"I have…several questions." Rias managed, albeit just barely.
I don't think I've ever seen Rias look more bewildered than right at this moment.
Which is completely fair considering the state Gasper showed back up in, clinging to our plus one and all.
Rias sat behind her desk, simply staring at the scene before her. Sitting on the couch was Gasper, freely out of his box, and talking. Animatedly!
Yes, he was a little quiet, and he stumbled here and there, but this is a massive leap compared to his previous state.
Of course, her reaction is compounded by the fact that Gasper is doing all this with a completely new person, a dhampir girl she's never seen before.
Though she probably knows about her at least.
As for Valerie herself, it's clear she still isn't all here. Her head is tilted slightly toward Gasper, and she nods along with things he says from time to time, but her eyes, her focus is clearly completely elsewhere.
Even teleporting here didn't make her react. You'd think she's dead to the world at this point.
Akeno clearly recognizes something is amiss with her, because while she looks on, smiling for Gasper, it strains whenever he asks Valerie something, and she barely responds.
Shirone, meanwhile, has had the strangest reaction thus far.
She's clinging to my side, tightly. Damn near the point where I might pop. She's trying her best not to look at Valerie, for whatever reason, and her ears seem perpetually pinned down on her head.
No matter how many headpats I give her, she doesn't seem to want to move. It's like she's on some sort of high alert.
I wonder if Shirone is feeling the ghosts and shit Valerie is talking to or is aware of, and that's giving her the spooks?
I'll talk to her privately after this.
For now?
I pat Gasper's cardboard box that I'd sat on her desk as soon as I got here, "Well, I probably have answers. So, go right ahead!"
"Who is that?" Rias naturally asks, pointing toward Valerie.
"Valerie Tepes." I respond easily, causing every single devil around me to widen their eyes, "She's the dhampir daughter of King Tepes, as you can imagine. I'm not sure how much of Gasper's story you know, but she's the one who he tried escaping the vampires with, only as that went wrong, she saved him instead."
Rias slowly nodded, "His, savior, right…Gasper mentioned her before, but didn't go into too much detail." A short pause, then she followed up, "If she's King Tepes daughter, how is she here?"
Almost robotically, I could feel Shirone start looking up at me.
Man. I could do the funniest thing right about now.
"I kidnapped her." I admit frankly.
Chomp.
Ah. Ow. Shirone bit my side.
Rias abruptly stood, hands hitting her desk as she shouted in alarm, "You did what!?"
Akeno simply giggled and muttered something about commitment? I don't know, I'm not really paying attention to her right now, mostly just watching Rias go from confused, but calm, to instant panic.
It's kind of cute, not going to lie there!
"I kidnapped her," I repeated, as though she didn't hear me the first time, "it was actually really easy too. Barely an inconvenience." I added just for the hell of it.
"T-That! Noriaki!" Rias hissed, "You can't kidnap someone's daughter, just like that! Especially when it's the daughter of a faction leader! Like the vampires!"
"But I can, though, who's going to stop me?" I rightfully point out.
"Well, obviously! The! Uh…" Rias falters, her incredulous look becoming uncertain almost instantly.
"Oh, President," Akeno giggles lightly, "looks like someone shouldn't have skipped out on their underworld foreign relations assignment~!"
Rias turned on Akeno, face flushing in embarrassment, "S-Shut up! I just haven't done it yet! And for good reason, you know that!"
Her Queen 'properly' chastised, Rias swiftly returned her attention to me.
"That's not the point, though! There are rules, and relations, and po-"
"Meh." I cut her off with a wave of my hand, "Boring. Don't care. No one can stop me. No one cares about the vampires. And I bet, if they were wiped out tonight, no one would even remotely give a fuck."
Rias opened her mouth to say something, but paused, as her eyes narrowed, suspicious, "...why'd you word it like that?"
"Word what like what?" I raise an eyebrow.
"Tonight." Rias emphasises, "Wiped out tonight. Why'd you say that?"
I shrug. "Dunno what you're talking about."
Silence reigned, and Rias stared, eyes narrowed at me, like I was a particularly hard homework question that needed filling out.
My face never wavered even slightly.
Someone had to ruin the fun eventually, though.
"Idiot senpai." Shirone huffed, "If you were going to kill them all, you should've invited me. Those assholes deserve it for what they put Gya through."
Wonder where that nickname for Gasper comes from, the screaming?
In the background, Gasper suddenly perks up, turning towards us for once, "A-Aww, Shirone! You doooooo caaarreeee!" He cries out over-dramatically.
Painfully slow, Shirone looks back at him.
Just her look was enough to make him squeak like a mouse.
"Don't test me." She grunted out, before adding, "I will get the garlic."
"Eeek! Right! Sorry!"
Shirone huffed and turned back toward the rest of us.
"Oh, my?" Akeno hummed, lips pursed in consideration, but not really reacting.
As for Rias? Her eyes locked right on me. And when I didn't say anything back to Shirone at all?
"...Noriaki." She began anew, carefully.
"Yeah?" I responded casually.
"What did you do to the vampires, Noriaki?" She asks, far more tentatively this time.
I considered her question for a moment. I didn't really need long.
"I gave 'em all a good sunbath." I answered with a smile and a thumbs-up to boot.
Rias collapsed back into her chair with a groan, muttering something about international incidents.
As if those are something she's going to have to deal with?
If anyone is going to, it'll be my mom.
But at the same time, who the fuck is going to be left to start one, right?
No allies to vouch for them. They offered nothing to others besides their parasitic existence.
In fact, if I don't get a medal from the pantheons around the Balkans, I'm going to specifically form an international supernatural task force purely to file a complaint with everyone involved and demand a reward.
…Well, alright, I won't go that far, the vampires aren't even worth that much after all.
I might pout a bit. That's it, really.
"Noriaki…" Rias nearly whined, lifting her head, but I held my hand up before she could go on any longer.
"Don't worry. The other dhampir, any humans they had, they'll have a better, safer place to go after this." I snorted, "I did account for that, you know. I didn't just nuke their castles and such from orbit."
"Should've." Shirone chimed in with a huff.
For now, she would be ignored; however, as Rias still looked a bit unsure, "Where, exactly, did you send them?"
I only had one truthful answer to that question.
"I dunno."
I received three blank stares at once for that answer. Truly, a monumental feat.
"Noriaki." Rias sighed, and I simply held my hands up.
"Hey, now, I'm telling the truth! I don't know, because I'm a clone, and the original me is still dealing with everything as we speak." I reveal, and for some reason, my smile doesn't get me anything besides more blank looks.
Blessedly, the silence that reigns this time doesn't last forever.
Rias sighs deeply, already done with today, "We'll save this for later. Moving on, for right now, as much as it pains me to admit? Noriaki, I'm not sure we can really…keep her here."
Gasper goes completely silent in the background.
Right, best to nub this in the butt before I pop from a sonic attack.
"She has the Grail." I abruptly add.
Shirone shrinks back, doing the catgirl equivalent of a cat's head going into their neck.
Akeno's eyes widen to comical proportions before turning and looking straight at Valerie.
Rias, meanwhile, slowly blinks.
"...I'm sorry, what?" She asks, in complete disbelief.
"Yeah, I'm not really playing around this time. She's got the Holy Grail, the Longinus Sacred Gear Sephiroth Graal." I reveal, turning and looking back toward the dhampir girl, whose arm is currently seized by Gasper, "But, as you probably noticed, she's not all the way…here, at the moment. That's why. She was forced to use the Grail too much, and this is the result."
Shirone shivered against my side, and Akeno put a hand to her mouth.
Rias stood back up, "This changes things," Gasper sighs in relief, his grip on her relaxing, "but I'll still need to check with my brother to make sure…"
I couldn't help but roll my eyes at that. Yeah, like it's really going to be a problem. She holds a Longinus. She has no ties to any faction anymore, not like that really mattered in the first place, but it's a bonus.
In the end, that won't matter. They'll take her in.
I actually weighed the pros and cons of letting them sweep up Valerie, and in the end, decided I didn't care either.
Mostly because, well, Valerie is basically useless right now.
She's damn near a vegetable as is; trying to make her use the grail as she is right now may not even be possible. They can't pull out one of the cups without outright killing her or damaging her mind so much she'd basically be dead.
In the end, the only one doing anything with the grail would be Ajuka, I think. But I also don't believe Sirzechs will really let him unless it's specifically to help Valerie, considering the girl's connection to Gasper, and thus Rias by extension.
So, in the end, she'd be an emotional support for Gasper, and that's basically it.
Unless they somehow get their hands on a shard of the original grail that Heaven has, but I doubt that.
I could, maybe, heal her, but at this moment I'm not even going to try.
Why?
The grail manipulates life and souls.
The only way I see myself healing her is by brushing my soul dangerously close to that damn cup.
I'm not taking that risk. Even if I'm sure I can resist it, I still have a scar from the True Longinus that says maybe you can't.
Anything dealing with Him I'm keeping at arm's length, for now. I already have enough to worry about with the True Longinus literally lying under my bed. The last thing I need is to worry about the grail.
So, Valerie can keep it, and I can treat the devils like a facility for her. Doubt Rias will reincarnate her, but she can certainly try. I wouldn't recommend it, though, for the reasons my previous thoughts have stated.
Rias moved to walk away, likely heading straight to her brother, but paused right as she walked around the deck, blinking as though realizing something.
"Before that, though. Noriaki?" She looks at me, causing me to perk up, "Why would you go through all that? Attacking the vampires, getting Gasper's savior…"
Ah, that's easy.
"We made a deal." I smile at her before elaborating further, "I knew I couldn't help Gasper there myself, so I decided to get the only one who could." I look toward Gasper, and Rias follows my gaze in short order.
Gasper is out of his box, in the open air, in the light. He smiles, recounting some tale with barely a stutter, about some contract he did for someone, one of his first, right after he took to using the internet to do his jobs. Even if it's only to a girl being near equivalent of a vegetable, it's still far and above better than before.
Right now, he's lost in his own little world; he doesn't even recognize us looking at him, or even talking about him.
"It won't be perfect," I continue with a small mirthful chuckle, "especially in the time frame you need. But it'll be way better now. Just having her here will make him work for it far harder than anything I could say or do to him."
"...I see," I didn't need to look at Rias' face to see her smile, I could hear it in her words, "thank you then, Noriaki."
Although I wished I had looked, because then I would have seen her coming.
As it was, I nearly jumped when Rias came in and hugged my other side.
Predictably, Shirone hissed, as a catgirl is to do. She was specifically hissing at where Rias' chest practically wrapped around my arm.
First thought?
Ain't no way in hell she's wearing a bra right now.
Because I can feel everything. The softness. The squishness. There's something just in general different about them in a way I can't quite place.
I now understand, at least partly, why Issei simped so damn hard for Rias.
"You've already done so much, and it's been what, a day?" She shakes her head and smiles brightly up at me, "Beyond our deal, please, if there's anything you want or need, don't hesitate to let me know, okay?"
I nod, my composure not cracking an inch, shooting her a smile back, "I'll let you know when I think of something, alright?"
Rias chuckles lightly before pulling away, giving Shirone a pat on the head as she walks by.
Who, in response, hisses at her again, her hair now standing on end.
Huh! First time I've seen that happen.
Shirone suddenly looks at me.
Ah, wait, that probably isn't a good thing, is it?
The white catgirl rears her head back, her mouth opening wide.
Oh yeah. I'm cooked. Sorry boss!
The last thing I hear before I pop is Akeno's sly giggles, as Shirone's fangs impact my side again.
~ A New Sun ~
In a pillar of light, I appear before the Junior Division of Kuoh Academy, getting out a good, long stretch as I do, before I start walking.
What a day, eh? A shame I took most of it up tearing apart the vampires.
Well, really, that didn't take so long; it was gathering up and keeping safe the humans and dhampirs.
Pathetic bloodworms.
Still, managed to wipe out the vampires. Or, at least, I believe I have. High Class Vampires rarely leave their castles and settlements, and the lower classes are bound by their superiors in a peerage that is literally slavery.
Like, they can turn humans into vampires, their will is dominated completely, legit slaves.
It's all fucked. Well, was. Then I came along. All their settlements and castles are glowing embers bathed in sunlight, straight down through the basement, and even further, just in case.
In the end, the Carmilla Queen was about as much of a bitch in a fight as King Tepes.
I was almost sad my attack didn't cause the original Dracula or Carmilla to awaken through some bullshit and try to throw hands. I doubt they would have put up much more of a fight, but eh.
At least make me sweat a little, right?
As for the humans and dhampirs, well.
I thought about going to the Church, I really did. If I knew for certain where Dulio was, I would gladly have let him on it.
Far too many of the dhampir left behind were children; it actually made me sick.
Unfortunately, I didn't know where he held up, or if he even had a permanent residence somewhere, and since I didn't trust anyone else in that damn Church, I settled for the closest power that I knew a little about.
Romania isn't too far from Greece. Mount Olympus was way easier to find than the vampire's hideout, that's for sure.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to meet any of the big guys, like Zeus, who I know has chilled since his myths.
Or Hestia. That kind of made me sad. I always wondered what she would have been like in this world.
I got intercepted by Hermes on the way there, and gave him the details of what I had done, and if Olympus would help.
He seemed like he was high on Red Bull, so I can't say for certain if it was my words or that which gave him the godly equivalent of a heart attack.
In any event, Olympus was glad to help! Everyone hated the fucking vampires, Olympus was no exception, and taking care of a bunch of displaced humans and dhampir, finding them a new safe place to live is easy for them.
So! That's that taken care of.
Next up!
I stop now before the door to the Sword Cult club dojo.
I can feel everyone inside, including a certain someone new.
My hand was pulling the sliding door open almost on instinct.
"Huh?" Avi perked up, standing before the group of girls with her arms crossed, probably hosting some kind of meeting.
There was another girl, however, off to her side, holding a clipboard.
Short, but a tad taller than the shrimp herself, with short light blue and pink hair that reminded me somewhat of a mixture of the two cotton candy types. Her blue eyes snapped off her clipboard and focused on me instantly.
Even faster than Avi's had.
"Ah!" Avi snapped her fingers, "Sensei! You're back!"
The other girls finally turned around and looked at me.
Zekka immediately shrivelled upon herself, while the other two just acknowledged my presence.
"Oh! Come on! Quick!" The shrimp practically bounced over to me, "So much happened while you're away! And! While she isn't a part of the club, we even have a new friend!"
She took my hand and pulled me the rest of the way into the dojo.
"Sensei! Officially meet-"
"Elta Satanachia." I finish for her, causing the shrimp to suddenly look at me in shock, and for the girl in question to suddenly perk up. "I left a clone here, remember? He was around for a bunch of stuff, and his memories return straight to me…" I trail off, letting the implication of that sit.
While I don't know absolutely everything, and I'll be sure to fill the holes in later, right now, I have something more important to embark on.
Petty. Revenge!
A smile graces my face, thinning across my face.
"U-Uh, S-Sensei?" Avi takes one big step away from me, holding her hands up.
"This is going to be either really good or really bad." Schwe notes to Lilebette, the blonde knight merely nods in response.
Zekka immediately stands up, getting in front of Elta, the cotton candy-haired girl tensing up immediately, "U-Um! Hold on, Sensei, I-"
"Sit."
Zekka immediately went down on her knees. "H-HAI SENSEI!"
"E-Eh!?" Elta looked at Zekka, shocked, "Wait, just like that!?"
"Mhmm." I hum.
Elta jerked, going ramrod straight, and absolutely still.
Why? Because I was suddenly standing right in front of her. That's why.
"So." I start, tone clipped, "What was it that you said again, about me? When you were doing that test for the shrimp there…"
Every single word I spoke caused the girl to tense more and more.
"Ah. Right." I dramatically recall, "Something about how a sensei should probably show certain qualities, which I was lacking, no?"
Elta gulped.
"Shrimp." I abruptly call out.
"Y-Yes!?" Avi panickedly replied.
"Basement. There's some stuff I left down there. Grab the first bag and a wooden sword." I ordered her.
"Uh, o-okay, sensei!" She quickly rushes off.
A golden glow slowly ebbs out from my form now, causing the already fairly pale girl to pale more.
"Aw, don't worry, cotton candy hair." I state, causing her to nearly double over from sheer insult, "I just got you a welcome gift, is all. Your new uniform, while sticking around here, and, well…I test every new member." My smile grows, "You aren't a club member. But close enough, right?"
"Well," Schwe chimes in, "it was nice knowing you, Satanachia."
Lilebette nods in agreement, patting her chest with her fist in salute, "May your death be swift and painless, at least!"
"U-Um, ah, S-Sensei?" Zekka finds the will to speak up again, "Please don't g-go, too hard on her?"
"No promises." Is my smooth reply.
Before me, the cotton candy girl only whimpers.
Ah, this is going to be a nice detour before I get to deal with Yuuto!
Better enjoy it while it lasts~!