Chapter 30: Accretion 5
Koneko
"Haaaahhhhh…" Hyoudou flopped down next to Asia on one of the couches, wearing gray boxers and a white t-shirt, his hair still damp from a recent shower. "Even after being healed, I somehow still feel sore in places I didn't know existed."
"Oh! I'm so sorry Issei-kun, did I not do a good enough job?!" The ex-nun apologized profusely, reaching out suddenly glowing hands to the [Pawn]. "Here, let me help!"
The girl was wearing a pink full-body pajama set, with fuzzy pants and a soft button up shirt.
"A-ah, sorry, there's no need!" The boy tried to calm her down in a panic. "I was exaggerating, you did great Asia-chan! I'm just tired, really!"
"He's right, Asia-chan," the voice of my [King] spoke up. "There's no need for you to doubt yourself. You do fantastic work, you shouldn't sell yourself short."
My head turned as Buchou walked in wearing nothing but a loose bathrobe, and sat on the other couch across from Hyoudou, right next to Kiba's legs.
He was lying lazily spread across the cushions, with one arm over his eyes and the other hanging over the edge towards the floor, dropping his usual knightly poise out of fatigue. He wasn't asleep though, just physically tired. [Twilight Healing] didn't recover stamina or fix exhaustion, so after a full day of sparring with me, he was out of gas. Meanwhile, with just half an hour of circulating my chakra, I was back to feeling mostly fine physically, even if running low on energy reserves.
Of course, Hyoudou's eyes were entirely focused on Buchou's cleavage the moment she walked into view, and when she sat down and crossed her legs without a care, he was in a perfect position to get a glimpse of "something".
"!" He miraculously held back the urge to start howling like a perverted monkey the way he usually does, but the lecherous grin and sudden loud and heavy breathing was a dead giveaway to what was going through his head. That, and his eyes being glued to her bare thighs.
Asia pouted from next to him, seeing where his attention went, and latched onto his arm to try and get it back.
I just sat back and watched as the entertainment began.
Despite my disgust, it was like watching a car crash. As long as it wasn't directed at me, I couldn't help but keep looking when the perv really got going, especially when people like Rias were involved and practically invited the outbursts.
I was broken out of my thoughts when two soft but heavy objects settled onto my head, pressing my ears flat. The layer of silk fabric between them did nothing to stop the warmth from radiating from the orbs
I tilted my head back slightly under the weight, looking up with a deadpan to see purple eyes, Akeno's upside down face staring back while holding in a giggle behind her mirthful smile. Her hands settled around my collarbone in a light hug from behind.
"I can't help but notice there's a seat free beside you," she noted. "Is Naruto-san not joining us?"
"Nn." I would have shaken my head, but the female perv was still pressing her chest on it to hover over me. That wouldn't have stopped me really, but the fact that she might take perverse pleasure from the motion did. "He's upstairs."
After dinner, while everyone else decided to hang out in the main lounge and relax before bed, Uzumaki-kun had gone straight to his room to do schoolwork.
"Phooey," Akeno pouted. "Oh well. I guess that means that spot's mine then. Now I have you all to myself~" her lips curled into a smile.
I waited for a few seconds, but she didn't move to take her seat.
I narrowed my eyes up at her amused smirk, my ears still being smothered by her giant udders. Decision made, I channeled my chakra.
And flung my upper body to the side with a twist.
The [Queen] let out a panicked yelp as she was pulled over the couch by her tits, unable to pull her hands free of me until I released my chakra mid-throw. She landed with a face full of couch cushion, butt sticking up in the air as she hung over the backrest like clothes left to dry. The deep-purple silk nightgown she wore slipped down to her shoulders while her upper body was upside down, revealing the smooth skin of her back, and the matching purple thong that disappeared between her round cheeks.
I smelled a hint of a metallic scent and glanced to the side, scrunching my nose. Unfortunately, the other perv in the room seemed to take it as his win as well.
Hyoudou's nose gushed with blood even as Akeno scrambled to right herself and smooth out her gown.
Even though Akeno was the target of his leer, I couldn't accept that.
"Please catch on fire and explode," I asked him nicely.
"Ooh, that was a good one Koneko-chan, ahaha!" He just laughed with blood dripping down his face as Asia fret over him, the weirdo.
When Akeno finally sat next to me with a twitching smile on her otherwise blank face, I knew I'd won.
She held herself back from teasing me for the rest of the night, so I considered it an excellent move.
(Next day; Day 2 of 13)
I was standing across from Kiba, the two of us a short distance from the other two blondes of the group, the [Knight] holding his flame sword at the ready.
After every day that we spent focused on sparring, sensei wanted us to spend another focused on either advancing our skills, or experimenting with our abilities. Right now, I was trying to experiment with ways to deal with fire, like trying to use my chakra as a sort of heat-redirecting shield above my skin to let me ignore flames for a little bit.
It wasn't going too well, but it wasn't all that terrible. My hands kept getting burned and my shield kept getting quickly overwhelmed even by Kiba's relatively weak flames, but it could just be a skill issue on my part.
'Maybe I should look up how heatsinks work…'
I filed the thought away for later on, after my next few attempts and subsequent burns.
That was actually why we were doing this near the nun; At first, Kiba and I didn't really think of the consequences of me letting a wave of fire hit me for training purposes, and so after my hands started hurting too much to continue, we left our original spot from yesterday to get them healed. Since we weren't going to be moving around or taking up a lot of space, we just decided to stay close to the other blonds afterwards.
In front of Asia was a large field of makeshift obstacles from random junk that was teleported in, poor footing in the form of upturned rocks and mud, and traps rigged up by Naruto-sensei. At one end, Asia stood, fidgeting slightly and covered in drying splashes of mud and paint. Throughout the field, there were swords made by Kiba left planted around randomly in the ground hilt-up, some with strips of cloth tied loosely around them. At the center, the resident ninja stood with a bucket of balloons by his feet and a fist full of thin and hard to see metal wires.
At the other end of the field sat Akeno-senpai, sitting on a picnic blanket next to a stack of study materials, while her attention was actually focused on a sheaf of dossiers on Riser's peerage that Rias had put together.
Asia's training, when she wasn't healing Hyoudou's muscles after his workouts or Kiba and I's injuries after a spar, was to run through an obstacle course of Naruto-sensei's making, collecting the all of the cloth strips in whatever order she could manage, before making it to Akeno if she could. All while trying to dodge the paint-filled water balloons he would throw, trip hazard wire traps he'd pull taut when she approached, and other projectile traps he controlled through the use of his wires.
If she could make it to the [Queen, while collecting all the strips without getting hit or falling, then she could take a break from physical training and begin lessons in some basic support magics.
Unlike my own attempts at training, hers didn't even have a silver lining, and wasn't going particularly well at all. In the past couple of hours, the most she'd managed to get before messing up was one strip of cloth. One out of ten, with that single strip being barely more than a dozen yards away from her starting place.
Yesterday, Naruto-sensei had her doing things like jump-rope, lateral hops, and other basic exercises to test her balance and coordination.
Clumsy, slow, and weak, were all terms that could be used to describe Asia physically. The most that could really be said about her physical ability is that her hands were steady and she had decent stamina, which could be attributed to her almost ascetic lifestyle as a holy maiden, walking around and healing strangers. Because of She didn't have an actual base to work from, he figured it would be better to start from scratch, having her learn how to move through live tests instead of repetitive and predictable exercises.
He said something about how experience is the best teacher, but I was a bit skeptical. I remember him telling me his master threw him into a ravine with no warning, so I'm pretty sure his view on teaching things other than chakra control or fighting technique was a bit skewed.
Asia did her best, but…
'As expected from the nun. Her strengths are her kindness and dedication, not her body.'
All the dedication in the world wouldn't make someone immune to becoming discouraged from repeated failures though, especially when they weren't seeing any visible improvement.
With the repeated failures and lack of progress, Asia's posture was beginning to slump in dejection.
If I noticed it from my periodic glances at her, then I had no doubt sensei had too.
Suddenly, Hyoudou came around the corner of the property, huffing and puffing.
Naruto-sensei glanced over. "Come on, you got this man!" He shouted out encouragement at Hyoudou. "Just three more laps, then you can take a break!" The brown haired teen passed by while looking like he might keel over any second now.
Asia perked up, standing straighter at the sight of him.
The [Pawn] was currently running laps around the mansion while weighed down to train his body's endurance under strain, in order to handle using the [Boosted Gear] for longer at a time. As a Devil, just running laps around a property at bodyweight would take way too long to get any actual benefit from. Even brand-new devils who were unathletic and out of shape before being reincarnated, tended to start out with physical ability nearing the level of professional athletes.
There were outliers like Asia who only got a very minor boost, but that usually was only the case with [Bishop]s like her anyway.
Instead of using bodyweight, Hyoudou was dragging a refrigerator along behind him in the grass. With a rope crudely tied around his waist connecting him to the big boxy object, it was just enough weight to make him work to pull it, but not enough that his endurance exercise became a strength exercise.
"Fuh… Fuck– hah, you– hah, man!" He wheezed out in complaint. He didn't stop though, and actually seemed to push himself to move even faster, nearing the pace of a brisk jog. I would have been impressed by his resolve and dedication, if I wasn't already aware of the source of it.
"Issei-kun…" I heard the nun mumble.
"Just… watch! I'm, guh– gunna… get strong enough… to touch… Buchou's oppai! Uwooohhhh!" His arms pumped faster as he got his second wind, speeding away in a sprint and out of sight again as he turned a corner. Like an 18-wheeler taking too sharp of a turn, the side of the fridge smacked into the building with a bang and a wobble before disappearing as well, a path of crushed grass left in its trail.
Naruto-sensei laughed, and while my initial gut reaction was disgust at the open perversion, I couldn't even fully blame the teen boy. After all, in order to better motivate him, Rias promised to let him grope her chest if we win the rating game, under the condition that he manages to take out thirteen points worth of Risers peerage.
An absurd amount for someone as new to the supernatural world as him, but frankly, he was an absurd person in his own way, even without the [Boosted Gear]. He was almost scarily single-mindedly focused when boobs were on the line.
Personally, I felt like Buchou was playing with fire, promising something like that to a person like him, but it was her body in the end.
Naruto-sensei turned his head back to Asia as the pervert left our sight.
"You good to go again?" He asked with a grin.
"Issei-kun is giving it his all, so I will too!" She exclaimed with a small little fist pump, her motivation restored. Her follow up whisper didn't miss my ears either. "I won't fall behind Rias-sama!"
"Then start again whenever you're ready, I'm all set," he called out.
"Right!"
She ran forward again, quickly stepping around patches of slick mud and dodging a very heavily telegraphed paint balloon, her eyes darting around in random directions to look out for traps. She reached her first strip again, hurrying to grab it while she tried to decide on which cloth to go for next. The moment she chose, she took three steps, only to forget about the wire she'd tripped on two attempts ago, strung between a downed tree log and a wooden crate.
"Waahh-mph!"
She face-planted in the grass.
Asia pushed herself back up with a muttered "owwie", and made her way back towards the edge of the field after replacing the cloth.
I turned away, looking back to Kiba for my own training. He turned his own head, a small smile on his face from watching Asia keep trying.
"Are you ready?" He questioned lightly, adjusting his posture.
I stared at the tongues of fire coming off the demonic flame sword in his hand, thinking back to my failed attempts at making a viable heat shield. "One moment," I said, tilting my head.
The thing I'd learned about using magic to make a barrier that can totally block heat and fire, is that it can be broken if enough fire is thrown at it, which would be easy enough for a Phenex. Shields holding up to attacks is almost always a matter of power versus toughness, and there's always a limit to how tough you can make a shield when its caster is weaker than their opponent.
That being the case, the best way to handle attacks from stronger opponents isn't blocking, but redirecting.
The issue I was having, is that my attempts to redirect the heat and flames from Kiba's swords were falling apart too quickly. Too much heat, too much fire for me to redirect at once with my methods. Like an outdated game console not having the specs to run a new-gen game, or a Devitube video pausing to buffer over and over because of low internet bandwidth.
I needed to either figure out a faster, more efficient way to redirect the heat, find a way to make myself more resistant outright, or somehow make it so the fire itself can't hurt me.
The first option, I could leave for another day, after I take some time to look up how people do the same thing with technology to give me ideas. That left me with the second and third options for today.
Having more chakra doesn't automatically make someone stronger or more durable as a passive effect really, that's something you have to actually manipulate your chakra to do, even if all it takes is to circulate the energy around your body. I was actually pretty good at doing this, but reinforcing my muscles to be stronger and better at absorbing strikes didn't magically make a blade not cut me or a fire not burn me, chakra didn't work like that even if my [Rook] piece did. I would have to experiment with my chakra's properties to make it more fire-resistant, just like–
I blinked as an idea struck me.
I walked closer to Kiba, and he unbent his knees, relaxing from his stance with a quirk of his eyebrow.
"I need a steady flame, please."
He looked curious, but complied with my request, holding out his blade horizontally and letting it emit a soft glow similar to a candle flame, but stretched all along the edge.
I needed to experiment with my chakra's properties, just like I did when first connecting to sensei to perceive his network. Now, I didn't even need to mix my chakra with that life energy to see it, even if I still did so. I'd gotten good enough at it that I could do it on my own if I wanted, like the difference between pushing a door open manually instead of pushing a button to open it automatically.
I held out my hand, coating it in a thick layer of flowing chakra as I brought my palm closer to the flame. I got as close as I could before the heat began getting uncomfortable, just inches away.
Naruto-sensei had told me about a bunch of different types of elemental Ninjutsu, how shinobi use their chakra to not just create techniques, but also control and manipulate existing elements directly, by using a concept called "nature transformation". By matching the nature of the element, they could gain much greater control of it than would be possible with just hand seals.
Fire was just energy being released as heat and light. How hard could it really be to connect to, compared to that absurd power pulsing from Sensei's core?
Maybe I was thinking about this the wrong way and was about to burn my hands over and over for nothing, but it was worth trying.
I plunged my hand into the fire.
…
…
'…Ow.'
(Saturday night, May 5th; Day 4 of 13)
The soft tapping of a keyboard and the steady thrumming of a laptop's fan filled the dimly lit bedroom. With the sun having set already and the main light being too bright for this time of night, the only light turned on in the room was the bedside lamp. The background noise of the computer at work was oddly soothing in a way, and if I wasn't currently fully focused on my meditation, I probably would have been tempted to just tilt over right here and now to fall asleep. Never mind the fact that it wasn't my room.
Instead, I continued sitting in my cross-legged position on the bed, leaning against my headrest while staying mentally engaged.
After three nights of him secluding himself after dinner to do schoolwork, I'd decided enough was enough and forced my presence on him. At first he tried to wave me off, saying I should hang out with the others since he was going to be boring, but after a 'long' and 'difficult' argument (he folded instantly when I said please), I had my way.
The time before bed after a busy day of work was best used for something enjoyable or relaxing, not more work. And if you had to use it for work, it was best to have company to take the edge off. Pets only sort-of counted, since they made terrible conversation partners.
I absently stroked the silky smooth, black-furred cat in my lap.
Breathe in.
Flow like a river, constantly in motion. Get pushed back with the force of an ocean wave. Don't resist, move along with it.
'Go with the flow.'
Breathe out.
The wave retreats, energy spent. Follow it, feel the way it moves. Don't try to move as one, move together instead.
One compliments the other, each existing in harmony.
'Push and pull.'
Repeat.
A sudden groan sounded out, and the key-tapping stopped.
I lost sync with my own breaths, but it wasn't really an issue. I didn't actually need that crutch anymore anywa–
"Ahhh, man!" My ears flinched. "Why does history homework have to be so damn boring!" My headrest whined, his back flexing against my shoulders as he aggressively ruffled his own hair. I felt the steady, rhythmic pulsing of his heartbeat sped up slightly to match his sudden burst of motion.
My eyebrow twitched against my will. The idiot was lucky that his outburst hadn't messed me up, with my chakra still running through his body the way it was.
Something about being up here in the mountain forests made it a lot easier for me to mix my chakra with Kurama's– or at least, the energy I think belongs to Kurama– so even when I was startled, I didn't lose my connection. Hell, it might even just be because we're out of Kuoh.
There's probably a lot more natural energy out here for the fox to actively suck up again, making it easier for mine to get drawn in too.
"It's your own fault, idiot," I grumbled, shifting in my seat to get comfortable again. "Rias offered to get you a full exemption from schoolwork. You're the one who turned her down."
We were sitting back-to-back on his bed, hanging out for a bit with our after-dinner free time. Uzumaki-kun was using the time to complete some schoolwork on the Academy's online portal, while I was taking the opportunity to continue working on my goal of healing him.
It was slow going still, but with the way Devil healing worked, I needed to understand everything I could about his body, immersing myself in its inner workings.
I felt the telltale signs of blood rushing to my face when certain thoughts about a certain area intruded in my head unwelcomed, and forced the mental images down with a vengeance.
It didn't do anything to stop my cheeks from feeling warm, but fortunately, no one else was in the room to see my weird reaction. Full-body scanning, by its nature, scanned the full body.
I absently scratched Kuro behind the ears.
'Puberty sucks…'
"I know that!" He groaned back. "And I still stand by my decision, but come on! History sucks! I know it's important and all that, but would it kill them to make learning it less boring? I've read the same paragraph like three times in a row now without realizing it, because it's all just blurring together in my head…" He ended his rant and slumped.
I silently sighed and began the process of unraveling my chakra from probably-Kurama's. Even as streams of the bluish-white energy pulled away to return to me, the potent red energy didn't seem to want to let me go, wisps of the energy refusing to separate and instead mixing in further, tinting my chakra a light purple.
None of this was actually visible of course, instead just being the colors I mentally associate with the energy in question based off of feeling alone.
As I finished reabsorbing all of my chakra and then some, feeling an extra-comfortable warmth in my chest, I opened my eyes. A pair of eyes similar to my own were staring up at me. The cat blinked languidly when I made eye contact.
"If you aren't making progress anymore, then let's do something else." I stopped my petting of Kuro, lifting her out of my lap and setting her to the side, getting a lazy meow out of the former-stray. I twisted around until I was kneeling beside my friend, glancing between the screen on his lap and his mentally drained face. "It's okay to take a break, dufus."
He glared half-heartedly my way. "Who're you calling a dufus?! I pay more attention in class than you do!" With the way his eyes squinted, he just ended up looking like a fox trying to pout. "And besides, I made a promise to myself to take my education seriously. I don't break my promises, ya'know?" His fingers settled back onto the keyboard as he turned back to the screen, but
I wanted to roll my eyes, but then I thought back to the day of my first Ninshu lesson. When admitting his crush and talking about his soul damage, he'd mentioned having trouble reigning in his habits and keeping his tendencies in check, or something to that effect. I could have scoffed just now, and pointed out that even without paying as much attention, the only class I was behind him on was Biology.
But saying that first might diminish what I actually want to say if he took it as a challenge, a sign he needed to work harder.
"You have more than a week left." I instead tugged on his sleeve as I spoke to get his attention. When he turned his head again to look at me, my other hand pulled the laptop screen down until it touched his fingers. "Making a promise doesn't mean you can't do other things too. Take a break."
He glanced back down at his mostly-closed laptop with annoyed consternation. "But I-"
"Stop obsessing over it, idiot!" I cut him off with a bit more heat in my voice than I intended when he kept being obstinate, and took the option out of his hands– literally pulling the device out of his lap and away from his hands. He didn't protest, an expression of grudging realization on his face, even if he was still annoyed. I took a breath through my nose and let it go, reminding myself that I was trying to help him relax, not start a confrontation or stage an intervention. "Let's just watch a movie or something."
He took in a deep breath of his own and held it for a few seconds, before releasing it slowly.
"Yeah," he said slowly, nodding once. "Yeah, you're right."
He let himself fall back onto the covers beside me with a whumpf, turning his head slowly in a sudden bout of laziness to glance up at me. "So, what did you have in mind, shorty?"
Kuro jumped onto his stomach while he wasn't paying attention, causing him to let out a quiet 'oof'. I locked eyes with the feline.
"Good Kuro," I praised her with a small nod, getting a small nya in return, before she started licking her paw.
"I'm being bullied here," the jinchuuriki (ex-jinchuuriki?) muttered, lifting his head to pout at her even as he began stroking her fur. "I give you food, shelter, and affection, and you betray me just because she's also a cat." Kuro didn't acknowledge him, just kept grooming herself. "Behavior like this reminds me why I was never a cat guy before."
"Youkai, not a cat," I said, lightly thumping his shoulder for comparing me to a domesticated pet. "We're completely unrelated."
Kuro sneezed mid lick.
"Coulda fooled me," Uzumaki-kun deadpanned, but I saw the way his lips struggled not to curl into a grin.
I dropped the argument, hiding a small smile of my own as the moment of tension passed, and went back to his question.
"Most of the others are in their rooms now," I noted, recalling the sounds of the various doors in this wing opening and closing. "Let's find something to watch on the big screen downstairs. The bed's more comfortable, but I'm still hungry."
"Alright, you glutton," he agreed with a teasing grin as he sat up, cradling Kuro in one arm. "I still don't really get where it all disappears to, because it's definitely not helping you grow any bigger."
My eyes narrowed and my lips curved downward into an annoyed frown. I knew him well enough by now to know that he wasn't just teasing me about my height, even if he wanted me to think that was his only implication.
"Although," he continued in a more contemplative tone, oblivious to my imminent wrath. "It's not like that's a terrible thing. You're already really cute just the way you are, ya'know?"
I said nothing.
Unleashing my wrath right now could just end up drawing his attention to my burning cheeks, and he might think I had a fever or something equally stupid like that.
I stood up and quietly made my way towards the door ahead of him, suddenly feeling self-conscious about being in his room in a nightgown
'...Idiot.'
I wasn't entirely sure if the thought was directed more at him, or myself.
(Friday, May 4th; Day 5 of 13)
I leaned back with a twist, before lurching forward after the blade passed inches from my cheek to throw a punch, but Kiba was already gone. I let my upper body tilt forward to pull my rear leg up in a kick, right as the quiet sound of grass creasing underfoot stopped behind me.
Chakra surging through the limb, my heel crashed into his sword with a metallic crack as my foot rose behind me, snapping his weapon in half mid-swing where my chest would have been. I swung with my kick into a standing split, twisting around and pivoting on the ball of my grounded foot to face kiba, and dropped my heel back down in an axe kick as one smooth motion.
He managed to pull back in time to not get hit as he created a new, european-styled sword in his main hand, the other arm held behind his lower back in a dueling posture. I didn't recognize the weapon, and it didn't have any obvious supernatural features giving away what it's gimmick was- just a plain, mundane looking sabre- so I had to make sure to keep an eye out for it. When my heel slammed into the dirt, it cratered the ground in a ring around us, causing him to stumble in his retreat. My enhanced eyes and reflexes saw through the spray of dirt and caught the way his foot landed awkwardly, and I lunged forward low to the ground in an instant to take advantage.
His forgotten hand revealed itself, only getting my attention at the last second, and causing my eyes to widen in surprise as he pulled a sword I hadn't noticed him make from behind his back. The shape of a fencing sword rose up to point at me. Its hilt was faintly glowing a soft white, and the thin, needle-like blade that was so pitch black, I could only tell where it ended because of the absence of light in its place, my depth perception failing me.
'!'
I tried moving as fast as I could, taking advantage of my reflexes to throw myself to the side or something, but my own kick had loosened the soil too much. I wasn't fast enough to mold the chakra needed to both solidify the foothold and attach myself for leverage, while also using the leverage to then kick off of it. The best I managed was twisting my torso so that the point was aimed at my shoulder instead of my chest.
The hilt glowed a crackling, electric white out of nowhere, and suddenly there was a line of darkness piercing through my left shoulder.
I stood frozen for a moment. There was no blood, and while I felt the blade passing through me, there wasn't any pain either, just a sense of numbing cold and stiffness that spread outwardly from the weapon. I belatedly realized I couldn't move my left arm, and quickly shook off my shock to try throwing a palm strike to shatter the completely new sword.
Keyword being "try", because the moment my right arm moved, it immediately stopped in place, and that same paralyzing, stiffening numbness spread to my neck and upper chest, the vantablack sword tip piercing out from the front of my collar bone. I couldn't actively move a muscle below the chin, not even my legs, though I noticed my breathing continued automatically.
Kiba straightened up and dismissed the sword, and its effects disappeared instantly, giving me back control of my body. I quickly checked my shoulder and brought a hand to my chest, flexing my wrists and fingers and brushing against the smooth, undamaged skin under my shirt, seeing and feeling no signs of any wound or damaged clothing.
I stared at his too-polite-to-be-smug smirk, slightly unnerved.
"...How?" I didn't understand what just happened. What the sword even actually did, how he got me from behind while standing right in front of me, how it left no wounds, none of it. It wasn't a matter of my muscles being locked in place somehow, not something I could struggle against. I tried to move, and my body simply didn't respond.
The only thing I understood was that the mundane looking sword was just bait, a feint, using its plainness to draw my suspicion to the wrong arm.
"My newest sword, tentatively named [Impulse Stealer, is a blade of darkness that redirects light and heat that touches it, and electrical signals in its vicinity. Its primary function is to 'steal' any active electrical impulses sent from the brain to the rest of the body that enter its area of effect, so if I can pierce an opponent's spine, I can temporarily paralyze them," He explained with a hint of pride, before wincing.
He held up the hand that had held the weapon, and I saw that it seemed to be twitching somewhat erratically. "Whatever I redirect has to go somewhere, so it's all released from the hilt in a concentrated form, which can have some drawbacks for me." He chuckled sheepishly. "Also, since it's not made of a physical material, it can't actually harm anyone directly or be used to exchange blows or blocks. It can also be overloaded or disrupted fairly easily because of its immaterial nature, but on the flipside, I'm also able to freely extend and bend the blade itself however I wish with enough concentration and energy, as you experienced at the end there when it got you from behind."
I just stared at him.
"...Your Sacred Gear is bullshit."
He laughed. "You can blame Uzumaki-kun for this one. I was picking his brain yesterday for ideas for capturing opponents, and he mentioned how one of his best friends was from a clan that used their shadows to bind and paralyze people. Impulse Stealer is only useful if the opponent doesn't know about it really, and is just a pale imitation of the techniques he described to me."
'That's right,' I thought in realization, 'he's talking about that Shikamaru guy.'
When Uzumaki-kun mentioned those immortals on the first day, I had asked for more details about the encounters that night while dinner was being prepped, and he'd told me a bunch about the smartest person he knew; a perpetually lazy teen with hair like a pineapple, who happened to be one of his oldest friends, and the person who planned the death of a murderer who couldn't die.
That the boy was one of just a small handful of people Uzumaki-kun could call a friend as a kid, more than anything else he's done, is what made me interested in maybe meeting him one day.
"In the end, you could have broken free if you had another couple moments to try, and now that you know it exists, it's basically useless as anything other than a momentary distraction." Kiba shrugged. "It's still just a gimmick and a work in progress."
"A gimmick that got me," I pointed out. "Only need a moment to win a fight."
"True enough, I suppose," he acknowledged the point with a smile and a small dip of his head. "It may not win the fight on its own, but if it ends up helping us even a little bit, then it was worth the effort."
I nodded.
It was the whole reason we were all here training, after all.
Chapter 31: Multi-Interlude 3
Kuoh Town
(Monday, May 7th)
Bikou took a moment to take in the atmosphere of the town's forest at night as he rode into range on his golden cloud. After a few weeks of bouncing around the Tokyo prefecture, not just hitting the arcades, but also hitting up some of the more exclusive gathering spots for youkai, he was finally mentally prepared– both in motivation, and in context gained from chatting with other practitioners– to dig into the Kuoh mystery.
Was he hoping that he'd wasted enough time for Kuroka to solve it herself, so that he could take credit for the investigation when he finally contacted the Hero faction, all without having to get involved with that ominous shit?
Absolutely, one hundred percent.
But that didn't mean he couldn't at least pretend to be putting in some amount of effort by talking to other practitioners about it. [Dimension Lost] could be a damn sneaky Sacred Gear, so better to be safe than less-safe.
'Never know when Georg could be checking in, after all,'the newest Monkey King thought to himself.
Bikou shook away the thought, bringing his focus back to the matter at hand. While his nimbus flew steadily and sedately without his input, he sat cross-legged on top of the cloud and paid close attention to his senses, preparing himself for the moment his range crossed the border of the void-like effect. Soon, he felt the edge of the town beginning to appear, the life forces of those who lived on the edge of society flickering into his mind's eye in rapidly increasing numbers, shining against the steadily dimming background aura of the world itself.
He mentally braced himself for the shock, knowing he was just moments away from reaching that void he'd observed weeks ago–
"..."
Seconds passed as he travelled in the relative quiet of the wind, the sounds of the town's active nightlife gradually reaching his ears.
Bikou opened his eyes reflexively to blink in confusion.
"The hell…?" The monkey Youkai questioned under his breath.
He double checked his memory as he physically neared the town proper, making sure he was approaching from the same direction and angle as he had the first time, just to make sure.
"This energy…" He muttered. "It's… normal?"
Contrary to his words, the natural energy of the town was far below a level that would be considered natural for the area, to the point that even some deserts had more. What he really meant was that everywhere he sensed, there was some amount of ambient energy instead of a giant void, even if that amount was too small in too large an area for most practitioners to even notice. Instead of an instant cutoff point where any wisps that crossed rapidly disappeared into the emptiness, there was a gradual flow of energy from the town's surrounding wilderness that had crept in where there was nothing at all a month ago, slowly beginning to refill the area.
Nearing the center of the town so he could spread his range to cover everything, something else caught his attention. Multiple somethings, actually.
For one, Bikou couldn't find Kuroka anywhere. That on its own didn't really mean anything though, because of all the youkai he knew, she was the best at hiding her aura. Second only to that old monster she was familiar with, who he'd only met once, Nurarihyon.
What made it odd was that she hadn't contacted him yet even though the situation in town had changed. There was no way she wouldn't have felt his presence by now, but there was still no sign of her making a move at all, not even to get him up to speed.
It wasn't completely weird, she could just be playing a prank on him as payback for skipping town and leaving all the work to her…
'Yeaahh…' he thought sheepishly, 'that's probably it. Deserved, I guess.'
He made note of the aura of an unfamiliar sage in town hanging around near a group of Devils, but decided to ignore it for the moment. It had the uniquely phantasmal presence that all Youkai had to some degree, without the intrusion of Devilhood like Kuroka's, so it was probably just whichever senjutsu user the Kyoto youkai faction had sent. Their aura was weird though, being more hazy than usual and covering a larger area than expected for its mid-tier power, but he put it out of his mind.
He'd seen weirder.
With one "mystery" solved and another set aside for later, the young man shifted his attention to the cardinal East and North of town, where two similar feeling groups of humans had gathered. While he could stretch his sensory range to similar levels as Kuroka, unlike her, he couldn't pick up on the more detailed things without focusing on a specific area inside of it, causing everything else but the absolute basics to fall out of his awareness.
The northern group seemed to have more people, so he focused on them first. Taking a closer look, their auras showed signs similar to that of mundane construction crews on a job site. The only thing that marked that as strange was the fact that they almost universally had more refined and controlled life-forces than the average human.
Putting that on the back burner for a moment, he switched to the eastern group. Compared to the close to a hundred people to the north, this group only had six in total. What made it notable was the fact that all of these members seemed to be magical outliers. While the larger group had levels of power and control that marked them as supernatural but fodder-tier, these six, while not particularly close to his level by any means, were well above average for human mages. They were currently standing in a five-pointed circle, channeling that power to use in some form of ritual he couldn't decipher with just their aura's to go off of.
'Well, that at least explains a little bit,' he mused, absently digging a pinky into his ear to scratch an itch. 'Seems some magical cabal is setting up shop in the area. Probably for the same thing I'm investigating if I had to guess.'
Bikou internally debated heading over and confronting them with a trade offer directly. Their knowledge, for his… he wasn't sure yet, but Bikou was confident he could scrounge up something a bunch of human mages would find valuable. "I'd bet good money they could tell me what I need to know…" he muttered under his breath.
"I would take that bet of yours, fellow Daoist."
Bikou's head jerked to the side, eyes snapping open in surprise to take in the appearance of the smooth voice's owner.
With calm eyes of bright crimson, silky-straight black hair tied up in a high ponytail, and sharply aristocratic facial features framed by a pair of bangs, the figure hovering many meters away to his side was draped in flowing white and emerald robes with heavy gold accents. He looked relatively young, maybe just a little older than Bikou himself, but with the supernatural, you could never really tell based on looks.
The man slid a hand out from where it rested within his billowing sleeves, raising it up to show a golden coin with a square hole punched out of the center, held carelessly between the tips of his index and middle fingers.
"Would a thousand taels suffice?" The man spoke softly, but with an expectation of being heard despite the distance and altitude they were at. While the legend of the six-eared macaque skewed popular belief, most monkey youkai didn't particularly benefit from any enhanced hearing. Monkey ears were pretty similar to human ears after all. That being the case, he shouldn't have been able to hear the man over the sound of the winds this high up without at least reinforcing his senses first.
There was just one problem with that.
Bikou wasn't hearing or feeling any wind right now, none at all, which would normally be impossible this high.
"'Fellow Daoist', eh?" Bikou glanced down at the man's feet, ignoring the offer of a frankly ludicrous amount of money. He was flat broke, while he didn't know the exchange rate for gold, he had a feeling a thousand taels-worth was a significant amount, to put it lightly.
He was almost disappointed to see that the man wasn't standing on a flying sword. He'd always been curious to see how that worked, as a fellow flying-item rider. "What's a cultivator like you doing in a backwater town like this, so far from the mainland?" He asked with a curious smirk instead, turning his cloud to face the newcomer while shifting to rest his staff on his shoulder.
Left unasked was the question of if the man was even actually here, or just some sort of projection bullshit. Bikou couldn't sense him at all.
The cultivator slipped the hand back into his sleeves and walked closer, his traditional chinese boots lightly stepping across the air as if it were a solid platform. Bikou's eyebrow twitched.
'Tch,' he grumbled internally. 'The nimbus is great, but why the hell is this guy able to fly on his own power while I can't?!' He conveniently ignored the fact that he spent most of his time training his existing combat skills, instead of trying to study the mechanics behind flight spells to create one of his own. It wasn't exactly like he could just go down to the library and check out a book on the secrets of flying.
"Tell me, what is it you wish to learn from those human sorcerers you were observing?" The man ignored his question and asked one of his own as he approached, eyes staring past him towards the east.
"Haahhh…" Bikou sighed in annoyance, "I'm on a pretty troublesome job right now. Got hired to look into the town's ambient energy situation. Way I figure it, a buncha mages settin' up shop in the area oughta know at least a little bit about what's going on, so I might as well pick their brains for answers," he explained, not really caring about operational security. He was hired to find shit out, not keep a secret.
Just the thought of all the investigative work still in his future was already boring him though. He just wanted to have a good time fighting, dammit! Where was Kuroka to do his work for him when he needed it?!
"Hmph." The cultivator walked past him, stopping a couple meters away with his back facing the youkai as he continued looking down in the direction of the sorcerers, miles away. "The Five Principle Clans, families clinging to the glories of their past triumphs. They have eyes, but fail to recognize Mount Tai." The unnamed cultivator turned his head just enough to glance back at Bikou with a single crimson orb. "They will not have the answers you seek, for your observations already surpass their own in their hubris." The man looked away once more, turning his back fully on Bikou with a dismissive tone. "Toads, lusting after the meat of swans."
"... What?" Bikou asked with an eyebrow raised in confusion at the use of the phrase. "What's any of that got to do with it? I ain't got a clue what's going on in the town, so they'd have to be complete idiots to know less than me. And in my experience, human sorcerers hate stupidity more than almost anything."
A new, feminine voice spoke up. "What my brother means-" A woman with long hair blacker than the night sky stepped into profile view from the other side of the cultivator, as if she'd been there the whole time just out of Bikou's sight. Her head was slightly bowed and her eyes serenely closed, her black robe and blue hakama contrasting against her deathly pale skin in a reversal of the standard shrine-maiden colors. "-is that despite the intentions of the new Himejima clan head and the voices that support her, there are those within the clans that silently rebel, insisting that the strength of their traditions will prevail over progress and change."
The dark miko opened her eyes, head turning towards the Monkey King so that twin orbs of familiar crimson could pin him under her icy gaze.
"In other words, their hubris is in the very act of actingwithout sufficient knowledge, blinded by the successes of their honored ancestors that they wish to replicate for themselves," the woman with black-painted lips finished.
"Good to know," Bikou deadpanned, unfazed after the initial surprise had worn off. He vaguely recognized the woman after taking a closer look. One of her posts had recently appeared on his social media feed, after all. It might have surprised his comrades if they ever found out he had one, but it wasn't like it was anything more than a burner account he used to lurk anyway.
He may be a battle junkie who didn't have the time or interest to pursue a relationship, but he was still a hot-blooded male! Hot women posting attractive pictures of themselves online was a cultural phenomenon he was absolutely down for.
"That being said," he drawled, keeping his thoughts to himself and staying vigilante. After all, having a mundane hobby didn't say jack shit about how powerful someone was. "I don't suppose either of you would be willing to enlighten a stranger like little ol' me?"
From what he remembered from his scrolling, she had full-scale black-feathered wings. There weren't a whole lot of species that had those as a default feature, so she was most likely a Tengu based on her shrine maiden outfit, or some sort of dark or fallen angel who happened to like the clothing style. Given the fact that they seemed to be able to suppress the wind in the area around them, he couldn't sense either of them, and they were almost definitely related based on her words, Bikou was leaning towards them both being Tengus, and sages themselves.
Something occurred to him at that moment, and he focused his senses towards the aura he'd overlooked earlier.
Just as he thought might be the case, it was gone. It must have disappeared at some point during the time he wasn't paying attention to it.
Like, for example, the moment these two appeared before him. Hypothetically speaking, of course.
He was just a tiny bit annoyed at past-him for dismissing it so quickly.
"Have you not realized it yet, fellow Daoist?" The possibly-fake cultivator questioned without looking back, waving a single upturned-palm to the side in a wide sweeping gesture. "The qi remains weak, yet the land continues to recover even so. It is almost as if the source of the disruption has resolved itself, or perhaps…" The man paused, as if to contemplate the possibilities. "... moved on?"
Despite the questioning tone, it was clear to the monkey what the man was implying.
The sister picked up where her brother left off.
"Tread with caution on your journey to the west, traveler," she warned with half-lidded eyes, much to Bikou's rising dismay.
Pitch black crows wings burst out of the brothers back, large enough to engulf the siblings entirely, hiding the pair completely from Bikou's view. A moment later, the appendages slowly retreated back to the point they seemingly emerged from before disappearing, leaving the sky empty aside from a monkey youkai and a whisper on the wind.
"... for the knowledge you seek moves in hand with hunger."
"..."
Bikou stared at the empty space in front of him contemplating his choices.
'Did I just get an ominous-sounding quest from a goth social-media influencer?' He wondered incredulously before sighing in defeat and directing his cloud to fly vaguely westward.
"This. This is why I always stick to fighting stuff," he complained to nobody, just venting his annoyance. "What the fuck is even going on anymore? I just wanted to get into a couple of good scraps, is that too much to ask for?"
'Maybe this is why Kuroka didn't seem to be in town,' he rationalized with a hopeful grin beginning to form. 'She's probably already on the trail of whatever this thing is. With any luck, we'll get into contact soon, and then I can finally get my shot at those Heroes! Geheheh!'
Bikou would never know just how accurate that thought was, as at that exact moment in time Kuroka was taking a nap in the bedroom of the unknowing subject of his search.
Sitri Group Home
(Same time)
Unlike the Gremory peerage's mansion, the Sitri peerage shared a much more modest and homely building as their alternate headquarters to the Student Council room. Large enough to provide accommodations to a full peerages-worth of people, and expensive enough that only the wealthy or a group pooling money could reasonably afford it, yes, but still not at the level of a full-blown mansion.
Sona valued discipline and restraint to a much greater degree than Rias did, and as such, preferred a more modest home for herself and her peerage when in the human realm, to help keep herself and her peerage from becoming too detached from everyday reality and lax in their duties to their subjects in the town. That being the case, the Sitri home didn't contain a great many rooms for group gatherings, limiting itself to three living rooms, a game room, and a home theatre room to accommodate potentially up to 16 people on a daily basis.
So when the pair of Tengu youkai twins emerged from the shadow of the main living room's biggest couch, it was to an audience.
"..." The siblings looked at each other for a long couple of seconds.
"... Nailed it," Yoru said with a wide grin that didn't match his stern features.
"Hell yeah we did," Akatsuki agreed with a similar smile. "That guy totally bought it. 'Would a thousand taels suffice?'That was absolutely perfect."
"'Tread with caution on your journey to the west,'" Yoru mimicked her own parting line in his best impression of her voice (which was scarily accurate given the fact that they were corvid-type bird youkai), before giggling like a schoolgirl. "Yours was even better, I thought he was going to catch on for sure! Wasn't that guy the newest Monkey King? It's a miracle he didn't notice that reference!"
"Ehh? Are you for real?!" Akatsuki exclaimed with a wide-eyed gasp, bringing a sleeve up to cover the lower half of her face. "I just said it to sound mysterious and send him towards the mainland! I didn't even notice that!"
"Yeah, he had the staff and the cloud, remember?"
They both broke out into hysterical laughter, which turned into cawing as they doubled over and accidentally lost control of their human forms, reverting back to their natural crow-headed forms.
Sona Sitri, Shinra Tsubaki, Meguri Tomoe, and Yura Tsubasa were looking at the pair with varying expressions of bemusement, disbelief, and interest, the latter two girls having to twist around in their seats on the couch to watch the spectacle.
"... I assume from your current moods, whatever it was you had to deal with went well?" Sona questioned with a singular eyebrow rising above her glasses.
Tsubaki and Momoe were both glancing between the two tengu and each other, exchanging concerned looks.
Momoe cleared her throat, voicing both of their own concerns as former shinto exorcists themselves. "More to the point, did you say the newest Monkey King was here?!"
The siblings got their squawking under control a couple seconds later, and Yoru took the lead in responding.
"Yes, to both," he confirmed with a nod of his beak, turning serious for a moment. "An unknown but powerful youkai arrived unannounced, and cast his presence across town. We didn't recognize him as one of our mistress's subjects, so I went to observe him," the bird-man explained. "According to Yasaka-sama in her last missive, the appointed spiritual protectors of Japan– Himejima Suzaku and the Five-Principle clans under her overall command– have been tasked by the kami with erecting a containment barrier ritual around the town of Kuoh, meant to be activated in the worst-case scenario of a Kishin being born."
As lacking in common sense as the two tengu were, they were able to do their jobs well, including giving accurate and detailed reports when needed. They wouldn't have risen to their position as Yasaka's bodyguards and agents if they couldn't do even that much.
Akatsuki continued for her brother, having re-applied her human transformation, her ice-cold and gloomy expression completely at odds with her carefree voice. "Of course, when some random and powerful guy like that shows up and says he was hired by some unknown party to investigate the town, we gotta do everything we can to make sure he doesn't go messing with our own side's operations, especially since he locked in on them pretty hard." She shrugged, her hands peeking out from the sleeves of her black robe. "So we said some vague nonsense about them being ignorant losers who don't know what they're doing, and sent him off on a wild goose chase."
Three of the Devil girls shared somewhat unsure glances. Unlike the others, Tsubasa– not having had a formal education on Youkai stories despite her experience fighting them– simply shrugged, not knowing the relevance of a 'Monkey King'. "So some strong dude showed up, and you sent him packing? Nice."
"... Very well. Welcome back, then," Sona said to the twins at last, choosing to ignore her [Rook]'s ignorance for now.
Ultimately, Sona decided that these two were the experts, and she didn't know quite enough about the intricacies of the situation to dig deeper at that moment, so it was best to simply come back to it when she had a better understanding.
"Back to the previous topic before you left," she continued after clearing her throat, "I believe we were about to discuss scheduling for the next week, to set up a meeting to go over your updated duties as Youkai ambassadors."
The twins' head's turned to look at each other as one, a literally visible aura of intensity and focus beginning to surround them.
Unknown to Sona and Yasaka when each had received their own reports from the twins, the siblings were fairly confident now what, or rather who, the source of the anomaly was, especially with the natural energy recovering now that the two primary suspects had been out of town for about a week. While they hadn't lied in their reports, saying that the situation didn't seem likely to turn bad, they'd left their suspicions out. For one, they weren't one-hundred percent sure, so it was best to wait for the Gremory group to return so they could confirm things.
And secondly…
Well, they were having fun in Kuoh.
Things that weren't fun, though?
"Nose goes!" x2
Work meetings with the strict Sitri devil.
Both shot their hands towards their faces. Both tilted their heads down to shorten the distance.
But only Yoru currently had a beak.
Yoru fist-pumped, letting out a victorious caw as he dropped into a shadow and disappeared, leaving Akatsuki alone with the four Student Council members while her cheeks puffed out in a pout.
If one of Sona's eyes happened to twitch, none of her peerage present dared point it out.
(Meanwhile, to the east)
With straight, chin-length black hair and narrow brown eyes, Doumon Kaito was an average-looking Japanese man who had never particularly wanted for much. Born into the Doumon clan with a weaker than average connection to the Principal family's divine element of water, he had been deemed too weak to be put through the rigorous, back-breaking training the most talented received, but just powerful enough to still be useful to the clan through the act of leveraging ritual arts and sealing.
While those who were born lucky enough to have talent were put through the wringer every single day to prepare them for the fight against the monstrous beings knocking on Nihon's doors, destined to serve those faceless kami and receive strength in return just to be sent back into the fight all over again… people like Kaito, the ones who were only lucky enough to not be discarded like the trash they were, these people spent their days toiling away in the libraries and gardens, practicing with brushes and ink rather than swords and talismans.
While the strong fought and bled and died for the favor of gods they never met and to protect a humanity that didn't know they existed, rising through the social ranks as if a title would make the paperwork do itself, Kaito and his ilk were the ones with real power, real influence behind the scenes. After all, where would the Principal clans be without their protective barriers, their cleansing rituals, their talismans, logistics, and ledgers?
Let them have their petty titles, he had thought; Kaito would much rather be the one deciding who 'needed' and received the support to rise or fall with but a stroke of his brush, all from the safety of his 2-tatami mat work room.
That is what he told himself for nearly fifteen loyal years, ever since he entered his teens and was competent enough to be left to his duties and self-study unsupervised.
When orders from the Himejima clan came and went through the rest of the clans' bureaucratic arms, stamped with the seal of Takamagahara and carrying instruction to leave the Heaven-approved youkai faction to their own investigations while the Clans prepared contingencies, it was he who the elders turned to when they needed a protective containment barrier built, and he they turned to for the purpose of picking who would be on the seal-planning teams from the experts the other clans provided.
Him, a clerk of no particular fame or title, but recognized all the same for his specialization in the sealing arts. All from his tiny little six-shaku-by-six-shaku office space, that the higher ups had decided was generous enough for someone they had "nurtured" from the bottom up.
And he would do the job they told him he would do, because it would be an honor for someone like him to receive such a vital job from them. Just…
With a tiny little bonus. Because he was generous like that.
He didn't have anything against the current leader of the Himejima and her faction, who currently held overall command of the Five Principals by virtue of being favoured by the heavens. In fact, he agreed on almost every level with what she was doing, how she was trying to steer the clans towards greater unity and care among family, how her confidence and power and results had swayed over more than half of the reining elders and leaders to her way of thinking, even if many of them were simply choosing the side they believed would win in order to save their own status.
But somewhere along the way, the scorn and dismissiveness of the old regime became too much for Kaito to accept his status. Which was why, standing there at Kuoh's eastern anchor-site as the practical ritual team was preparing to implement the theoretical team's designs, Kaito locked eyes with Nakiri Ken, the sixth and most central member of the "main" plan, the old regime's "actual" plan, and Kaito's actual, final plan.
The slightly younger male met his stare with perfect calm, showing nothing outwardly.
Kaito knew better, though. Beneath the facade, the man was assuredly sneering down at his 'lesser', not even knowing that the lowly Doumon scribe he looked at had been the one to maneuver the Nakiri scion into this position in the first place.
As a child born to the union of a well regarded Doumon mother and Nakiri father, Ken was blessed with a strong connection to both the water and earth elements, and had talent to spare. So much so, that even as an accomplished exorcist, the power he had at his fingertips had not been enough for him, and so he had begun dabbling into the sealing arts to supplement his ability, much to the approval of both the old and the new regime.
As someone who truly believed in his own superiority, Ken was more than willing to step upon others in his destined ascent up the ranks, to be an unknowing pawn in the scheme Kaito had secretly suggested to the generouselders who still clung to the waning power of their traditions.
Himejima Suzaku's faction and the kami wanted a seal put around the town, to be activated only in the worst case scenario, in order to contain disaster from spreading to the rest of the country. To accomplish this, he had guided the planning team towards a four-directional five-elemental seal, centered on an anchor of earth for stability and strength. One member from each of the houses for each element, and a member of the Nakiri for the stabilizing earth element.
To the other expert ritualists, the fact that Nakiri Ken was chosen as the center point despite only being at a journeyman level in the arts was understood to be a matter of clan politics and playing favorites. Frustrating, but not unexpected, and relatively easy to work around.
To Kaito, Ken and his Nakiri compatriot, and the Traditionalists, Ken's dual-element of water was key to the modifications that Kaito– as the ritual overseer– would be making at all four sites after the initial work was done.
Should the worst come to pass and the barrier need to be activated, it would not just be strong enough to contain whatever power emerged inside of it, but flexible enough to contain and redirect that power.
It just wouldn't end with Ken, as those sniveling bastards had been led to believe by Kaito's deferential suggestions. They were going to try something no matter what happened, he had simply drawn their attention to a potential path.
No. Kaito had had enough of being an afterthought. Of being a nobody, with nothing and no one, while the strong were welcomed home with smiles and given anything their hearts desired.
Those shitty old men only truly listened to power and their gods, so Kaito would become someone they could do nothing but listen to.
All he had to do was wait, and hope that all of those bastards' best and worst hopes came true.
Fifteen long, empty years of kneeling at his low work table, stealing whatever miniscule silver lining he could find from the little things in life, ignoring how he was ground down bit by bit each day until everything always seemed a bit more gray than it should.
Doumon Kaito felt a smile form without having to fake it. The expression felt alien on his lips, and from the look on Nakiri Ken's face, it looked it too.
Kaito couldn't bring himself to push it down, though.
For the first time in years, he had a future to look forward to. For the first time ever, he felt happiness.
'Ahh~, I can't wait for this apocalypse to come!'