Ch.41
Rias called the simulation at four in the afternoon and the numbers were bad.
Day nine. The clearing was torn up from a full day of team drills, the grass shredded, two training dummies reduced to splinters. Kiba was sitting on the bench with a towel over his head. Akeno was leaning against a tree, her shrine maiden outfit singed at the hem from her own lightning. Koneko was standing where she'd been standing for the last ten minutes, staring at the ground, her knuckles raw.
Asia was healing everyone. Moving between them with her rings glowing, quiet, methodical. She didn't look at me. She was focused.
Rias stood in front of the group with her tactical board propped against a rock. She'd been running permutations all day. Different matchups, different positioning, different opening gambits. She'd had Akeno simulate Yubelluna's explosive style and had Koneko practice fighting two opponents at once and had Kiba run speed drills against multiple targets and none of it had changed the math.
"Best case," Rias said. Her voice was level. "We eliminate ten of his fifteen pieces before attrition catches us. Kiba handles the forest Pawns. Koneko matches Xuelan and at least one other piece. Akeno takes Yubelluna if we can isolate her from support. That leaves Riser with four to five remaining servants and himself."
She looked at the board. The numbers she'd written were clean and precise and damning.
"Riser himself regenerates from anything we can deliver. The Power of Destruction can hurt him, but not fast enough. He heals before I can follow up. Akeno's lightning might do sustained damage, but after fighting Yubelluna she won't have the reserves for a prolonged engagement with the King."
Nobody said anything. The clearing was quiet except for the faint hum of Asia's healing and the birds in the tree line.
"The Rating Game is tomorrow," Rias said. "I wanted you to know the honest assessment."
Kiba pulled the towel off his head. "We've had worse odds."
"We haven't."
He smiled anyway. "Then we'll set the precedent."
Akeno pushed off the tree. She crossed to Rias and put her hand on Rias's shoulder and squeezed once and didn't say anything. Rias's jaw tightened. Her eyes stayed on the board.
Koneko hadn't moved. Her gold eyes were on the ground and her hands were at her sides and her cat-shaped hairclips glinted in the afternoon light.
"Koneko," I said.
She looked up.
"Eat dinner tonight. A real dinner. If you fight Xuelan on a rice cracker, you'll lose."
Her mouth pressed flat. "...I'll eat."
"A real dinner."
"...Fine."
The group broke apart. Kiba went to stretch. Akeno walked with Rias toward the villa, their heads close together, talking in low voices. Asia finished healing Koneko's hands and packed her kit and followed them inside.
I stayed in the clearing.
The sun was getting low. The shadows from the tree line were reaching the torn-up grass. The training dummy that Koneko had destroyed that morning was still in pieces by the fence. Someone had stacked the larger chunks neatly.
Tomorrow Rias would lose the Rating Game. I knew it. I'd watched it happen from my couch in another life, in a body that didn't have dragon energy in its veins. Akeno would fall to Yubelluna's Phenex Tears. Koneko would get ambushed. Kiba would be overwhelmed. Rias would stand alone against Riser and his remaining pieces and she would be magnificent and it would not be enough and she would forfeit.
And then the engagement would proceed. The wedding. The ceremony in the Underworld where Riser would take her hand and she'd stand there in a dress she didn't choose in front of people who'd sold her.
I'd be there. That part was different from the anime. In the show, Issei crashed the wedding with his friends. In this version, I'd crash it alone, because I wasn't in her peerage and I couldn't enter the Rating Game and the only thing I could do was wait for the math to play out and then show up at the wedding with ten seconds of Scale Mail I hadn't earned yet.
Ten seconds.
I went inside.
The villa was quiet after dinner.
Koneko had eaten. Rice, fish, miso soup, a second bowl of rice. She'd eaten it methodically, like fuel, and she'd said nothing and nobody had commented and when she'd finished she'd put her dishes in the sink and gone upstairs. Rias had gone to her room early. Akeno had made tea and sat with it and stared at the cup until the steam stopped rising and then she'd gone upstairs too. Kiba had cleaned the kitchen. Asia had helped him.
I'd tried to sleep. My room was dark and the futon was cool and the window was open and I lay there for an hour staring at the ceiling and the ceiling stared back and nothing happened.
I got up. Pulled on a shirt. Went to the roof.
The villa had a flat section of roof above the second floor, accessible through a window at the end of the hallway. The tiles were cold under my bare feet. The mountain air was sharp and the sky was clear and the stars were bright and indifferent.
Koneko was already there.
She was sitting at the edge of the flat section, her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. Her white hair caught the starlight. She was wearing pajamas and no shoes and she was small against the sky.
I sat next to her. Left a foot of space between us.
She didn't look at me. She was looking at the mountains. The dark shapes of the peaks against the stars, the tree line below us, the faint light from the villa's windows falling across the garden.
Neither of us said anything.
The wind moved across the roof. Cold. It picked up the ends of her hair and moved them. A cricket was chirping somewhere below us, rhythmic, steady. The villa creaked once, the wood settling in the temperature drop.
She leaned.
Her shoulder touched mine. Then her head. The weight of it was slight, her white hair against my arm, and she settled there without asking or explaining. Her body was warm on my right side and the wind was cold on my left and she was looking at the mountains and I was looking at the mountains and neither of us spoke.
We sat there for a long time. The cricket stopped and started again. The light from the villa windows went out one by one as people turned off lamps. The stars moved overhead by degrees.
Her breathing changed. Slower. Deeper. Her weight against my shoulder got heavier by fractions, her body giving up its tension the way it had in the clearing when I'd held her after she collapsed. Muscle by muscle. Her head on my arm was still and warm and her breathing was even and she was falling asleep.
I waited until her body was limp against me. Then I shifted, carefully, and slid one arm under her knees and one behind her back and stood. She weighed nothing. Her head lolled against my chest and her white hair fell across my arm and her cat-shaped hairclips were cold against my skin.
I carried her down from the roof. Through the hallway window, my bare feet quiet on the wood floor. Her door was the second on the right. I opened it with my elbow. Her room was small and neat, the futon already laid out, her school bag in the corner, a box of pocky on the nightstand.
I laid her on the futon. Pulled the blanket over her. She was on her side, her legs curling up, her hands tucking under her cheek.
Her ears flickered.
White. Cat ears. They phased into visibility on top of her head, triangular and furred, twitching once before fading back.
My hand moved before I thought about it. My fingers touched the space where the ear had been. Her hair was soft there and warm and the ear flickered back into visibility under my touch, solid, real, and she made a sound.
Low. In her throat. A vibration that traveled through her chest and into my hand and it was almost a purr. Her lips curved. In her sleep. The flat expression was gone and her face was relaxed and young and she was purring under my fingers.
I pulled my hand back.
I looked at my hand. Looked at her. The ear faded again. Her face smoothed. She was asleep.
I stood up. Started for the door.
Her hand caught my sleeve.
She was still on her side, her eyes barely open, gold slits in the dark room. Her fingers were closed around the fabric of my sleeve and her grip was light and she was more asleep than awake.
"...Come back."
Two words. Barely there. Her eyes were already closing.
"After," I said.
Her fingers opened. The fabric slipped free. Her hand fell to the futon. Her eyes closed. Her breathing went steady.
I stood in her doorway for a moment. Then I closed the door.
I went to my room and lay on the futon and closed my eyes and went under.
The mindscape was where it always was. Obsidian floor, green gem-light in the walls, the ceiling too high to see. Ddraig's space.
She was waiting for me. Avatar form. Red-scaled skin catching the green light, copper where the scales thinned at her collarbone and arms. Green eyes, slit-pupiled. Horns sweeping back from her temples. Armored in dragon scales that left her shoulders bare and her arms crossed and she was tall and she was looking at me with her arms crossed.
"Partner."
"Ddraig."
"I've been running the calculations." She uncrossed her arms. Paced. Her bare feet made no sound on the obsidian. "Your reserves. The energy from the intimate bonds. The Gremory's Destruction traces. The Himejima's hybrid lightning. The Argento's holy-type integration. Combined with your training output and the body optimization your benefactor provided."
She stopped pacing. Faced me.
"It's enough."
My heart kicked. "Enough for what?"
"Balance Breaker." She held up her hand. Green energy crackled across her fingers, forming the ghost of a gauntlet, an armored plate, the beginning of a shape I recognized from the anime. Scale Mail. The full-body dragon armor that every Boosted Gear host spent years trying to reach. "Partial activation. A temporary manifestation. Not the arm-sacrifice version your predecessors used. This would be bond-synced. Powered by your accumulated reserves instead of your life force."
"How long?"
"Ten seconds."
The number landed in the quiet of the mindscape. Ten seconds.
"Ten seconds of Scale Mail," she said. "During that window, your output would be High-Class equivalent. Your Boost would stack faster. Your physical parameters would match or exceed a mid-tier Rating Game veteran."
"And after ten seconds?"
"Complete drain. Your reserves would be empty. You'd be baseline human for minutes afterward. Vulnerable. If you haven't won in those ten seconds, you won't win at all."
I looked at the ghost of the gauntlet on her hand. The green energy pulsed. Scale Mail. The thing that had turned a crying teenager into a dragon in the anime. The armor that meant something.
"Can you give me more time?"
Ddraig looked at me. Her green eyes were steady, slit-pupiled, ancient. The light from the walls pulsed in time with the Boosted Gear's gem.
"Ten seconds. That's what your bond with me is worth right now."
The words sat between us. A challenge. An invitation. "Right now" meant the bond could be worth more. Could be deeper. She was telling me and asking me and daring me at the same time.
I held her gaze. Her green eyes.
"Then I'll make ten seconds enough."
Her mouth curved. The ghost gauntlet on her hand dissolved and the green light dimmed.
"Tomorrow, then."
"Tomorrow."
I opened my eyes. My room. The futon. The ceiling. The window was open and the mountain air was cold and the stars were fading at the eastern edge of the sky. Dawn was coming. The Rating Game was today.
I lay there for a while. The ceiling was white and featureless and the air was cold and the villa was quiet around me.
I got up.