Ch.32
The villa smelled like garlic and tomatoes and something herbal that I couldn't identify but my stomach could.
Asia had taken over the kitchen on day three. Nobody had asked her to. She'd woken up early, found the pantry, and by the time everyone else was stumbling downstairs for breakfast she had pasta dough resting under a cloth on the counter and a sauce on the stove that smelled like a restaurant in a country none of us had ever been to. She was wearing an apron over her training clothes and her blonde hair was tied back and her sleeves were rolled and she was kneading dough with a focus that bordered on violent.
She cooked Italian. Of course she did. The girl was raised in a convent in a small Italian town and she'd learned to make pasta before she'd learned to heal, and when she told me the recipe was from a nun named Sister Maria who had hands like sandpaper and opinions about flour, I believed every word.
By day four she was making dinner for the whole villa and nobody complained because nobody was stupid enough to complain about food that good.
I was helping. The word "helping" was generous. I was chopping vegetables while Asia did everything else. She'd given me an onion, a knife, and a cutting board and positioned me at the counter beside her and my job was to turn the onion into pieces small enough to go in the sauce without being large enough to be identifiable. I was failing. The pieces were uneven. She kept glancing at my work and pressing her lips together.
"Smaller," she said.
"They're small."
"They need to be smaller, Issei-san. The sauce should absorb them completely."
"If they're any smaller they'll be invisible."
"That is the correct size for an onion in soffritto."
I chopped smaller. Her hands were working the dough next to me, pressing and folding and pressing again, and her forearms were dusty with flour and the kitchen was warm and the sauce was bubbling and somewhere outside Kiba and Koneko were sparring and the sound of wooden swords and Rook-class impacts drifted through the open window.
Our hands brushed over the cutting board. My knuckles against her fingers. She didn't pull away. Her fingers stayed where they were and she kept kneading.
"Issei-san."
"Yeah?"
She stopped kneading. Her hands were in the dough and flour was on her fingers and her green eyes were on the counter.
"Everyone trains. Rias-san trains her Destruction. Akeno-san trains her lightning. Koneko-san and Kiba-san spar. You train with all of them." She swallowed. "I heal."
"You heal."
"I heal. That's all I do. When the Rating Game happens, I'll stand at the base and I'll heal whoever comes back injured and I'll watch on the broadcast while everyone else fights." Her voice was steady but her hands were gripping the dough too hard, her knuckles white in the flour. "And I'm afraid that one day healing won't be enough. That someone will be hurt past what I can fix and I'll be standing there with my rings glowing and my hands out and it won't matter."
The kitchen was quiet. The sauce bubbled. The sparring sounds from outside had stopped.
I put down the knife.
I turned her by the shoulders. Gently. She came around to face me and her eyes were wet and her chin was up.
"You kept me alive after Raynare," I said. "The spear went through my stomach and you put your hands on the wound and you held me together while Rias finished the resurrection. You kept everyone going during the church raid. When Freed put a blade through Kiba's side, you closed the wound in eight seconds while the fight was still happening. Asia."
She was looking at me. Green eyes, wet, wide.
"The person who keeps the fighters fighting is the one nobody can replace."
Her mouth trembled. Her eyes overflowed. She pressed her lips together hard and the tears ran down her cheeks and her shoulders shook once under my hands and then she was against me. Arms around my waist, face in my chest, her body pressed against mine and her hands gripping the back of my shirt with flour-covered fingers. She smelled like garlic and dough and the faint floral scent of her shampoo underneath.
I put my arms around her. She was small. Her head barely reached my chin. Her body was shaking and the tears were soaking through my shirt and the sauce kept bubbling on the stove and the kitchen was warm.
She pulled back after a minute. Wiped her eyes with her wrist, which left a flour streak across her cheekbone. Sniffed once. Looked at the stove.
"The sauce," she said.
"It's fine."
She went to stir it. Her back was to me and her shoulders were straight and the flour streak was still on her face and she stirred the sauce with careful attention and her free hand was gripping the edge of the counter.
"Thank you, Issei-san." Quiet. Without turning.
"Yeah."
She stirred. I went back to the onion. The pieces were getting smaller.
That night, Ddraig pulled me under.
The mindscape was where it always was: a vast dark space lit by green gem-light from the walls, the floor polished obsidian, the ceiling too high to see. Ddraig's territory.
She was waiting for me. Avatar form.
Red-scaled skin that caught the green light, copper-toned where the scales thinned over her collarbone and arms. Green eyes, slit-pupiled, the same color as the Boosted Gear's gem. Horns curving back from her temples, dark and smooth. Armored in dragon scales that covered her torso and thighs and left her arms and shoulders bare and the musculature underneath was lean and defined. She was tall. Taller than me by half a foot, which she enjoyed.
"Partner." Her voice was deeper in the mindscape. Fuller. "Sit."
I sat. Cross-legged on the obsidian floor. The green light hummed around us.
"I've been examining the energy transfers," she said. She was pacing. Slow, deliberate, her bare feet soundless on the floor. "The demonic energy you've been receiving. The Gremory's Destruction traces. The half-breed's holy lightning remnants."
"And?"
She stopped pacing. Turned to me. Her green eyes were bright.
"The energy isn't merely adding to your reserves. It's integrating into the Boosted Gear's architecture. Weaving itself into the framework. Your reserves grow, yes, but the Gear itself is growing. Evolving. The infrastructure that supports Boost and Transfer is becoming denser, capable of sustaining higher output."
I processed that. "Meaning what?"
"Meaning Balance Breaker."
The mindscape went quiet. The green light dimmed.
"Scale Mail," Ddraig said. "Full-body dragon armor. The form that every host I've had has struggled to reach, that has cost most of them years or their sanity. The energy from your intimate bonds is accelerating the Gear's evolution toward it. At the current rate, partial activation is possible within weeks. A temporary Scale Mail. Limited duration, significant drain, but functional."
"Without sacrificing my arm."
"Without sacrificing anything except stamina." She was looking at me with an expression I'd never seen on the dragon's face before. Her brow ridges were drawn together and her slit pupils were wide. "No host has ever reached Balance Breaker through sync alone. The Gear has always required crisis or sacrifice. You're growing toward it through something the system wasn't designed for."
"Sex magic."
"Do not call it sex magic."
"The power-sex-loop."
"That is equally undignified."
"The intimate energy transfer protocol."
"…Acceptable." She looked away. Her jaw worked once.
"Show me the technique you've been developing," I said. "The counter-stance for fire-type attacks."
She turned back. Professional.
"Stand."
I stood. She circled behind me. Her scaled hands found my forearms and adjusted them, lifting my guard, rotating my wrists so my palms faced outward. Her grip was firm and warm. The scales were smooth against my skin.
"Your Boost output needs to route through the forearms, not the fist," she said. Her voice was close. She was behind me, adjusting my stance, and her body was close to mine. "Fire-type attacks are area of effect. You don't block them. You deflect the energy around you."
Her hands moved to my elbows. Pushed them wider. Her chest pressed against my back. The scales were warm and smooth and she was taller than me in this form and her breath was on the back of my neck and the green light in the mindscape pulsed once.
Three seconds.
She let go. Stepped back. The distance returned.
"Again," she said. "Properly this time."
Her voice was flat. Professional. Her green eyes were on the wall behind me and not on my face.
I adjusted my stance. We ran the technique twelve times. She didn't touch me again.
Neither of us mentioned the three seconds.