P.S this story starts a few years before the start of our favorite DXD verse!
AND I DON'T OWN ANY DXD MATERIAL, ALL CREDIT TO THE ORIGINAL WRITERS!
"Talking out aloud"
'Thinking with ones mind'
"Spirits inside the sacred gears talking"
Without further delay, lets start the chapter!
Earlier, Kuoh, the Hyoudou Residence
The full moon hung fat and silver over Kuoh, spilling its pale light through the window of Issei Hyoudou's bedroom, and Issei Hyoudou was, at that particular moment, wishing very much that the floor would open up and swallow him whole.
He sat cross-legged on that floor, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed with tremendous interest upon a single scuff mark in the wood, and did his level best to make himself small. It was not working. It was very difficult to make oneself small when Rias Gremory was standing over you with her arms crossed and her blue-green eyes flashing, and when the gentle, worried face of Asia Argento was hovering just behind her, wringing her hands.
"…and then, and I want to make absolutely certain I have this right," Rias was saying, in the dangerously level tone of a woman holding her temper together by sheer force of will, "you decided, without telling me, without telling anyone who might have stopped you, to go chasing after Kiba. Into a city crawling with rogue exorcists and stolen Holy Swords. With Koneko and Saji-kun in tow. On a hunch."
"…When you say it like that, it sounds bad," Issei mumbled to the floor.
"It sounds bad because it was bad, Issei!" Rias's voice cracked upward, the careful control slipping. "Do you have any idea what could have happened to you? Any idea at all? Freed Sellzen is out there somewhere. Valper Galilei. Who knows what else. And you three, three of the youngest, least experienced fighters I have, went wandering into the dark to look for a boy who did not want to be found, with no plan, no backup, and no one who could have come to help you if it had gone wrong!"
"We were trying to help Kiba—"
"I know!" Rias pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. "I know that. That is the only reason I am scolding you instead of something far worse. Because your heart was in the right place, as it always, always is. But Issei, a good heart does not stop a sword. It does not turn aside a light-spear. Do you understand? You could have died. Koneko could have died. Saji could have died, and then I would have had to explain to Sona how her pawn came to be killed helping mine do something reckless, and I promise you, that is a conversation I would not have survived either."
Asia stepped forward then, her green eyes bright and wet. "Issei-san," she said softly, and somehow her quiet worry landed harder than all of Rias's fire. "I was so frightened when I realized where you had gone. I kept thinking… I kept thinking about what I would do if you did not come back. Please. Please do not do something like that again without telling us."
That did it. Issei's shoulders slumped, and whatever defensiveness had been left in him drained away entirely, leaving only shame.
"…I'm sorry," he said, and he meant it, down to his bones. "Buchou, Asia, I'm really sorry. I didn't—I wasn't thinking about all that. I just saw Kiba hurting, and disappearing, and I couldn't stand the idea of him being out there alone, doing something that would get him killed, while I sat here and did nothing." He finally lifted his head, and his brown eyes were miserable but earnest. "I get it now. I really do. I put everyone in danger, and I didn't find Kiba anyway. I'm sorry."
For a long moment, Rias simply looked at him.
Then the anger went out of her all at once, the way a storm blows itself out, and she let out a long, tired breath, and did something that made Issei blink in surprise: she stepped forward, reached down, and gently took his head in both her hands, cradling it, tilting his face up to look at her.
"You wonderful, exhausting idiot," she said, but there was no heat in it now, only a fierce and weary affection. "Listen to me. Listen. You are not allowed to be stupid like that again. That is an order from your King. When something is bothering you, when you are frightened for a friend, when you have a suspicion gnawing at you the way this one about Kiba clearly was, you tell me. You do not swallow it and go running off into the night alone. You come to me, and we deal with it together. That is what I am for, Issei. That is what it means to be my precious servant, and my friend. Do you understand?"
Issei swallowed hard, his throat tight. "…Yeah," he managed. "Yeah, Buchou. I understand."
"Good." She held his gaze a moment longer, then released him and straightened, and just like that the storm was entirely gone, replaced by the warm, teasing warmth that was more usual to her. "Honestly. I turn my back for one evening and my cute pawn tries to get himself killed. What am I going to do with you."
"…Love me unconditionally?" Issei tried, with a weak grin.
"Do not push it." But she was smiling now, and the tension in the room had broken. "Come on. All of you. It has been a very long day, and I think we could all use the sleep. Whatever is going on with Kiba, whatever this Excalibur business turns into, we will face it in the morning, together, with clear heads. Not tonight. Tonight, we rest."
And so, with the silver moon climbing higher outside, the three of them settled in for the night. Issei, as had quietly become the custom in the crowded Hyoudou household, drifted off with Rias's warmth at his back and Asia's gentle breathing nearby, and for a little while, in that small pocket of the world, everything was peaceful and safe and good.
It would not stay that way for very long.
Some Hours Later
Issei woke because the world was screaming.
Not with sound. With something worse than sound, something that bypassed the ears entirely and went straight for the animal core of the brain, the ancient part that knew, without needing to be told, when it was in the presence of a predator. He came awake all at once, heart slamming, breath caught in his throat, every hair on his body standing rigid, and beside him he felt Rias jerk upright in the same instant, and heard Asia gasp awake across the room.
Killing intent.
It rolled over the Hyoudou residence like a physical tide, thick and black and ancient, a pressure so vast and so malevolent that it made Issei's teeth ache and his stomach turn to water. He had felt strong opponents before. He had trained under Marid, had sparred with Kenta, had stood in the same room as a Maou. This was none of those things. This was something older and colder and infinitely more hungry than anything he had ever known, and every instinct he possessed was shrieking at him to run, to hide, to be anywhere in the world but here.
"Out," Rias said, and her voice was tight with a fear he had almost never heard in it. "Now. Everyone, up and dressed, now."
There was no time for anything so mundane as clothing pulled on by hand. A pulse of crimson magic washed over the three of them in a heartbeat, and their nightclothes were replaced with their proper attire, Rias in her school uniform, Issei in his, Asia in hers, the transformation instant and seamless. Together, hearts pounding, they rushed down the stairs and out through the front door into the moonlit night.
And there, waiting for them in the Hyoudou family's modest front garden, bathed in the silver light of the full moon, stood a nightmare.
He was tall, and lean, and terrible. His hair was long and dark, falling past his shoulders, framing a sharply handsome face split by a grin of pure, anticipatory cruelty. He was dressed in dark, ornate clothing that spoke of another age entirely, and from his back spread not two wings, nor four, nor even six, but ten, ten great pinions of oil-black feathers that drank the moonlight and gave nothing back, spread wide against the night sky like a stain across the stars.
Issei had never seen him before. He knew exactly who he was all the same. Everyone in the supernatural world knew that silhouette.
"Kokabiel," Rias breathed, and she moved without thinking, stepping half in front of Issei and Asia, one arm thrown protectively across them, crimson power already gathering at her fingertips.
"Rias Gremory." The Cadre's voice was smooth and rich and dripping with contempt, a cultured purr with a razor underneath. "The little sister of Lucifer. How disappointing you are, in the flesh. I had heard such things, and here you stand, a frightened girl in a schoolgirl's costume, trembling on her doorstep." He tilted his head, the cruel grin widening. "And the Sitri brat is much the same, I imagine. The pride of the new generation of Devils. Ha. Your ancestors would weep to see what has become of their line. Soft. Comfortable. Weak."
"What do you want?" Rias demanded, and though her voice shook, she did not retreat a single step. "Why are you here, Kokabiel? What could a Cadre of the Grigori possibly want in a quiet human town?"
"War, girl." The word came out of him like a lover's sigh, rapturous and hungry. "What else has ever been worth wanting?" His crimson eyes gleamed. "I am so tired of this false peace. This coward's truce that the old fools signed while the fire still burned in our veins. Two thousand years I have waited, and watched, and endured, while lesser beings played at diplomacy and called it progress. No more. Tonight, I light the fire again. Tonight, I take the stolen Excaliburs, and I turn them upon this city, and I paint the sky with the blood of Devils, and when Heaven and the Underworld come howling for vengeance, the Great War will begin anew, and I will finally, finally have my glory back."
"You're insane," Issei said, the words torn out of him before he could stop them.
Kokabiel's gaze slid to him, and something in it sharpened, hungry and delighted, and Issei felt his blood run cold.
"Ah," the Cadre purred. "And there he is. The Red Dragon Emperor. I can smell the old lizard on you, boy." He licked his lips. "Ddraig. One of the two most feared beings of my age, brought low into the body of a human child. Do you know, when I heard the current Sekiryuutei had surfaced in this very city, it was half the reason I chose it? I have killed a great many things in my long life, boy, but never a Heavenly Dragon's vessel. I find myself curious what it will feel like." His grin was all teeth. "I look forward to killing you most of all. Do try to give me something worth remembering."
Issei's Sacred Gear flared to life on his arm before he even willed it, the green jewel pulsing with Draig's answering fury, but Rias's hand clamped down on his wrist, hard.
"Don't," she hissed. "Not here. Not now."
[Boost!] the gauntlet chimed anyway, and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, Issei felt his awareness drop inward, the moonlit garden falling away, replaced by the vast, dim dreamscape where the spirit of the Red Dragon Emperor dwelled. Draig's enormous form loomed in the dark, twin green eyes burning like distant furnaces.
"Careful, partner," the dragon rumbled, his voice an ancient warning that rolled through the whole of the mindscape. "That thing out there is not a fight you win tonight. I have felt his like before, in the old war. Rein it in, and live to grow strong."
Then tell me how, Issei shot back, frustration boiling over even here. There has to be a way. How do I beat him, Draig? How do I take that smug bastard down?
For a long moment, the dragon was silent.
"You don't," Draig said at last, and there was no cruelty in it, only blunt and ancient honesty. "Not as you are. I'll not soften it for you, partner, because a soft lie is how a host gets himself killed. As you stand tonight, you could not hold a candle to that creature. He is a Cadre. A general of the old war, and one of its cruelest. You have carried your Sacred Gear for a handful of months; he spent the whole of the Great War carving through devils and angels alike, and by every account I have heard, he enjoyed it. He was one of the butchers of that age, boy, a Fallen Angel who fought not to win but to slaughter, and who wept when the fighting finally stopped. That is what waits for you out there." The green eyes narrowed. "The very most you could manage, if you reached down deep and unlocked that same form you found against the Phoenix boy in your rating game, would be to buy the others a few precious moments. Enough, perhaps, for someone to run. And that is not a victory, boy. That is a delaying tactic paid for in your own blood. But it is the honest ceiling of what you are tonight, and you would do well not to imagine otherwise."
That's it? Issei's fists clenched in the dark of his own soul. Bleed and buy a few seconds? Then who? His voice rose, ragged with helpless anger. Who can actually beat him? Right now, tonight, somebody has to be strong enough to put that monster in the ground. Who?
And to his surprise, Draig smirked. Issei could feel it, the vast, ancient amusement rolling off the great dragon like heat off a forge.
"Now there is a better question." The green eyes gleamed. "The truth, partner? If you could wield my full power, the whole of it, the strength that once made emperors and gods speak my name in dread, you would not need to ask at all. You could put Kokabiel down yourself, alone, and walk away without a scratch upon you. That is what sleeps in your arm. That is the summit you are climbing toward." Then the amusement cooled into grim honesty. "But that road is long, and you have only just set your foot upon it. As for tonight, as you are now? No one of your years can take him in a straight fight. Not the Gremory girl, not the Sitri girl, not the lion nor the swordmaiden. Not one of you. To beat a Cadre in open battle, it takes a Leader-class being, one of the true powers of the three biblical factions: a Maou, a Seraph, a Governor of the Grigori. Anything less than that, and it is not a fight at all. It is a slaughter with extra steps." The dragon's rumble gentled. "So do the wise thing, partner. Live. Hold. Buy your hour. And grow strong enough that the next time a monster like this darkens your door, the answer to 'who can beat him' is you."
The mindscape dissolved, no more than a single heartbeat having passed in the waking world, and Issei was back in the garden with Draig's words still ringing through his skull.
Issei clenched his fist and forced the power back down, though every instinct in him screamed against it, and Kokabiel watched the struggle play out across the boy's face with the fond, patient amusement of a cat watching a mouse decide whether to run.
"Wise," the Cadre observed lazily. "The dragon is not ready, and neither are you. Not that it will matter in the end." He spread his ten wings wider, and the killing intent in the air redoubled, until Asia whimpered and even Issei's knees threatened to buckle. "So. Here is how tonight will proceed, children. I have grown bored of skulking. I will be waiting for you at that charming little academy of yours. Kuoh Academy. Bring your peerages, both of you, the Gremory girl and the Sitri girl and all your precious little servants. Come and face me, and let us see if the new generation of Devils has anything at all worth the killing." His eyes glittered. "Consider it an invitation."
Rias's jaw tightened. Her mind, Issei could see, was racing, and after a moment she spoke, grasping for the only sensible option there was.
"And what," she said carefully, "is stopping Sona and me from simply evacuating Kuoh? From getting every soul in this city to safety and denying you your battlefield entirely? Why would we play your game at all?"
For a moment, Kokabiel simply stared at her.
Then he threw back his head and laughed, a rich, booming, genuinely delighted sound that was somehow more horrifying than any threat.
"Oh, you could try," he said, wiping mirth from his eyes. "You truly could. And I will be honest with you, little Gremory, it would disappoint me. It would break my heart to see the proud blood of the Satans turn tail and flee rather than face a superior being. But I would understand it." His grin turned vicious. "After all, running away is what weaker races do when the predator comes. There is no shame in a rabbit fleeing the wolf. It is simply nature."
Superior being. Weaker races. Rias's eyes flashed with fury, her pride as a Gremory and a Devil stung to the quick, exactly as he had intended.
"But," Kokabiel continued, and his voice dropped into something cold and final, "before you pin all your hopes on flight, allow me to spare you the trouble. Did you truly imagine I would leave so obvious a door open? I have surrounded this entire city, Rias Gremory. Every road out, every ley line, every crossing point. A cordon of Fallen Angels, hundreds of them, every one of them loyal to me and me alone, ringing Kuoh like a noose. The moment you try to move the population, the moment you try to slip away yourselves, they will fall upon this city and there will be a slaughter the likes of which these quiet streets have never dreamed of." He spread his hands, mock-apologetic. "So you see, there is no running. There is only the school, and me, and whatever courage you can scrape together between now and then. I do hope it is entertaining."
And with that, Kokabiel gave a small, mocking bow, and his ten black wings beat once against the night, and he rose into the moonlit sky, his cruel laughter trailing behind him like smoke, until he was nothing but a shadow against the stars, and then not even that.
For a long, long moment, the three of them stood frozen in the garden, the terrible pressure slowly receding, leaving behind only the pounding of their own hearts and the cold silver light of the moon.
Asia was the first to make a sound, a small, shaky exhale, her legs finally giving out so that she sat down hard on the doorstep, trembling. Issei was at her side in an instant, an arm around her shoulders, though his own hands were shaking too badly to offer much steadiness. And Rias stood over both of them, staring up at the empty sky where the monster had been, and for just a moment, in the privacy of the dark, she let her own carefully-held mask slip, and Issei saw the raw fear underneath it, the terror of a young King who had just been handed an impossible fight and an impossible choice.
Then she closed her eyes, and drew a breath, and when she opened them again the mask was back, and the fear was locked away where it could not slow her down.
Then Rias moved.
"Get inside," she said, her voice hard and fast, all trace of fear ruthlessly shoved down beneath the iron of command. "Both of you. I have calls to make. Now."
Kuoh Academy
The academy at night was a different place entirely from the bright, bustling school of the daytime. Under the full moon its familiar buildings loomed dark and silent, its empty courtyards washed in silver and shadow, and as Rias and her people arrived, the wrongness of it pressed down on all of them. This was not the ground of their ordinary lives anymore. Tonight it was a battlefield waiting to be born.
They came together in ones and twos, summoned by Rias's urgent calls: Koneko, small and grim, her golden eyes hard; Akeno, arriving with an unusual solemnity that had replaced her customary teasing lilt. Sona Sitri came with her own peerage close behind her, Tsubaki at her right hand, Saji trailing anxiously in the group with the hangdog look of a young man who had already been thoroughly lectured once tonight and expected worse to come. The two Kings met in the middle of the darkened courtyard, and one look at each other's faces confirmed what both of them already knew. Kokabiel had visited Sona too. The invitation had been extended to them both.
But it was what they found near the old schoolhouse that stopped them cold.
"Over here!" Saji called out, having jogged ahead, and his voice was sharp with alarm. "Kaichou, Gremory-senpai, over here, quick! It's the exorcists, they're—they're hurt bad!"
They hurried over, and the sight that greeted them was grim.
Two figures lay crumpled against the base of the old schoolhouse wall, and it took only a glance to see how badly they had been used. Irina Shidou lay unmoving, her chestnut hair matted dark with blood, her breathing shallow and ragged, deep and terrible wounds scoring her side and shoulder. She was unconscious, her face pale as the moon above, and had clearly been so for some time. And crouched over her, half-collapsed himself, was Masomi.
The young exorcist prodigy was in scarcely better shape than his charge. His dark robes were torn and soaked through with blood, one arm hung at an angle that spoke of a bad break, and his handsome, weathered-beyond-his-years face was drawn tight with pain and grief and grim, stubborn determination. He had one trembling hand pressed to the worst of Irina's wounds, and Rias realized, with a lurch of horror, what he had been doing. He had been trying to heal her. Trying, with the church's field techniques and his own failing strength, to keep the girl alive. And he had been failing, because he was too badly injured himself to do the work properly, his own broken body betraying every attempt.
"Masomi!" Rias dropped to her knees beside them. "What happened? Where is Xenovia?"
"Kokabiel." The word came out of the young exorcist in a bloody rasp. He did not look up from Irina; he did not stop trying to press his failing power into her wounds. "He came for us first. To… to send a message, I think. To you." He coughed, blood on his lips. "And we were not alone out there, Lady Gremory. Your knight found us. Hours ago. Kiba." Rias flinched, but Masomi pressed on. "He came looking for Valper, for the swords, half out of his mind with it, and he threw his lot in with Xenovia and the rest of us, and for a while the lot of us hunted together. And then Kokabiel came." His voice cracked. "He was toying with us. The whole time. A Cadre against a handful of exorcists and one grieving Devil boy, and he was toying with us, and even that nearly killed us. When it turned truly bad, Kiba and Xenovia were driven off, or drew him away, or fled, I could not tell you which, it happened too fast. They were separated from us in the chaos. Irina and I took the worst of it, and the two of them simply… vanished. I do not know where they went. I do not know if they yet live." He couldn't finish. His hand pressed harder against Irina's wound, and a fresh sob of frustration tore out of him. "I cannot heal her. I have tried, God forgive me, I have tried, but I am too badly hurt to hold the working, and she is dying, and I cannot—"
"Move aside." A gentle voice, but firm. "Please, Masomi-san. Let me."
Asia Argento knelt down across from him, and though her hands were trembling and her face was white with fear, there was no hesitation in her at all. Twilight Healing bloomed to life around her fingers, the soft green glow of the two rings spilling out to bathe both fallen exorcists in warm, restorative light.
Masomi stared at her, at the Devil healing his charge, and for a moment something complicated and painful crossed his face, the old enmity of his faith warring against the desperate gratitude of a man watching a life he could not save being saved before his eyes. In the end, the gratitude won. It was not even close.
"…Thank you," he whispered, as Irina's ragged breathing began, slowly, to ease and deepen. "Thank you. Whatever you are. Thank you."
Asia worked in silence, her brow furrowed in concentration, pouring her gift into the two of them. Under her hands, the terrible wounds began to knit. Masomi's broken arm straightened with a sickening click and a hiss of the young man's breath. The color began, by slow degrees, to return to Irina's ashen face. But healing on this scale, two people, wounds this grave, was no small thing even for Twilight Healing, and Rias could see the toll it was taking; Asia's face grew paler and paler, sweat beading on her brow, her small frame beginning to tremble with the effort.
"Asia," Rias said gently, gripping her shoulder. "That's enough. You've stabilized them. Don't push yourself past your limits, not tonight of all nights, we need you."
"But Irina-san isn't fully—"
"You've done what can be done here," Rias said firmly. "The rest needs more than one healer can safely give. You've saved her life, Asia. That is enough."
Asia let the light fade at last, and swayed where she knelt, exhausted, and it was clear she had given very nearly everything she had. Irina lived, and breathed easier now, and her worst wounds had closed, but she remained unconscious, and it was equally clear that Asia, drained as she was, could do no more for her tonight.
It was Sona who stepped in, her sharp mind already three moves ahead, as it always was.
"She cannot stay here," the Sitri heiress said crisply, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Not in the middle of a battlefield, unconscious and unable to defend herself. Tsubaki." She turned to her Queen. "I need you to move her. Take Irina-san to the new property, the mansion on the outskirts. Get her into the medical facility and continue the treatment there, everything Asia-san's work has left undone."
Tsubaki nodded, gathering the unconscious exorcist carefully into her arms. "At once, Kaichou."
"Wait." Rias frowned. "Sona, is that place safe? We are about to fight a Cadre. If Kokabiel decides to go hunting for stragglers—"
"The facility is already on full lockdown," Sona replied. "The moment I felt his presence tonight, I sealed it. It is cloaked, layered in illusion-work and defensive barriers, the best my family's magic can provide. Against ordinary threats, it is effectively invisible." Her expression hardened, and she did not sugarcoat it. "But I will not lie to you, Rias, or to myself. Those barriers were built to hide from ordinary threats. They were not built to hide from a Cadre. If Kokabiel finishes with us and turns his full attention to hunting down every last soul in this city, the illusions will not hold against his gaze. They will buy time. They will not buy safety." She met Rias's eyes squarely. "Which means our task tonight is very simple. We do not let it come to that. We keep Kokabiel occupied, and contained, and dead if we can manage it, until help arrives. Hiding is not a plan. It is only a delay. So we will not plan to hide. We will plan to win, or at least to hold, and we will pray it is enough."
Tsubaki vanished with Irina in a shimmer of Sitri magic, away to the cloaked mansion on the edge of town, and the rest of them were left standing in the moonlit courtyard, the reality of what lay ahead settling over them like a shroud.
The Strategy
"All right." Rias drew a breath, and when she spoke again it was with the crisp authority of a King with a battle to plan. "If we cannot run, and we cannot hide, then we fight. Which means we need to be clever about how we fight, because none of us are under any illusions about the gap in raw power here." She looked around at her assembled people, and at Sona and hers. "So let us think. Kokabiel is a Cadre. A survivor of the Great War. Individually, not one of us is anything to him. But we are not one of us. We are two full peerages, and if we use ourselves correctly, we might just be able to hold him."
"Containment," Sona said immediately, the two Kings' minds already running along the same track. "That is the first priority. If Kokabiel is here to burn Kuoh, then the single most important thing we can do, before we so much as think about defeating him, is to make certain the fight stays here. On these grounds. Away from the population."
"Agreed." Rias nodded. "A battlefield of our choosing, sealed tight. Which plays directly to your strengths, Sona, not mine."
The two heiresses had, over years of rivalry and friendship, come to know the shape of each other's abilities as well as their own, and the division of labor formed between them almost without needing to be spoken aloud.
"My peerage will handle the barrier," Sona confirmed, adjusting her glasses, her violet eyes gone cold and analytical. "It is what we are built for. Water and defense and control, not raw destruction. We will raise a containment field around the entire academy, the strongest my people can manage, and we will hold it. The goal is simple: nothing gets out. Not Kokabiel, not his forces, not a single stray light-spear that might land in a residential street. We turn Kuoh Academy into a sealed box, and we keep the war inside it." She paused. "It will take everything we have to maintain a barrier strong enough to contain a Cadre. My peerage will be committed entirely to holding it. Which means we will not be able to help you inside."
"I know," Rias said quietly. "And that's as it should be. Your gifts are containment and control. Mine are…" a grim little smile, "…destruction. If anyone is going to stand in front of Kokabiel and actually hurt him, it will have to be me and mine. Power against power."
"Buchou," Koneko said, speaking up for the first time, her small voice tight. "You're talking about fighting a Cadre. Directly."
"I am talking about holding a Cadre," Rias corrected gently. "There is a difference, and it is the only thing keeping this from being outright suicide. We are not trying to kill Kokabiel, Koneko. I want to be very clear about that, all of you. That is almost certainly beyond us." She looked around at their frightened, determined faces. "Our task is to survive. To hold him here, to keep him occupied and contained and away from the city, and to stay alive long enough for help to reach us. That is the whole of the mission. Not victory. Endurance. If every one of us walks off this battlefield still breathing, then we will have won, no matter what happens to Kokabiel himself."
The plan, such as it was, took shape between them in the cold moonlight. Sona and her peerage would form the outer ring, dedicating themselves wholly to the great containment barrier, sealing the academy grounds and holding that seal no matter what unfolded within. Rias and her own peerage, the power-type fighters, the ones with the destructive strength to actually trade blows with a monster, would take the field inside, and would face Kokabiel directly, and would hold him for as long as flesh and will and crimson power could manage it.
It was thin. It was desperate. Every soul in that courtyard understood, without anyone needing to say it, that it was very likely not going to be enough.
But it was a plan. And a thin plan, held onto with both hands, was better than the alternative, which was simply despair.
"How long," Saji asked, his voice smaller than usual, "do we have to hold?"
Nobody had an answer for that. And it was in the silence following that question, as Rias opened her mouth to admit that she did not truly know, that the air near the courtyard's edge split open with a flash of crimson light, and two very welcome, and very unexpected, figures stepped through.
Reinforcements
"You will hold him," said Yumi, stepping out of the crimson light with Kenta at her side, "until Lord Marid arrives. And you will not hold him alone."
"Yumi?!" Rias whirled, her eyes going wide. "Kenta?! What—you're supposed to be at the Olympian meeting! Both of you left with Marid only a day ago, how are you—"
"We came back," Kenta rumbled, cracking his knuckles, his golden eyes already sweeping the battlefield with a warrior's assessment. The big Kuroshishi looked, if anything, grimly pleased to have arrived in time for a fight. "And a good thing too, by the look of things. You lot appear to have gotten yourselves into quite the mess while we were away."
The two of them made a striking sight in the moonlight. Kenta was all coiled, restless power, a mountain of a young man plainly itching to be let off the leash. But it was Yumi who drew Rias's second glance, because there was something different about her tonight, something in the way she stood, in the faint, silvery cast to her presence. She seemed steadier than usual. Surer. Her blond hair caught the light of the full moon almost as though it belonged to it, and when Rias reached out with her senses, she found Yumi's power running higher and cleaner than she had ever felt it before, as though the very night were feeding her.
The full moon, Rias realized, though she did not understand the half of it. She could not have known about a quiet promise made in a sunlit Spanish hall, about a goddess's blessing given to an earnest young Devil, about the words your voice will carry farthest to me in the dark, and strongest of all on the night the moon is full. She only knew that her friend's bishop stood before her tonight wrapped in a strength that had not been there before, and that whatever its source, she was profoundly grateful for it.
"Explain," Rias said. "Quickly. All of it. How are you here?"
"The meeting ended," Yumi said, and even in her haste a flicker of something proud and warm crossed her face. "It went in our favor, Lady Rias. Better than any of us dared hope; Lord Marid stopped a war and struck a trade accord with the Olympians themselves, but that is a tale for a calmer night. When it was done, Lord Marid told Kenta and myself to return home to Kuoh, to rest, to get some sleep before he followed." Her expression darkened. "But the moment we crossed back into the city, we were attacked. Fallen Angels. A patrol of them, waiting near our arrival point." She said it flatly, but there was steel beneath it. "They made the mistake of thinking two tired travelers would be easy prey. We disposed of them. Quickly."
"They were Kokabiel's," Sona said grimly, understanding at once. "The cordon. You landed right in the middle of his noose."
"So we gathered, once Lord Marid's call reached us not a minute later." Yumi's jaw tightened. "He told us that Kokabiel was attacking Kuoh. That the Cadre had made his move at last, exactly as Lord Marid feared he would. And he gave us our orders. We are to come to the school. We are to stand with you, and fight alongside you, and lend you every scrap of strength we have." She looked between the two stunned Kings, and her voice softened, but did not waver. "And we are to hold. All of us together. Until he arrives."
The words landed in the courtyard like a lifeline thrown to drowning souls.
"…Marid is coming," Rias breathed, and something in her chest that had been clenched tight since the garden loosened, just a fraction. "He's actually coming. Here. Tonight."
"He is already moving," Kenta confirmed. "He was in the Lucifer's own halls when the word reached him, receiving his flowers for the Olympus business, and by now I would wager he has torn himself away from every congratulation in the Underworld and is bending every road he can find toward this city. You know how he is, Rias." A grim, fond smile touched the Kuroshishi's face. "He does not leave his people to burn. Not ever. If Marid Gremory says he is coming, then he is coming, and the only question left is whether we can hold the line until he does."
For the first time since she had woken to that terrible killing intent, Rias felt something other than fear. It was not hope, exactly, not yet. But it was the shape of it. The knowledge that they did not have to hold forever. That there was an end to the darkness, a point on the horizon they only had to reach, if they could just endure long enough to get there.
"Then that changes things," she said, and iron returned to her voice. "That changes everything. We are not holding until we drop. We are holding until Marid comes. That is a line with an end to it. That is something we can do."
"Rias." Kenta's deep voice cut in, gentle but pointed. "There is one more thing you should know, and you will not like it." He glanced at Yumi, then back. "Where is Kiba?"
The question dropped the temperature of the courtyard by several degrees.
"…We don't know for certain," Rias admitted, and the guilt of it was raw in her voice. "He's been missing since this morning. He went after the Excaliburs. After Valper. Issei and the others tried to find him earlier tonight and couldn't." She swallowed. "But Masomi told us more, when we found him. Kiba found the exorcists out there in the dark, and threw in with them, and he was fighting at their side when Kokabiel fell upon them all. In the chaos, he and Xenovia were separated from the others and driven off somewhere." She shook her head, her jaw tight. "Where they are now, whether they even still live… no one knows. He is out there, Yumi. Somewhere in this city, on this of all nights."
Yumi closed her eyes for a moment, and a shadow of old, deep pain crossed her features, the pain of a woman who knew exactly what ghosts were driving her missing brother, because she had once been haunted by the very same.
"…Then we fight without him, and we pray he lives to be scolded for it," she said quietly, opening her eyes, and there was a terrible steadiness in them. "I made my peace with those swords long ago, Lady Rias. My brother never did. And now he is out there in the dark, chasing the same grave that nearly swallowed us both as children, on the very night a Cadre comes to burn our city." Her hands curled into fists. "So I will hold this line. I will hold it with everything Lady Artemis's moon has given me tonight, and everything I am besides. And when Kiba comes home, because he will come home, I will be here, alive, to drag him back from the edge myself. That is a promise."
"There is more good news, Buchou," came a new voice, calm and measured, "though I am afraid you may not thank me for it at first."
Akeno Himejima stepped forward into the moonlight, and there was none of her usual playful teasing in her manner now. Her beautiful face was solemn, composed, and there was something in her violet eyes that looked almost braced, like a woman who has done a difficult thing and fully expects to be scolded for it, and has decided to do it anyway.
"Akeno?" Rias frowned. "What have you done?"
"I contacted the Underworld," Akeno said simply. "Directly. While you were speaking with Sona-sama, I opened a channel and I sent word of our situation to Lord Sirzechs himself." She lifted her chin, meeting her King's gaze without flinching. "He is sending reinforcements. A force from the Underworld, dispatched the moment he heard. They will arrive in approximately one hour."
For a heartbeat, Rias simply stared at her Queen.
Then the color rose in her face, and her voice, when it came, was sharp with anger and something more raw beneath it. "You did what? You contacted my brother? Behind my back, without asking me, without so much as a word—Akeno, how could you? You know how I feel about this! You know I do not want to go running to Onii-sama every time I face something difficult! I am supposed to be a King in my own right, not a little girl who calls for her big brother the moment things get frightening! This is my territory, my responsibility, and you went over my head and made me look like a child who cannot handle her own—"
"Rias."
Akeno did not raise her voice. She did not need to. There was a quiet, iron gravity in that single word that stopped Rias's tirade dead, and when the Queen spoke again, it was slow, and serious, and utterly without apology.
"I know," Akeno said. "I know how you feel about it, and I did not do it lightly. I know you want to stand on your own, to prove yourself, to be the King you are becoming without hiding in your brother's shadow. I understand that better than anyone, and on almost any other night, I would have held my tongue and let you fight your own battles, and I would have been right to." Her violet eyes were steady and grave. "But this is not almost any other night, Rias. This is not a stray Devil, or a rogue exorcist, or even a rating game against a Phoenix. This is Kokabiel. A Cadre of the Grigori. A being that warred against the original Satans, the archangels, and the God of the Bible Himself in the great war, and survived. A monster so far beyond us that it is not even a contest, it is a category error to imagine we could face him alone and win."
She stepped closer, and her voice dropped, gentler now but no less firm.
"There is a difference, Rias, between refusing to ask for help out of pride, and refusing to ask for help when asking for help is the only sane thing left to do. Kokabiel is out of our league. So far out of it that the word barely applies. And when the enemy is that far beyond you, when the lives of your entire peerage and an entire human city hang in the balance, then swallowing your pride and calling for the strongest ally you have is not weakness." Her eyes held Rias's. "It is wisdom. It is what a good King does. Your brother would never think less of you for it. He would think less of you if you didn't. And I would rather you be angry with me and alive, than proud and dead, and every one of these children dead with you. So I made the call. And I would make it again."
The silence stretched. Rias's fists were clenched at her sides, her jaw tight, the wounded pride and the cold reason warring openly across her face.
And then, slowly, the fight went out of her, and she let out a long, shuddering breath, and her shoulders sagged.
"…You're right," she admitted, and the words cost her, but she said them all the same. "Of course you're right. I hate it, but you're right. This is Kokabiel. This isn't the time for my pride." She dragged a hand through her crimson hair. "I'm sorry, Akeno. You did the right thing, and I shouted at you for it. Thank you. Truly. I don't know what I'd do without you."
An Hour
Akeno's solemn expression softened at last into a small, warm smile. "You would manage, Buchou. But I am glad you do not have to." She inclined her head. "One hour. That is what Lord Sirzechs said. One hour, and the reinforcements arrive."
"One hour," Rias repeated, and turned the number over, weighing it against everything they were about to face. It was, she reflected grimly, both an eternity and no time at all. An hour against a Cadre. An hour of holding a monster at bay with children and desperation and borrowed strength.
But it was, at last, a number. A finish line. Between Marid racing toward them and Sirzechs's reinforcements an hour out, the shapeless terror of how long had finally resolved into something concrete, something that could be endured because it could be counted.
"All right," she said, and squared her shoulders, and became, fully and finally, the King her people needed her to be. "Then we know exactly what we're doing. We hold for one hour. That's the mission. Not victory. Not glory. Sixty minutes of staying alive, of keeping that monster contained on these grounds and away from the city, until help arrives from two directions at once." She looked around at them all, her frightened, brave, exhausted people. "One hour. We can do one hour. We have to."
The Line
With the shape of it settled, the plan hardened into its final, deadly form, and the two Kings walked their people through it one last time beneath the watching moon.
Sona and the whole of her peerage would form the outer ring. Their sole task, their entire purpose for the coming hour, was the great containment barrier. They would seal the academy grounds from the outside, pour every ounce of their strength into holding that seal, and ensure that whatever hell was unleashed within, not one drop of it spilled out into the sleeping city beyond. It was not glamorous work. It was not the work of heroes in the songs. But it was, in its way, the most important task of the night, for it was the one thing standing between Kokabiel and the slaughter of thousands, and every soul present understood it.
"We will hold the box," Sona said simply, and there was no fear in it, only the cold, absolute certainty of a woman who had found the one job she was built for. "You hold the monster inside it. Do not die, Rias. I would find it extremely inconvenient to explain to your brother."
"I'll do my best not to inconvenience you," Rias replied, with a ghost of their old rivalry's humor, and the two heiresses clasped hands, briefly, fiercely, before parting to their tasks.
Inside the barrier would go the fighters. The ones with the power to actually stand against a Cadre, however briefly. Rias took stock of them, her strike team, her holding force, and did the grim arithmetic of who she had and who she did not.
Herself, first and foremost. Rias Gremory, heiress of the Power of Destruction, whose crimson annihilation was the single most dangerous weapon her side could bring to bear.
Akeno, her Queen. The Priestess of Thunder and Light, whose storms could make even a Fallen Angel think twice, and whose holy-lightning heritage was perhaps uniquely suited to hurting a thing like Kokabiel.
Koneko, her Rook. Small, and frightened, but possessed of a monstrous physical strength and a durability that made her invaluable in a brawl against something that hit as hard as a Cadre.
Issei, her Pawn. The Red Dragon Emperor, green and untested and barely beginning to understand the leviathan that slept in his arm, but carrying, all the same, the potential of one of the two most feared beings of the ancient world. Kokabiel wanted him most of all. That, perhaps, could be made into a weapon of its own.
And now, thank whatever powers were listening, two more. Kenta the Kuroshishi, Marid's Rook, a mountain of ki and fury and lion-born strength, worth any three ordinary fighters in a straight brawl. And Yumi, Marid's bishop, wrapped tonight in the silver blessing of a huntress-goddess's moon, her twin Sacred Gears and her holy-forged blades a gift beyond price against an enemy like this one.
Six fighters, then, to hold the line inside the box. And with them, one more.
"I will fight."
They turned. It was Masomi. The young exorcist had dragged himself to his feet, and though Asia's healing had closed his worst wounds and mended his broken arm, he was still pale, still unsteady, still plainly running on little more than willpower and duty. But his grey eyes were clear and hard, and his good hand had found the grip of a sword.
"Masomi-san, you're in no condition—" Rias began.
"I am an exorcist of the church," Masomi said quietly, and there was no room for argument in it. "A power-type fighter, trained my whole life to stand against exactly this kind of darkness. Wounded or not, I am worth more on that field than off it. My charges were nearly killed by that creature tonight, and one of them still lies unconscious in a stranger's mansion because of him." His grip tightened on the sword. "I will not sit this out. Whatever the church's quarrels with Devils, tonight Kokabiel is the enemy of us both, and I would sooner die fighting him beside you than live having watched from the sidelines. Let me stand with you. Please."
Rias studied him for a long moment, this stubborn, honorable young man who had every reason to hate them and had chosen, instead, to bleed beside them. And then she nodded, once, with respect.
"…Then stand with us, Masomi. And be welcome."
Seven, then. Seven fighters to hold a Cadre of the Grigori for one hour, on the moonlit grounds of a human school, while a barrier held the city safe at their backs and help raced toward them from two directions at once. Rias Gremory and her peerage, minus one lost knight whose absence ached in all of them; Marid's two, lent across the miles by a King who did not abandon his people; and one wounded exorcist who had decided that tonight, at least, they were all on the same side.
It was not enough. Every one of them knew it was not enough.
It was what they had.
Rias Gremory looked around at them, her strange and desperate and precious little army, standing together in the silver light with the great dark bulk of Kuoh Academy looming before them, and beyond it, waiting, the ancient monster who had come to burn their world. She felt the weight of every life that depended on the next hour, and she felt the fear, cold and real, and she pushed it down beneath the iron of who she had to be.
"All right," Rias said softly, and crimson power began to gather around her like a cloak of living fire. "Let's go and keep a Cadre busy."
And together, the line that would hold Kuoh turned and walked into the dark toward the waiting school, and the moon shone down, full and silver and cold, upon the battlefield about to be born.
Chapter End
AND THERE IT IS! The calm is officially over, and the storm has arrived! I have been building toward the Kokabiel arc for SO long and I cannot tell you how excited I am to finally be here!
So this chapter was all about setting the stage. We got Rias and Asia reading Issei the riot act (that boy needs about four keepers), the FULL MOON setting that's going to matter, and then the man himself, KOKABIEL, showing up to ruin everyone's night. I wanted his introduction to feel genuinely scary, this is a being on a completely different level from anything the Kuoh kids have faced, and he KNOWS it. That casual, gleeful cruelty is so fun and horrible to write.
We also got a lot of moving pieces into place: poor Masomi and Irina getting wrecked (Asia to the rescue!), Xenovia missing in the chaos (where IS she? hehehe), Sona's containment plan, and of course Yumi and Kenta arriving just in time, lent by Marid himself. And did you catch Yumi being stronger under the full moon? That Artemis blessing from last chapter is already paying off! I love when a seed planted earlier gets to sprout.
And of course, the two lifelines: Marid racing home, and Sirzechs's reinforcements one hour out. Akeno making that call behind Rias's back, and Rias having to swallow her pride, was a beat I really wanted to land. Sometimes the strongest thing a King can do is admit the enemy is too big to face alone.
Next chapter… we FIGHT. Seven defenders, one Cadre, one hour. Kuoh Academy is about to become a warzone, and somewhere out in the dark, Kiba is still chasing his ghosts. Buckle up, everyone. It's going to be a wild one.
As ALWAYS, please please PLEASE leave a comment and let me know what you thought! Constructive criticism is hugely appreciated, if something felt off or you spotted a plot hole, tell me! Your comments genuinely fuel these chapters.
Until next time, stay safe and have fun!
DGZalama out!
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