A/N: Yapping yappers, teens being teens.

ᓚᘏᗢ

Koneko

"I'm ordering the food while we wait for them." I said to my [King] while tapping on my phone, getting no response from her.

We were currently sitting in one of the larger and comfortably furnished living rooms, on one of the larger and plusher couches in the home, which faced a floor-to-ceiling OLED screen TV. The two boys were currently getting cleaned up in the home-gym's shower room, and would meet back up with us up here on the second floor when they were finished changing.

The room we were in wasn't quite a home theater– that was over in the western wing, on the 1st floor and recessed into the ground– but it was a much more convenient place to eat, with a long knee-high table stretching parallel to the couch in between it and the screen. The lights could be dimmed on a dial too, so while the windows and creme colored walls meant this room couldn't get quite as dark as the theater, we did at least have the ability to lower the brightness enough for the picture to look good.

Of course, none of this actually mattered to everyone who lived here, being Devils with perfect night vision, but I guess the interior designers accounted for us having non-devil company over at some point.

"I'm getting sushi catering, I'll get Kiba his usual from that Italian place he likes, and Uzumaki mentioned his favorite food is Ramen earlier." I continued. "What should I get you?" I asked her.

Again, to no response.

I turned away from my phone to stare at her blankly. She'd break down and acknowledge me if I stared hard enough.

She always does.

A little extra encouragement to speed up the process wouldn't hurt though.

"Stop pouting and tell me what you want to eat, or I won't order anything for you."

When the boys had approached us after their final round, introductions had been short and swift. I'd made sure of that. The excuses I gave for the sake of my nose and stomach weren't exactly lies– they really did smell and I really was hungry– but I mostly just wanted to cut off Rias's incoming Japanophile-induced outburst when she found out Uzumaki was a ninja.

I enjoyed watching anime just as much as any other Japanese teenager, but Rias was an Otaku among Otakus for everything Japan. That aspect of her didn't bother me at all, but I was at least aware that it could be overwhelming to people who didn't know her.

"I'm not pouting." She denied while pouting, head turned away from me.

"You are." I deadpanned.

"Fine, maybe just a little." She admitted, reluctantly uncrossing her arms and turning to face me. "But only because my cute little [Rook] kept the fact that she knew a ninja— a real life ninja!— a secret from me!" She accused me with playfully narrowed eyes.

I suppressed a reflexive eye-twitch at her calling me little. It didn't usually bother me when she did since she practically raised me after everything that happened, but so soon after Uzumaki obviously mocked my height, my mind was unintentionally on the lookout for any perceived comments on my size.

Instead, I stared at her even more deadpan than before.

"I've known him for less than a week," I stated blandly, "and spent maybe six hours with him outside of classes, tops." She began to fidget under my gaze as my words reached her. "Half of that was yesterday, and most of the other half was today."

I stared at her some more.

She broke first, as expected, looking away with a slightly embarrassed expression

"Okay, okay, I get your point! You couldn't have known." She admitted defeat. "Just stop looking at me like that!" She whined.

If I averted my eyes, it was definitely because she asked me to stop staring, and pointedly not because I had learned that the boy named Uzumaki Naruto was a ninja within the first minute of actually interacting with him face to face.

I cleared my throat.

"Anyways, food. What am I getting you?" I asked for the third time.

Rias hummed lightly while leaning back to sink further into the couch cushions. "It's been a while since I've had ramen, so I'd like some too if you would," she requested after a moment of thought. "Miso tonkotsu, please."

I nodded, adding her order to the cart.

"Oh, and get something for Akeno too, just in case she decides to come back after she's done with her plans for the day," Rias added. "I already let her know we have a human guest over for now, so she shouldn't just teleport in if she drops by. It would be a shame to have to wipe Uzumaki-kun's memory."

I nodded, adding an oyakodon and finalized the orders, confirming them for delivery.

Despite Akeno's prodigious skills as a chef, her personal tastes leaned more towards simple comfort foods like the common chicken-and-egg on rice bowls.

Then the second half of what she said hit me.

"You wouldn't need to wipe his memory anyway." I denied with a shake of my head.

She glanced at me with a quirked eyebrow and sly smile. "Are you sure? He may be a ninja, but ultimately he's just a normal person, one who shouldn't be aware of our side of the world unless we plan on involving him."

'Did she forget he was talking to Kiba about fighting a guy with a sword made out of lightning earlier?' I thought in confusion.

It occurred to me a moment later that even though I heard them speaking clearly, they might have been out of range of her hearing entirely. Which would make sense, with how surprised she was to find out he was a ninja upon being introduced.

I could tell that she already accepted my declaration, and was just playing the Devil's advocate to hear out my reasoning. From the look on her face, she was probably trying to find a way to tease me again.

Best to nip that in the bud.

I stared her dead in the eye. "I'm sure, because he already knows I'm a devil, and he definitely suspects Kiba is too."

That surprised her, going by the widening of her eyes.

"Really? How did that end up happening?" She questioned curiously. "And Kiba-kun was holding back significantly, and they were relatively evenly matched basically the whole time. Why would he suspect Kiba?"

I rolled my eyes.

My [King] didn't so much 'lean' towards, more like embodied the caster-type mindset entirely. She didn't have any more than a vague idea at best of what was considered 'normal' human physical ability, and didn't understand that for someone on Uzumaki's level, Kiba was clearly moving at low-superhuman speeds.

"His eye for detail when observing people is absurd." I explained instead, choosing not to point that out and embarrass her. "He figured out on his own that I wasn't fully human within five minutes of meeting me. All it took was him watching the way my muscles flexed when moving and a basic line of questioning, before he landed on inhuman ancestry as the explanation. At that point, I figured it was fine to tell him I'm a devil." I finished.

She didn't need to know that I had taken the drop on the roof the way I did deliberately, as a way to get him open enough to sate my curiosity.

"Huh." A look of intrigue crossed her face. "I guess if that's the case, there's no way he didn't notice something off about Kiba-kun," she muttered.

Regardless though, a thought occurred when I remembered what happened at the beginning of our meetup.

"Either way, I doubt memory manipulation would work on him for long anyways."

"Why is that?" Rias asked. "Does he have some sort of resistance?"

I wasn't sure if that was an accurate way of describing it, so I shrugged instead of nodding.

"He was able to convince himself to ignore the compulsion field around the property, even though it clearly affected him." I pointed out. "With his level of body control and observation skill, I wouldn't be surprised if he could figure out his mind had been messed with, even if he can't remember how."

"You're probably right then, and trying anyway might just cause more problems than it would solve," she concluded. "I'll be sure to let Sona know her peerage should either be extra careful with their abilities around him, or to approach him first and be upfront about the things he might notice."

I felt a tension I hadn't noticed in my shoulders begin to relax when she finished speaking.

"Still, he calls you 'Koneko-chan' already, huh?"

And here came the annoying part.

"You even added a '-kun' at one point down there! Maybe Akeno was right yesterday. He sure 'moves' fast, to have caught you already," Rias teased, shuffling herself closer on the couch so that she could throw her arms around me in a hug. "Should I be worried that Uzumaki-kun is going to end up stealing my Koneko-cuddling time in the near future?" She questioned dramatically while holding me tightly.

I bore the indignity of the teasing by ignoring it. If I acknowledged her, it would just encourage her to keep going. Instead, I let myself relax with the feeling of nostalgia I got from the warmth of her soft body pressing against me.

My eyes slid shut involuntarily as I took in the scent of the girl who gave me a new home, who gave me a place to belong. I leaned further into my master's embrace. I could hear her calming heartbeat, feel it through her embrace.

It felt like safety.

"I'm glad…" Rias murmured next to my ear, and I realized that I had begun nuzzling her cheek at some point in the hug. One of her hands found its way up to the back of my head and she began combing through my hair with her fingers. "It makes me happy, to see you make new friends, to watch you open up just a little more," she said softly, gently squeezing me a little tighter.

I continued practically melting under her fingers ministrations for what felt like hours as we slowly rocked from side to side, and I might have even drifted off sooner rather than later if it weren't for the muffled sound of Kiba's footsteps approaching from the hallway at an even gait.

He had a very particular way of placing his feet when walking. It wasn't a whole lot different from normal people, but it was different enough to be noticeable for how extremely consistent it was. I assume that it's an unconscious habit left over from his swordsmanship training.

Moments later, the single set of steps stopped and the sound of the door opening behind us reached me.

"Ah, sorry for interrupting. Should I close the door and give you two some privacy?" I could literally hear the teasing smile in his voice, but I was too comfortable to care and continued to lean into Rias' arms with my eyes closed. Rias's fingers only paused for a second before continuing to lightly massage my scalp

I idly wondered why he came by himself, since Naruto shouldn't know his way around the place yet.

'Probably left him with a list of directions.'

"There's no need for that, you can come in." Rias said to him after pulling her face away from the side of my head. "Don't mind me, I'm just cuddling my cutest pillow– I mean club member." She joked while doing a little wiggle. Kiba seemingly took the invitation and began the walk around the couch. We were near the middle of the couch, me on the left and Rias to the right, and going by his steps, Kiba began heading to the right side

Now, I don't find girls attractive to the best of my knowledge, and Rias is my family, but even I felt my face warming up a little at the motion. Fittingly enough for her anime obsession, my [King] has anime-sized udders, and she is holding me very tightly to her chest right now, which made it very hard to not think about the two–

"You hear that, Kiba? She just said you aren't the cutest." My heart rate jumped and my eyes snapped open in surprise at the sound of Uzumaki's voice, coming from right behind the couch.

"You gonna take that lying down?" He teased the other boy. "I don't know about you, but me personally…" he trailed off with a snicker.

Kiba chuckled, "I guess I'll have to change my morning hair care routine if I want to beat Koneko-chan."

Rias definitely noticed my reaction, because she ignored their byplay and brought her hand from my hair to my chin, tilting my head this way and that to look my face over, even as my heart was already going back down to normal.

"Are you alright Koneko-chan?" She asked with concern in her eyes.

I nodded simply. "Was just surprised." I said honestly. It had somehow slipped my mind in the moment that the ninja was… well, a ninja. I've never heard him moving through the school this past week, but here in the safety of my home, I genuinely expected my senses to keep me aware of everything around me.

I turned my head and narrowed my eyes the tiniest bit at Uzumaki, who was watching everything curiously even as he silently slipped around the couch to my left, dropping into the plush cushion with a whumpf sound– the first sound other than his voice to give away his physical presence here.

He was back to wearing the clothes he arrived in, minus the jacket, which I assumed was being washed with the other clothes at the moment. With his orange shirt leaving most of his arms bare, it revealed that the bruises littering his smooth skin had already begun turning yellowish. His knuckles– which had their skin split open when Kiba's sword made contact– were a raw pinkish color, looking like the fresh skin that appears when a scab comes off.

I'm not exactly perfectly familiar with human biology and their healing speed, but even I could tell that he's healing too quick to be normal.

'Probably related to his ninja stuff.' I thought. 'Speaking of…'

"I should make you wear a bell when you visit. You move too quietly."

He blinked owlishly at me, before snorting. "If you wanted a pet that badly, you should go ask those Pervert Trio guys at school. I'm sure they'd jump at the chance to have you put a bell around their necks. Call them Koneko's Nekos instead."

Kiba sputtered and choked on a surprised laugh somewhere on the other side of Rias, having taken a drink of something while Uzumaki was talking.

I felt my face scrunch up involuntarily. "That's disgusting."

What a gross thing to even think about.

Uzumaki smirked. "Sure, but it looks like it's my win this time, so it worked as intended."

I sent a withering glare his way, which made him put up his hands in surrender even as he grinned.

Rias giggled as she released me from her hug, and stretched forward to grab the entertainment system's remote from the table.

"As funny as it is watching you two flirt-"

I turned my narrowed eyes on Rias, and it was Uzumaki's turn to sputter at someone making an absurd statement.

She continued with a smirk. "-we should probably figure out what we want to watch while we wait for the food to arrive." She finished her statement with a click of the remote, turning the system and screen on.

"I'd prefer something lighthearted," Kiba gave his opinion from the other side of our redheaded master. "And maybe light on the action if it isn't animated. I somehow get the feeling that most of us would find stunt-action either hilariously bad, or dreadfully boring." He added with a light chuckle.

Uzumaki got himself under control and glanced at the options as Rias scrolled past them on the streaming service.

"Anything is fine with me, to be honest," He shrugged, adding his own two yen. "The last time I had both the time and patience to really watch anything was over two years ago, after working a protection detail job for an actress."

Rias paused in her scrolling.

"You worked as a bodyguard for an actress?" Rias asked in interest. "Did you get her autograph? Who was it? Why did she need a ninja to protect her? Did you need to fight anybody?!" She rattled off rapid fire.

"Woah hehe, slow down there." Uzumaki chuckled at her excitement. "Yes and yes, for the first two. Her name was Koyuki Kazahana, but the public and even most of the directors and other staff only knew her by a fake name she chose as her stage name, which I think I'll leave to you to figure out on your own." He smirked smugly at Rias's pout as if he just told an inside joke that only he understood.

"As for why she needed ninja to protect her," Uzumaki moved on, "that's a longer story."

That didn't stop Rias's thirst for a real life ninja story, and so she urged him on.

Kiba leaned forward to listen, interested as well.

What came next was a somewhat barebones retelling of what sounded like a plot straight out of a movie. It involved a family man on the verge of creating some unspecified revolutionary technology, being betrayed and murdered by his own jealous brother, with the literal key to his success being hidden in the possession of his daughter who escaped the initial attempt on her life. Said daughter had apparently been able to remain anonymous under a fake identity for over a decade, despite also openly being an apparently successful actress.

It turned out that the woman's uncle apparently had ninja connections of his own, which was how he arranged the initial assassination, and was the reason why Koyuki needed ninja bodyguards of her own. Long story short, Uzumaki's team beat her uncle's, and the guy was tossed behind bars with a life sentence.

As if that wasn't enough, apparently the shoot they were doing was done up in the icy north, and the two teams came to a clash on a bunch of icebergs, many of which ended up cracking apart and sinking due to the fights.

"What kind of ninja stuff did the other team use though?" Rias whined. "Tools, moves, attacks, you can't just skimp on the details like that!"

I poked her in the side, getting a flinch. "Your 'Otaku' side is taking over."

She sheepishly gathered her composure back with a cough into her fist. "... I'm sure I have no idea what you mean by that."

Uzumaki and Kiba both chuckled at the byplay.

"Anyway, there's not a whole lot I remember about the way those guys fought at all." Uzumaki said after a moment. "I've fought a lot more people in the years since I was thirteen. The most I can say is that their leader made frequent use of the naturally occurring ice in his attacks, but he wasn't even anywhere near as good at it as the first ice user I fought, despite being over twice his age."

He shifted in his seat, and I felt the cushion behind me shift in response as he leaned back with a slight wince.

"Hey, off topic, but do you guys have a stool or something laying around somewhere that I can rest my feet on?" He asked casually. "My legs are pretty sore."

"Or something. This couch has electronic footrests on either end. Check on the other side of the armrest with your hand," Rias instructed him, "You should feel a pair of buttons just underneath that which raise and lower it."

"Oh, sweet." He leaned over the armrest to look.

The quiet hum of the couch's mechanism working reached me a few seconds later.

"Ah, a thought occurred to me;" Kiba suddenly spoke up. "Since we're waiting for food anyway, why don't we just put on something mindless to watch while we wait and discuss what we actually want to see?"

"So, Drag-so Ball?" I suggested.

"You take that back!" Rias squawked, losing her composure for the second time in two minutes flat. "Drag-so Ball is a classic!"

We ended up putting on a random game show. None of us could figure out what the rules were, but to be frank, it seemed like neither the contestants nor the hosts were 100% sure either, so we basically just talked over it anyway.

Most of the conversation was related to school since that was the one subject we all definitely had in common, but other things included annoying clients we've all dealt with, places we wanted to visit, and random facts about anything we each knew.

Despite the fact that both parties in the room were only very recently "in the know" about each other's natures, there was surprisingly little to no grilling for details from either side.

Uzumaki was being so upfront and casual with mentions of his background that they slipped into the conversation completely naturally, his personality integrating into our group dynamic seamlessly in a way that made our respective natures seemingly irrelevant.

We did eventually get back to the original topic, and settled on a Studio Gerbil movie that only Rias had seen.

Shortly before the game show ended, my phone vibrated from where I had left it sitting in my lap, and picking it up revealed a notification telling me that the delivery driver was here.

I glanced at Uzumaki for a moment, before turning away without my expression shifting, and gently nudged Rias.

She shifted to look down at me. "Hmm?"

"Food's here. Can you help me carry it up here?" I asked.

"Oh," she blinked, "that's right. Sure thing." She nodded.

The weight itself wouldn't be an issue, but I didn't want to risk accidentally spilling the ramen in the delivery bags while trying to carry everything.

We stood and walked around the couch on Kiba's side.

"We should be back in about five minutes," Rias said to the two boys as she opened the door to the hallway. I stepped through, her following closely behind me. "Try not to start a fight that destroys the room until then!"

She closed the door, leaving them with that teasing remark.

"Well then," she turned to me with a smile, "Shall we be on our way?"

I nodded and turned and began walking, feeling her eyes on me the entire way.

It had barely been ten seconds before she decided to get straight to the point.

"So," Rias began with a sly tone of voice, "What's the real reason you asked me to come with you?" She asked. "It wouldn't happen to have anything to do with all those glances you've been sneaking Uzumaki-kun's way, would it?"

I could hear the grin in the way she said it. Unfortunately, she wasn't entirely wrong, so I couldn't just ignore her teasing like I usually did.

I didn't respond immediately, trying to think of how to put into words what I'd noticed, and how it tied in to what I wanted to ask her.

I'd seen the way his bloody knuckles had healed, and confirmed over the past half hour that it wasn't just my imagination that he healed abnormally fast. Not only had the pink already faded from said knuckles already, leaving unblemished skin, but many of his visible bruises had also all but completely faded by the time we stepped out.

"Uzumaki…"

Except for one. A patch of deep black and blue, slightly swollen flesh near the middle of his shin that hadn't seemed to get better in the slightest.

The fact that after sparring for the better part of ten rounds with Kiba, and his worst injury of the day came from me failing to hold back my strength enough? Me kicking him in retaliation for an insult he hadn't even made, just because I assumed his meaning, after he'd been nothing but genuine with me in all our interactions?

"He heals fast." I began. "Extremely fast, for a human. But…"

From the moment I had seen the injury, I'd recognized that it was my doing and felt shame in my impulsive action. It had been a long time since I'd felt this much guilt over hurting someone, the last time being when I'd still been getting used to my strength as a [Rook] and accidentally hurt one of the maids chasing me, trying to get me to take a bath as a young child.

Which is why I decided to try making it up to him, even though by all rights it seemed like he didn't particularly mind.

"It's not enough to fix him." I declared, stopping to turn and face her.

Rias, who had been patiently listening as she sensed the seriousness in my tone, raised an eyebrow in slight confusion. "Oh?"

"I accidentally hurt him much worse than he deserved when I kicked him," I explained, "I'm going to apologize, and I want to make it up to him, but I'm not as good with Recovery magic as you."

"Ah, now it makes sense." Rias hummed happily as she realized this was me asking her for help. "I'd love to give you some lessons and pointers whenever you have the time, but you do realize you won't be seeing results immediately, right?" She smiled kindly at me with her warning. "Healing magic is one of the highest forms of magic after all."

That was fine with me.

As we continued walking, I told my [King] what I had in mind.

Naruto

With the girls having stepped out, Kiba and I were left to our own devices for the next few minutes.

Naturally, given our sparring was still fresh on the mind, that conversation circled back around after a minute or two of idle commentary on the awful show playing on the TV.

"You know," Kiba began with a thoughtful tone, as a hand rose to cup his chin, "I've been replaying our matches in my head, over and over again from the moment we finished, and I still just can't figure something out."

"What is it?" I asked curiously.

"I'm certain that I've pinpointed every moment your left hand went directly from the ground to your pocket," he explained. "Every moment during or after a match, every break in-between, from the moment I realized I had to take you seriously after your first move, I'd been studying your movements well enough to clearly remember the motions you've made, even if I didn't notice the sleight of hand at the time."

"Yeah?" I grinned, seeing where this was going. "And?"

Kiba pointedly eyed my expression with a wry smirk of his own.

"Pardon me for my bluntness, but as a devil reincarnated by a [Knight] piece, I am quite easily capable of reacting to and deflecting bullets being fired at me." He stated it almost blandly, dropping the polite fiction of normality that he'd kept up until now. "Despite that, I can't recall any point where you filled your right pocket, and the few times you'd been out of my vision for long enough, the follow-up actions you actually took meant it wasn't possible for you to have done it then," he elaborated. "So, how did you do it?"

"Your observations are actually spot on," I smirked at him. "There's nothing special I did that you haven't made the connection to, you're just thinking too narrowly."

"Too narrowly?" Kiba's eyes narrowed in thought.

"Yeah. You should try stretching your mind," I snickered, "maybe take a moment to admire the scenery a bit. You know, before you jump straight into the action."

"What?" He blinked in confusion.

It took a moment, but I saw the exact moment his expression changed to one of realization, and then exasperation as he got my meaning. It was, in my opinion, hilarious.

"Hahahahaha!"

"From the very beginning…" He sighed while pressing his palm to his forehead. "You had that in mind right from the moment we started, before that even. Wait…" Kiba brought his hand down and looked at me even more appraisingly than before.

I got my laughter under control and curiously met his stare.

"... Couldn't you have brought that out at almost any point earlier, and gotten your three wins sooner?" he pointed out.

I shrugged.

"I mean, yeah, probably," I agreed, "but maybe you would have been more on guard for nasty tricks. Maybe I wouldn't have been able to take full advantage of the distraction. A lot of things could have changed the outcome." I explained. "In the end, I decided I wanted to see the best you were willing to bring to the table, and then do my best to beat that version of you. So I saved my best trick for last."

Kiba chuckled.

"Well congratulations Naruto-kun, because you certainly succeeded. I'll have to add a hand-to-hand section to my training routine," he said. His smile shifted into a challenging smirk. "I hope you understand, this means you have to keep improving too. I can't have my sparring partner falling too far behind me, after all."

I smirked right back and opened my mouth to respond–

The door opening at our backs cut me off. Koneko entered first, with a platter as wide as her arm was long in one hand and two paper bags in the other, followed by Red with two bags of her own.

"Only gone for five minutes, and you're already back to talking about fighting." Koneko rolled her eyes. "Boys."

I stuck my tongue out at her as she walked around the couch and set the platter on the long table. She snapped her fingers and three glowing red circles filled with symbols similar to Fuinjutsu– I think they're called 'magic circles'– appeared just above the table in front of mine, Rias', and Kiba's spots on the couch. Cheap plastic trays descended from them onto the table, appearing out of nowhere. She then placed one of her two bags on my tray and the other on Rias's.

"I got you ramen, since you mentioned how much you liked it. Miso and pork."

I had to physically hold myself back from jumping towards the bag to tear it open, both for the sake of manners, and to not accidentally break the footrest mechanism.

"Thanks a lot!" I said eagerly, making sure not to drool.

The footrest couldn't lower fast enough.

.

When everyone got seated and our food all prepared for consumption, Rias dimmed the lights and started up the movie. Apparently it was made by a really famous animation studio, and was regarded as one of their best.

It was a weird story about a bamboo girl named Kaguya who became a princess or something, involving her struggle to fit into her new life as a noble in the capital after living as a peasant in a village. After having been ridiculed for being a peasant by other nobles she transformed and suddenly got a bunch of suitors, who she sent on quests to prove themselves to her.

A bunch of stuff happened, and then later it turned out she was actually from the moon originally?

All in all, despite the coincidental parallels between the character and Super Granny, it was an alright story. As the credits began to roll, I could understand why Rias was tearing up and sniffling near the end, even though I personally was made of sterner stuff than that.

A flash of red shined in and out of existence from the corner of my blurred vision, and I felt Koneko's finger tap my shoulder. Turning, I saw a vague outline of her arm holding something boxy out for me.

"Th-thank you, Koneko-ch-chan." I spoke gracefully without any hiccups.

I accepted the box of tissues and blew my nose heavily multiple times.

'All this damn dust in the air.' I tried using the back of my hands to wipe the irritant from my eyes, but it just kept coming back.

.

We all continued to hang around and talk for a while, but it was already starting to get kind of late by the time the movie ended, so things wound down pretty soon after.

The first to excuse themself was Kiba, citing homework he wanted to finish before tomorrow, followed shortly after by Rias claiming 'club leader duties with Sona' while winking at Koneko. It looked like she was trying to be discreet with it, but I didn't understand why she was winking even when I noticed it, so I guess it didn't really matter in the end.

Koneko was currently leaning over the table and packing what little of her leftover sushi remained into a tiny little bento box, while I had put the footrest back up around halfway through the movie, and was currently leaning back and relaxing in the comfortable silence, my right arm resting across the back of the couch. I glanced around the dim room and took in the mess that remained, from the takeout bags to the disposable utensils and soft drink cans

The quiet suddenly became just a tiny bit more uncomfortable than before.

"So, uhh," I broke the silence, "... want some help cleaning up?" I asked awkwardly.

Koneko placed the lid on her little bento and swiftly tied the ribbon that would hold it closed into a bow, before it sank into a magic circle that appeared below it.

That done, she wiped her hands meticulously with a napkin, and then scooted back in her spot on the couch herself.

She leaned back into the cushion and closed her eyes

"No need." She said after a moment, eyes still closed. "We have servants for that."

I could have facepalmed at the obvious answer.

"Damn rich people…" I muttered under my breath, even though it was obvious she'd hear.

Koneko's head tilted slightly, a lock of her hair slipping past her ear as her eyes slid open. Her golden orbs almost seemed to glow in the low lighting, already locked onto my own.

I was suddenly hyper aware of the placement of my arm for some reason, resting just a few inches behind her head on the cushion.

I very deliberately stopped my body from tensing up reflexively.

"We're going to have to put off finishing our discussion again…" Her voice shook me out of my distracted state.

It took me a moment to realize she was no longer looking at me, but looking at one of the windows past me.

I pulled my eyes away from her dimly lit features to turn and look out at the night sky myself.

"You make that sound like it's a bad thing," I said with a chuckle. "I don't really mind it, myself."

Even with the fact that the light from modern cities tended to block out the light of distant stars at night, this part of town was secluded enough from the more commercial areas that a majority of the brighter constellations shone through. None of them were particularly familiar to me.

It wasn't the best night sky I'd ever seen, not by a long shot, but I think I appreciated it more in this moment than I would have as a kid in Konoha.

"Personally, I've enjoyed talking with you, Koneko-chan," I looked back at her with a grin, "so I just see it as another excuse to hang out another day."

She didn't disagree.

We'd just finished walking down the path to the front gate to say our goodbyes for the night, when she stopped short a few steps.

"...I'm sorry." She said as I turned to find her head bowed. "I didn't hold back my strength nearly enough. I shouldn't have kicked you at all, especially not with as little thought given to it as I did."

Ah, so she noticed my little limp.

'Or maybe she saw the bruise earlier, and felt that now was the best time to bring it up?' I thought. 'It doesn't really matter which, I guess.'

It honestly surprised me a little that she said sorry… which then led to me being surprised that I was surprised. In the first place, it shouldn't be shocking that a girl as thoughtful as she seemed would feel the need to apologize for hurting someone. At the same time though, Sakura-chan used to hit me way harder all the time without apologizing, so I just didn't really expect it.

I blinked.

There was a strange moment where that thought struck me as odd in some way, but right now wasn't the time to analyze why, so I shoved it to the back of my mind for later.

"Y'know, I can't exactly say 'it's no issue' because I'll probably walk with a limp for the next few days-" I'd idly diagnosed my shin bone itself as being bruised on the walk to the room we gathered in, and estimated my own abnormal recovery time to be around a week or so, maybe less If I kept my weight off of it. "-but honestly, I'll be fine."

I stepped closer and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Besides, it's clear to me you feel remorse over it, so don't worry about it that much." I met her gaze with a reassuring smile when she lifted her head. "I forgive you."

Koneko held my gaze, seemingly looking for something in particular, before giving up with an exasperated sigh.

"Fine," she agreed.

I turned back towards the gate, but was stopped from doing anything more by her snagging hold of the back of my shirt.

"Wait."

I looked back over my shoulder as she spoke.

"Even if you forgive me, you shouldn't be putting weight on that leg. I'll help you get home." She stated it in a way that gave no room to argue.

"Oh, I didn't realize you had a driver's license." The mental image of the small girl struggling to see over the wheel was pretty funny.

"I don't. I'm a [Rook, I'm going to carry you." She declared her intent, causing me to blink.

"Ehhheheh, wouldn't that look super suspicious though, a girl your size carrying a guy bigger than her?" I chuckled nervously, futilely attempting to discreetly remove my shirt from her grasp.

A pair of bat-like wings longer than her body spread out behind her as if appearing from nothing.

"We'll be flying, obviously," she countered with a roll of her eyes.

I gulped.

.

Koneko only carried me most of the way to my address, only relenting and bringing us back down when I insisted that my neighborhood had cameras everywhere, and that it would look suspicious if I appeared in the cameras close to my apartment without showing up in the ones by the front gates. Of course, I didn't mention that I was known to do this all the time using camera blind spots anyway, and that the community's security company was familiar with my antics, but she didn't need to know that.

The flight itself wasn't all that special to me, having been able to do so myself by the end of the war, but it was slightly nerve wracking having to trust in the grip of such small arms while we were well over ten stories high in the air. You could be strong enough to carry the weight of a truck, but that didn't mean you'd actually be able to carry it easily without a secure way to hold it. Back home, we'd just use the tree-walking method to keep our grips, but I could tell that Koneko wasn't doing something similar from the way I could shift around in her arms.

The rest of the way was spent walking, with my arm thrown over her shoulder at her own insistence. It was a little awkward since despite my own short stature, she was still a good half a foot shorter than me, but it was infinitely more preferable to my pride than our previous setup.

There is no experience in the world that can prepare a man for being held in a princess-carry by a girl, especially one smaller than himself.

If I ignored the intense burning in my cheeks, this was downright pleasant comparatively. Not that being carried by Koneko-chan wasn't pleasant or anything, it was just–!

'THINKING OTHER THOUGHTS NOW!' I cut off that line of thinking entirely. Nothing good could come from it.

"Uzumaki." Koneko's quiet voice once again broke through my strange thoughts. "I want to ask you something."

'Seriously, what is up with me recently?'

I didn't let my thoughts show on my face. "Alright, what's up?" I gave her my full attention instead, sensing the seriousness in her body language.

For as short as I've known her, Koneko was an almost perfect example of consistency. In the way she walked, talked, and breathed, she defaulted to a languid, almost minimal effort approach to things. I wasn't seeing that right now.

Her steps were uncharacteristically stiff, and her breathing tightly controlled.

"Before I ask, I have something else I need to tell you, for context," she added.

"I'm listening." I confirmed.

She took a deep breath, held it for a couple seconds, and released it.

"I still don't know what you meant about a 'chakra network' earlier, but I'm not just part-devil. I'm also a youkai," Koneko revealed.

"Huh." I blinked, wracking my brain to remember the relevant info she'd given me earlier. "That's neat, I guess?"

I can't say I was expecting it, but it didn't exactly surprise me at all. She could have said she was part cat and I wouldn't have batted an eye. At this point, anything seemed possible.

Just another thing to mentally catalog under 'Koneko factoids,' that functionally changes nothing about how I view her.

"Earlier, I mentioned that using chakra comes naturally to us youkai. What I didn't mention, is that Senjutsu does too. It's something that almost all species of youkai can use to some extent, and my species is especially drawn to it," she explained. "For reasons I don't want to talk about, I put off learning how to use either of them." Her hand, which had curled into a fist by her side, shook lightly. "A recent situation has made me aware that it was a mistake. I should be able to get a hang of the basics on my own, but I don't know how much that would even help at this point," she admitted, her head slightly lowered.

We stopped walking.

'Ahh, damn. How unfortunate.' I sighed internally, offering my condolences. It sounded a lot like she was hinting at the type of tragic backstory that was all too common among the people I'd met in the Elemental Nations. We'd both danced around the topic of our childhoods earlier, so I already figured something bad happened, but to think it involved Senjutsu…

"We only just met recently, and don't really know each other well, but…" Her voice wavered slightly as she looked up at me, her hesitant golden eyes firming as they met mine. "I want to get strong enough to protect my friends," she announced with conviction.

"Could… could you teach me how to use Senjutsu?"

It must have taken a lot of courage from her to ask that question, if my guess about her own trauma was correct.

I didn't have to think about it. I gave her my response.

"I'll teach you." I stared down into her eyes with deadly seriousness, trying to convey the vital importance of my next words.

"I only have one rule. If you can't follow it while I am teaching you, then I will not teach."

~,,––,,^^-

A/N: And that's the end of the intro arc.