Ch.6
The magic circle deposited me on a hardwood floor that smelled like old books and furniture polish, and for a second I just stood there, swaying, with one hand pressed against my ribs and blood still soaking through the jacket Rias had given me.
The ORC clubroom.
I'd seen it in the anime a hundred times, but the anime hadn't included the smell. Old wood and leather and candle wax, with a metallic edge underneath, like the air itself had been charged with demonic energy for so long it had soaked into the walls. The room was dimmer than I expected. Heavy curtains, a sofa that looked like it had survived two world wars, Rias's desk at the far end under a window, a chess board set up on a side table. Occult symbols painted on the ceiling that I recognized from at least three episodes.
The sofa was where I ended up, because my legs decided they were done and Rias guided me into it with a hand on my shoulder before I could protest.
"Akeno," she said.
"Already here, Buchou."
The voice came from behind me, and I turned my head. Akeno Himejima was standing in the doorway to what I assumed was the kitchenette, holding a tray with a tea set on it. Long black hair in a ponytail tied with an orange ribbon. Violet eyes. Gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous where you forget what you were doing mid-sentence, except I was bleeding and that kept me focused.
She set the tea tray on the side table and came around the sofa. "Shirt off, please."
"We just met."
"Ara ara." The smile that crossed her face was warm and slightly crooked, amused by a joke she hadn't expected from a bleeding teenager. "I need to see the wound."
I pulled the ruined button-down over my head, hissing when the fabric peeled away from the gash across my right side. The light spear had caught me clean, a diagonal line from just below my ribs almost to my hip. The edges were burned, cauterized by the holy energy, and the skin around it was an angry red that faded to pink further out.
Akeno knelt beside the sofa. Her hands hovered over the wound, and then a soft green glow bloomed from her palms. Warm. The warmth spread through the damaged tissue and the pain backed off from screaming to a dull throb.
She smelled like incense. Temple incense, the sandalwood kind, mixed with something lighter that was just her. Her hair was close enough to brush my chest where she leaned in to examine the gash, black silk against bare skin, and I stayed still.
"My, you're very still for someone in pain," she said. Her voice was low, close, meant for me and not the room.
"Your hands are warm. Why would I move?"
Her eyes came up to mine. The smile changed. Wider on one side, a curve that had weight behind it. Her fingers lingered on the edge of the scar tissue, tracing the boundary between burned and whole, and the healing glow pulsed brighter where she pressed.
"Ufufu. What a well-behaved patient."
She took her time. I let her.
Across the room, movement. A blond boy had entered from the hallway, slim and handsome, gray-blue eyes, carrying himself with the casual ease of someone who'd never had to try to be liked.
"Ah, hello." He dipped his head. "Kiba Yuuto. I'm Rias-buchou's Knight."
"Issei."
"I know." His smile was genuine and easy. "I'm glad you're in one piece. Koneko said the fight was... eventful."
In the corner, a small white-haired figure was sitting on a chair with her legs tucked under her, eating chips from a bag with methodical precision. Gold eyes tracked me from across the room with the focused disinterest of someone watching a nature documentary. She didn't introduce herself. She didn't speak at all. She ate another chip.
Koneko. The surveillance had followed me inside.
Akeno finished the healing with a final pulse of warmth and sat back on her heels. The gash was closed, sealed into a thin pink line of new skin that still ached when I breathed but didn't bleed. She looked at her work, then at me, and her eyes dropped to my chest.
"Done," she said, and stood gracefully. "Try not to tear it open."
I pulled my shirt back on. It was still bloodstained and ripped on one side. Rias, who had been standing at her desk watching the entire exchange with her arms crossed, stepped forward.
She'd changed. Somewhere between the fountain and the clubroom she'd swapped the nightgown for her school uniform, and the crimson hair was pinned back with a clip. She looked like a girl who owned the room she was standing in and everyone in it.
"I imagine you have questions," she said.
I had the answers. All of them. Four seasons of anime and a week of channeling sessions with the dragon who lived inside my left arm. But Rias didn't know that, and she couldn't.
"A few," I said.
She told me everything. The Three Factions. Devils, Angels, Fallen Angels. The Great War that killed the Biblical God. The System that ran Heaven in his absence. Kuoh Town as Devil territory, jointly administered by the Gremory and Sitri clans. The Fallen Angel who'd attacked me was a rogue operating without authorization from Grigori leadership.
I asked the right questions. "You said the God of the Bible is dead?" Wide eyes, appropriate shock. "Devils have their own government?" Genuine curiosity, well-placed. "What's a Sacred Gear?" Like I didn't have one on my arm half an hour ago.
Rias watched me as she explained. She was looking for panic, for denial, for the kind of overwhelmed terror that a normal human would display when their worldview collapsed in the space of five minutes. She wasn't getting it.
"You're taking this remarkably well," she said.
"I almost died an hour ago. Hard to panic about theology after that."
Her mouth thinned. She wasn't buying it entirely, but she let it slide. She walked to the chess board on the side table and picked up a piece. A pawn. Small, white, unremarkable.
"What you have on your arm is called a Longinus," she said. "Specifically, the Boosted Gear. It contains the spirit of one of the Two Heavenly Dragons. It's one of the most powerful Sacred Gears in existence."
"And that's why the Fallen Angel came after me."
"Yes. And she'll come back. Or others will. A Longinus wielder who isn't affiliated with any faction is a target." She turned the pawn piece over in her fingers. "I can protect you. Make you stronger. Give you access to resources and training that would take you years to find on your own."
"What's the cost?"
She held up the pawn piece. "I have eight of these. Evil Pieces. A reincarnation system. I would make you my Pawn. You'd become a Devil, a member of my peerage, and in exchange you'd serve me as my servant."
The room was quiet. Akeno was standing by the tea tray, cup in hand, watching over the rim. Kiba had settled into a chair by the wall, posture relaxed but attentive. Koneko ate another chip.
I looked at the pawn piece in Rias's hand. Eight of them. All eight, spent on one person. I knew what that meant because I'd watched the scene play out in a different version of this story, on a screen, in a life that felt further away every day.
"No," I said.
The room went vacuum-sealed. Akeno's teacup paused halfway to her lips. Kiba's easy smile flickered. In the corner, Koneko's chip stopped en route to her mouth, which was somehow the most alarming reaction of all.
Rias stared at me. Her jaw had tightened.
"No?"
"I don't want to be anyone's servant."
"It's not literal servitude. It's a peerage system. We're family, not-"
"You picked up a chess piece and told me I'd serve you. I'm not interested."
Silence. Her fingers closed around the pawn piece. The pressure showed in her knuckles.
"The Fallen Angels will come back," she said. Her voice was level but the temperature in it had dropped. "You're human. You're vulnerable. Without a faction behind you, you're a target with a weapon you don't know how to use."
"I survived tonight."
"You survived because she chose to leave. If she'd stayed another minute-"
"She didn't."
Rias's eyes narrowed. Across the room, Akeno took a slow sip of her tea. One eyebrow was raised, and the corners of her mouth were turned up just enough that she looked like she was enjoying herself. Her eyes moved between Rias and me.
"What I'll offer you," I said, keeping my voice even, "is an alliance. I'll fight alongside your peerage. I'll share information when I have it. I'll cooperate against threats that put both of us at risk. But I stay independent. I don't kneel. I don't serve. I'm your ally, not your piece."
Rias didn't answer immediately. She looked at the pawn in her hand, then at me, then back at the pawn. Her jaw worked. I'd watched her in the anime dealing with Riser, dealing with a family that wanted to sell her to a husband she didn't want. Rias Gremory did not lose arguments. She outmaneuvered them until the opposition crumbled.
She was running through the playbook right now, and nothing in it covered a bleeding human boy turning down eight Pawn pieces while sitting on her sofa in a torn shirt.
"This conversation isn't over," she said.
"I know."
She put the pawn piece back on the chess board with a click. Her fingers stayed on it for a second. Then she straightened, and the heiress mask came back, smooth and composed.
"Akeno will arrange transportation for you. We'll speak again soon."
"Looking forward to it."
The corner of her mouth pulled up, but her eyes didn't follow. I stood up. The healed wound twinged but held. Kiba gave me a nod on the way out. Koneko watched me leave without blinking. Akeno walked me to the door and opened it with one hand, leaning against the frame.
"You're interesting," she said. "Buchou doesn't get told no very often."
"First time for everything."
"Ara ara. I hope so." Her smile widened. It was an invitation. I just couldn't tell to what yet.
I walked home. The streets were dark and the wound in my side ached with every step, a low pulse that reminded me I'd been stabbed by an angel earlier that evening. A couple of stray cats were fighting in an alley I passed, yowling at each other over something I couldn't see.
At home, my parents were asleep. I went upstairs, locked the door, and sat on the bed in the dark.
"You are an idiot," Ddraig said.
"Probably."
"Eight Pawn pieces. The reincarnation would have doubled your base demonic energy overnight. Your growth rate with the Gear would have accelerated by a factor I cannot easily calculate. You would have gained flight, enhanced physical capabilities, and access to the entire Devil contract system. You turned all of this down."
"Yeah."
"Why?"
I stared at the ceiling. The ceiling fan was turning. Same off-balance blade. Same soft clicking.
"Because I don't kneel."
Ddraig went quiet for a long time. The pressure of her attention was there, steady and heavy, but she wasn't pushing. She was thinking.
"The previous host would have said yes without understanding what he was agreeing to. He would have been delighted to belong to the red-haired girl."
"I'm not the previous host."
"No. You are not." Another pause. Longer. Then, with a weight to the words that I hadn't heard from her before: "…I chose well this time."
I closed my eyes. My side ached. My left arm was sore from the gauntlet. Somewhere in Kuoh, a Fallen Angel with a fake name was reporting to her cell that the perverted boy she'd been sent to kill had a Longinus and steady hands and had whispered things he shouldn't have known. And across town, a girl with crimson hair was sitting at her desk holding a chess piece and trying to figure out why her plan had derailed.
And in a few days, a blonde nun with green eyes was going to arrive in this town carrying a suitcase and a Sacred Gear that everyone wanted to steal from her, and I was the only person in the world who knew she was coming.
I had work to do.