Hi.

~,,––,,^^-

Naruto

The three of us stood in the massive back yard, the sun shining down on us at an angle.

Well, Yuuto and I stood a few meters across from each other in the backyard, near the middle of the perfectly trimmed lawn, while Koneko sat in a reclining chair on the patio off to the side with a plate of cookies in her lap. "Backyard' may have been underselling it just a bit though, considering it was more than half the size of a soccer field and surrounded by a tall hedge wall.

"So, what ground rules are we setting?" I asked while doing some crouching leg-stretches, letting the fingers of my right hand trail through the perfectly-trimmed grass below me. Their tips trailed through a thin layer of loose soil closer to the surface than I would have expected. 'Hmm. Seems like the groundskeeper recently added a layer of mulch.' I didn't know much about lawn care compared to keeping indoor potted plants, but I was pretty sure this was overkill.

'Then again,' I thought, glancing around at the freaking compound. 'What about this property isn't overkill?'

"No going for the crotch should be obvious," I said out loud, returning my mind to the topic at hand, "that would just be a dick move." I paused mid-stretch, realizing what I just said. "... Pun retroactively intended."

Yuuto gave an amused chuckle at my corny joke.

After he had introduced himself, the three of us had moved inside to the game room and played a couple simple games like ping pong while talking about school. It was about halfway through my first match against him that I realized Yuuto was slowly increasing the speed and precision of his hits intentionally, probably in an effort to try assessing my reactions rather than him just getting warmed up.

Despite me being able to keep up with and even beat the level of effort Yuuto put into the matches, Koneko destroyed us both completely at the game without much effort. Even with her shorter limbs giving her less reach, her reflexes and hand-eye coordination were blatantly superhuman, and she wasn't even trying to hide it.

It was almost as if she was annoyed about something and venting on us in her own way.

I wondered why.

I must have put up a good enough showing though, because shortly after we had enough of the games, Yuuto requested a spar with me unprompted, and offered to lend me some spare training gear when I accepted. I declined the offer for the padded gear, but I did accept a spare set of dark blue athletic shorts with pockets, and a skin-tight white sleeveless shirt to wear so that my casual clothes wouldn't get torn up.

Which led to our current location, with Yuuto casually holding a blunted training sword in one hand. It was shaped differently than what I was used to seeing, being modeled after what they called a "longsword," but it wasn't anywhere near as weird as Zabuza's sword or Samehada. It was similar to a chokuto in that it was a straight sword, but the main thing I needed to keep in mind was that it was double edged, so return swings might come faster.

"We should also refrain from aiming for the face and neck," the other blond offered smoothly in answer. "Since you have elected not to wear protective gear, we should keep in mind that we can't exactly hide our faces at school in two days. It's probably not a great idea to show up noticeably bruised and bandaged, wouldn't you agree, Uzumaki-san?" He explained with a wry smile.

It made sense, though I got an inkling that he was saying it more for my sake than his own. When I had declined the training armor, he followed suit in the name of fairness, but seemed more or less indifferent to either choice.

Nothing in his tone or actions were noticeably malicious in any way, but my mental awareness of his most-likely superhuman physical ability gave his words a sort of unintentionally-arrogant vibe, like he was just humoring me rather than actually taking me seriously.

Which was a fair stance, if I was being completely honest. If he actually was a Devil like Koneko, he'd very likely be able to physically out-perform me by a wide margin.

Didn't change the fact that it was just a little bit annoying, though.

"Sure," I nodded in agreement. "How do we want to rule grapples and ground-fighting? If we were both using hand-to-hand I'd say we go to a ten-count or a tap out, but that doesn't work as cleanly with weapons involved."

Yuuto just lightly smirked. "If you can get me to the ground, I'll call it your point. I happen to be very proud of my footwork."

I grinned internally at that. He still came off as a little bit condescending to me, but at least part of that was due to his confidence in himself rather than outright looking down on me. I always preferred it when someone's arrogance was rightfully earned.

Neither were great, but those who look down on people they perceive as having been born 'lesser' than them have always pissed me off the most.

'I'll match him then!'

"Ha! I'll make you regret saying that soon enough! By the end of the day, I'll have knocked you on your ass at least three times." I stood from my stretches and returned his smirk challengingly with a sly one of my own, pointing my left thumb at my chest while casually plopping my right fist into my pocket. "If you manage to graze my stomach, chest, or back, or get a clean hit on either leg, I'll call that in your favor. If you manage to land a clean hit on either of my arms, I'll continue without using that limb, but if you manage to hit it a second time below where the first strike was, I'll call it a chest shot, and your point," I outlined. "Anything else that wouldn't end a real fight with a real sword is free game."

"I accept your conditions." The prim and proper Kuoh student– seriously, it wasn't even a school day and he was wearing his full school uniform, tie included– turned and called out to our observer. "Koneko-chan, would you mind refereeing our matches?"

I saw her nod and swallow her baked treat, raising a hand. "Get ready. On start."

I pulled my hand out of my pocket and shifted on the balls of my feet, leaning forward a little with both legs slightly bent and hands ready at my sides. My own school blazer hung on my shoulders once more, empty sleeves drifting lightly by my side in the miniscule breeze. I watched Yuuto settle in a half-turned stance, keeping his profile to me with one hand holding his sword pointed vaguely in my direction, his rear hand free to react in either offense or defense.

"Three."

I slid my rear foot significantly further back, shifting my center of gravity much lower in the process.

"Two."

I watched Yuuto's feet and sword hand shift in angle ever so slightly in response.

"One."

My blue eyes met his own, both of us staring the other down in anticipation of each other's first moves.

I relaxed the tension in my forward leg, letting it bend further and began freefalling further into my forward lean, arms following suit

Koneko's hand began falling. "Start."

I tensed and pushed off from where I had subtly pressed the loose soil into a forward foothold, already low enough to the ground that I dug my fingers into it and pulled myself forward simultaneously.

Before the first syllable even fully left her mouth I was rocketing towards Yuuto as fast as I could physically push myself, keeping a low enough profile that a normal person would have trouble leveraging much strength against me, let alone with a sword.

I may have crossed the initial distance between us fast enough that an onlooker might miss it if they blinked, but despite the surprise clear in his slightly widened eyes, he had already back stepped twice by the time I reached his starting point. Even while matching a human's movement speed, his reaction speed was just that much better.

Feeling the adrenaline pumping through my veins while my right hand twisted back to ready a haymaker, I watched in almost slow-motion as I approached Yuuto, him lowering his own center and planting his feet in a way that would allow him to either lunge forward, or hop backwards at a moment's notice. At the same time, his sword lowered for a stab while his free hand rose to block or deflect my fist.

My grin bared teeth as I saw the moment he realized his mistake, the lower position giving him line-of-sight to my left hand that my body was previously covering.

My left hand that was trailing through the dirt.

I tore my fingers out of the lawn with an upwards swing and twist of my body, flinging a spray of soil at his head and upper body.

True to my expectations, he was able to react before it reached him. Yuuto turned his head and brought up his free hand to block it, closing his most exposed eye and trying to keep me visible in the corner of his remaining eye while the spray pelted his cheek and palm. Unfortunately for him, I didn't think it would successfully blind him in the first place. It served exactly the purpose I needed it to.

Yuuto had the option to either close distance and meet me head on, or back off and try to create distance. At the start of the duel, he chose to back off. Being taken by surprise and having his vision hindered while seeing my charge losing steam, he made the same choice again, pushing himself away in a backwards hop even as he swiped his sword in a horizontal slash to ward off my pursuit.

Luckily for me, I hadn't planned on directly pursuing him in the first place, and began making my next move at the same time as him.

I followed through with my full body twist, managing to spin around and plant the fist I had feinted with palm-first onto the ground, and using it as a pivot point, continued with the motion to swing my legs around in a lunging leg-sweep that had me sliding over the lawn just under his blade. Just as his feet made contact with the ground again and he made to move his front foot for whichever motion he had planned, my leading foot stopped that dead by hooking around the back of that ankle and pulling, forcing him to almost fall into a split as his front leg was suddenly much further forward than before and he lost his balance, arms jerking out of position in order to try compensating.

Planting my other palm on the ground mid-movement and twisting my midsection, I pushed off and turned my sweeping angular momentum into a full-body rotation, swinging my other leg up and over to slam my heel into his back, hitting him in the lower spine with the full force of my body in motion behind it.

With a small gasp escaping his mouth, Yuuto was sent tumbling to the ground while I used what was left of my momentum to roll into a kip-up and land back onto my feet to stand above him. He'd ended up letting his weapon fall to the side in favor of using his hands to catch his fall before he could face-plant into the dirt.

"Point goes to Uzumaki." Koneko's monotone voice called.

All-in-all, the "fight" lasted no more than five seconds.

"So," I said with a smug grin on my face as he pushed himself to his knees, and then his feet, "that's not exactly 'on your ass,' but I think I'm gonna count that as one out of three."

I basked in the looks I received from the two. Koneko's eyes rolled at my trash talk, while Yuuto's took on a calculating gleam as he re-assessed me, brushing off the grass stains and crouching to pick up his sword.

I just casually straightened out the jacket on my shoulders with a smirk, staring Yuuto down as if what I'd done was simple, barely worth mentioning.

It was not. I could only keep up that pace for a few minutes, max. If I tried to keep going past that, I'd start slowing down without having chakra to enhance me and need to take a break to recover, but it's not like he needed to know that.

Besides, I may be a "normal" human nowadays, but I'm still an Uzumaki, it's literally in my genetics to recover stamina faster. Fast enough to allow me to maintain my top-speed sprint for more than fifty times longer than normal, before the energy cost catches up.

I stepped back a bit and settled into a less aggressive, more reactive stance, watching as he brandished his blunted sword once more. A flicker of red on one of the upper floors caught my attention from the corner of my eye, but I forced myself to focus entirely on my opponent.

No distractions right now.

"Maybe you should take this a little more seriously," I said to the other blond, watching his eyes zero in on my different stance much less casually than before. "Step it up a notch, y'know? Show me what you can really do." I grinned slyly as he locked eyes with me again, understanding dawning in him. "Believe me…"

"I can take it."

Koneko

I restrained the urge to sigh in exasperation at the two boys in front of me.

In the Uzumaki's case, despite claiming to be a ninja, it almost felt like he didn't have a single subtle bone in his body. If it weren't for his silent movement skills and the display of misdirection he'd just shown, I would have assumed his peoples versions of "shinobi" and "ninja" had nothing to do with the modern meanings of the words. It wasn't really a big deal at all that he was quick to give away that he knew we weren't 'normal,' but it's the principle of the matter.

For Kiba, it was just because I all but outright told him not to underestimate his opponent, and he still ended up letting the shorter blond dictate the entire pace of that round.

'And look what it got him,' I thought with just a tiny hint of satisfaction, taking in the dirt smears staining his uniform.

I switched my gaze to Uzumaki, taking in his odd choice to keep his jacket on his shoulders despite changing into exercise clothes. With the way his legs and arms were exposed, it was easy to recall what he'd said to Mitsuri about his physique. Looking at his bare arms and calves showed that he wasn't some noodle-limbed scrawny kid, but it was clear to see that vanity wasn't something he cared about when building himself up, because none of his muscles noticeably bulged against his lightly tanned skin when he wasn't heavily tensing them.

Seeing as both of them seemed to be ready, I brought my hand back up. "Three. Two. One."

And down it went. "Faito."

This time, Kiba was the one who launched himself at his opponent, moving noticeably faster than Uzumaki did at the start of the previous round. He led with a diagonal downwards slash while he was still some distance away, making use of his longer reach advantage.

Just because he didn't rush forward, didn't mean the tattooed blond was sitting still though.

While Kiba was charging forward, Uzumaki shifted his stance to be more steady, digging his front foot in. When the slash came down at him, he pivoted ninety degrees on a dime with a backwards lean to dodge while planting his rear foot solidly in the dirt, just in time to kick himself forward and past Kiba's free side as the [Knight]'s followup slash chased him, preventing him from punishing the perceived opening.

Kiba, having planted his own front foot at the start of his attack, pushed off and reversed his momentum just as quickly, used the twisting motion of his midsection to grab the pommel of his sword with his free hand at the end of the swing, seamlessly lunging into a two-handed thrust.

Uzumaki maintained his momentum and kicked off the ground once more, propelling him out of range of the stab just before it would have caught him in the side.

As Uzumaki's feet slid to a stop through the grass, they both held their positions for a second to watch each other's movements, having more or less switched places. Kiba had a determined smirk on his face, while Uzumaki… well, he was grinning like a lunatic to be honest.

The moment passed, and this time they both charged each other, a flurry of rapid swings, feints, calculated dodges, and fists.

Even if he was still holding back for the sake of competition, it was clear that Kiba's speed was superior enough that Uzumaki was struggling to keep up when he had to rely on reacting to the rapid slashes and stabs. How he made up for it, just enough to not be completely outclassed, was by seemingly always being positioned in just the right way to either dodge out of range of follow ups before they even began, or take advantage of a sudden opening to force Kiba's own retreat or block.

This didn't mean that he was actually pressing Kiba of course.

The speed of a [Knight] meant that if he actually wanted to Kiba could outright run circles around the shorter combatant, but what it did mean is that the sheer experience and skill Uzumaki Naruto was showing in unarmed combat was enough to hold off a talented student of Okita Souji using a sword, operating at a low level of superhuman speed.

Kiba was definitely dictating the pace of the fight, but that didn't change the fact that Uzumaki was just better than the [Knight] touted as a rare talent.

The two fell into a pattern of engaging in a flurry of strikes and dodges before Uzumaki inevitably took advantage of an opening to escape with little more than glancing blows, his jacket sleeves flapping every time he dashed away.

This continued for some time, without any real hints of the pattern changing. I even had to summon a new plate of cookies from the kitchen when I finished the first.

At last, something new happened.

Uzumaki had managed to land a couple of light blows to Kiba's sides and one to his wrist by now, but on his last attempt to duck away, Kiba had managed to "take" the fingers from his right hand. With a swipe that was just a little bit too fast for him to fully escape, the sword made contact with his knuckles in a painful-sounding crack that had him wincing with a grimace.

He wouldn't be punching with that hand anymore for this round. Maybe even for the rest of the day, if the damage was as bad as it sounded.

My hidden ears twitched, picking up a sound other than the two boys having their violent fun.

"So I was right. I thought I saw something unusual from my window," Rias commented as she made her way over to me from the back door. "It's so rare to see Kiba-kun enjoying himself like this, so I felt it would be a nice chance to come and root for my [Knight] in person."

I wordlessly offered her a chocolate chip cookie as she took a seat in one of the chairs next to me, keeping my eyes on the spar. Uzumaki just barely managed to duck under another wide slash, and made to punish Kiba by going in with a left uppercut aimed at his stomach.

"Thanks," Rias accepted the baked treat with a smile that I could practically hear. "I appreciate it, Koneko-chan."

The punch didn't get a chance to connect. Kiba, having wizened up to that particular tactic of Uzumaki's, was perfectly prepared. One of his hands slipped down off of the handle of his sword to slap the fist to the side, this time leaving Uzumaki open for Kiba to lash out with a kick.

The whisker-marked teen seemed to be slowing down, I could hear him breathing harder from here.

Rias's hair rustled slightly as she turned her head towards the fight.

Uzumaki just barely managed to get his free palm between himself and Kiba's foot to try deflecting it, but all that did was prevent his breath from getting knocked out of him when the energy behind Kiba's kick forced his own hand to smack into his side. Unprepared to absorb the power behind such a sudden kick with his injured hand, Uzumaki stumbled back in a spin, his jacket flapping around and flaring up off his shoulder as it caught wind with the quick rotation.

The kick forced him into Kiba's preferred range with his back exposed, his school blazer haphazardly covering his head and upper body, right as the sword was coming around again. An almost unavoidable attack given the circumstances.

Or so it would seem from Kiba's perspective.

In a move that caught the [Knight] entirely by surprise, Uzumaki used the visual cover his jacket provided to follow through with his stumble and drop straight towards the ground. He timed it so perfectly that the moment Kiba's sword caught the edge of the flapping fabric, he bent forward while lifting his feet off the ground with his inertia, letting the momentum of the sword prevent the jacket from falling with him and taking away his visual cover.

The additional weight and wind resistance slowed the swing enough that Uzumaki's dead-weight drop brought him just under its path as it passed through where he had been a moment before.

Kiba himself stumbled forward when his attack met far less resistance than he was expecting, swinging clearly through where he believed the shorter blond's body had been and throwing him off balance. When he was met with empty air as his swing finished, the [Knight]'s eyebrows twisted in confusion. It only lasted for a split-second though, as he realized there was only one direction his opponent could have gone.

He turned his gaze down, just in time to see that he was too late

With the summersault-like motion Uzumaki had initiated to fall faster, his upper body was left lower to the ground than his lower body, so he only needed that split second in order to slam his palms on the ground and push.

His fall was abruptly turned into a lunging mule-kick that landed cleanly in Kiba's unguarded diaphragm with a dull whump, audibly knocking the air out of him as he staggered back with a wheeze, practically folded in half and clutching his stomach.

Recovering from the delivery of his counterattack, Uzumaki did another spinning maneuver that once again looked more like some sort of break-dancing move, resulting in him sweeping Kiba's feet out from under him. As Kiba fell back towards the ground, Uzumaki's spin brought him into a kneeling crouch beside the [Knight] with his left hand already swinging down.

With twin thumps that would have sounded like a singular one to someone with hearing worse than mine, Kiba's back hit the ground at the same time as Uzumaki's left fist buried itself into the dirt beside his head.

The backyard was silent for a couple seconds, save the sounds of Kiba's hacking coughs and Uzumaki sucking down gasping breaths, both trying to get their breathing under control.

"... Two-Nil." I belatedly called the round.

After more than ten minutes of high intensity sparring and constant motion, Uzumaki took another victory.

Yeah, okay. I'll admit it.

Uzumaki Naruto is definitely, one-hundred percent, ninja material.

Anyone can fight dirty, up-to-and-including throwing dirt in peoples faces at just the right time. You didn't have to train to do that, just not caring that you will be seen as a dishonorable fighter was enough.

It takes an entirely different type of thinking to take into account and make use of the clothing you casually wear for a fight-winning distraction.

"So, this is the boy you mentioned yesterday, huh?" Rias's intrigued question broke me out of my stupor.

"Mm." I nodded, watching as Uzumaki finally pushed himself up into a crouching stand, pulling his left hand out of the lawn with a light spray of dirt and grass. He reached his right hand down to offer Kiba some help getting up, who accepted it with a grateful nod.

"That was a really good fight, man! One of the longest ones I've had in a long time." Uzumaki laughed breathlessly with satisfaction after they were both standing, stuffing his dirty fist into his pocket. "You're pretty good with that thing, I was barely able to find any openings I could use," he complimented the older boy while flexing his right hand with a slight wince.

I couldn't help but find it weird that he didn't at least wipe off the dirt before he–

'Wait.'

My eyebrows rose a tiny bit as I replayed what I saw in my mind.

'Did he just…?'

"It's strange," Rias spoke with a tone of intrigue, "I can't figure out how much he costs."

I put my thought on the backburner for now and turned to look at my [King], watching her gaze on the sole non-devil here with interest. She was talking about his evil piece value, but I didn't understand what she meant.

"It seems I still have a long way to go," Kiba said with a chuckle. "If I'm what you'd consider 'pretty good,' then I'd love to meet someone you consider amazing with the blade. You are incredibly hard to pin down yourself, it's admittedly a little frustrating, if awe-inspiring. To think I believed my footwork was excellent."

"Heh, don't knock yourself," Uzumaki rebutted with a grin and a smack on the taller boy's shoulder, "You've got the skill part pretty much down, you just need more experience. I've been fighting precision-types like you for most of my life at this point."

Having hearing as good as mine wasn't always easy to deal with, there were downsides too; like right now. Being able to hear the boys just as clearly as I did Rias made it much more difficult to focus my attention in one direction. It could get a bit jarring to hear a completely different topic brought up, when there weren't enough voices at once to subconsciously sort into indistinct chatter. Ironically, the more sources of distractions there were, the easier it was to put my focus where I wanted it.

It was much easier to ignore the background noise and people's voices at school, for example.

Doing my best to tune the two boys out, I asked my [King] to clarify. "What do you mean? Don't you need to do the ritual to learn how many pieces it will take?"

It was fairly common for popular reincarnated devils in peerages that rank highly in the Rating Game to make their Evil Piece value public knowledge, usually as a form of bragging. On the one hand, needing multiple pieces to reincarnate was proof all on its own that they were a cut above the rest. On the other hand, getting so strong that you could defeat those "superior" devils with ease despite taking only a single Pawn… well, strength speaks for itself in Devil society.

As a result of this trend spreading in the competition culture, Devil-run media has made use of the nature of Evil Piece values, to build suspense in their shows when a character is about to join a peerage. If they show the character as having a high value, it's meant to show how badass they are, or in the opposite case, it's meant to show they are the underdog.

As far as I was aware, many of the producers creating these shows and using this trope are peerage [King]'s themselves, being the third and fourth sons and daughters of noble houses, making use of their families wealth to expand their families cultural influence in new ways. They wouldn't all have independently made up the uncertain nature of determining a candidate's value, so it had to be at least close enough to the truth.

"Hmm?" Rias paused and blinked. "Oh, right. I guess I've never had the need to explain this before, and it isn't exactly something that's important for every new devil to learn, so you probably didn't know. That's my bad," she said with an apologetic smile, turning in her chair to face me. "Here, let me explain."

"To start, let me be clear; a [King] cannot determine with certainty how many pieces reincarnating a new peerage member will cost them until they attempt to do so," Rias confirmed. "However, there are many things that go into how much value someone has, which can be accounted for even without the help of the Evil Piece System. Sacred Gears, natural talent, potential for growth," she listed, "things like that all increase a person's value according to the system, and being a [King] gives us the ability to tap into that and get an idea of the value the system assigns to that person just by focusing on them."

I tilted my head in confusion. It sounded to me like she was just contradicting herself. Do [King]'s know the value beforehand or not?

"The issue lies in the fact that said value is not the same as their Evil Piece cost," she continued. "Just as prospective peerage members have a value, so do us [King]'s, and both of these values are used to determine how many pieces are spent reincarnating someone. No one aside from Ajuka knows exactly how it's determined, and it's made more difficult by the fact that a [King] can't perceive their own assigned value, but it's pretty well known that someone worth all eight pawns to a regular High-class devil will take much fewer for someone like my brother to reincarnate."

I hummed at that and nodded. It made sense now, but it also made the whole piece-bragging trend seem really dumb.

Back to the reason for my question, though.

"Why isn't it working on him?" I asked her.

She turned her focus back to him. He and Kiba were talking about their training routines apparently, since Uzumaki was still recovering his stamina. Unsurprisingly, Uzumaki's was just barely on the 'human' side of 'inhuman' on the days that he felt like pushing himself, including endurance exercises that I knew for a fact would kill an un-enhanced human, just for his warmups.

At some point in the conversation, Kiba had switched from using '-san' to '-kun' for Uzumaki.

Rias frowned in thought the way she sometimes does when a move Sona makes in their chess games stumps her.

"Normally when I use the ability, I can perceive a person's defined value as an aura of varying brightness, except I don't actually see it with my eyes. The brighter and larger the aura, the higher the Evil Piece System values them. With him, though…" She placed a hand on her chin like she was trying to solve a puzzle. "With him, I keep getting mixed signals, and it seems like it changes every time I look away."

"Mixed signals?" I asked.

"Yeah," she nodded, her cerulean eyes fixated on the short blonde, "I can't really explain everything because according to Ajuka everyone processes the '[King]'s Sight' differently, but there are moments where it's like he has a small but bright light instead of an aura, moments where the aura is extremely dim and diffuse, barely there at all, and moments where I can't perceive anything at all. People's rating in the system can change, but that's something that only usually happens over long periods of self-improvement, or in more negative cases, giving up and slacking off. That-" She waved a hand vaguely in Uzumaki's direction at something only she could see, "-is not normal, not by any means."

I hummed while she brought a hand up to pinch her brow with a sigh of frustration.

Trying to think of why that might be the case didn't really help since it was completely outside of my experience, but something about calling his aura 'dim' and 'barely there' itched a part of my brain.

"... He mentioned a while ago that he once got injured so badly he almost died and still has internal injuries that didn't heal right. Could that affect it?"

Rias's hand lowered and she opened her mouth to answer, but then closed it, and furrowed her eyebrows in thought.

We both looked at where he was talking with Kiba, the conversation having moved on to opponents they've fought. Uzumaki looked to have almost recovered fully, talking animatedly about a ninja he'd fought who wielded a sword with a blade made entirely out of lightning.

I guess he's completely given up on pretending to be normal here. He probably assumed that I'd told them about him being a ninja. That, or he just got caught up in the excitement and forgot to hide it.

Either one was a possibility with him, I was coming to realize.

He'd probably be ready to start the next bout soon. After the showing he's given, it was a bit hard to believe he still had internal damage. He moved more easily and fluidly than literal acrobats.

"... Maybe?" She answered in an unsure tone. "It doesn't answer why his aura keeps changing, but it might explain why it dims and even… disappears."

Uh oh. I didn't like the sound of her hesitation at the end. Something about the way I reflexively looked at her must have given away my thoughts, because she elaborated a moment later.

"The only other time I've seen a person's aura begin to disappear, was when I reincarnated Kiba." She said in a low tone.

My mouth drooped into a slight frown at the implication.

She'd saved Kiba from the verge of death when she reincarnated him.

"... Something is seriously messed up with his body then." I already technically knew this, having been told by him directly on two separate occasions, but hearing it all but confirmed by the Evil Piece system itself made it even more worrying. Him saying it while walking around doing acrobatic flips and spins didn't exactly drive home the point he was making the same way a system with hundreds of years of reliability did.

Rias hummed in agreement. "Regardless, while it's a worrying implication for his overall health, it's likely that he's stable enough if he's already lasted as long as you implied. I can ask to have one of my family's healing specialists come and take a look at him at some point in the future if you want, and I wouldn't say no to reincarnating him if his situation takes a turn for the worst, but he should be fine for now."

She perked up. "Anyway, enough of this ominous topic. It looks like they're ready to start again."

True to her word, the two boys had separated once more and were taking their stances.

They looked over at us to referee again, and I lifted my arm obligingly.

"Three… Two… One…"

My arm fell, and they began anew.

ᓚᘏᗢ

Part 2 in a week or two.