole weight of all what happened seemed to be coming down on them now.
Gaeriel was dead. And many of the rest of them were also lucky to be alive at this point.
Rias also instantly sensed the change that had happened to Kiba. Asia and Xenovia have a short explanation.
"So you are not longer a Devil," Rias stated. She took this information in for a moment.
Her reaction finally however was a bit unexpected.
"Maybe it is better like this," she admitted. "I am just glad you are alive."
Kiba and Xenovia exchanged a short glance.
"Well -your reaction is a bit surprising," he commented.
"I have long figured out that it is better to have comrades and friends than Servants because of the damned Evil Pieces," Rias said.
`Yes - because you have grown paranoid,´ Rias then thought to herself. `Because you not longer trust the Evil Pieces or the Peerage System itself after you saw powerful Servants rebelling against some of your counterparts. So you always have this lingering doubt in your mind.´
To Issei and a few of the others, Rias reaction was not that surprising. They had seen this change in her mind-set developing over a long time.
What caught them off-guard a bit was how straightforward she suddenly was about it now.
xxxxxxx
Flashback - Around One and a half year earlier, during Issei´s two year training
Issei and Rias were standing together inside his bedroom in the house they were staying at.
"You are sure about this?" Issei asked her.
Rias was wearing only a see-through nighty with only a black panty and stockings, with no bra underneath. So he could not help to have his eyes wander off over her body and especially her large breasts. Something she noticed as well, but didn´t seem to mind in the slightest - the opposite actually.
"Seriously – that is some kind of a clishee-line, isn´t it?" Rias replied with a light smirk and a bit of underlying sarcasm. "A girl and a guy are about to have sex and the guy asks her in the last moment - are you sure about this? This is like out of some kind of movie, isn´t it?"
"I guess it is," he said. "But it is fitting here, isn´t it? I mean, we have known each other for months and you never seemed interested in me in that way for the longest time."
"Didn´t I?" she replied. "Had you ever considered that maybe I was interested and just didn´t know how to say it? Or that I didn´t dare to?"
"Not daring? Someone like you?" he questioned.
"You mean someone so full of herself, arrogant and self-righteous like myself?" she asked.
"I didn´t say that. You just never seemed like the type to be afraid to say what you feel." Issei´s expression now turned serious. He even ignored Rias breasts right before him, as hard as it was.
"But it´s the truth, isn´t it?" she said. "I always was arrogant, selfish and spoiled. To be honest, I am not even sure what to think. I - I am afraid."
"Of what exactly?" he asked her.
"Of..." She was not really sure how to say it. "You could say of something like this. Of looking eye to eye with someone, of speaking with a man equally... of being judged."
"Rias..."
"After I met you and after I came to see all these other versions of us, I realized - Kiba, Koneko, Gaspar, even Akeno, all people that I actually knew were either my family or my subordinates. My only equal was Sona and Sairaorg came close and even with them, I was always `slightly´ above them, because my brother was the strongest Satan and Sairaorg, despite his power, was barely accepted by his own father."
She continued to talk and her expression became somewhat empty.
"All personal relationships I ever had with anyone were always to some degree based on force, manipulation and the question who was higher in rank. Hell, Koneko was technically handed to me as a gift and Akeno had the choice either become my `guest´ or die," she said sighing.
"I know logically that Akeno, Kiba, Koneko and Gaspar are all loyal to me and accepted being Devils and my Servants. But what if not? it always come into my mind. What if they at one points have the same thoughts I just said and turn against me?
You don´t know how often I secretly thought about just dissolving my Peerage and see if they can just be my friends on their own. But then..."
Rias realized that she was ranting.
"I-..." Issei begann. "I am not quite sure what to say about this."
"But you," she said to him. "You were somehing else. At first I tried to recruit you into my Peerage in the beginning, tried to make you mine. But I failed. You resisted me. And you had joined a group that was completely unknown to us and just too powerful to control. So I kept my distance.
But, even after I tried to make you my Servant without asking you, you accepted me. I saw you helping Asia, forgiving Raynare, fighting, Crocel, Kokabiel and many other threats. And then you literally showed me entire new worlds.
I was, well - fascinated by you. Even with our pervert tendencies - or maybe that attracted me even more, since I am kind of a pervert myself.
And there you were with Raynare, Irina and Asia... and later with Gaeriel and Ravel too. I saw them with you and like all spoiled brats I wanted what was in front of me. That the other girls were regulary talking about how good you were in bed certainly didn´t help," she admitted with an awkward smile.
"But at the same time I just didn´t know how to deal with someone independant like you. I had no leverage over you, nothing to offer you, no way to make you join me. That way of thinking just shows how fucked up my idea of relationships was in the first place. I know that now," she said.
"I want to be with you, like the other girls. I have nothing to offer you than myself."
"This is exactly like it should be," Issei stated, "no leverage, no `offers´."
"But I not longer just want to make you mine. I want to be yours as well. Will you take me?" she asked.
He draw her closer to him and kissed her.
xxxxxxx
Flashback End
Issei also felt terrible as he saw what happened with Murayama and Raiser´s Rook. He should have made sure that the opponents he had telepatically knocked out earlier were truly out.
How could he have been so careless?
He laid his arms around Murayama and draw her into an embrace.
"I am sorry," he said. "If I had not just let this guys lying around unconscious… Or if I had at least not just followed Raiser-20 to take him down…"
"Then this maniac would still be alive and could attack us again," Rias-01 interrupted him.
"Don´t blame yourself Issei-kun," Murayama stated. "We all make mistakes. In fact we all could have thought about that as well. But we all just believed that they would stay down for the entire fight after you took them down. It is not your job to do the thinking for our entire team."
The other two unconscious enemies, the SHA Warrior Kara and the Pawn Marion were still lying at the places where they left them.
As they checked the area after the fight was over, they also came across two more people.
The first one was the Rias Gremory of this world, who had just been standing silently and seemingly apathic at the doors of the ORC´s club building.
She had realized that it was over. And that Raiser-20 had lost. Now she seemed like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
They all had a good idea what Raiser´s insane double must have done to her, given Rias descriptions and his own claims.
None of them could bring themselves to see her as an enemy…
… and the other person was Raynare-17 who had been seemingly aimlessly walking over the former battlefield and nearly instantly surrendered to them.
At first it looked like she had wanted to flee, with fear written on her face as she saw them.
But then she seemd to have realized that it was senseless.
"I – I don´t want to fight you," she called out.
Especially since it was clear that she had no chance at all and she knew it, they all thought.
"I surrender. Just give me your word that you won´t send me back home."
"Because you know you will be executed there?" Irina asked pointedly.
"How about we give you our word that we just kill you right here and now if you don´t give up?" Xenovia questioned.
They were all still angry and riled up about all what had happened.
Issei on his part was not even sure how to react to this counterpart of his first girlfriend and lover.
It was her face, her body.
xxxx
He knew this version of Raynare had killed the Issei of her own world not once but twice.
Just like his own Raynare had once.
But his Raynare had changed. He had seen this hundreds of times.
When he looked at her however, it was nearly as if the woman who had killed him was back.
And worse. He knew that killing her own world´s Issei was only one of the lesser ones of her many crimes.
By what they knew, she had actually been a follower of Kokabiel and tried to help him start a new war with the Devils.
Then she had joined his insane double Issei-13 and the Devil Hunters and was actually part of their team when they and their Masters wiped out nearly the entire Devil Race in one of the last worlds they had visited.
He gave it to her that she had probably only joined that group out of fear and desperation in the first place.
Not that this even started to be an excuse.
He could forgive his Raynare, since her actions ultimately only hurt a few people beside himself and in the end she always believed to act for the best of her people.
Even when she had been willing to sacrifice Asia to impress Azazel, she had believed that the Twilight Healing would be useful for the Fallen Angels. Otherwise Azazel would had no reason to be impressed by it in the first place.
But this one…? No – this was not the woman who had killed him. This was something far worse. But at the same time she was not very strong by their standards and not really a threat to them right now.
xxxx
The SHA Warrior Kara, the Devil Pawn Marion and now Raynare-17 - it seemed they had an entire line of prisoners now.
Two dangerous homicidal enemies eliminated. This should have counted as a great victory.
But it didn´t feel like a victory at all.
Rias-18 showed them a secret basement complex underneath the Occult Research Club´s building, where Raiser-20´s prisoners were being held.
That meant her own Peerage, including this world´s real Akeno and the real Peerage of the real Raiser Phenex of this world, that Raiser-20 and his Servants had replaced after he had killed him.
All of them were being held locked up and in a magical hybernation.
Issei and his team took a short time to release and awaken the captured Devils. They gave them a short explanation of who they were, where they came from and what had happened since they were imprisoned. Several of them remembered the strange doppelganger, who had killed their Raiser and imprisoned them here. So their story didn´t sound that off given the evidence.
They also explained what had happened to their world´s Rias and told them to take care of them. All of them knew Rias double was in a terrible mental state and probably needed intense counseling. Maybe they should have done more to help her.
But they could just not bring themselves to stay in this world any longer than necessary. They were all just too exhausted - mentally and physically, especially mentally after all what happened.
Taking care of Rias-18 was the responsibility of her own Peerage and people anyway.
So they left this world and returned home.
xxxxxxx
DxD Universe 1
Raynare greeted them a few moments later as they were back in their base, along with Sirzechs, Grayfia and Rias parents, who had come here after they heard of Rias kidnapping. The three former Stray Devils who were staying as their `guests´ were also present, standing however on their own in grater distance to the Maou and the other Devils.
"Rias," Sirzechs called out as he saw her.
"Are you unharmed?" Venelana asked her.
"I am," she replied. "He has done nothing to me. Issei and the others came in time."
"That is good," Zeoticus said.
"Gaeriel?" Raynard said, having seen who had returned... and who not.
The look that everyone gave her was answer enough.
She sighed. Gaeriel had in the last years become one of her closest friends. For a good reason. She had, along with Issei, been one of the main reasons why she had changed. She was the one who had convinced her not to try to kill Asia, even if she had done it with an underhanded tactic. She had helped both her and Issei to come to terms with their own issues.
And now she was gone, while she not even been there to help.
"I should have come with you," she said.
"Then your powers might have gone out of control and all could have gone worse," Rias pointed out.
Raynare had also noticed the other version of herself and the other two captives. But compared to Gaeriel, that was not so important to her right now.
"Who are these three?" Sirzechs however asked.
"Prisoners," Issei stated. "This is the Raynare who was with the Devil Hunters, a members of the insane Raiser´s Peerage and one of these race of gen-engineered warriors we told you about."
Sirzechs and the other members of Rias family also noticed the change with Kiba.
"Kiba had been close to dieing and somehow lost his Evil Piece while Asia healed him," Rias explained. "I will not try to turn him again unless he asks me to. It is alright for me like this."
"If you excuse me, I will leave now and spend some time by myself," the Raiser who was part of their team said. "I think I will go to visit my Family and my Peerage. The ones who are still there," he said with some bitterness. "I..."
He had just lost his Queen and closest lover. And now he had avenged her. So what else was left to do for him right now? After the wrath followed now the emptiness
"You are not sure if you will return," Issei spoke out what the other was thinking. "I understand how you feel. You have joined us voluntarely. We will not stop you if you decide to leave. But I hope you will decide to return. Thank you for helping us so far."
"Thank you for understanding," Raiser replied.
He turned around and left the room.
Understanding - of course he understood, Issei thought.
They would quit now for the rest of the day.
A few of them went to their own rooms. Or went on their own to do something else.
Sirzechs and Grayfia would return to the Underworld. Rias was going with them. She would spend the rest of the day with her family who had been worried out of their minds for her.
Kiba, Xenovia and Asia would accompany them as well, Kiba because he wanted to see Akeno, Koneko and Gaspar and tell them what happened in person and Xenovia and especially Asia because they didn´t want to leave his side until they knew for sure what kind of effects what had happened to him and the loss of his Evil Pieces would have.
Their three captives were being brought to their secret holding cells. The same ones that had orignally belonged to Rias Peerage and where they had once for example temporally held Freed Selzen after Issei had defeated him in his first fight. Rias and her Peerage had just added a few cells more.
Raynare and Irina would stay with Issei for the rest of the evening. But today they would only sit together and talk. No one was in the mood for anything else.
xxxxxxx
The next day
All of them had returned and were now doing their usual business. It was nearly as if things had returned to normal - nearly.
Their three former Stray Devil guests had by now left them and moved into a house somewhere in the town instead, where they were currently living together.
Kiba and Murayama were currently having a light sparring match in their trainings-room, with Xenovia sitting on the bench close by and watching.
Murayama had improved a lot when it came to using her supernatural abilities, they realized. Her swordmanship had become quite impressive as well. Not that it had ever been bad, but ultimately she had at first just been a highschool-girl that practized kendo, while Kiba, Xenovia and Irina had already been trained warriors.
But by now her skill had mostly caught up to theirs.
They had not been sure if Kiba should get active again so quickly, but he wanted to see what his now (once again) changed body could do.
At one point during their mock-fight however, Murayama landed a strike that Kiba barely managed to pary... and then something surprising happened.
Suddenly green shimmering flames were lighting up, first from his hands and then quickly spreading over his entire body. The fire was coming from inside him, similar like from a member of the Phenex Clan - only that the flames also had something of the green light of the Twilight Healing.
"It seems the Green Phoenix Fire had not just healed you," Asia said. "It had staid in your body and somehow bonded with it."
The `Green Phoenix Fire being nothing else than the fire from the Phoenix Entity she had received from Jean Grey, combined with the power of Asia´s own Sacred Gear.
"Can you stop it?" Xenovia asked Kiba.
"I will try," he said.
He was calming himself down and trying to clear his mind and the flames disappeard, for the moment.
"I am curious what kind of powers these flames give you Yuuto," Xenovia questioned.
"Regeneration - surely," Asia said. "It comes from the Phoenix Fire and the Twilight Healing after all. I am not sure if he could also heal other people like me and Raynare. Maybe other things too. We should show it to the others."
"Yes," Kiba replied.
He was not sure how to feel. He was still coming to terms with the fact that he was not a Devil anymore... and now this.
xxxxxxx
At the same time
Issei, Raynare, Rias and Kuroka, along with Sirzechs and Grayfia, were meanwhile standing in front of the cells in their makeshift prison and talking to the three captives, in an attempt to question them. The three were now in magical handcuffs that suppressed their powers.
In addition to these cuffs, there were also magical barriers and even simple old fashioned iron-bars on their prisoner-cells themselves. They didn´t want to take any risks.
The questions were, who of them was the most likely to talk? what should they ask them? And did they even knew something worthwile in the first place?
"What do you know about the Dark Order and their plans?" Issei asked Kara.
"You will not find out anything from me," she replied. "I am not afraid to die. I would just join the Darkness that my Masters worship."
"You know - there are other things that we could do with you," Sirzechs stated calmly. "Things that might keep you from joining this Darkness you talk about anytime soon."
Sirzechs admitted he was bluffing. They had already been warned about trying something like this.
"If your are hinting at your so called Evil Piece System, you better not even think about it," Kara responded. "As I heard it is recently against your own laws to turn someone without their permission. And besides," she smiled at him, "if you claimed a warrior of the Dark Order like that, your race would be wiped out faster than these Erebos Demons could ever hope to do it. My Masters don´t like it when someone tries to take one of their followers," she stated.
"I am not like this pathetic creature over there, who was a Pawn before her Master even joined us." She looked at the captured Pawn Marion, who was in a cell next to her own.
"At least I am not something that was grown in a lab," Marion called back.
"Lab?" Sirzechs asked a bit confused.
"Didn´t you know? The SHA are an race of gen-engineered warriors. They are all created in some kind of glass-tubes," Marion said.
That part was new to them.
"Actually," Kara stated, "I am one of the few of my kind who actually has parents. My father and my mother came together and, well - I was born."
"But that is the exception?" Rias asked incredulous.
"Yes," Kara answered.
Issei and a few of the others sensed that she was somewhat emberassed about this topic.
"This is a bit of a personal matter to you," Issei remarked.
"Actually – there are a few of my people who have prejudices against the ones under us who are naturally born. Not many – but my old instructor when I was at the academy was one of them," she admitted.
"He gave me more difficult tasks, rated my work worse than others and ridiculed me in private."
"What happened?"
"I killed him of course," she said.
"And you got away with it?" Rias stated.
"Got away?" Kara said sardonically. "I did it in front of the entire trainings-class and personally reported it to my superiors. Prejudices against someone based alone on their heritage are against the code. And anyone in our society who is breaking the code is to be found out and exterminated by the highest law.
They questioned me under telepathy and then I was recommended for exemplary behavior."
Everyone was now starring at her in disbelief, even her fellow prisoners Raynare-17 and Marion.
They started to realize how bizarre and twisted the society this woman came from was.
But on the other side, had the entire Evil Piece System not been similar insane, objectively seen?
"And people say I am crazy," Raynare-01 commented sarcastically.
They realized that it was unlikely that this prisoner would cooperate.
They turned to Raynare-17 instead.
"What can you tell us about the Devil Hunters and the so called Erebos Demons?" Sirzechs asked Raynare´s double.
"If you are
"If I tell you what I know, will you let me go?" Raynare-17 asked them.
"Maybe we will just kill you if you don´t talk," Kuroka suggested.
"You wouldn´t do that. You are not killers."
"Like yourself, you mean?" Kuroka retorted. "Don´t kid yourself. We all have killed several times when we had to. And we certainly won´t hesitate with a twisted mockery of our friend here like you."
She gestured to Raynare-01.
"And besides, I don´t think that you know anything of worth anyway. I can not imagine anyone actually trusting a two-faced opportunis like you."
"At least I know how to survive, even if I don´t have Ultimate-Level power, unlike..."
Unlike Gaeriel, it went through everyone´s mind.
Raynare-17 went pale as she saw the looks everyone gave her and realized how her words could be interpretet.
"I - I didn´t mean it like that. I was not talking about your friend," she exclaimed.
But that didn´t change that everyone was reminded of it.
"I will tell you what I know," Raynare 17 gave in.
Issei meanwhile could not longer take it.
He called everyone together again.
xxxxxxx
About a hour later they were all standing together in the largest room.
Raynare´s double had started to tell them what she knew. As expected she had not been told the coordinates of the word the Erebos Demons came from. But the Demons had recently moved entire armies from one dimensions to others. And with the Guardian´s abilty to detect such breaches, they were already narrowing it down anyway. As it was, they would find their world probably soon.
Issei on his part had made a decision. He was about to try something, something that maybe he shouldn´t.
He remembered what he had learned. The powers of a God... and far beyond that.
His Sacred Gear activated.
Issei´s mind reached out, first into the Boosted Gear - to Ddraig:
("Partner.") He heard Ddraig´s voice in his head.
Balance Breaker... Crimson Awakening... both of his power-ups activated within split-seconds.
Issei was now radiating with pure power, which he however controlled perfectly and did not let affect the place around him. He also did not manifest his Scale Armor, something that had become optional to him a long time ago.
Like Issei had learned of it, his mind, augmented by Ddraig´s powers, reached out into the universe... and beyond. through the layers of reality and into the infinity beyond. Matter, space, time past - present, life - death, all that was only separated by a thin layer now.
The past was just as real as the present. And now he reached out behind that layer, to a place where trillions over trillions of beings who had lived across the multiverse existed in a timeless existence, depending on who they had been in life in light or in darkness.
He let his mind call out to one soul that was closely connected to his own... and this one soul reached back to him.
("Issei - do you really want to try that?") Ddraig asked him.
Issei had been told not to try this until he had more experience. But...
"I do," he said.
He made one move more and used his own psychic powers to let this soul manifest itself back in this world. It took the form of an transparent apparation of her body when she had been alive.
"Gaeriel," he said.
"Issei." the phantom answered after a short moment.
"You have actually called me," she said.
They all were starring at the ghost, for the lack of better words. Many people in this world believed that the souls of Fallen Angels simply disappeared when they died. But as they found out, this was actually not true. They just didn´t enter a artificial created Afterlife by the Gods of this world.
This was actually nothing new to them. They knew that some of the Elder Guardians communicate with the dead. Issei had actually watched Darien summon the spirits of King Arthur and Merlin themselves.
But they didn´t know that Issei knew how to do it as well.
"Issei, I want you to know that I don´t blame you for my death," Gaeriel said. "Neither do I blame you Rias or anyone else here. I know what I was getting into when I joined this organization and when I went on that mission with you."
"I still feel bad that you died trying to save me," Rias told her.
"Like I said, it wasn´t your fault."
"I-... if you want to, I can try to get you a new body and transfer your spirit into it and then..." Issei said.
"Please don´t, my soul had already moved on from this universe," she replied. "Bringing me back from there might actually cause an unbalance in the order of things in your world and could cause a counterreaction... and that is the last thing you need right now, believe me.
Something terrible is about to happen. From the place I have been, I could see many things."
"I... - Okay," Issei gave in.
"Gaeriel - I never said... I wanted to thank you for what you did for me," Raynare told her. "You and Issei both helped me to change my ways and become a better person."
"The same goes for me," Asia said. "Without you, Raynare might have actually killed me and we might had never become friends and we all would not have been happy together."
The others said similar things to her.
"I am actually the one thankful to you all. I had lived for centuries and the time I spend with you guys was the happiest in my messed up life. And Asia, thank you for forgiving me for the mistake I made years ago."
Asia nodded at her.
"Issei - I am sure the other girls will take care of you," Gaeriel said.
"You can count on that," Irina replied, smiling `innocently´.
"If you feel the need to talk to me some day, you can summon me again. I whish you all luck you can get. Goodbye - until we talk again. Issei - I love you."
"I love you too," he said.
With that he let go and the spirit disappeared.
xxxxxxx
Three Days later
They had all sat down in the large hyper-modern version of a living room inside their mansion and looking at the large sceen in front of them, closely ressembling an flat-screen TV set.
Well, technically it was one, but with some extras.
They were watching the latest recordings of their spy drones – like they had done it for the first time in he home-universe of the Guardian Organization over two years ago. When they had first watched different parallel versions of themselves.
Since then they had watched many similar worlds like this. Mostly small snippets of the inhabitants daily lives, before they actually visited this words.
They still used this probes before they visited new realities. Mostly to identify worlds those Earth had been turned uninhabitable or thrown into chaos beforehand.
Also to make out other possible local threats. Not that this often worked, because most threats did not always showed themselves openly at the first look.
This time however they were viewing the recordings for another purpose. They wanted to make sure that their suspicion was right and that they really had located the origin-universe of the Erebos Demons.
Another question was, should they actually go there? Normally they were mostly exploring other universes oft he DxD Cluster. There they often faced dangerous threats - yes. But here they were talking about walking right into the center of an hostile interdimensional empire.
xxx
The first probe had been send to this Dimension´s version of the Human World - to it´s equivalent of the town Kuoh.
But the town was not there. What they came to see was simply a landscape of meadows and hills like they were everywhere around the planet.
"Maybe Kuoh had just never been build in this world?" Irina questioned.
That was a possibility. Or it had been destroyed in a war or even through a natural disaster. But that would have to have happened centuries ago at least, since there were no visible signs left.
"Let us take a closer look," Raynare said.
"This `rock´ there," Rias pointed out. "It is not a rock at all."
She was right. It was a broken leftover part of a brickwall.
So the theory that the town had been destroyed was the right one.
xxxx
Their second probe-drone had been send to this world´s Underworld itself. From there they hoped to get a real answer.
And they did. The first picture already told them nearly all they needed to know – Demons. Many of them.
In some sense it was not even much different than looking at the Underworld like they knew it. Showing a city of similar style like in their own underworld, with `citizens´ roaming the streets and places and going on their daily business.
Only that these citizens in this case happened to be mostly Demons – and a few Fallen Angels inbetween - instead of Devils.
At least on the first look. After watching for a minute and taking in some details, he started to notice significcant differences between this world and theirs.
The first one was a certain building.
"This seems to be some kind of temple," Raynare said.
This was true. In it´s appearance it seemed like a mix of a modern church and some kind of ancient building.
What caught their eye however was the symbol engraved right over the front entrance, consisting of two interwined circles.
"That ist he Infinity Symbol," Issei said. "Infinity, wait – Ophis?" he realized.
"We already heard that at least part of the Demons are worshiping Ophis," Asia pointed out. "Is it really that surprising that they would have some kind of temple for her?"
xxxx
If she were honest, while Asia had become somewhat disillusionized with the Church and Religion as a whole – even if her faith itself was still there – she could not quite wrap her head about the idea that someone would worship a being that was so openly disconnected and uncaring about the rest of the world like Ophis.
The God of her world´s Church had at least the excuse that he had been dead for a long time. Ophis on the other hand was straigthforward about the fact that she just didn´t care.
xxxx
With the following pictures, they also saw other signs of differences between this Underworld and their own.
they saw one couple of Demons, by their clothes and posture, obviously people of high rank – most likely nobles – their equivalent of the 72 Pillars.
Walking behind them were two more Demons. This ones were carrying visible weapons, so they were obviously guards.
And behind them… four more beings. Two of them had their bat-like wings materialized, that were looking only a bit different than the Demons. They were however missing the small horns the Demons had on their foreheads – Devils.
They all were wearing some kind of metallic collar around their necks that was obviously used to suppress their powers – slaves.
Not that the Devils didn´t have slavery. The Evil-Piece System had been nothing but a glorified version of it. Or at least it had been until the latest reforms.
But it wasn´t so openly displayed. You could say the version of slavery that the Devils possessed often a pleasent looking fassade, often denying that it was slavery in the first place.
While this version here was brutally honest.
"Funny - isn´t it, how the world can also be the other way around?" Kuroka commented with some dark irony.
They remembered that she used to be a Stray Devil.
"This is not funny," Rias said weakly.
"It never was," Kuroka replied grimly. "Not with your race on top either."
Rias knew she was completely right and didn´t say anything.
The scenes they were watching came however to an end right now. They suddenly saw an Demon in battle-armor looking right at them – or rather at their probe-drone, stepping closer and reaching out to the drone.
And then the sceen became dark.
"He has destroyed the probe," Rias said. "He must have noticed."
"That also means they will know that someone was spying on them," Irina pointed out.
"But they would not know that it was us," Kiba stated.
"We should still be under their main suspects, since we have encountered them before," Rias replied.
"Does that really make much difference?" Xenovia asked. "The Devil Hunters have already attacked us here, so they knew which world we come from."
"It makes a difference because now they knew that someone is monitoring them and they will probably look out for intruders and spies," Issei stated.
"The question is should we actually go there?" Irina questioned. "I still have a bad feeling about this. Even with the method you have suggested. Their higher ranks must know what we look like. And we are powerful, but we are still only a few people."
"If not, what have we collected this entire information for?" Xenovia countered.
"It is not like we are planning to attack them head on. We know from my counterpart that the Demons are not in control of this entire world," Raynare pointed out.
"In the West the Church and Heaven are in a cold war with them. And there is also a resistance movement in the territory they control too. If we can contact these Factions and bring them in contact with the Alliance Lord Azazel, Sirzechs and Michael are forming against the Demons…"
"Yes – it could be the first step of defeating them," Issei finished for her.
"Yes it is." They heard a voice coming from all around them.
Then a glowing silvery featureless humanoid silhuette appeared before them. It was Darien. Or at least an apparation of him.
"Making contact with the Demons local enemies could in fact be a promising chance," he told them. "But I will not tell you to go if you decide against it. You are right that it could be very dangerous.
If you choose to go, we will try to do what we can to assist you. But weh ave our own problems right now. The Dark Order is moving."
They all knew what that meant.
"Anyway, if we go, we should at least not travel from our world to theirs directly," Raynare stated. "The risk is just too great that it would be detected. Even if they had not just found our probe, it would have been better to use another universe as a interstation.
So then they would at least only look for some unknown intruders and not know that it was us right away."
"I think I know just the right place," Issei said.
He was thinking about the chaotic world where they had fought the final fight against the insane Raiser.
"I see – so when you have decided to go, I have something for you. A gift that is a weapon against the old enemy the Demons are trying to bring back.
I would have preferred not to give you this until much later. But if they succeed to bring back Darkseid, it might be the only way."
Issei felt how some kind of telepathic message was being send into his mind. He did not really understood it. It was send right into his subconsciousness, along with a mental trigger to activate it.
"Only use it if you have to," Darien told him, "only if they actually manage to resurrect him."
xxxxxxx
A short time later
Issei and the others were ready to depart.
The group of them that would infiltrate the world of the Erebos Demons consisted of Issei, Raynare, Rias, Irina, Kuroka and a bit surprisingly… Sirzechs and Grayfia.
Sirzechs on his part had insisted on coming, or he would not have let Rias go with them. Not that they couldn´t understand this, given that Rias had just been kidnapped a few days earlier.
There was however something very different about them from how they usually were.
"I´m not sure if I will ever get used to this," Irina said. On her back was now a pair of nearly devil-like black wings and small horns on her forehead.
In Issei´s mind her appearance was at the same time in a bizarre way incredible cute and fundamentally wrong at the same time.
By her appearance Irina was now a Demon, just like Issei himself and the others were.
They all had used a procedure - a combination of science and magic - to temporally change their genom into that of a Demon.
It was not a magical disguise, so it could not be detected. More like a more advanced version of the Evil Piece System, without the negative side-effects or obvious signs that could be detected (a.k.a a magical chess-piece inside your body).
Genetically seen they were actually Demons right now.
The greatest unusual thing were Issei´d Sacred Gear and Irina´s affection for Holy Weapons, so they had to hide them.
Kiba would have liked to come as well. But with the recent change and his new powers, it seemed to risky to put him trough the procedure right now. So he and the others decided to stay behind, take care of the base and guard the prisoners.
Sirzechs ironically was now looking nearly exactly like the stereotypical Devil from Western Culture and Rias like the female version of it.
Rias had actually at first argued that as a prominent Faction Leader, Sirzechs would be too recognizable.
But by the information from Raynare-17, the Sirzechs of that world had died at the end of the Great War, so the chance of someone recognizing him instantly after all these centuries would be pretty low, unless they would run directly into a high ranked member of the Demon´s government.
Just like a present day human would be unlikely to recognize Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin if they saw them alive on the street today.
As a compromise however Sirzechs had agreed to wear a beard, similar to his father Zeoticus for the mission (those grow they had sped up with magic a bit).
Grayfia had actually commented that he didn´t look bad with it.
They were also all wearing clothes similar to the Demons in the recording.
"Well – I guess I am lucky that I am part of one of the `Master races´," Raynare commented with obvious sarcasm.
She and Kuroka were the only ones out of them who didn´t underwent the procedure.
Raynare because they had been told that the Fallen were allies of the Demons in that world. So Fallen Angels walking freely around was nothing unusual and Kuroka because one of her counterparts was member of the Devil Hunters.
And having someone who could pass of as an important enemy agent could be useful. Aside from that they knew that beside Devils sometimes also Yokai were held as slaves. Humans however were not, simply because the Demons saw no use in it - aside for Sacred Gear users of course. So Irina and Issei would stand out too much as humans.
They were ready.
xxxxxxx
Somewhere else in the Multiverse
The Guardian leader who was calling himself Darien in this days, this time in flesh and blood, was standing in the middle of an seemingly endless wasteland of destruction, that stretched over the length of nearly an entire continent.
This wasteland was completely covered by a bizarre black, seemingly living substance.
Luckily they had managed to save the rest of the planet.
Standing next to him was the woman called Spectre and in front of them two Lords of the Dark Order - one of them his old enemy Faust, the other was Dracula - ironically an alternate version of their own ally Alucard/Vlad/Dracula.
These two were the only case in that a Dark Order Lord and a leading member of the Guardians were in fact alternate versions of the same person.
xxx
Like the Vlad of their own team, this one had been under the name Alucard in service of the Hellsing organization during the 20th Century of his home-dimension.
In opposite to him however, during the attack on London by the supernatural terror organization called Millenium in 1999, he had turned against Hellsing and wiped out not only Millenium, but also them and the greatest part of London.
And like the other Alucard, he had from that point on evolved from an already immensely powerful Super Vampire, to an terrifying godlike being with seemingly endless power, the ability to be anywhere he wanted to and bend the structure of reality itself by his will.
xxx
The planet they were standing on was an alternate version of Earth. One that was kind of a deja vú for both both Spectre and Faust. It was a world very similar to this one where they had fist met.
A few members of the Guardians came from a world very similar to this one.
In this world the world-wide operating mega-company Genom had created an artificial race of sentient Androids also called the Boomers. They had been created as servants of humanity and mostly treated as disposable tools - at first at least.
Here however things had gone differently. After attempts of some Boomers to break free from the programming that bound them to their creators were discovered. The companies and governments begann to replace them with non-sentient, far less effective and dangerous, machines and the Boomers were shut down and destroyed.
A genocide had been taking place that most of the population never realized had happened, because they refused to see the Androids as alive in the first place.
All this naturally led to a economical crisis, which ironically was blamed on the Androids and their attempt to break free.
What followed was a society that heavily rejected the idea of Artificial Intelligences as a whole. And even many religions adopted the doctrine that AIs were a sin against God and the natural order of things.
For the Dark Order however all that were simply a miss-development and several steps backwards in evolution.
xxx
The living black mass was nothing but a manifestation of Dracula himself (similar like his counterpart Alucard could do it as well), that had materialized itself everywhere, spreading over the planet, leveling cities, cracking the ground and causing earth-quakes, sinking entire regions into the sea.
Countless people had been impaled and killed by spikes that had been suddenly shooting out of the earth and were now hanging as a bizarre and terrible display of terror between the destroyed landscape.
The two Guardians had been able to detain the black mass and keep it from spreading over the rest of the planet. But only after it had already obliterated all of Japan and most of the chinese eastern regions.
Author´s Notes: The world shown in the last part is, as some have probably noticed, based on an alternate version of the Anime series Bubblegum Crisis.
Regarding TrinitySeven´s review question about Inglib Leviathan or Elmenhilde: I am not sure yet.
xcc
I have made a few rewrites trough the story. In first line regarding the character called Dragon Issei – from Universe 19 (the one where the Fallen Angels led by Kokabiel and Khaos Brigade, led by Ophis herself have taken over and where an Erebos invasion had been stopped by two versions of Ophis).
When I originally introduced this world and the character in question a few years ago, I had intended to make a story Arc including this character. With the way the story developed over the time however, I had to abandon that story-idea.
With that the character served no actual purpose anymore for the story and only added unnecessary content and backstory. So I decided to remove the character from the story entirely and rewrite the part he already appeared in.