Chapter 225 - 43-45

Chapter 43: Canicular 5

Koneko

(Sunday morning, July 15th)

I woke up to the sound of the dryer running in the other room and the smell of cooking eggs and bacon reaching my nose. I idly took note of the fact that I wasn't in my bed as I began coming to awareness, being curled up on my couch instead. I cracked open my eyes, blearily looking towards the cable box under the TV for its digital clock, while trying to remember why I woke up on the couch this morning.

I didn't try very hard before I gave up thinking about it.

I am not a morning person, so I wasn't exactly fully awake and functional yet.

My eyes finally started focusing after I blinked away the blurriness.

10:13 AM

"Nnnng…"

"Rise and shine, Koneko-chan!" A familiar voice called cheerily, entirely too energetic for how early it was. "I made breakfast." His voice became louder, moving closer from the direction of my kitchen.

"Mmrg," I mumbled. "Too early…"

I heard him laugh at my complaint and felt a hand pat my head between my ears.

Before I could scrounge up more than a groan's-worth of effort into complaining more, I was distracted by my field of view being blocked by a butt.

It was a very nice butt, even if it was sort of hidden by the pair of baggy orange track pants covering it.

The butt shifted to the side, leaving my view and causing my eyes to fixate on the plate of steaming hot scrambled eggs, rice, and bacon that was left on the coffee table in front of me.

The smells began filling my head fully as I inhaled for a yawn, sending signals straight to my stomach.

'I guess I can forgive him, just this once...'

I let go of the pillow I'd been about to throw in Naruto-kun's direction– Wait, why was he here?– and started pushing myself upright to sit properly while rubbing my eyes.

I reached for the chopsticks he had set by the plate and caught sight of the sleeve of my cat-themed pajama shirt.

'Oh. Right. That's why he's here.'

After watching three episodes of anime, I'd offered to let him crash on the couch. After he decided to accept the offer instead of choosing to run home at one-forty in the morning, I'd gotten changed, and we both stayed up to finish the show since he was already staying over anyway.

Or rather, we'd fallen asleep together on the couch while in the middle of watching.

As was usual when we watched anime I'd already seen, I'd been half-watching the show, half-watching his body as I and fed my chakra through him with his arm draped across my shoulders.

In the end, I'd felt the moment he lost the battle against biology and fell asleep, and after a moment of indecision, I'd decided to take advantage of the situation and leaned further into his side, closing my eyes and resting my head against his chest to enjoy his warmth and the feel of his heartbeat for just a little while.

'Just a little while' had turned into 'all night', apparently.

I picked up my plate and started digging into the simple but tasty meal.

"I didn't want to wake you up just to ask if I could use your ingredients-" he began as he came back, sitting down next to me with his own plate, "-so I stopped by the convenience store after my morning workout to grab some things. You now have another half-package of bacon in your fridge. Also, hope you don't mind, but I used your shower and ran my shirt through a wash cycle."

"Mm, I don't." I glanced over at him, pausing when I saw his shirtless form and damp hair, the blonde spikes lying lower than usual with the extra weight. His arms and torso flexed slightly as he moved to take a bite of his own food, his skin still having a pinkish hue from the hot water. "No need to ask," I mumbled, drinking in the sight from up-close. "Just go ahead and use my stuff next time, don't worry about it."

"'Next time', huh?" He asked in an amused tone after he finished chewing and swallowing. "You planning on asking me stay the night more often? Want me to cook for you in the mornings so you don't have to?" He joked with a chuckle, before going back to his food.

Sitting curled up warmly together the steady, rhythmic beating of a healthy heartbeat lulling me to sleep; waking up to a warm smile and bright eyes greeting me, his mouth opening to say–

I tore my gaze away from his body to look at his eyes. I felt myself hesitate from nerves, but I pushed through the urge to stay quiet; to leave things the way they were, as nice as it has been.

"Yes."

I set my plate down and stated it clearly, getting him to pause.

I hadn't been planning on anything. Those thoughts hadn't crossed my mind until he brought it up. Saying 'next time' was just… natural. He was my guest and had stayed over because I'd wanted it, so of course he could eat my food while here. I had offered to let him– one of my best friends– spend the night once already, so of course it could happen again. It just made sense and I hadn't thought that deeply about it.

But when he said it, I thought about it- and when I thought about it, I liked the sound of it. So, I decided to go for it; to try being proactive about making a change in my life for once, without circumstances pushing me in that direction like they had when I first asked him to teach me about Senjutsu.

He lowered his chopsticks and turned his head to meet my gaze, twisting in his seat slightly to face me more directly with surprised blue eyes.

"I like it when you're with me," I told him, watching his eyes open a little wider and feeling my cheeks begin heating up. I pushed on, not letting myself get cold feet once I'd started. "I like being with you. Day or night, in or out of school, or training, it doesn't matter; I want to spend more time together. I want to become closer to you."

"K-Koneko-chan?" His face started reddening, contrasting surprisingly cutely with his whiskers. He stammered, mouth opening and closing to find something to say. "I- uh… what-?"

I leaned over and reached out, gently pushing up his chin with my palm.

"Close your mouth, idiot," I said with an upwards quirk of my lips. "You'll catch flies."

My hand lingered for a moment, and he swallowed while staring into my eyes as I pulled away, my fingers lightly brushing the underside of his jaw as I went.

Then he blinked, looking confused. "Wait, I'll 'catch flies'? What the hell is that supposed to mean?" He lifted an arm while lowering his head to take a whiff of his bare armpit. "I didn't miss an area while scrubbing, did I? I don't think I smell bad…"

I didn't know if I wanted to throttle him for derailing the moment, or laugh at Naruto-kun being so… Naruto.

I spotted something at the edge of the table in my peripheral vision.

"It's an English saying, means something similar to silence is golden," I explained, settling for rolling my eyes while hiding an amused smile. Naruto-kun was about to get his karma for messing up the mood of my almost-confession, so it balanced out. "By the way, look out."

"Huh?" He glanced around confused, before he saw it and he panicked. "Shit! Bad Kuro, no! I already fed you!"

The black cat had silently climbed onto the table and just snatched up three of his bacon slices in her maw, jumping away when he lunged from the couch to grab her. He tried to chase her, but the moment his back was turned, Shiro jumped onto the table with an audible clatter and made off with the last two slices, much to Naruto's dismay as he turned back at the sound.

"Dammit!" He moaned in despair, his hands scratching violently through his hair. "And I already cleaned the frying pan, too…"

I thought for a moment about sharing some of mine-

"Sucks to suck," I said, before stuffing one of my own slices into my mouth.

-but it was only a moment.

Naruto's whiskered cheeks puffed as he stuck his tongue out at me.

After he settled back down to eat his rice and eggs moments later, he hesitated. "Koneko-chan… what you were saying earlier… did you mean…?"

I nodded while chewing. "Mm." I swallowed my bite and looked up at him, shuffling just a bit closer so that our knees were touching. My tail wiggled with nervous energy.

"I like you, Nyaruto-kun." Even with my embarrassing verbal slip, I couldn't help but smile at the expression that formed on his face. "Let's keep having more fun together, ne?"

His red cheeks stretched into a goofy grin. "You bet, eheheh!"

We talked some more during and after breakfast, not focusing on anything serious for long, just keeping things as casual as usual for a nice and relaxing morning.

Eventually, the rest of the day came calling for us. We were going to meet up again later today to go on another patrol/hunt, but for now we each had things we needed to do, and I still hadn't gotten a chance to take a bath since the day before yesterday.

Naruto-kun waved over his shoulder one last time as he walked down the sidewalk, heading towards the downtown area while twirling his sword in his other hand. I waved back, smiling– not that he could see me with his back turned. It was the thought that counted. Besides, even if he couldn't see me anymore, I could still see him just fine.

'Definitely a nice butt, for a guy.'

Something something 'hate to see them go, love to see them leave,' as the westerners would say.

Still, I couldn't help but feel like I was forgetting something as I made my way back to my apartment door.

It was only after my bath that I remembered what that something was, when I went into my room to pick out the day's outfit and saw Kuro enthusiastically rolling around on my bedsheets and pillows like they were covered in catnip.

'Oh. Right.'

She paused in her motions while on her back when she saw me, head upside-down as she stared at me. I stared back.

'I guess I did kinda kidnap his cat.'

I shrugged after a moment and went back to getting dressed for the day.

I'd either drop her off at Naruto-kun's home later– preferably when he was there to keep an eye on her– or have him come here to pick her up when he had the time. I'd get to see him a little bit more either way, so both worked for me.

Kuoh Academy, student council room

(Thursday, July 19th)

Over the course of the next few days, while there wasn't a whole lot of progress on the "find Kalawarner/capture another Fallen" front, with them seeming to be lying low for now, that didn't mean that patrols were uneventful across the board. Some of the others in our peerages had come across more than one incident. Kiba and Hyoudou had separately eliminated at least two Stray Devils each, all of them with body counts, while Tsubasa and Meguri had ended up clashing with a group of Eastern Faction youkai who'd shown up to harass the Five Principals.

While we'd been told that the leaders of the Kyoto and Kanto factions were collaborating on the Kuoh situation, the Kanto faction was pretty infamous for not putting a lot of effort into keeping its members under control, so things like this were almost bound to happen. We'd literally expected it to happen and planned around how to handle it.

The most concerning thing was that Kiba and Hyoudou weren't the only ones to take out violent strays during the four day period. Reya and Ruruko had also come across one together, and Momo another. While we had already known that Stray sightings were rising because of the youkai population migrating away from Kuoh, this was an absurd amount of strays suddenly showing up, especiallybecause Kuoh was actually becoming more and more dangerous for them, with the Five Principles' presence and Fallen activity on the rise.

"Is this not really suspicious?" Momo asked as we all sat around the long table in the center room, Sona's base of operations having enough seating to host both peerages fully for this meeting.

When it had become clear to our [King]s that there was even more stuff going on in town with the debriefings we'd given over the last few days, they'd called another joint meeting to explain everything new going on, this time with everyone except for Naruto-kun present. It was still school club hours, so he was at his computer club right now.

It started with going over what Naruto-kun and I came across on our first patrol and Sona's follow up with the clock tower, which didn't reveal anything suspicious, and ended with discussing what the other patrol pairs encountered, mainly focusing on the strays since it seemed like all the Fallen that weren't named Mittelt had gone to ground.

And she was basically useless.

Momo continued her thought. "It's very unlikely to be a coincidence, which can't spell anything good for the town if this is part of some sort of plot."

We hadn't even gotten bounty notifications from the Underworld's enforcement agency for these strays before we'd found them, meaning they were relatively new arrivals to the town; we'd taken them out before the government had time to compile and send us a file on them, a process which would have started the moment their agents in town uncover the signs of activity from things like missing-people cases and noise complaints.

The fact was, six strays in four days– encountered on regular patrols, not even actively hunting them down– was absurd. Even if bounty orders and dossiers were sent our way, that would still be an unreasonable number.

"You're not wrong," Sona agreed, contemplating. "There's also the fact that going by descriptions, all of the strays were on the extreme upper-end for the level of their mutations. For their control of their Demonic Power to be that bad, all of them must have been far more powerful than their bodies could have handled."

Kiba nodded. "Of the ones I fought, if they'd had enough control of their power to retain their sanity and a humanoid form, I estimate they would have been about as strong as Koneko-chan without the use of her chakra."

Buchou hummed, elbows on the table and fingers laced together in front of her mouth. "We've had them identified and confirmed by the agency, they were all low-class [Pawn]s with only a single Evil Piece." She unclasped her hands and set them in front of her, a finger starting to tap on the polished wood. "For each of them to have as much raw power as a [Rook] as talented as Koneko-chan is unusual on its own, and to all show up around the same time indicates some sort of group ties, most likely as disposable assets for a backer."

She stopped her tapping.

"The Five Principals wouldn't 'lower' themselves to working devils of their own volition, so they're out of the question. That leaves the Grigori- who are almost as hostile towards strays as we are, the Kanto faction youkai- who don't have a reason or the organizational structure to use proxies like this, or a fourth party entirely."

"If I recall correctly," Tsubaki spoke up, adjusting her glasses, "I believe Yoru and Akatsuki-dono mentioned a few months back that a powerful youkai had shown up briefly to investigate Kuoh, and the Five Principals as a result of the that, at the behest of a third-party employer. What are the chances these strays are connected to the same individual or group?"

Kaichou tipped her head forward in a nod of acknowledgement. "High enough to be concerning, but simultaneously low enough to, paradoxically, also be a concern as well. Whether it is a singular unknown group responsible for both incidents, or two unrelated unknown groups, either reality poses its own issues for us in the mid-to-long term."

"Which is why for the moment, we will just have to settle for doing what we can about the immediate situation at hand, while Sona and I figure out what we can do on our end as Kuoh's overseers," Buchou agreed with a sigh, before firming up. "Akeno, Koneko."

I came to attention as we were addressed.

"You two are the best at sensing and tracking out of all of us, so from now on, your jobs will be search and destroy. Make combing sweeps of the town with a priority of finding and rooting out any dangerous strays as soon as they appear," Buchou ordered. "The other factions know how to act subtly and maintain the secret of the supernatural world, but too many strays acting too chaotically will threaten that secrecy and put even more people in danger."

"Hai." I nodded.

Akeno just smiled one of her close-eyed smiles that was more scary than reassuring for whoever saw it.

"As for the rest of you," Kaichou continued, "We will continue assigning patrol duties as before, but with a focus on enforcing buffer zones between the known Five-Principal Clan occupied areas and the rest of the factions present, emphasizing de-escalating tensions. Our priorities are to prevent any conflict from spilling over and affecting the town, determining who is behind the current chaos and dealing with them appropriately, and re-establishing our authority over the town's supernatural population, in that order." Sona waved her hand. "Dismissed."

With the group of determined teenage devils calling out a chorus of "Hai!"s, the meeting was over, and those of us that didn't have more business in the student council room began filing out. While most of the others left immediately to do other things while chattering about this and that, like Kiba, Asia, and Hyoudou who were going to an arcade before it got too late, I stood outside the door, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed and eyes closed while I waited for Akeno, since she had stayed behind to help Tsubaki clean up the tea and coffee cups.

After a few minutes of listening to people move around inside the council chamber, I flinched when my shoulder was unexpectedly poked, my eyes snapping open in an instant.

'...'

A giggle came from above me, and I glanced up from Akeno's chest– it's not my fault it's eye-level for me– to see her purple eyes looking down at me with a mischievous grin.

I hadn't sensed her at all.

"Ufufu, you and Uzumaki-kun aren't the only ones who can sneak up on others now, Koneko-chan~."

I wasn't particularly trying to sense for her in the first place, but I hadn't even heard her coming either. Either way, it was impressive that she'd managed to pick up silencing her footsteps as well as Naruto-kun's already, since I know that wasn't a skill she'd had before the rating game.

"Want to go meet up with Uzumaki-kun at his club?" I didn't acknowledge her antics or achievement and got straight to the point. "I want to hang out together before we go hunting."

I also needed to tell him we'd have to stop our usual patrols and late-night hangouts for now since I had new orders, but that wasn't that important, because I could also just tell him through text.

Akeno blinked with a raised eyebrow, before smiling.

"I'd love to."

Naruto

(Wednesday night, July 25th)

I crouched in the boughs of a tree as I watched a small group of robed guys pass by underneath me, less than ten in total. All of them were walking over to, and taking turns vaulting over, the brick wall that separated the forest from the supply depot, on their way towards the warehouse from that first night. While I would have expected an organized group like the Principal clans to want their members to use a more official looking entrance than just hopping the fence, this particular group of guys weren't coming from the city, and were actually staying at a brand new compound further into the woods.

From what I could tell based on the other days I'd spent staking this place out on and off, the way they spoke and their plain, solid-color half-robes meant that while they were officially part of the Five Principal Clans, they were more like branch members; grunts who handled working with the civilian side of the clans' power bases, and were closer to civilians themselves than they were to the cutthroat traditional onmyouji that made up the bulk of the clans' actual power.

In other words, they were blue-collar workers with all the same stereotypes and work habits, the only difference being that they had a tiny bit of magical ability.

They complained about higher ups, joked with the other workers, and cut corners on stuff like 'walking around and using the front gate' when there was a perfectly good wall to jump over; the usual stuff for working men.

Completely different to the four sorcerers from a week and a half ago.

Luckily, the sorcerers hadn't been back in three days.

Even though the four had been scared by Koneko's sort-of bluff when she wasted a decent chunk of her chakra for intimidation, they weren't total newbies who didn't pay attention to their surroundings, unlike these guys.

Throughout the week while Koneko had been going about her new stray-hunting duty, she'd periodically made stops in this area to check in on things from a distance.

Whatever the mysterious source of Light that she couldn't properly sense was, it was still here, unchanged, even though the Fallen hadn't returned.

I closed an eye and brought a small handheld night vision scope up to the other, my vision flipping to shades of green as I scanned the trail behind them for any stragglers.

'Perfect.'

Confirming there wasn't any movement, I slipped the device into a hip pouch and dropped to the forest floor, dashing towards the group silently while keeping myself to the shadows.

I caught up to the edge of the tree line as the last one hopped up from his crouch and grabbed the ledge with his hands. I took a running start, aiming around a dozen meters to the right of where the group vaulted it, timing my jump.

If there was one thing I learned about breaking and entering over my years of pranking jackass shopkeepers and old-man Hokage, it was that all security systems– whether technology based or mystical– had the same weakness.

After all, in order to let the right people in, they had to be able to let people in.

I soared over the wall right as the last man pulled himself over the edge, and I landed in a silent roll behind a stack of pallets right as he landed heavily on his feet next to his obliviously chatting co-workers. The tiny glow of the talisman the group's leader was holding, that he pulled out before the first person hopped the wall, flickered out.

Why go through the front gate, when they can just turn off the security for a few seconds? What could be the harm?

That was the sort of mindset people got into when they got comfortable in a routine, like people who leave their back doors unlocked all the time because they couldn't be bothered to use the front door, having to unlock and re-lock it every time.

The Hokage office windows were the exact same, with people like Kakashi-sensei constantly popping them open and skipping the main reception entrance when reporting to granny.

While the group of workers filed in through one of the rear doors, I skirted around the sides, darting from cover to cover as I made my way to the side of the building where I knew there was an unlocked window on the second floor.

Sure enough, I spotted the faint orange glow of a light cigarette as I hugged the wall, just barely lighting up the hand and face of a middle-aged man who was leaning out the window while puffing smoke.

I watched from below as he turned his head, reacting to the indistinct sound of one of the new arrivals calling for him.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll punch out in a moment!" He yelled back. He took one more long drag of the thing before putting it out using the metal windowsill. "Calm yer fuckin tits fer once, ya brat!" He pulled back into the building and carelessly slid the window down as he left his smoke spot, only mostly shutting it.

I waited for about five seconds before scaling the wall and quietly shimmying the window back open, slipping inside and sliding it back to mostly closed behind me.

I found myself in an unlit hallway, one end leading to a stairway heading down, and the other end heading to an office area. I slinked into the dim office space and ducked behind a desk, seeing Mr. Smoker punching numbers into a console on the far wall, the device's little screen shining bright in the darkness. He finished soon enough and left back the way we came, his heavy footsteps clanging loudly down the metal stairs when he reached the end of the hall.

I took the moment to stand up and look around to get an idea of the places layout. The office I was in was suspended over the center of the main warehouse space, with a pair of windows on either side looking out over the warehouse floor. Looking through the windows, I saw the newly arrived robed figures walking around with clipboards under the work-floor lighting that was rigged below the level of this office, checking various shelves of wood planks and metal sheets, and crates of stone and gravel.

"If I were a Fallen, what would I want with this place…" I muttered as my eyes scanned the warehouse from above. "... and where would I look?" This office was pretty high up, so visibility was very good; despite technically being the second floor, it was closer in elevation to a third floor due to how tall the first one was in order to fit the industrial-sized shelves.

Off to the corner of the main floor, I saw another door, marked with both a stairwell symbol and 'Restricted Access' sign.

But I knew from what I've seen of the building layout both inside and outside, that staircase didn't go up.

'Bingo.'

The windows weren't designed to open, so I couldn't get out and climb the shadowed crossbeam rigging without shattering the glass and drawing everyone's attention up here. I turned to begin mapping out the most direct, hidden path through the shelving units to get to the door, when I paused.

"I figured you'd be back at some point. I could just see it in the way you moved."

There was a tanto pressed up to my neck.

"Uhh," I muttered, looking up into the gray eyes of the female sorcerer from before. She still had that intensity in her eyes that none of the others had back then, but the scar across her cheek sat smoothly, her face more relaxed than I'd expect it to after catching an intruder who was friends with devils. "... I can explain?"

Her expression didn't change, but somehow I felt like she was laughing at me.

"Go on then, Uzumaki Naruto-san. Explain."

'Dammit.'

Chapter 44: Canicular 6

Naruto

I must have paused for too long trying to get my story straight in my head, because she started talking again.

"Homeroom 1-B under Arata Misaki and member of the computer club, apartment 8-C of the Neighborly Heights community complex, and unofficially recognized as a citizen of Nippon just over a year ago, with a new identity created through the Specter Assimilation Bureau, backdated to cover your lack of existence in the system prior. After a year of turning away government agents, you began working with the local Devils, and are now trespassing on a government subsidiary's property for the second time this month."

Her gray eyes narrowed, the first real shift in facial expression she'd made.

"I'll ask only once, Uzumaki Naruto; Who are you, and what is your purpose here? Cooperate, and we will be lenient."

'Huh.' She'd done her research on me, and even managed to sneak up on me. 'I guess the ninja cosplay outfit isn't entirely for show. But uh, what's the deal with that other stuff?' Maybe those shady guys who sometimes showed up at my door weren't actually creeps sent to do shady things to me? Maybe they were just creeps who were bad at their jobs…

Moving on.

"You got the wrong idea, lady," I told the young woman, slowly raising my hands with my palms open to show I was unarmed, eyeing the blade an inch from my neck. "I really am just a student at Kuoh Academy now days." I cautiously poked a finger at the flat of the tanto while I spoke, to see if her grip and positioning of the blade would budge. It did, slightly, but she pushed it closer to the skin of my neck warningly, her lips thinning and an unamused eyebrow raising in response.

'Probably around my strength,' I thought, based on the resistance. 'At the least, not way overwhelmingly stronger than me even if she happens to be holding back.'

"I don't care about the different factions or whatever," I said flatly, eyeing the dim green blinking light of the console reflecting off of the end of her polished blade. "I hang out with devils and do odd jobs for them because they're my friends, from school, not for any other reason."

The hand holding the blade shifted its grip just the tiniest bit, but I couldn't tell if that was in a good way or a bad way for my future health in the low light. I couldn't risk it.

I made my decision and looked up to stare at her, glancing my gaze to the side for a single instant.

Something about humans that I didn't really grasp until I started studying biology in this world, is that humans are social animals, with a ton of unconscious habits that we evolved to survive in the world as a group.

For just a split second, her eyes flickered to follow my gaze out of sheer instinct, an ingrained reflex that she either hadn't consciously realized existed, or hadn't learned how to suppress in a combat situation yet due to her relatively young age for fighters in this world.

I flexed my wrists and a pair of knives shot up into my raised hands' grips; one being one of my regular disposable dark-gray kunai, and the other being a new kunai made out of the same shiny and supernaturally durable metal my sword was.

I jerked my head back while slipping the polished knife between my neck and her blade, and I forced her back a couple steps in her moment of wide-eyed surprise. At the same time, I spun my other kunai into a reverse grip and caught her reflexive palm-strike on the solid part of my elbow in a high block, before swinging the rest of my arm down in an attempt to stab her shoulder to disable her arm. She pushed past her surprise and collected her expression almost instantly, pulling her hand back just in time to bring it up to catch my wrist, the sharp point of metal just centimeters from her shoulder.

"If you won't come quietly-!" The girl grunted out in exertion as she held back my retaliation.

She twisted her tanto around to push my other kunai to the side, breaking our sudden blade lock at the same time as she threw my wrist to the other side, leaving my upper body open for a single moment. A fluid motion brought her tanto back up to thrust at me.

Unfortunately for her, I was already mid-motion, bringing my leg up to kick her in the gut. Unfortunately for me, she blocked my kick with her knee the same way I'd blocked her palm strike with my elbow. Even as the strength of my kick pushed us away from each other, forcing us to hop back on a single foot each to keep our balance, the leg that she used to block snapped up in a kick straight to my extended calf that had me wincing, already feeling the muscle want to lock up as we flew apart.

I slid back until my heel banged against the wall below the window and stopped my momentum, while the Shinra girl's path sent her tearing through a flimsy cubicle divider, without her even giving a reaction to show that she'd noticed it as she landed. It was a little hard to see her exact shape against the darkness of the room at this range, but I was just able to make out her tanto being held up near her head in a two-handed stabbing position thanks to a glint of light reflecting off it, its tip aimed at my chest.

"-then I'll take you in through force." She finished in a no-nonsense tone.

I got the feeling that whatever way she was leaning before, she definitely didn't believe in my honest intentions now.

Multiple meters away from me, with a blade barely more than a foot long, she thrust.

My newer kunai was something I'd had commissioned specifically to consistently withstand clashes against stronger things, like Light weapons and the swords Kiba could make, while still being small enough to keep on me at all times unlike my sword. According to Koneko, this chick was probably part of the Shinra clan– the one tied to the Metal phase/element/whatever they wanted to call it– so I knew from the moment she showed herself, that it was basically a guarantee that the only major piece of metal she carried wasn't just an ordinary tanto with nothing special going for it.

I'll admit; whatever I was expecting from her, a bootleg of that snake bastard's extending sword wasn't in my top ten guesses.

A flash of reflected light was the only visual cue I got as the blade shot at me like a bullet.

My wrist jerked as the angled tip smacked off of my new kunai with a clang, racing over my right shoulder as its path was barely redirected by my hasty deflection. She had aimed at my chest at the start, but shifted to pierce my shoulder when I began moving both my kunai into place to block that, abandoning her feint to aim instead for a non-lethal incapacitation on me like I had for her, forcing me to react in a split second or take the hit.

Also, despite the window being directly behind me, I didn't hear the sound of glass breaking.

Meaning, her control of the technique was good enough to stop the extension exactly where she wanted to based on feel and reaction speed. Either that, or it was one of those techniques that had users set exact parameters before activation for total consistency, like the henge or kawarimi.

I leaned towards this case being the first option.

Though, none of that was the focus of my mind at this moment. Despite the relative distance between us, the pressure she began putting on my kunai in her current attempt to slice down into my shoulder wasn't any less than what she'd used for that brief moment we'd clashed a few seconds ago. In fact, it was even more than before, since she was using two hands this time.

"Give up," she demanded with a tone of authority. "If you keep resisting, I can't promise your connections to the Ruin Princess will protect you from punishment when I take you in for breaking and entering."

Somehow, her technique seemed to let her ignore leverage, putting the entirety of her strength into pushing down on my crossed knives with just the end of her meters-long blade. I was reluctant to throw her blade to the side and get out from under it just yet, because if her leverage trick worked the way I thought it did, she might be able to turn it back on me from a more difficult to deal with angle at a moment's notice.

"'Take me in' this, 'breaking and entering' that, what are you, a cop?!" I groused through grit teeth.

"Yes, actually." The deadpan response caught me off guard, and I stumbled for a split second when the weight of her blade pressing down on me disappeared.

It sliced through the air at my side, suddenly changing direction with a flick to cut back towards my hip with seemingly little effort from the girl; just tiny twists of her wrists angling the weapon, keeping her feet planted instead of trying to get a better position like an actual ninja would.

A flex of my ankles sent me jumping up over the blade as I threw my cheap kunai at her center mass. Another casual flick of her wrists had the blade banking sharply upwards to come at me from below while I was still in the air.

'I fucking knew it.'

While I kicked my feet down to stop her slash with the steel-reinforced soles of my shoes, she twisted out of the way of my thrown knife without shifting her feet, giving me an idea.

"Shinra Himitsu." She announced her name while I stood crouched on top of her tanto (which she didn't seem to struggle much to hold up, with my added weight). "Junior agent of the government's Specter Enforcement Bureau under the National Police Agency, which holds a controlling interest in the True Elements-"

"Blah, blah, blah. You can believe it or not," I interrupted while balancing on her blade, gesturing around us with the knife in my right hand while fingering my hip pouch with the left, "but I don't give a damn who owns this place! Whether it's you clan people or some government agency, it doesn't mean anything to me!" I was venting some real irritation at the situation, since all the recent chaos was starting to take away from my hang-out time with Koneko-chan.

My footing disappeared as the tanto retracted suddenly, leaving me at the will of gravity. I twisted midair as I fell, whipping my main knife at Himitsu's forward ankle and a spare from my pouch at her other thigh, even as the tip of her tanto extended again to punch straight through the space my stomach had been a fraction of a second before.

Her blade retracted in an instant again as she jumped up and to the side to dodge both. At the same time, I clenched my empty fists around the practically invisible wires trailing out from my sleeves and swung my arms, my feet touching the ground as I yanked my right hand back and swept my left up at her. My good kunai came flying back at me, while the forgotten one I'd thrown earlier whipped up after her.

"What the-?" The wire wrapped around her ankle right as she was about to land.

I caught my nice kunai, and before she could react in time to try cutting the metal thread connecting us, I yanked hard on the wire, pulling her leg out from under her the moment her foot touched the floor again.

She recovered almost instantly, managing to plant her other foot on the ground and extend her tanto to stab into the floor, propping herself up but it was an awkward position to act from, almost having fallen into a split.

"I'm not here to fight, even though I'll defend myself," I told her, still holding the wire tight in case she tried to make a move. "I'm here because a bunch of people are causing problems in the town I live in, and I've decided to help my friends keep the peace and investigate. Nothing you say or do can change my mind."

I did my best to memorize the layout of the room, and dug two fingers into my pouch to pull out a large-gumball sized pellet wrapped in paper; my latest advancement in smoke-bomb tech (with some magical help from Akeno– alchemy was useful as hell).

"Your guys are part of the problem, and I'm going to figure out why that Fallen was here, no matter what some government chick says."

Her eyes widened and she moved, lunging towards me with her hand outstretched. "No, stop!"

I yanked to try and trip her again, but the metal wire had apparently loosened enough to free her without me noticing a lack of tension somehow, so it was just the kunai being reeled back my way instead.

'Right, metal element bullshit.'

It didn't matter, she wouldn't reach me in time and her tanto wasn't currently pointed at me. I was already throwing it down.

The pellet hit the ground with a loud bang and a flash right as I twisted and swung the flying kunai into the window to shatter it outwards. Himitsu's approaching form disappeared from sight as a thick, gray smoke began rushing to fill the room around me in a split second. I dashed to the side, keeping my movements silent as I circled the room while the smoke filled it, and engaged the mechanism on my bracer to reel in the wire so I wasn't dragging the knife on the floor behind me.

I had broken the window as a diversion, while I was actually making my way to the hall so I could take the stairs.

I raced through the room and escaped the edge of the cloud and into the hallway.

I made it a single step, when I noticed the black-haired girl bursting from the smoke just a step behind me and to the side, wisps of gray trailing off her limbs. Her head was angled to stare at my left forearm right where my bracer sat.

'She predicted me? Damn!'

I slammed my forward foot down, tiny metal studs on my soles digging into the thin carpet to stop my momentum with a short and rough slide, and dashed backwards back into the smoke as she stumbled past me, unprepared for the sudden maneuver.

"Wait! I-!" Whatever she tried to say became indistinct and muffled through the thick smoke. Something about the shape of the tiny particles absorbing and scattering sound vibrations really well, according to Akeno when she helped create the things.

I stayed low as I ran back through the office relying on memory, dragging my hand across the floor to snag the other extra third kunai before heading over to jump through the window, where the smoke was already beginning to thin out as it escaped the office space.

Landing on one of the building's crossbeams, I saw workers from below looking up and pointing fingers at the billowing smoke. One of the men ran over to a fire alarm on the wall and pulled, setting an alarm blaring.

'Damn, I'm on a time crunch now!'

I shot into a sprint across the shadowed beams, relying on the smoke distraction to draw the attention of anyone who would be looking up. I chanced a glance back and saw my pursuer land on the beam in the same place I had.

Again, her gaze was locked onto my left arm.

"Tch." I clicked my teeth together and dropped down between two tall shelves to get out of her vision. 'Did she manage to put a tracking spell on my gear after I tripped her?'

I threw the probably-compromised knife in one direction while I ran the other way, and swiped my nice kunai up to sever the wire. If I was right, then the spell or whatever could be attached to the kunai, the wire itself, or even my entire left bracer system, channeled into it through the wire when it was wrapped around her ankle.

If it was that last scenario, I would be screwed until I could find the time to ditch the entire thing.

'Who am I kidding… she knows where I live, I'm screwed regardless!

Unless…?

I put aside thoughts of crashing at the mansion or Koneko's place for a while, and focused on weaving through the maze of shelving units towards the back corner. Luckily, every night shift employee who might have seen me running through the work floor was either distracted with the results of my smoke bomb right now, or evacuating the building due to the insistent ringing of the fire alarm.

Within a minute, I reached the door to the stairwell and, ignoring the 'Restricted Access' sign, tried punching in the electronic lock's default emergency access code.

I clicked my tongue when it blinked red and didn't unlock. It was made by the same company that made my gated community's security building locks, so it was worth a shot. I quickly put one of my kunai to use, unscrewing a pair of screws to pop off the face plate, taking a chance and assuming that the tamper switch wasn't actually wired, and pressed the blade against the contact connected to the exit button on the other side of the door.

This time, the panel gave an extended beep and the light lit up green, so I turned the handle and opened the door. I stepped into the enclosed stairway and hastily screwed the plate back in place before racing down the stairs, letting the door swing shut behind me as motion-activated lights lit the stairwell.

I reached the bottom in less than a second and pushed open the next door in a hurry to step into the basement.

Even before I entered, the lights were already on, confusing me a little as I walked into what looked like a normal basement. It was larger than average– which made sense because this was a warehouse– but other than that, it was just filled with a bunch of messily scattered basement-things like boxes, extra shelves, unused furniture, and the infrastructure stuff like boilers and backup generators or whatever the old and rusting machinery was.

The sound of water running through pipes and pressure changes through the heating system were loud enough down here to cover the muffled sound of the fire alarm as I stepped between piles of random stuff. I looked into one box and saw stacks of paperwork, and then another that was full of dusty old office phones and various cables. There was one of those outdated box-TVs on one of the shelves, and leaning up against a heavily scratched wooden desk was a baseball bat of all things.

"What the hell?" I muttered out loud. "Does everyone who works here just dump all their useless junk down here?" 'Where's all the secret important stuff?'

"Yes, they do."

I spun around, kunai raised as Shinra Himitsu's voice came from behind me where the entrance was.

"Cool it, I'm not here to fight anymore," she claimed with a head tilt, her hands hanging down at her sides. "After all, I did try telling you to wait up before you ran, by the end of our confrontation."

Her Tanto was returned to its sheath on her lower back and her stance was relaxed. Not to mention, she literally announced her presence to me when she didn't have to, so her statement actually checked out.

"Alright…" I chose to accept her statement at face value, even knowing full well it could be a trick for some other objective of hers. "I'll believe you for now." I glanced around the room. "Why is this place 'Restricted Access' then if it's just used to store old crap?

"The sign is probably there to stop the average moron from accidentally breaking something important like the water boiler, or the internet circuit," she said with a shrug, before her lips thinned. "Now tell me, what did you mean back there when you said 'you guys are part of the problem'?"

"I meant what I said. A bunch of groups are causing issues in the town right now, and you guys– the Five Principal Clans– are involved in it," I told her. "Stray Devils are showing up every day without any explanation, hotheaded youkai with grudges are getting into fights with you clan people that we have to constantly break up, and Fallen Angels were popping up in places they shouldn't have been– at least, they were right up until Koneko-chan and I tracked that one here last week, and now they've gone into hiding. I crossed my arms while listing off the different issues, her frown deepening as I explained. "This place is one of the last obvious leads we have on the group of Fallen involved, but your people have been jackasses refusing to give us access to investigate."

"That's a major breach of protocol," the scarred Shinra girl said with furrowed brows. "While the Principals own a significant stake in this property and company, the majority owner is still the Japanese government. Since the government is aware of the Gremory and Sitri management of the town, our clans have no right to deny them entry in their role as Kuoh's supernatural ruler's."

I snorted. "Red and Sitri's peerages are stretched thin as it is, keeping the town in check right now. Whether they tried through the 'official channels' or not, I don't know. I'm just here to help them in my own way. The Fallen was here for some reason, after all. Better to find out what he or she was after."

"Ah." She nodded in understanding. "So that's why you came down here; you thought there might be something that the Fallen was interested in stealing in the 'restricted access' room."

"Yep."

She went silent for a moment, obviously thinking, before her head fell into her hand with a sigh and a muttered complaint. "Senpai is gonna make me do so much paperwork for this… Shishou too…"

"Fine," she said, shaking off her resignation and looking up to meet my eyes. "If there's anything a Fallen might be interested in stealing, it wouldn't be down here or on the regular work floor. I'll bring you to our secure storage room to take a quick look around, but we'll have to be fast. It's better for both of us if you aren't here when the first responders get here."

It had only been about two minutes since the employee pulled the alarm, and we were on the edge of town, so we probably still had a few more minutes before then.

Still… "Not giving me a whole lot of time to investigate," I snarked, "but okay. Lead the way, lady."

She nodded once, turning and racing back the way we came with me hot on her heels.

We sped up the stairs and out into the maze of shelving units and boxes, where she jumped up, kicked off of the top of one of the units, and launched herself up to land on the railing of an upper-level catwalk and continue running. I followed with a single jump, staying close behind as she led me towards the front of the building.

"The 'secure' storage room is in the front?" I called over the ringing of the alarm with a raised eyebrow, not that she could see my face as we began to slow on the approach to a sectioned-off space with a door. "Isn't that just asking for a burglar to walk in the front door and walk out with your good stuff?"

"You went straight for the back of the building." Her rebuttal was as effective as it was deadpan, making me chuckle awkwardly. "Plus, more employee activity in the front means more witnesses."

"Fair."

With most of the workers either sticking around to gawk at the 'fire' or evacuating the building, the front lobby office was empty when we went through the door. We turned a corner and went down a short hallway which led to a sturdy metal door, a door that opened without the Shinra girl needing to put in a code after she turned the handle with a silvery-glowing hand.

Stepping inside, the storeroom was somehow both larger and smaller than I expected; the stuff inside was both more and less impressive, too. I stepped inside first, glancing around.

It was about the size of my bedroom, so more roomy than a small storage closet, but more cramped than what I'd imagined of a full-on storage room. Draped above the door was one of those thick ropes with tassels hanging down that shrines used to ward off evil spirits. Lining the side walls were clearly labeled cabinets and shelves packed with stuff; things like traditional ink blocks, stacks of talismans and explosive-tag sized paper slips, jars full of powders and liquids of different colors and levels of clearness, and incense burners.

On the back wall, there were dozens of religious staves like shakujou, wands, and bows, all hanging on wall mounts, as well as a crate of messily folded robes and a crate of wooden geta sandals sitting on the floor.

"... I gotta admit-" I began, scratching the back of my head sheepishly, "-I have no idea what I'm looking for here. Got any clues?" I turned to face my escort, just to see that her standing a single step into the doorway, eyes narrowed in a frown that scrunched up the scar across her cheek.

"... No."

She didn't sound super convinced herself.

"Our inventory audit didn't find anything from this room unaccounted for-" she began, looking around with a slow, assessing gaze. "-but something is off. I just know it, but I can't tell what."

Just that moment, we both noticed the distant blaring of an approaching fire truck overcome the constant ringing of the fire alarm to be heard.

"That's your cue to leave," she said, not even looking my way.

"With nothing to show for the trip," I said with a sigh, before clicking my teeth. "So much for my attempt to help out. Damn it."

The government agent-slash-Shinra clan member shook her head. "I'll keep investigating, with the bureau's backing if need-be. If I find anything the Gremory and Sitri heiresses should know, I'll contact you."

"Huh? Really?" I asked with some surprise.

She looked at me for a moment, before tilting her head. "It's my job twice over to stop the supernatural from breaking the everyday peace. You are trying to help with that goal, aren't you?" I nodded. "Then it's fine. Now shoo, leave before you're spotted by someone else."

I decided to trust her for her word after everything else she'd shown me, and slipped out to make my escape from the building.

I made it to the perimeter wall of the depot right as the fire trucks reached the front gate, and slipped out the gate in their blind spot right as the last one passed through, free to go home.

Or not, because apparently my place was a popular haunt for stalkers now days. I debated heading over to crash at the mansion or Koneko's apartment.

'Himitsu said she'll get in contact with me, so she'll probably show up at my place uninvited.'

I paused in thought as something occurred. 'Wait, does it really even matter? If she found my place, she can easily find my friends' homes.'

I shrugged and chose my destination, planning a stop along the way.

'I guess I'll pick up some dinner for Koneko-chan as a thank you. There's gotta be a twenty-four-hour joint somewhereon the way…'

Chapter 45: Canicular 7

Koneko

(Monday, July 30th)

-

Today 7:49 PM

9SageNaruto: still no sign of her at my place either.

9SageNaruto: oh well.

Koneko1123: we should put up some missing posters

9SageNaruto: nah its fine, street cat gonna street cat

9SageNaruto: she'll show up when she wants

Koneko1123: if ur sure

9SageNaruto: if it comes to it we can always ask Yoru to help

Koneko1123: the twins were called back 2 kyoto a couple days ago tho

9SageNaruto: so?

9SageNaruto: they set up a shadow anchor at the arcade, we played yesterday while you patrolled

9SageNaruto: he can b here in liek 5 mints.

9SageNaruto: i mean minutes.

Koneko1123: makes sense, guess u need a practice partner to beat my score

Koneko1123: anyway gtg, just started my patrol

-

I put my phone away and looked out over the edge of the roof. Kuro had gone missing from my apartment a few days ago, and while it wasn't weird for the smart cat to disappear like that in the first place– since Naruto-kun always left a window open for her at his home– she usually came back a day or two later at most.

It's been almost a week now. Five days.

I had to remind myself that the black cat was originally a stray, and a healthy one at that. Naruto-kun was right; she'd be fine on her own. After having her basically living with me for the week before, I'd gotten more closely attached to her than I expected, considering she wasn't even mine.

Either way, I had a job to do.

It wasn't quite yet dark out, but the sun was sitting pretty low on the horizon. Being the summer, people were staying out later than usual because of the longer days, but even with that it was beginning to get late, so most were already in for the night or in the process of heading home, especially since it was a monday night.

Even with summer break having started a few days ago, most students still showed up for summer club activities, and adults still had work in the mornings. Further east into the red-light district and the more central areas close to the train station would be busier still, but I was only just entering central Kuoh from the south side, having just come from the old school building.

The sound of two teenage girls talking reached my ears as they took a shortcut through the shadowy wooded park across the road from me. Different from what most might expect from teenagers going home from summer clubs, these two were actually heading further south, back in the direction of the academy and a couple other student-attractions like the karaoke place.

My eyes shifted as I blinked, sending chakra to my head. Almost like turning on a mental zoom, my focus pierced through the gaps in tree coverage to spot the slightest shifting of leaves as the two girls' unknowing follower snuck around behind them. It had crept closer and closer for the last minute as they meandered down the path, and was just about to pounce if I was reading it right, from its quickening heartbeat.

I could cross the distance in four steps. A hundred meters in two seconds, and the girls wouldn't ever have to see a thing.

I waited.

Sure enough, the hidden devil's patience didn't last another five seconds before it jumped out from the trail's bushy hedge line with an inhuman roar. A pair of knife-like claws rushed towards the girls' backs, attached to the humanoid upper body of what looked like some sort of jaguar-centaur man.

The two girls side-stepped away from each other smoothly, only sort of turning their heads to watch as the Stray flew past, barely missing them.

It landed skidding on its side a dozen meters away, a deep gash at the chest and missing an arm, spilling blood that steamed as it poured out of the wound.

"Oh no!" The teen with the light-brown twintails exclaimed apologetically, even as she lowered the katana that had suddenly appeared from under her white cloak. "You almost dodged that? I didn't want you to suffer too much, even though you're a devil… let me end your pain, for the Lord's mercy extends to all under His gaze."

"Don't bother." The other one, a blue haired girl, said matter-of-factly. A long and thin wrapped up object was strapped over her own cloak across her back. "It'll die on its own in the next minute anyway. If you want to waste your efforts being merciful to enemies of God, then let it cling to whatever time it has left instead. There's only oblivion waiting for it either way.

The twintailed girl sighed with a nod, and they continued walking.

I watched as the katana shifted and shrank like a liquid until it wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet, before she tucked her arm back under the cloak. The aura of Holy Light that radiated off of it was smothered, suppressed by the cloak until I could barely feel it.

The two exorcists seemed to be heading toward the academy, so they were probably here for official business and were going to speak with Buchou.

More importantly, that weapon set off all kinds of alarm bells.

There was a difference between the regular Light element and "Holy" Light. Light was extremely effective against "dark" type beings like devils and youkai, but nothing more than that, which was why most exorcist weapons and low-tier Fallen Angels could hurt even high-tier devils, but didn't necessarily always kill. It was the Holy element that was poison to us, with even normally survivable wounds being fatal.

The cut the stray took wasn't deep enough to be fatal if it was just a Light-type weapon. On top of that, there were plenty of weapons that could transform, legendary and not, but only Holy energy was confirmed to destroy the souls of devils killed by it, "sending them to oblivion."

There was only one weapon I could think of that fit what I just saw and heard, one out of a group of infamous weapons that all sane devils had a healthy wariness of regardless of power; the Excaliburs.

Twintails brought Excalibur Mimicry to Kuoh.

I let out a resigned huff. 'Better see what's up.'

I summoned my wings to approach at a more casual speed.

I didn't hide my presence as I flew down a bit on the other side of the Stray, right when they were about to reach it. Folding my wings back, I took out my phone to snap a picture of the unconscious soon-to-be carcass.

"Hiya! I'm Shidou Irina." Twintails called out cheerfully.

'Part Japanese?' I wondered idly.

She smiled apologetically.

"Are you gonna attack us too, little Devil-chan?" She asked. "If you do, we'll have to exorcise you, you know?"

I almost rolled my eyes while filling out a form for bounty collection, as Shidou's partner blatantly shifted to be able to quickly grab the object on her back.

"No," I answered blandly. "I'm Toujou Koneko, Rias Gremory's [Rook]. Why's the church in Kuoh?" I got straight to the point.

"We have business here. That's all you need to know until we speak to the Gremory heiress," the blue haired one said bluntly, not even offering her name.

'Rude.'

"No need to be rude, Xenovia…" I heard the Japanese girl mutter sheepishly after a strained chuckle, unknowingly agreeing with me.

"Okay," I said, unbothered by Xenovia's attitude either way. Rude or not, I had things to do, areas to patrol. She was sort of right in a way, knowing why they were here wouldn't affect my duties unless Buchou decided it would. "I'll escort you to her. Gimme a second, arranging cleanup."

I hit the submit button on the form, marking the GPS location for an agent in the town to come pick up the remains.

If the two girls asked, I'd offer them their rightful bounty money. If not, well, it's not like they'd know they were missing out on anything. The amount of snack money I could pull out of my allowance from Buchou was limited, so it was always nice to keep my own personal funds topped off.

Just because the rudeness didn't bother me, didn't mean I wasn't gonna be petty about it.

Naruto

After checking around my apartment one last time, just in case I missed the bundle of black fur hidden behind some furniture or in a shadowed corner somewhere, I decided to go out and take a walk around town– maybe do some people watching or hit up one of the wooded parks and feel the atmosphere. It had been a while since I went out without a goal or destination in mind, and I didn't really have anything I wanted to do at home at the moment. This world was way more peaceful than the Elemental Nations, so it would be nice to just take it all in for a little bit

Wearing a pair of orange track pants and a black t-shirt, I threw one of my school blazers over my shoulders, strapped a slim kunai pouch to my thigh, and left the apartment complex with my cane-sword in hand, making my way towards the main roads with the sun on the horizon ahead of me.

By the time I made it to the downtown plaza, the sun had fully set and the sky was darkening, with streetlamps starting to turn on and light the sidewalks. Some adult men and women walked around, leaving stores and shops as they made their way towards their cars or bus-stops, while plenty of teens made their ways in and out of arcades and other entertainment places.

My idea of people watching was kinda a bust, because as nice as it was to see people peacefully going about their lives… I was bored as hell within just a few minutes. It was only slightly more interesting than cloud-watching with Shikamaru, and only because I could zone out and think about going to some of these places to hang out with Koneko and our other friends.

'Ugh, how the hell does that lazy bum sit around for so long?'

The plaza's atmosphere and walk here itself was still relaxing, so it wasn't a total waste. I just decided to move on and find a park to walk through, though.

My phone dinged in my pocket as I moved away towards the plaza's outskirts.

Pulling it out, I didn't recognize the number on the notification.

Today 8:17 PM

AgntShinra-NPA: Where are you right now?

It took me a second of staring in confusion, before I realized who it was.

'That stalker got my number too?' I deadpanned. 'That's not even on school records.'

Either way, I began typing out a response. The Shinra chick probably wanted to meet up somewhere to talk about a lead she found, which was fine with me.

"Oh, Uzumaki-kun?"

I looked up and to the side at the sound of Norika's voice calling out to me as I walked past the corner of the block. My glasses-wearing classmate was moving down the sidewalk in my direction, carrying a satchel bag in her hand.

I smiled, hitting send on my text and pocketing the phone.

"Yo!" I greeted her with a little raised hand wave and a grin. "How's your break been going?"

"It's been good, if a bit boring. All I've done is spend time with Mitsuri at her family's cafe, since she's doing some part-time work with them during her break," she replied with a small smile of her own as she came up next to me. "And yours?"

My phone dinged again, but I ignored it for now. I was talking to a friend right now, so it could wait.

"Eh." I shrugged. "Still getting used to not having to get ready for school in the mornings again. I keep waking up before my alarm, and I don't even have one set right now, heheh!" I normally forced myself to wake up sort of early to train anyway, but there was something seriously annoying about not being able to sleep in even without an alarm to wake me up. "Other than that, it's been kinda all over the place, lot's of-" I paused, twirling my cane for emphasis, drawing her eye. "-'stuff' going on that's kept me busy when I'm not training or hanging out with Koneko-chan, Himejima, or Kiba. I had some time with nothing to do just now, so I'm heading to one of the parks to take a walk."

Completely different from Mitsuri's usual funny reactions, Norika looked unfazed by my 'subtle' reference to my ninja'ing, as if it was completely normal and expected. Instead, her head tilted slightly in interest at the mention of a walk through a park, and I remembered that she's mentioned enjoying going on walks with her family before.

"Want to join me for a bit?" I offered with a tilt of my head in the direction I was headed.

"That would be lovely." She accepted with a warm smile.

My phone began ringing, but I shoved a hand into my pocket and fumbled around to hit the mute button.

Man, some people could be so damn nosy.

(A little later)

"It still surprises me sometimes."

I glanced away from the little weasel I was watching play around with a berry a few dozen feet ahead of us, looking down at the smaller girl after she spoke. She was only a couple inches taller than Koneko-chan; not quite in the 'late-elementary-school' size category like the tiny cat girl, but definitely below average for her age.

"What does?" I asked curiously. We'd been walking along a paved trail through the closest park for a couple minutes, mostly just chatting about how each of our clubs chose to handle summer attendance.

"You do."

The bluntness surprised me, coming from her. Norika had a habit of implying things without laying everything out directly, unconsciously leaving her full meaning up to interpretation in an innocently teasing sort of way whenever the rest of us roped her further into our dumb, funny, or weird conversations. She didn't have any trouble directly involving herself in our friend group's shenanigans, but she liked to pretend as if she was a third-party observer happily watching a train wreck happening in front of her whenever one of us (usually me or Mitsuri) made a fool of ourselves.

She continued.

"I wouldn't have thought someone like you could be the way you are, before; at least, not until I got to actually know you." She gave a light sigh with a shake of her head. "... I'm usually pretty good at judging people's true character with a couple of looks, but with you? It's like I'm blind." She chuckled for some reason. "I thought you were a scary delinquent up until that day Mitsuri-chan introduced us, and even after that, I never would have guessed that a goofy, energetic boy like you would be the type to enjoy a quiet, night-time stroll through a park."

She glanced up at me with a wry smile. "You just keep finding ways to surprise me, Uzumaki-kun."

I chuckled. "I guess I still live up to my old nickname back home, Konoha's most unpredictable knuckle-headed ninja." I took a deep breath of the fresh air around us, watching as the marten stuffed the berry into its mouth and scampered onto the walkway in my path. "But you're right, I didn't use to have the patience to enjoy something like this. But one of my senseis made me learn how to sit still during my training, and I guess you could say that helped me take in and appreciate nature." My lips curled in amusement at my little inside-joke, before I glanced back at my more normal friend. "You've never really seem all that surprised to me, though.

"There are plenty of strange things in the world, Uzumaki-kun…" She glanced at me with an amused look of her own. "I'm simply used to ignoring that side… of…"

She trailed off, and we paused, her oddly teasing expression shifting to one of confused wariness as her eyes were drawn to something ahead of us. The little marten at my feet, that didn't pay any mind even as I stepped up within a foot of it, rose up on its hind legs and sniffed the air after the leaves of a tree off to the side shook, before darting off into the brush in the opposite direction.

I followed Norika's gaze.

Nothing.

Just an empty pathway through the park, lit up by a few small street lamps.

Something was clearly here though.

"Maybe we should-" I saw her flinching back, her voice catching before she could finish what she was saying.

I reacted.

Koneko

"So what you're telling me-" Buchou began, her face flat, "-is that the Church sent the two of you– Excalibur wielders– into my territory without any prior warning, and you want me to sit back and let you run amuck through my town while you look for three other Excaliburs that were stolen– almost certainly by Fallen– and tracked down to be in Kuoh, with the goal of either reclaiming or destroying them?"

It was currently just her and I in the ORC room, with everyone else out on assignments.

It was extremely lucky, in my opinion. Kiba and Asia were both victims of the Church not caring about its followers, and Xenovia was…

"Yes. If you get involved, you might choose to work with the perpetrators to take another two Excaliburs away from us, your mortal enemies," Xenovia stated bluntly. "If you aren't working with them, prove you're innocent by staying out of this, Devil."

… difficult, to put it charitably.

I'd give it even odds between her and Kiba for whichever one baited the other into a fight first, if he were here. I didn't know the exact details, but I knew he hated the church more than most other things.

Irina face-palmed at the blue-haired girl's lack of tact. "Why do I let her take the lead?" I heard her mutter.

"Hmm…" Rias's head tilted, a considering expression on her face. "Are you an idiot?"

Xenovia's eyes narrowed.

Buchou continued. "Because that might be the most asinine, delusional thing I've heard in months. If the Church had bothered to do even a little research into Kuoh at all, they would know that for the past month, we have had our hands full trying to contain and suppress multiple antagonistic factions and external elements causing problems with each other within the town, including a potentially rogue sub-faction of Fallen, and this is after yet another incident not even half a year ago involving a cell of disposable Fallen black ops attacking people under my protection."

She stared at the short-haired exorcist, interlocking her fingers together on the desk in front of her. "In short, no. We are decidedly NOT working with the Fallen to steal your holy swords. If anything, we would be more inclined to work with you. It doesn't matter whose hands they are in, a holy sword is still an existential threat to devils, and we would much prefer helping you destroy a couple rather than to leave them in the hands of the Fallen."

Xenovia opened her mouth with a frown, but Irina stepped in front of her with forced cheer. "We'll keep that in mind, Gremory-dono, but we'd like to try on our own before accepting your offer, to keep things simple. If we have any troubles, we'll be sure to come back to it. Does that work for you?"

Rias pretended to think about it for a few seconds, before nodding, having already known her next move from the start.

"It does, on two conditions." She held up one finger. "First, you tell us which Excaliburs were stolen and what you know of their abilities that aren't already known outside of the Church. Even if we don't try to interfere with your mission, that doesn't mean the true thieves won't try to interfere with my people, so we need to be prepared to protect ourselves." She held up another finger while eyeing Xenovia– specifically, the wrapped bundle slung across her back. "Second, we need to know which Excalibur Xenovia-san holds, in case the enemy manages to defeat her and steal it as well. No need to elaborate on its abilities beyond the obvious if that's too much, it's enough to simply know which it is."

Irina nodded, a thoughtful expression on her face. "That's simple enough. We don't personally know enough about the swords we don't wield to be giving up too much information as far as our superiors would be concerned, and you would have found out about Xenovia's pretty quickly, too be honest. Excalibur Destruction is about as subtle as she is."

Xenovia huffed, but didn't argue the point.

"The three stolen blades are Excalibur Nightmare, Rapidly, and Transparency." Irina ticked off her fingers. "Neither of us know much about Nightmare to be honest, other than the fact that it looks sort of like a screw and can create illusions. Rapidly doesn't just increase its wielder's speed by a certain multiplier, it increases their top speed, acceleration, reflexes, momentum, and maybe even other things like healing speed and metabolism by a specific multiplier, no matter how strong the wielder already is. I don't know what that multiplier is, but it's not too crazy."

She shrugged, before moving on to the last one.

"Transparency makes itself and its wielder invisible, but it can make just one or the other invisible too, it doesn't have to be both. Though I don't know why anyone wouldn't just do both…" Irina put a finger to her chin in thought. "Oh yeah, it can also apparently make certain types of energy invisible too, but I don't think any of its wielders have been magic users before, so we aren't sure what the limits are for that. Most wielders have just used that to hide its Holy aura when sneaking around."

'Hiding its holy aura?' I wondered how effective it was at doing that. Even though it was a holy sword, it was just a fragment reforged by the church, only a seventh of the original. On the other hand, it was a seventh of the Excalibur, the strongest of all holy swords. Even just a fragment was still on par with other complete holy weapons. It could have some flaw that a skilled sensor like Akeno could see through, or it could be able to cloak itself perfectly, with the skill of its wielder being the only limiting factor. 'Could I sense its presence through Senjutsu…?'

I stiffened in my spot on the side of the room, my eyes widening as something clicked into place. I turned my head to stare at Buchou, just out of view of the exorcists, and my master shifted in her seat, leaning my way without looking directly at me, signaling she understood I had info for her.

"Thank you for that," Rias nodded at Shido. "That's useful info to know. In exchange, I'll let my peerage and my other allies know not to interfere if possible. You're free to investigate for now, though let me be clear; if you make too much of a mess on your own, we will step in regardless of your wishes. Was that all?"

"Yes, thank you for having us." Shido gave a short but polite bow at the dismissal, while Xenovia just turned and began walking towards the door without another word.

When I shut the door behind them after they fully left the room, and I confirmed their footsteps were out of earshot even for a regular devil's hearing, I turned to face my [King].

"Transparency is in Principal Clan territory." I wasted no time explaining my thoughts. "The Fallen that attacked us when Naruto-kun and I went there, they left the sword there after making it turn invisible and hide its Holy aura. I only noticed it through Senjutsu, because even if it's hidden, it's still there for me to connect to."

I could still be wrong, but it at least made a lot of sense in my mind.

"That's…" Rias put her hand on her chin, looking down at nothing while thinking it over. "... not the worst thing I've heard today, but still potentially very annoying." She looked up. "You said Uzumaki-kun and his new contact within the clans didn't find anything when he was there last, right? And no word from his contact yet on finding it?"

I nodded.

"Text him then." She gave an amused smirk. "Let's see if he can get you in there for an hour to try and find an invisible sword that can't be sensed normally. After all, we're not interfering in the Church's investigation, we're just continuing our own." Her amusement died down a moment later. "Besides, the last thing we need is one of their more fervent and religiously flexible members stumbling across it, and deciding that one of the Excaliburs is just the right weapon for their own aims."

I pulled out my phone, sent a message, and waited.

And waited.

… He wasn't answering as quickly as usual.

Naruto

I threw my jacket in an instant, jumping in front of Norika a split second later and swinging my cane up with both hands to clash against the invisible force that cut through the blazer, a heavy clang of metal on metal ringing out. The sheer force pushed me skidding back nearly a foot. My back smacked into Norika's front and sent her stumbling backwards, but it was better than whatever this invisible thing was smashing into her directly.

"What the hell?!" I grunted. "Show yourself, you coward!"

I didn't expect them to, but thought that maybe the attacker would be the type to get easily annoyed and make mistakes.

I almost thought about unsheathing my sword for a split second, but I caught a glimpse of the spot I caught the blow on; the dense metal sheath was partially cut through just from that one hit, exposing a sliver of the mirror-polished blade inside. Whatever weapon I was up against, my sheath wasn't strong enough to withstand a blow on its own, and without being able to see our attacker, it was too risky to try deflecting blows instead of just blocking.

I strained my ears to listen for movement.

Woosh

I surged to my right while spinning to the left, swinging my cane up and around in an arc in front of me. I felt the impact vibrate down my arms, my sword not being particularly well designed for absorbing strong impacts, but I followed through on my swing, pushing the invisible weapon down into the ground where it bit into the pathway with a loud clang and a small scattering of broken concrete.

Reversing my off-hand's grip with my cane pinning the invisible weapon to the ground, I lunged forward while unsheathing my sword in a quickdraw at the empty space in front of me, but a shaft of red Light burst into existence in the form of a spear to block my attack.

'The Fallen!'

"Your left!" Norika called out in a panic.

Just as quickly as the spear appeared, it disappeared the moment most of the force from my attack was stopped, and as I stumbled forward I threw myself to the right with a twist to the left, both my sword and sheath held in front of my body in an x-shape. The invisible weapon slammed into my hasty guard and sent me tumbling, leaving our attacker between me and Norika.

My heart was pounding and I grit my teeth, my eyes flicking up to find my friend as I twisted my roll upright onto a knee, my sword already swinging and my sheath missing its upper half as I let it slip from my grasp. 'If they go after her again–!'

A bolt of red Light flew at me, filling my vision.

I completed my pre-emptive swing, adjusting to knock aside the spear instead of trying to cut through a Fallen that wasn't there, my other hand slipping a kunai from my thigh pouch and flinging it by the ring roughly where I thought the Fallen would be, but I was too late.

Norika had let out a gasp and was falling backwards from trying to backpedal, and even as I tried to launch myself into a desperate sprint to reach her, her face was aimed up in front of her at an enemy only she could see.

'–I can't make it in time!'

She wasn't a fighter. This wasn't like with Neji, someone sacrificing themselves to protect their comrades. This was an innocent civilian being targeted by someone, just because she could somehow see through their invisibility trick.

It seemed like my knife was moving through the air in slow motion as adrenaline rushed through my veins, my vision blurring at the edges as the image of my friend's terrified expression seared itself into my brain.

I felt the muscles in my legs tearing, a burning strain filling my body as I pushed myself as hard as could, having crossed a dozen feet in the time it took for my sheath to hit the ground. It still wasn't enough, and an awful rage began to fill me.

A flash.

A clash of metal rang out, and an impractically long blade of polished metal slammed into an invisible wall and pushed it away, inches from Norika's face, the tanto extending from deep in the woods. My kunai sliced through the empty space right beside her and sailed into the distance an instant later, a severed half of a raven feather popping into existence as it passed.

I didn't have the time to feel relief and instead doubled my efforts, blurring forwards.

The extended blade raced upwards, and another clash of steel on steel rang out from a meter to the right of where the Fallen must have been before, so I adjusted, planting a foot, and pushing so hard off the ground that my ankle cracked, thrusting my sword at the only place the Fallen Angel could still be.

Another red spear shaft burst into existence in front of me… but the impossibly long tanto blade slashed down faster than the eye could follow, batting it down.

I felt my sword pierce through cloth and flesh and bone down to the hilt, before I crashed bodily into the invisible person with all my momentum, sending us both tumbling into the brush with a rustle of leaves.

I rolled with it, barely managing to keep hold of my weapon and yank it out of their body as we separated in the chaos, before my back slammed into a tree. I tried to regain my bearings while pushing myself back up into a ready stance, but it was with a struggle to put pressure on my left leg with the feeling of bone grinding on bone from my dislocated ankle.

The first thing I saw was the body.

Lying on the ground next to a bush, hand weakly pressing to his chest, was the indistinct form of a man with multiple crumpled wings laid out around him. His face was covered by a strange mask that wrapped around his head, leaving only his eyes and slightly pointed ears exposed. His clothes were as black as his wings except for a white, eight-pointed star on his torso, a star that was now soaked red with blood.

I cautiously took a step towards him, sword raised, and watched as his head lolled my way. For all I knew, he could be faking, pretending a regular flesh wound was worse than it actually was to catch me off guard.

"Why did you attack my friend?" It probably wasn't worth asking the man, but it couldn't hurt.

Like I expected, the man stayed silent aside from his labored breathing, his eyes staring up at me.

"He was after you."

The Shinra girl from the warehouse walked into view on the other side of him, and I glanced up, seeing her step through the brush with her normal-length tanto in hand while Norika stood worryingly a bit behind her, out of view of the man and closer to the lit pathway.

I jerked my head to the side an instant later and let the Light spear fly past me, where it hit the tree behind me with a loud crack.

I raised my weapon ready to continue, even as the tip of Shinra's tanto blade pinned the Fallen's arm to the forest floor with a squelch, but neither of our actions were necessary in the end.

The man was already dead.

He'd used the last of his strength to try to take my head off at the slightest distraction, pulling the now-gaping wound in his chest further open in the process of throwing the spear from his prone position, and filling the area with a coppery smell as he slumped face down in the blood-soaked dirt.

His chest wasn't moving, but I walked over and bent down to check for a pulse, just in case.

Nothing.

Standing up, I looked past the clan girl to the other side of the trail bushes. "Are you alright Norika? He didn't manage to hit you anywhere, did he?"

"N– Y-yes?" She stuttered with an unsure look, gripping her hands together tightly in front of her with a pale face. "I'm u-unhurt, Uzumaki-kun, just… a bit sh-shocked."

"Are you-"

'-sure?' is what I wanted to say, but I cut myself off, biting the inside of my cheek to keep my own worry in check. She was clearly good enough to walk around, anything else could be addressed later, some time and place safer than right here and now. "Alright, that's… I'm glad," I said instead. "Just… don't come any closer, yeah? This isn't a sight you should see."

A sick expression crossed her face and she nodded slowly, turning to face the other way.

I turned to face the Shinra girl again, who had crouched by the corpse herself now, studying the Fallen more closely. "You were saying before? Why was he after me?"

"Because you knew about that." Her hand stretched out to the side without looking, pointing at the forest floor a couple meters away. "Or at least, he thought you might."

Lying under a tree, with rays of moonlight breaking through the canopy to shine down on it, was a slim, one-handed and double-edged decorative longsword with such a perfect mirror polish that the mostly-full moon was reflecting clearly off of it for me to see, even from this distance.

"... A sword?"

It was a cool looking sword, sure– a little bit more plain than some of the crazy swords back home or the stuff Kiba could make with his Gear– but still.

"Not just any sword," She said, quiet and airily. "That's Excalibur Transparency; one of the seven Holy Swords of Excalibur, and the reason the Fallen were at our warehouse in the first place."

Something about her tone of voice set off an uneasy feeling in my chest.

"You guys were storing a holy sword in there?" I asked with raised eyebrows. I didn't know a lot about holy swords, but I knew enough to understand that most of them belonged to the Church. If the Five Principals had one in their warehouse, and it was one with the ability to turn "invisible", it would explain why Koneko could only sort of sense its aura of Light, and only through Senjutsu.

"We weren't." She rapped the back of her knuckles against the back of the dead man's skull. "They were. He just went and retrieved it from us, to our staff's confusion. I only realized what it was when I arrived too late and saw him turn invisible while flying off with it in hand. Finally figured out what was wrong, just for it to not even matter anymore."

She settled her tanto's blade on the body's neck before pausing as if in thought, then sheathing her weapon to instead grip the man by the back of his uniform and haul him over her shoulder as she stood, uncaring of the blood that began pouring down her body. His four limp wings dragged across the dirt as she began walking away into the forest without another word, a blank look in her eyes.

"... how many?" I called out quietly.

"Emptied the place out," she called back in the same uncaring-sounding tone. She paused, her back still to me. "Keep that sword out of their hands for me, will you? I've already got mine full of 'evidence' right now, you see." She continued walking.

I clenched my fists for a moment, before releasing them with an exhale. "Yeah. Sure. I can hold on to it for you, Himitsu."

"We don't want a damn thing to do with it," she muttered darkly. "Never did in the first place."

She waved over her shoulder with one of her supposedly "full" hands and began dashing through the trees with her carry-on disappearing within seconds.

I stepped out of the brush to stand beside Norika a minute or two later, my cane-sword as thoroughly wiped of blood as I could manage with the tiny cloth I kept in my kunai pouch for that purpose, the hooked handle hanging from my left elbow while I held the Excalibur with that same hand.

"Come on," I said, laying a hand on my short friend's shoulder. I made sure not to silence my steps and made a decent amount of noise on my approach, but she still jumped in surprise. "Let's get you somewhere safe for now."

She nodded softly, uttering a quiet "Mm."

We'd stop by the mansion for a while to calm Norika's nerves before sending her home. Red or Kiba would probably know what to do with this damn sword, too.

I pulled out my phone to check the time and text the two of them, and it was like putting salt in the wound to see the missed texts from ' .NPA' trying to warn me about the now-dead Fallen.

And one from Koneko, asking to meet with the very same agent.

With a sigh, I stomped my foot on the concrete just right, and snapped my ankle back into place with a wet-sounding click, getting a horrified flinch from Norika, who I then had to sheepishly assure her that I was fine (mostly) and that it really wasn't as bad as it sounded (it was).

Tonight fucking sucked.