Chapter 8: Perigee 6
Koneko
I woke up the next morning, nose twitching to the smell of a "traditional" western breakfast. Eggs, bacon, pancakes, sausages, french toast, chicken and waffles… basically everything that might come to mind when that phrase is said, the smell of it existed within my room. I'd decided to spend the night at the mansion set aside for the peerage instead of my own home, so that I wouldn't have to deal with waking up in time to get ready before coming over. If I overslept in my room here, Rias would just wake me up herself, since she tended to live here full time.
That I was smelling something at all meant there had to be enough food to feed four families for a whole day in order for the smells to reach this far from the kitchens.
In other words, the normal amount for a Saturday brunch between the two peerages.
Groggily kicking the covers off, I crawled away from the center of the massive plush bed. It was easily big enough for four or five people to lay on, which made sense considering it was the same bed Rias got for me when she first took me in. Back in those days, she and Akeno used to insist on the three of us staying in bed together and watching movies until I fell asleep, with Sona occasionally joining in.
I wouldn't admit it to them, but sometimes I missed being snuggled between them at night. All that useless fat on their chests was good for warmth, if nothing else.
I swung my legs over the edge, my feet landing on ultra soft carpet as I stood. Unlike the rooms at the Gremory estate in the underworld, where they were all lavishly decorated while somehow still maintaining a sense of homeliness, the rooms of the Gremory-owned Kuoh mansion were designed to be a mixture of purely modern aesthetics and casual comfort.
Aside from the fact that my room was something like three times bigger, the only thing that made it stand out from an average person's bedroom was the Victorian-style canopy bed frame. Smooth, light cream colored walls were adorned by a couple poster-sized album covers, with a TV mounted on the wall directly across from my bed. I had a study desk off to one side that I never used for anything but reading manga, and next to it was a bookshelf that was stuffed with manga, light novels, anime DVD cases, and CD's. Aside from a couple smaller shelves, a dresser, and a body length mirror, that was it. No walk in closet, no attached bathroom, none of the things that really make you think "this person is rich."
Of course, it was still a larger bedroom than ninety five percent of the population's, inside a mansion bigger than some apartment complexes, but, you know. It's the small things that count.
Ten minutes later, I found myself walking into the primary living room still half asleep and bleary eyed, changed out of my nightgown and into an oversized white shirt and black shorts, before plopping down into the corner seat of one of the multiple couches, mumbling in response to the greetings I got from everyone else present.
Tsubaki might have directed a question towards me at some point before walking away, but I was having enough trouble keeping my eyes open and head upright to bother paying too much attention and grumbled something unintelligible in response.
Damn my nose. I might have been able to keep sleeping if it weren't for its sensitivity.
It probably wasn't a good idea to binge-watch the Angle Beats anime last night, considering it was already past 12 AM when I started it. I had planned on watching it to relax at the end of the day following my scouting mission, but I'd gotten back from the arcade an hour or two later than I originally planned after the unexpected run-in with Uzumaki.
The indistinguishable sounds of people talking and moving around me slowly sharpened as I continued waking up. I began picking up snippets of conversations, like Meguri trying to explain to Kiba why katanas were the greatest types of sword while he politely voiced his disagreement, or Akeno, Tsubaki, and Hanakai talking about types of tea over in the kitchen.
After what must have only been a couple minutes but felt like an eternity, I shifted my head to look around, blinking the rest of the sleep out of my eyes while I stood up and stretched with a yawn. I saw through the glass doors that Rias and Sona were sitting on the back patio and talking, Kusaka and Nimura also with them but seeming to be having their own conversation. That only left one person– well, two if I included Gasper– that I hadn't noticed around the-
My thought was derailed by an overwhelmingly enticing aroma. The smoky, tingling scent of spiced breakfast meats and the sweetness of maple syrup filled my nostrils, my mouth salivating with a suddenness that made me notice just how hungry my gurgling stomach was. I glanced down to see a large plate stacked high with french toast and sausage and bacon and more, held directly beneath my nose. Following the arm holding it to its source, my eyes took in Yura Tsubasa towering more than a full head over me with a lazy smile, another smaller but-also-full plate held in her off hand.
"Akeno asked me to bring you some food while there was still some food left," She joked with a wry smirk. "'Said that you might need a little fuel to finish waking up."
The joke, for those unaware, is that we always had leftovers from these gatherings nowadays. The first couple times we did them, we ran out of food even after having accounted for how many people we had, so now we always overdo it.
The peerage members who do the cooking don't make mountains of food because we have a lot of mouths to feed, they do it because I always end up eating more than any other four members of our groups combined.
"Thank you." I nodded up at her, taking hold of the offered plate with both hands. A fork and knife were already stabbed into the stack of food, so now all I needed was a nice place to sit and eat. I looked around again, eyes gravitating towards the patio where the warm sun shone on its guests.
Yura followed my gaze. "Gonna eat outside with the others?" She asked idly.
"Yep," I nodded, beginning to make my way to the door. She made to walk with me, longer legs easily catching her up despite my head start.
"Mind if I join you?"
"Mm. Feel free."
We dragged some lounge chairs and a small table into a nice spot in the sun, then sat down and began eating in relative peace and quiet, the sounds of the others' voices reaching us from a few meters away. The patio– being relative in size to the rest of the mansion– had more than plenty enough room to host both peerages with space to spare, and overlooked a large backyard that didn't have much decoration other than a hedge wall along the back fence.
It was only after I had gotten up to get seconds and sat back down that she broke the unspoken silence between us.
"So," She began, "I happened to overhear something Yuuto said when he was talking to Tomoe." Hm?
'… I thought she wasn't interested in Kiba?' I thought.
"According to him, one of your classmates wants to fight him," She said with a little smirk, "Said you spoke pretty highly of the guy's skill."
'Ohhh.' It dawned on me.
This was a fighting thing. Out of everyone in both peerages, Yura would probably be considered the closest to being a battle-junkie, with the katana-fanatic Tomoe being a close second. Neither of them were that bad, not really, but Yura enjoyed fighting and used to battle weaker spirits and monsters before she even became a devil. She wasn't even from a special family of exorcists or magicians or anything, she was a normal human girl who just so happened to be able to see evil spirits, and decided to go around fighting them.
I nodded at her, mouth currently of syrupy, buttery pancakes. I finished chewing and swallowed, before elaborating.
"Uzumaki Naruto." I said while cutting my pancakes to prep the next couple bites. "On the first day of school I saw him practicing his martial arts on the roof. Yesterday he mentioned being interested in sparring with the Kendo Club, so I recommended he try Kiba instead. Kiba's closer to his skill level."
The Kendo Club girls were good at kendo, but even Murayama-senpai– who was a kendo prodigy by normal human standards– couldn't really compete with someone who had real combat experience. Even if her technical skill was at a similar level to Kiba's in a sport's setting, the sheer fluidity of deliberate motion I'd seen from Uzumaki told me that he would mop the floor with her in actual sparring, winning a hundred times out of a hundred.
She might start getting the hang of actual combat by then and begin making him have to work for it, but still.
"Hohhh?" Yura made a sound of surprised interest. "He's stronger than Yuto?"
I paused, a forkful of pancake hovering just short of my open mouth, then lightly shook my head.
"Yes and no." Lowering the fork for a moment, I explained. "He's more skilled at hand-to-hand, but he's purely human." I shrugged. "I think Kiba would win, but he'd have to be extra careful hiding his speed as a [Knight] to do it." I tilted my head. "I didn't see Uzumaki actually fighting; just practicing, so I could be wrong. He could be stronger or weaker than I think he is."
Yura hummed at that, before thankfully going quiet and letting me eat in peace.
I ended up going back for thirds, then fourths, and even fifths over the next two hours or so, in between being dragged into various group conversations. It was around 1 PM that the first person left, Sona needing to answer a summoning contract that she was keeping tight lipped about. After that, people started clearing out, having other things they wanted to do today.
By the time 2 o'clock rolled around, it was just the four of us left in the mansion. Rias had retired to her personal office to do some paperwork while Akeno was busy cleaning up with the use of magic, leaving me and Kiba alone in the massive living room, each of us lounging on opposite couches with a low table between us. He was enjoying a cup of tea and I was slowly eating one last slice of french toast while texting.
Today 2:03 PM
Koneko1123: im free for the day now, u?
Naruto's jPhone 3: i dont remember downloading this app thingy, did my phone come with it?
Koneko1123: nope
Naruto's jPhone 3: oh. Was it you?
Koneko1123: yep
Naruto's jPhone 3: thanks!
(Naruto's jPhone 3 is typing)
Naruto was understandably slow at texting, this probably being his first experience with it, so I had plenty of time to relax. I managed to take a couple bites of my snack before his next text finished delivering.
Naruto's jPhone 3: by the way, why is your name so different
Koneko1123: u can change ur username 2 whatever, instructions here: link
I set my phone down on the table and leaned back into the couch. There was a comfortable silence between us for a few minutes as Kiba sipped his tea and I continued eating.
My phone dinged and I glanced at it, my enhanced eyesight easily reading the screen from my seat.
Today 2:14 PM
9SageNaruto: cool. And yeah, im ready to hang out.
9SageNaruto: where are we meeting?
I ignored it for the moment in favor of finishing my food.
'"9Sage," huh?' I thought to myself. 'Interesting.'
I saw Kiba's light-blue eyes glance from my phone to my face
He smiled at me. "I take it you enjoyed the food as usual, Koneko-chan?" He asked me with some humor in his tone. I was nibbling on my last bite of the cinnamon-coated bread.
"Mm," I paused and nodded, "It was very tasty. Akeno's gotten really good at cooking." I popped the last bit into my mouth and started chewing.
"That's high praise, coming from you. I'll let Akeno know you said that before she leaves." He said with a chuckle. "Speaking of-" he planted his hands on the cushions and pushed himself up into a stand. "-It's almost time for me to get going myself, so I'll go do that now."
"Wait." I said. I picked up my phone and began texting quickly. He looked at me curiously but humored my request without a question.
9SageNaruto: where are we meeting?
Koneko1123: ill send you the address in a minute
Koneko1123: its second home for all my clubmates to share
Koneko1123: so my other friends are still around, but Kiba is going to be busy for a while
Koneko1123: should I ask him to meet up with us when he's done?
There. Now to wait.
(9SageNaruto is typing)
"I invited Uzumaki Naruto to hang out with me here today." I informed Kiba. "I've been meaning to talk to him somewhere more private than at school, and today is the first chance I got." I glanced down at my phone as it beeped.
9SageNaruto: sure, sounds good!
Looking back up at Kiba, I posed the question. "Have you decided yet to have that sparring match with him, or not? He's interested in meeting you in person if you make it back in time, so he'll probably ask about that."
"Ah…" Kiba rubbed the back of his head and smiled sheepishly, giving off an entirely different air than Uzumaki despite his frequent use of similar gestures. "I've been putting off coming to a decision. I felt that it would be best to wait until the next school day, so I could meet him face-to-face and get his measure as a person first," He said. "That being said, I wouldn't mind taking advantage of the opportunity." He continued with a nod. "How does around 5:30 or 6 o'clock sound?" He asked with a slight tilt of his head.
I thought for a moment. It was currently almost 2:30, meaning that if Uzumaki got here within the next hour, we would have two more hours at a minimum to learn more about each other's people. So, not a lot of time to get in depth about a lot of things for either of us, but plenty enough to give each of us the broad strokes.
I nodded at the [Knight]. "That probably works."
Kiba returned the nod with a smile, before continuing on his way towards the kitchen. "I'm just going to talk to Akeno for a bit before I leave, so I'll see you later then," he said over his shoulder as he walked past my couch.
I gave him a thumbs up, already starting to text the address to Uzumaki with my other one.
"See you then."
Naruto
When Koneko sent me the address to her club member's "shared house," I was mentally prepared to find myself arriving at a quarter to 3 PM to a house that, while bigger than the average for a town like Kuoh, was within a reasonable limit.
Standing on the street in front of the gate, a well maintained decorative brick wall stretching around the place, I could definitely see that "bigger" was accurate. I wasn't quite expecting just how much bigger, but I supposed that a whole club of unrelated people would need a bigger place than single-family sized housing, so I guess it makes some sense–
'The hell it does!' I screamed internally. 'Their fucking "house" is as big as my entire gated community! Who the hell decided a group of teens need a place like this!? It's so out of place too!'
If someone decided to walk to the other side of the street and take a look– because there's no way you'd be able to see the whole thing from this close– they'd see that each side of the giant property stretched all the way down the block, while the other side of the road just had a bunch of normal sized houses set side-by-side. It wasn't even a "rich" area, just completely normal suburbs. Where the other houses in the area seemed to be largely made from the same common materials with mostly smooth walls and a couple small windows in specific spots, the mansion was a mix of intricate masonry, intermittent balconies, and large windows evenly spaced across practically the entire building
"Does no one else see any issues with this?" I muttered out loud to no one, utterly baffled. "How'd they even get the property rights to build this here?"
"The perks of being a Devil."
I turned my head towards the increasingly familiar voice. It seemed I wasn't as alone as I thought, because I saw Koneko's golden eyes looking back at me from the other side of the gate as she opened it to let me in.
"There's a perception barrier covering the property that makes normal people dismiss it as nothing out of the ordinary." She explained, giving me what I thought was her version of a 'considering' look. She gave a firm nod after a moment. "I guess that just confirms there's nothing normal about you. It takes a serious weirdo to be able to ignore what their brain is telling them and see through it."
"Hey!" Uzumaki Naruto does not take that kinda thing lying down! "Who are you calling a weirdo, you washboard!" That'll teach her to make fun of me before even offering a greeting!
'Wait, no, she shouldn't be making fun of me in the first place…'
Thirty seconds and a bruised shin later, I was following her gesture to step through the gate with a minor limp, thinking back to when she first showed up at the gate.
'Maybe she really is some sort of ninja,' I thought to myself jokingly, studying her form semi-suspiciously as I stepped into the property. 'She's seriously quiet herself. I didn't notice her approach.'
She was wearing a cream-colored mini-jacket that ended at her midsection, left open on top of a short, light pink shirt/dress thing that hugged her modest chest, but flared out a little bit around her waist and hips. For bottoms, she was wearing a pair of blue denim shorts that were only barely longer than her Kuoh uniform's skirt was. Unlike when she was in uniform though, she wasn't wearing the usual calf-socks, so her smooth legs were left bare from the mid-thigh down.
All in all, despite my 'washboard' comment earlier, she wore her body type way better than many of our classmates. Honestly, I kinda thought she was cuter than Sakura-chan had been at any point in my memory.
She turned and started to walk down the path to the front door, the muscles in her legs flexing with each step she took.
"Come on," Her voice cut through whatever that weird train of thought was. I shook my head lightly to dispel any distractions, her eyes meeting my own as she looked over her shoulder. "We can grab some drinks from one of the kitchen's fridges, and go up to one of the balconies for privacy for a while."
I blinked. "Ah, yeah, sure."
I quickly followed after the white-haired girl, about to enter possibly the most impressive building I've ever been in.
And I'd been in literal castles!
Unlike the arcade where most games were electronic in some way, the room behind us was full of different table based games, like table tennis and poker. I didn't know many of the others by name, but I did recognize the one with the pockets on the edges of the table.
We ended up sitting in reclining chairs outside of the mansion's game room on the fourth floor. She had taken off her half-jacket thing and hung it on the chair's back, and I followed suit with my school blazer. I wasn't actually in uniform, just wearing some black cargo shorts and an orange t-shirt, but I liked the way the jacket looked and felt hanging off of my shoulders.
While I had a glass of plain water sitting on the table stand next to me, Koneko's drink of choice was a strange milk-based soda flavored with strawberry that was apparently pretty popular.
"So, how do we want to start?" I asked once we both settled into our seats, taking in the sight of Kuoh. Our chairs were angled so that we could easily see both each other, and the view. "I'm not sure how to describe my home to someone without missing details that are normal to me, so maybe if you ask me questions first, I can answer them and go from there?" The sun wasn't particularly close to setting, it being just past three o'clock, but this side of the property faced the east, so the roof lip of the building did block the sun at this point, keeping it out of our eyes and us in the shade.
Koneko took a moment to consider, tilting her head. "You're new to the supernatural world, so let's trade questions." She offered. "I'll give you an overview, then we'll go back and forth."
I nodded. "Sounds good."
"First," Koneko began, "is that most myths and legends are real, or based on real events…"
Koneko explained the basics of this new world to me, staying light on the details. Whether this was to stay in the spirit of 'a question for a question' or because she simply didn't know more, I couldn't tell. But what I did notice is that the more she talked, the less she kept up with her usual act, that being her clipped way of speaking. Considering that she spoke in that way even when she was relaxed, I had to guess it was something she did intentionally instead of unconsciously, but found it was too much of a hassle to keep up when talking at length.
In summary, I learned that the various religions and gods in this world's myths did in fact exist but kept to themselves, the "Abrahamic" faction was the most influential around the world and also split into three main sub-factions, which the Devils were one of. The three factions had warred against each other in the past, but were currently in a ceasefire, and the Devils had had a civil war about 400 years ago that was won by the more progressive and accepting faction.
In addition, one of their Maou's (the title given to each of their four leaders) was a genius inventor, and had created a method for devils to transform other races into Devils in order to replenish their race's numbers.
The fact that the transformation was tied to servitude under the devil doing the 'reincarnating' was immediately concerning to me, but I'd hold my thoughts about that to myself until I knew more. For all I knew, it could be similar to a shinobi being bound to either serve their village or be declared a nuke-nin. It would definitely be something to ask about though.
"Okay, I think I get the gist of it," I said after taking a sip of water. "So, it's your turn. What do you want to ask first?"
Koneko hummed for a moment. "You mentioned a 'Konoha Ninja Academy' in your weird rant yesterday. How big is your clan, to be trained in an academy instead of using traditional apprenticeships?"
"Ehhhhh…" I scratched my head awkwardly. "There's a bit of a misunderstanding there. Konohagakure no Sato is a whole ninja village with dozens of clans. To answer both parts of your question, my clan in particular was all but completely wiped out in a war against some other ninja villages some time before I was born, but the Konoha Academy has hundreds of applicants every year from both civilian and clan children." I explained, sidestepping the fact that I was actually an orphan. How exactly do you tell someone that both your parents died the day you were born, 'oh and by the way, I met them both recently and they told me they love me'? Awkward. "The academy teaches the students the basics. Those who graduate get put on a four man team with an experienced adult leader, while the rest are weeded out."
"Hundreds?" Koneko questioned with slightly furrowed brows. "How many graduate?"
I smirked at her, shaking my head.
"Nuh-uh, you already asked your question! My turn."
I paused realizing I hadn't answered a part of her question. "Oh yeah, one more thing. Apprenticeships are still done sometimes, but that usually only happens when an older ninja wants to pass down a particular skill and a newbie catches their attention," I finished.
She hummed at that, but otherwise let me have the floor, or however that saying went.
"Alright, my first question!" I grinned. It fell off pretty quick, when I remembered what I wanted to ask. "So, uhh, no offense, but that peerage system seems super sketchy to me. I know you said it's meant to repopulate the Devil's race or something, and can give normal people longer lifespans and magic, but it sounds like the type of thing a bunch of jackasses would try to abuse." I grimaced at the thought of people with the same or similar mindsets as that Danzo guy or Orochimaru getting ahold of such items. "Is there some sort of system in place to regulate them, a way to prevent them from being used to enslave people, or prevent abuse of their servants after the fact?"
Koneko shook her head.
"Not really. There's no official regulation on their use," she said with a frown, "but they are restricted to High-class Devils and above. Since reputation is more important the higher in devil society you get, the majority of devils treat their peerages fairly, even if it's just because they want to maintain an image as a good leader," She explained.
"There are cases where some devils are known to abuse the system, but the only way to reincarnate someone as a devil is for them to be willing, recently dead, or dying. For the most part, this stops the worst potential cases from happening, and many [Kings] treat their peerages well." She gave a slight nod towards the room at our backs. "The noble family my [King] is from, the Gremory, are known to treat all of their servants like family, to the point they had a mansion built for us," She finished with a hand gesture aimed at the property.
I hummed at that, not entirely happy with the result, but satisfied at the complete answer. I also made note of her use of 'us.' I wondered if she'd forgotten that she never actually told me outright her fellow club members were also devils.
'Then again, it's not like I even know the name of any of them other than the Yuuto guy,' I mentally shrugged. Maybe she just didn't actually care that much about keeping it a secret, what with the whole mansion thing.
We continued like this for the next hour or so, going back and forth, asking each other questions about the places we grew up while luxuriating in the breeze. She told me about her time spent with the Gremory's and the Underworld– a whole planet in another realm without any major bodies of water larger than a small sea– and how the four Maou created an artificial sun and moon for the sake of newly-reincarnated denizens, while I told her about the Hokage monument, the Ichiraku Ramen stand, and how the First Hokage used his abilities to turn thousands of acres of grassland into a forest within a single day back before the village was founded.
There were a couple points where each of us didn't want to answer a question, but considering that both times it happened the question was related to either of our childhoods, we both wordlessly agreed to steer clear of that landmine-riddled topic from then on.
I couldn't speak for Koneko, but I'd more or less come to terms with my shitty childhood already, ever since I confronted my darker emotions on the Island Turtle. I wouldn't be against telling her about it if she really wanted to hear about it, but I felt it would needlessly bring down the mood of our first official hangout.
I'd leave that conversation for when we were closer than just recently-met acquaintances.
Looking out at the clouds lazily drifting in the blue sky and the tall buildings made out of concrete and glass, I was reminded how far a society can progress in a few short years. According to my research in the early days of my stay in this world, the general technological level of this place twenty years ago was roughly the same as the various big cities in the Elemental Nations at the time the fourth war kicked off, and it rose rapidly. Because of this, the culture was forced to shift nearly as fast due to the sudden ease of access to practically unlimited information in the new era.
Things that would have been seen as acceptable behavior were no longer the case, and vice versa, due to more widespread knowledge and understanding. Also according to my research, in this case being done over the past week, the devils of old mythology were depicted as soul-stealing demons and malevolent tricksters. If those depictions held any truth back then, then it would seem– based on my sample size of one (Koneko)– that those days are long past, and Devil society is also capable of change.
So, while as a society it had some issues I found to be super messed up, I could at least content myself with the thought that what little I knew of it implied it was changing for the better, too.
I glanced at Koneko, who was also using the moment of silence to think something over in her head.
'And if they keep using these 'Evil Pieces' to repopulate their race with people like her, that change will come faster and faster,' I thought to myself.
I cleared my throat, seeing her eyes turn towards me as I did so. "Your turn."
She nodded seriously.
"What's ninjutsu?" She asked with a head tilt that I was coming to realize was a common gesture of hers. "Most ninjas call all techniques they use 'ninjutsu,' including regular sleight-of-hand, but you spoke like it was specifically something supernatural."
I was kind of expecting a follow up on one of her previous questions about Konoha specifically, but this worked too. I smiled, happy to explain something I was more familiar with and found interesting.
"For us, Ninjutsu is one of the main schools of techniques we used, alongside Genjutsu, Taijutsu, and Fuinjutsu. At its most basic level, ninjutsu is the combination of a person's physical and mental energies, shaped and controlled to achieve an effect," I lectured, feeling a nostalgic connection to Iruka-sensei. "Some basic examples are manipulating the elements, creating clones, transforming yourself and other objects, and a lot of other crazy stuff that would take too long to list out."
Koneko looked confused, if I was reading her slight frown correctly at a glance. "Physical energies? Mental? You mean like Chi and psychic energy?"
It was my turn to tilt my head. "I don't know anything about psycho energy or whatever it was you just said–" Her stare turned even more deadpan than usual at my (intentional) butchering of the unfamiliar word, "–but from what I've read on the concept of Chi, it's not too far off. We also called the two parts Mind and Body, Yin and Yang, life force and spirit, it didn't really matter. Very few people could do much with either one alone, because we were taught from a young age to combine them unconsciously. Slap 'em together–" I clapped my hands together loudly in front of me, before interlocking my fingers and clasping them together. "–and mix them to get Chakra, which can be used for practically anything if you train it right."
Koneko sat up suddenly, drawing my undivided attention. Her eyes were open wide and eyebrows raised higher than I'd seen them on her before. It was honestly the most lively expression I'd seen her make since I met her. If I'd thought she looked like some sort of doll before (I didn't, I was pretty good at reading physical cue's nowadays, but if I had), I definitely wouldn't right now.
With the way she was staring at me, I might as well have told her I was a time-traveler, or immortal. Or from a different world.
You know, something crazy.
"You okay over there shorty?" I asked her with a little bit of concern. Was it something I said?
Her eyes instantly narrowed. "Don't call me short, midget."
"Don't call me a midget!" I shot up in my own chair, incensed. "My name's Naruto! Na! Ru! To!"
"Hmph."
"Hmph!" We both turned our heads away from each other and I crossed my arms.
'See if I show any concern for you next time you freeze up!' I thought with what was definitely not-a-pout.
"..."
"..."
"... You said your village taught hundreds of kids, human kids, how to use chakra?" Koneko asked quietly after a moment. "Every year?"
I turned back and squinted at her. "Huh?" Was that what she was surprised about? "Uh, yeah. Our shinobi used it for all kinds of stuff." I shrugged. "Why?"
"Chakra is mostly only used by youkai. It comes more naturally to them than other creatures." She answered in an almost detached way, gazing at the horizon. She closed her eyes and seemed to gather herself for a moment.
"The name you chose, '9SageNaruto.'" She opened her eyes, and I couldn't decipher the look she was giving me. The way she was speaking now, and subtly tensing and forcefully relaxing herself, it was clear to me she was nervous, but I couldn't tell in what way.. "... Did your people also teach Senjutsu?"
Despite the serious air that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, I couldn't help myself.
I snorted.
"Pffffft! No way! That stuff is way too dangerous for the village to teach on any sort of scale. Only the best of the best are even capable of learning it, let alone it being taught to a bunch of teenagers." I chuckled at the irony. "As far as I'm aware, our village only had four sages since its founding. You have to be pretty damn strong already just to even meet the requirements."
"So you aren't a sage, then." Her tone and posture relaxed back to normal, but something about the way she spoke made me think she was just the tiniest disappointed.
If so, she's in luck.
"Hold on now, I never said that, did I?"
I smirked slyly at the look of surprise on her face. It seemed constant mental whiplash was the easiest way to get her blank-faced mask to crack, heh.
"You're looking at the youngest master of Senjutsu in the Hidden Leaf's history!" I exclaimed with my fist out, pointing a thumb at my chest.
Nevermind the fact that Konoha is less than a hundred years old… it's not like she needed to know that though.
Koneko visibly broke out of her shock and opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, I cut her off for the hell of it.
"Or at least I was. Nowadays, my chakra network is such a mess that I can't even feel my own internal life-energies. I'm surprised every day I wake up that I'm still alive." I sighed with a little smile. The life I still had was way more than I was expecting after entering the void, to be honest. "Hell, it's part of the reason I went from being the type of dumbass who skips classes, to being a model student. I've been focusing on studying biology in the hopes I can do something to heal myself."
I chuckled and rubbed my head. "I also kinda want to make my parents proud. One of the last things my mom told me before she died was that she wanted me to study hard and eat my vegetables, so I might as well accomplish one of those, haha!"
Koneko stared at me with a look torn between annoyance, concern, and disbelief. She struggled for a moment, before closing her eyes once more and schooling her face. I grinned sheepishly, hand moving to scratch my cheek and averting my eyes as I chuckled at her expression. That I only learned about my mothers last words because she told me herself seventeen years after the fact would've probably broken Koneko's composure beyond repair.
Watching her open her eyes again, this time I was going to let her speak uninterrupted, my gaze becoming serious as I read her body language.
She opened her mouth, and—
Knock knock knock
"Hello? My apologies if I'm interrupting something."
We both turned to the sound of a soft-spoken young man's voice, though I noticed Koneko was glaring petulantly– for her, that is; more like a slightly scrunched brow from anyone else– at the newcomer.
He had short straight hair, a lighter shade of blond than my own that framed his features seemingly perfectly, and a small mole under his eye that many people would call a 'beauty mark'. Standing at around ten-to-fifteen centimeters taller than me and looking like he could be a couple kilograms lighter, I could definitely see what Mitsuri meant when she called him a 'lanky pretty-boy.'
"You're here early." Koneko grumbled. Well, not really, she spoke perfectly clearly, but it was definitely meant with that intent.
His blue-gray eyes that glanced curiously between me and Koneko, before settling on her with a sheepish smile crossing his lips.
"Sorry for barging in without texting ahead, Koneko-chan," he apologized, "My final client canceled on me at the last minute, and I needed to come here anyway to tell Rias, so I thought I'd introduce myself while I'm at it." He turned to me.
I decided to take a page out of Kakashi's book, just for fun.
"Yo." I gave a lazy two-finger salute with a bored expression on my face. "You the help or something?"
He just smiled politely back at me. "I don't believe we've met before, please allow me to introduce myself; My name is Yuuto Kiba. Would I be correct in assuming that you are Uzumaki Naruto-kun?"
The smile on his face had remained completely relaxed, looking perfectly natural on his features. He even kept eye contact and everything.
I grinned and sat up, my act falling away before I even got any real use out of it.
Damn, he was good.
Chapter 9: Perigee 7
Naruto
The three of us stood in the massive back yard, the sun shining down on us at an angle.
Well, Yuuto and I stood a few meters across from each other in the backyard, near the middle of the perfectly trimmed lawn, while Koneko sat in a reclining chair on the patio off to the side with a plate of cookies in her lap. "Backyard' may have been underselling it just a bit though, considering it was more than half the size of a soccer field and surrounded by a tall hedge wall.
"So, what ground rules are we setting?" I asked while doing some crouching leg-stretches, letting the fingers of my right hand trail through the perfectly-trimmed grass below me. Their tips trailed through a thin layer of loose soil closer to the surface than I would have expected. 'Hmm. Seems like the groundskeeper recently added a layer of mulch.' I didn't know much about lawn care compared to keeping indoor potted plants, but I was pretty sure this was overkill.
'Then again,' I thought, glancing around at the freaking compound. 'What about this property isn't overkill?'
"No going for the crotch should be obvious," I said out loud, returning my mind to the topic at hand, "that would just be a dick move." I paused mid-stretch, realizing what I just said. "... Pun retroactively intended."
Yuuto gave an amused chuckle at my corny joke.
After he had introduced himself, the three of us had moved inside to the game room and played a couple simple games like ping pong while talking about school. It was about halfway through my first match against him that I realized Yuuto was slowly increasing the speed and precision of his hits intentionally, probably in an effort to try assessing my reactions rather than him just getting warmed up.
Despite me being able to keep up with and even beat the level of effort Yuuto put into the matches, Koneko destroyed us both completely at the game without much effort. Even with her shorter limbs giving her less reach, her reflexes and hand-eye coordination were blatantly superhuman, and she wasn't even trying to hide it.
It was almost as if she was annoyed about something and venting on us in her own way.
I wondered why.
I must have put up a good enough showing though, because shortly after we had enough of the games, Yuuto requested a spar with me unprompted, and offered to lend me some spare training gear when I accepted. I declined the offer for the padded gear, but I did accept a spare set of dark blue athletic shorts with pockets, and a skin-tight white sleeveless shirt to wear so that my casual clothes wouldn't get torn up.
Which led to our current location, with Yuuto casually holding a blunted training sword in one hand. It was shaped differently than what I was used to seeing, being modeled after what they called a "longsword," but it wasn't anywhere near as weird as Zabuza's sword or Samehada. It was similar to a chokuto in that it was a straight sword, but the main thing I needed to keep in mind was that it was double edged, so return swings might come faster.
"We should also refrain from aiming for the face and neck," the other blond offered smoothly in answer. "Since you have elected not to wear protective gear, we should keep in mind that we can't exactly hide our faces at school in two days. It's probably not a great idea to show up noticeably bruised and bandaged, wouldn't you agree, Uzumaki-san?" He explained with a wry smile.
It made sense, though I got an inkling that he was saying it more for my sake than his own. When I had declined the training armor, he followed suit in the name of fairness, but seemed more or less indifferent to either choice.
Nothing in his tone or actions were noticeably malicious in any way, but my mental awareness of his most-likely superhuman physical ability gave his words a sort of unintentionally-arrogant vibe, like he was just humoring me rather than actually taking me seriously.
Which was a fair stance, if I was being completely honest. If he actually was a Devil like Koneko, he'd very likely be able to physically out-perform me by a wide margin.
Didn't change the fact that it was just a little bit annoying, though.
"Sure," I nodded in agreement. "How do we want to rule grapples and ground-fighting? If we were both using hand-to-hand I'd say we go to a ten-count or a tap out, but that doesn't work as cleanly with weapons involved."
Yuuto just lightly smirked. "If you can get me to the ground, I'll call it your point. I happen to be very proud of my footwork."
I grinned internally at that. He still came off as a little bit condescending to me, but at least part of that was due to his confidence in himself rather than outright looking down on me. I always preferred it when someone's arrogance was rightfully earned.
Neither were great, but those who look down on people they perceive as having been born 'lesser' than them have always pissed me off the most.
'I'll match him then!'
"Ha! I'll make you regret saying that soon enough! By the end of the day, I'll have knocked you on your ass at least three times." I stood from my stretches and returned his smirk challengingly with a sly one of my own, pointing my left thumb at my chest while casually plopping my right fist into my pocket. "If you manage to graze my stomach, chest, or back, or get a clean hit on either leg, I'll call that in your favor. If you manage to land a clean hit on either of my arms, I'll continue without using that limb, but if you manage to hit it a second time below where the first strike was, I'll call it a chest shot, and your point," I outlined. "Anything else that wouldn't end a real fight with a real sword is free game."
"I accept your conditions." The prim and proper Kuoh student– seriously, it wasn't even a school day and he was wearing his full school uniform, tie included– turned and called out to our observer. "Koneko-chan, would you mind refereeing our matches?"
I saw her nod and swallow her baked treat, raising a hand. "Get ready. On start."
I pulled my hand out of my pocket and shifted on the balls of my feet, leaning forward a little with both legs slightly bent and hands ready at my sides. My own school blazer hung on my shoulders once more, empty sleeves drifting lightly by my side in the miniscule breeze. I watched Yuuto settle in a half-turned stance, keeping his profile to me with one hand holding his sword pointed vaguely in my direction, his rear hand free to react in either offense or defense.
"Three."
I slid my rear foot significantly further back, shifting my center of gravity much lower in the process.
"Two."
I watched Yuuto's feet and sword hand shift in angle ever so slightly in response.
"One."
My blue eyes met his own, both of us staring the other down in anticipation of each other's first moves.
I relaxed the tension in my forward leg, letting it bend further and began freefalling further into my forward lean, arms following suit
Koneko's hand began falling. "Start."
I tensed and pushed off from where I had subtly pressed the loose soil into a forward foothold, already low enough to the ground that I dug my fingers into it and pulled myself forward simultaneously.
Before the first syllable even fully left her mouth I was rocketing towards Yuuto as fast as I could physically push myself, keeping a low enough profile that a normal person would have trouble leveraging much strength against me, let alone with a sword.
I may have crossed the initial distance between us fast enough that an onlooker might miss it if they blinked, but despite the surprise clear in his slightly widened eyes, he had already back stepped twice by the time I reached his starting point. Even while matching a human's movement speed, his reaction speed was just that much better.
Feeling the adrenaline pumping through my veins while my right hand twisted back to ready a haymaker, I watched in almost slow-motion as I approached Yuuto, him lowering his own center and planting his feet in a way that would allow him to either lunge forward, or hop backwards at a moment's notice. At the same time, his sword lowered for a stab while his free hand rose to block or deflect my fist.
My grin bared teeth as I saw the moment he realized his mistake, the lower position giving him line-of-sight to my left hand that my body was previously covering.
My left hand that was trailing through the dirt.
I tore my fingers out of the lawn with an upwards swing and twist of my body, flinging a spray of soil at his head and upper body.
True to my expectations, he was able to react before it reached him. Yuuto turned his head and brought up his free hand to block it, closing his most exposed eye and trying to keep me visible in the corner of his remaining eye while the spray pelted his cheek and palm. Unfortunately for him, I didn't think it would successfully blind him in the first place. It served exactly the purpose I needed it to.
Yuuto had the option to either close distance and meet me head on, or back off and try to create distance. At the start of the duel, he chose to back off. Being taken by surprise and having his vision hindered while seeing my charge losing steam, he made the same choice again, pushing himself away in a backwards hop even as he swiped his sword in a horizontal slash to ward off my pursuit.
Luckily for me, I hadn't planned on directly pursuing him in the first place, and began making my next move at the same time as him.
I followed through with my full body twist, managing to spin around and plant the fist I had feinted with palm-first onto the ground, and using it as a pivot point, continued with the motion to swing my legs around in a lunging leg-sweep that had me sliding over the lawn just under his blade. Just as his feet made contact with the ground again and he made to move his front foot for whichever motion he had planned, my leading foot stopped that dead by hooking around the back of that ankle and pulling, forcing him to almost fall into a split as his front leg was suddenly much further forward than before and he lost his balance, arms jerking out of position in order to try compensating.
Planting my other palm on the ground mid-movement and twisting my midsection, I pushed off and turned my sweeping angular momentum into a full-body rotation, swinging my other leg up and over to slam my heel into his back, hitting him in the lower spine with the full force of my body in motion behind it.
With a small gasp escaping his mouth, Yuuto was sent tumbling to the ground while I used what was left of my momentum to roll into a kip-up and land back onto my feet to stand above him. He'd ended up letting his weapon fall to the side in favor of using his hands to catch his fall before he could face-plant into the dirt.
"Point goes to Uzumaki." Koneko's monotone voice called.
All-in-all, the "fight" lasted no more than five seconds.
"So," I said with a smug grin on my face as he pushed himself to his knees, and then his feet, "that's not exactly 'on your ass,' but I think I'm gonna count that as one out of three."
I basked in the looks I received from the two. Koneko's eyes rolled at my trash talk, while Yuuto's took on a calculating gleam as he re-assessed me, brushing off the grass stains and crouching to pick up his sword.
I just casually straightened out the jacket on my shoulders with a smirk, staring Yuuto down as if what I'd done was simple, barely worth mentioning.
It was not. I could only keep up that pace for a few minutes, max. If I tried to keep going past that, I'd start slowing down without having chakra to enhance me and need to take a break to recover, but it's not like he needed to know that.
Besides, I may be a "normal" human nowadays, but I'm still an Uzumaki, it's literally in my genetics to recover stamina faster. Fast enough to allow me to maintain my top-speed sprint for more than fifty times longer than normal, before the energy cost catches up.
I stepped back a bit and settled into a less aggressive, more reactive stance, watching as he brandished his blunted sword once more. A flicker of red on one of the upper floors caught my attention from the corner of my eye, but I forced myself to focus entirely on my opponent.
No distractions right now.
"Maybe you should take this a little more seriously," I said to the other blond, watching his eyes zero in on my different stance much less casually than before. "Step it up a notch, y'know? Show me what you can really do." I grinned slyly as he locked eyes with me again, understanding dawning in him. "Believe me…"
"I can take it."
Koneko
I restrained the urge to sigh in exasperation at the two boys in front of me.
In the Uzumaki's case, despite claiming to be a ninja, it almost felt like he didn't have a single subtle bone in his body. If it weren't for his silent movement skills and the display of misdirection he'd just shown, I would have assumed his peoples versions of "shinobi" and "ninja" had nothing to do with the modern meanings of the words. It wasn't really a big deal at all that he was quick to give away that he knew we weren't 'normal,' but it's the principle of the matter.
For Kiba, it was just because I all but outright told him not to underestimate his opponent, and he still ended up letting the shorter blond dictate the entire pace of that round.
'And look what it got him,' I thought with just a tiny hint of satisfaction, taking in the dirt smears staining his uniform.
I switched my gaze to Uzumaki, taking in his odd choice to keep his jacket on his shoulders despite changing into exercise clothes. With the way his legs and arms were exposed, it was easy to recall what he'd said to Mitsuri about his physique. Looking at his bare arms and calves showed that he wasn't some noodle-limbed scrawny kid, but it was clear to see that vanity wasn't something he cared about when building himself up, because none of his muscles noticeably bulged against his lightly tanned skin when he wasn't heavily tensing them.
Seeing as both of them seemed to be ready, I brought my hand back up. "Three. Two. One."
And down it went. "Faito."
This time, Kiba was the one who launched himself at his opponent, moving noticeably faster than Uzumaki did at the start of the previous round. He led with a diagonal downwards slash while he was still some distance away, making use of his longer reach advantage.
Just because he didn't rush forward, didn't mean the tattooed blond was sitting still though.
While Kiba was charging forward, Uzumaki shifted his stance to be more steady, digging his front foot in. When the slash came down at him, he pivoted ninety degrees on a dime with a backwards lean to dodge while planting his rear foot solidly in the dirt, just in time to kick himself forward and past Kiba's free side as the [Knight]'s followup slash chased him, preventing him from punishing the perceived opening.
Kiba, having planted his own front foot at the start of his attack, pushed off and reversed his momentum just as quickly, used the twisting motion of his midsection to grab the pommel of his sword with his free hand at the end of the swing, seamlessly lunging into a two-handed thrust.
Uzumaki maintained his momentum and kicked off the ground once more, propelling him out of range of the stab just before it would have caught him in the side.
As Uzumaki's feet slid to a stop through the grass, they both held their positions for a second to watch each other's movements, having more or less switched places. Kiba had a determined smirk on his face, while Uzumaki… well, he was grinning like a lunatic to be honest.
The moment passed, and this time they both charged each other, a flurry of rapid swings, feints, calculated dodges, and fists.
Even if he was still holding back for the sake of competition, it was clear that Kiba's speed was superior enough that Uzumaki was struggling to keep up when he had to rely on reacting to the rapid slashes and stabs. How he made up for it, just enough to not be completely outclassed, was by seemingly always being positioned in just the right way to either dodge out of range of follow ups before they even began, or take advantage of a sudden opening to force Kiba's own retreat or block.
This didn't mean that he was actually pressing Kiba of course.
The speed of a [Knight] meant that if he actually wanted to Kiba could outright run circles around the shorter combatant, but what it did mean is that the sheer experience and skill Uzumaki Naruto was showing in unarmed combat was enough to hold off a talented student of Okita Souji using a sword, operating at a low level of superhuman speed.
Kiba was definitely dictating the pace of the fight, but that didn't change the fact that Uzumaki was just better than the [Knight] touted as a rare talent.
The two fell into a pattern of engaging in a flurry of strikes and dodges before Uzumaki inevitably took advantage of an opening to escape with little more than glancing blows, his jacket sleeves flapping every time he dashed away.
This continued for some time, without any real hints of the pattern changing. I even had to summon a new plate of cookies from the kitchen when I finished the first.
At last, something new happened.
Uzumaki had managed to land a couple of light blows to Kiba's sides and one to his wrist by now, but on his last attempt to duck away, Kiba had managed to "take" the fingers from his right hand. With a swipe that was just a little bit too fast for him to fully escape, the sword made contact with his knuckles in a painful-sounding crack that had him wincing with a grimace.
He wouldn't be punching with that hand anymore for this round. Maybe even for the rest of the day, if the damage was as bad as it sounded.
My hidden ears twitched, picking up a sound other than the two boys having their violent fun.
"So I was right. I thought I saw something unusual from my window," Rias commented as she made her way over to me from the back door. "It's so rare to see Kiba-kun enjoying himself like this, so I felt it would be a nice chance to come and root for my [Knight] in person."
I wordlessly offered her a chocolate chip cookie as she took a seat in one of the chairs next to me, keeping my eyes on the spar. Uzumaki just barely managed to duck under another wide slash, and made to punish Kiba by going in with a left uppercut aimed at his stomach.
"Thanks," Rias accepted the baked treat with a smile that I could practically hear. "I appreciate it, Koneko-chan."
The punch didn't get a chance to connect. Kiba, having wizened up to that particular tactic of Uzumaki's, was perfectly prepared. One of his hands slipped down off of the handle of his sword to slap the fist to the side, this time leaving Uzumaki open for Kiba to lash out with a kick.
The whisker-marked teen seemed to be slowing down, I could hear him breathing harder from here.
Rias's hair rustled slightly as she turned her head towards the fight.
Uzumaki just barely managed to get his free palm between himself and Kiba's foot to try deflecting it, but all that did was prevent his breath from getting knocked out of him when the energy behind Kiba's kick forced his own hand to smack into his side. Unprepared to absorb the power behind such a sudden kick with his injured hand, Uzumaki stumbled back in a spin, his jacket flapping around and flaring up off his shoulder as it caught wind with the quick rotation.
The kick forced him into Kiba's preferred range with his back exposed, his school blazer haphazardly covering his head and upper body, right as the sword was coming around again. An almost unavoidable attack given the circumstances.
Or so it would seem from Kiba's perspective.
In a move that caught the [Knight] entirely by surprise, Uzumaki used the visual cover his jacket provided to follow through with his stumble and drop straight towards the ground. He timed it so perfectly that the moment Kiba's sword caught the edge of the flapping fabric, he bent forward while lifting his feet off the ground with his inertia, letting the momentum of the sword prevent the jacket from falling with him and taking away his visual cover.
The additional weight and wind resistance slowed the swing enough that Uzumaki's dead-weight drop brought him just under its path as it passed through where he had been a moment before.
Kiba himself stumbled forward when his attack met far less resistance than he was expecting, swinging clearly through where he believed the shorter blond's body had been and throwing him off balance. When he was met with empty air as his swing finished, the [Knight]'s eyebrows twisted in confusion. It only lasted for a split-second though, as he realized there was only one direction his opponent could have gone.
He turned his gaze down, just in time to see that he was too late
With the summersault-like motion Uzumaki had initiated to fall faster, his upper body was left lower to the ground than his lower body, so he only needed that split second in order to slam his palms on the ground and push.
His fall was abruptly turned into a lunging mule-kick that landed cleanly in Kiba's unguarded diaphragm with a dull whump, audibly knocking the air out of him as he staggered back with a wheeze, practically folded in half and clutching his stomach.
Recovering from the delivery of his counterattack, Uzumaki did another spinning maneuver that once again looked more like some sort of break-dancing move, resulting in him sweeping Kiba's feet out from under him. As Kiba fell back towards the ground, Uzumaki's spin brought him into a kneeling crouch beside the [Knight] with his left hand already swinging down.
With twin thumps that would have sounded like a singular one to someone with hearing worse than mine, Kiba's back hit the ground at the same time as Uzumaki's left fist buried itself into the dirt beside his head.
The backyard was silent for a couple seconds, save the sounds of Kiba's hacking coughs and Uzumaki sucking down gasping breaths, both trying to get their breathing under control.
"... Two-Nil." I belatedly called the round.
After more than ten minutes of high intensity sparring and constant motion, Uzumaki took another victory.
Yeah, okay. I'll admit it.
Uzumaki Naruto is definitely, one-hundred percent, ninja material.
Anyone can fight dirty, up-to-and-including throwing dirt in peoples faces at just the right time. You didn't have to train to do that, just not caring that you will be seen as a dishonorable fighter was enough.
It takes an entirely different type of thinking to take into account and make use of the clothing you casually wear for a fight-winning distraction.
"So, this is the boy you mentioned yesterday, huh?" Rias's intrigued question broke me out of my stupor.
"Mm." I nodded, watching as Uzumaki finally pushed himself up into a crouching stand, pulling his left hand out of the lawn with a light spray of dirt and grass. He reached his right hand down to offer Kiba some help getting up, who accepted it with a grateful nod.
"That was a really good fight, man! One of the longest ones I've had in a long time." Uzumaki laughed breathlessly with satisfaction after they were both standing, stuffing his dirty fist into his pocket. "You're pretty good with that thing, I was barely able to find any openings I could use," he complimented the older boy while flexing his right hand with a slight wince.
I couldn't help but find it weird that he didn't at least wipe off the dirt before he–
'Wait.'
My eyebrows rose a tiny bit as I replayed what I saw in my mind.
'Did he just…?'
"It's strange," Rias spoke with a tone of intrigue, "I can't figure out how much he costs."
I put my thought on the backburner for now and turned to look at my [King], watching her gaze on the sole non-devil here with interest. She was talking about his evil piece value, but I didn't understand what she meant.
"It seems I still have a long way to go," Kiba said with a chuckle. "If I'm what you'd consider 'pretty good,' then I'd love to meet someone you consider amazing with the blade. You are incredibly hard to pin down yourself, it's admittedly a little frustrating, if awe-inspiring. To think I believed my footwork was excellent."
"Heh, don't knock yourself," Uzumaki rebutted with a grin and a smack on the taller boy's shoulder, "You've got the skill part pretty much down, you just need more experience. I've been fighting precision-types like you for most of my life at this point."
Having hearing as good as mine wasn't always easy to deal with, there were downsides too; like right now. Being able to hear the boys just as clearly as I did Rias made it much more difficult to focus my attention in one direction. It could get a bit jarring to hear a completely different topic brought up, when there weren't enough voices at once to subconsciously sort into indistinct chatter. Ironically, the more sources of distractions there were, the easier it was to put my focus where I wanted it.
It was much easier to ignore the background noise and people's voices at school, for example.
Doing my best to tune the two boys out, I asked my [King] to clarify. "What do you mean? Don't you need to do the ritual to learn how many pieces it will take?"
It was fairly common for popular reincarnated devils in peerages that rank highly in the Rating Game to make their Evil Piece value public knowledge, usually as a form of bragging. On the one hand, needing multiple pieces to reincarnate was proof all on its own that they were a cut above the rest. On the other hand, getting so strong that you could defeat those "superior" devils with ease despite taking only a single Pawn… well, strength speaks for itself in Devil society.
As a result of this trend spreading in the competition culture, Devil-run media has made use of the nature of Evil Piece values, to build suspense in their shows when a character is about to join a peerage. If they show the character as having a high value, it's meant to show how badass they are, or in the opposite case, it's meant to show they are the underdog.
As far as I was aware, many of the producers creating these shows and using this trope are peerage [King]'s themselves, being the third and fourth sons and daughters of noble houses, making use of their families wealth to expand their families cultural influence in new ways. They wouldn't all have independently made up the uncertain nature of determining a candidate's value, so it had to be at least close enough to the truth.
"Hmm?" Rias paused and blinked. "Oh, right. I guess I've never had the need to explain this before, and it isn't exactly something that's important for every new devil to learn, so you probably didn't know. That's my bad," she said with an apologetic smile, turning in her chair to face me. "Here, let me explain."
"To start, let me be clear; a [King] cannot determine with certainty how many pieces reincarnating a new peerage member will cost them until they attempt to do so," Rias confirmed. "However, there are many things that go into how much value someone has, which can be accounted for even without the help of the Evil Piece System. Sacred Gears, natural talent, potential for growth," she listed, "things like that all increase a person's value according to the system, and being a [King] gives us the ability to tap into that and get an idea of the value the system assigns to that person just by focusing on them."
I tilted my head in confusion. It sounded to me like she was just contradicting herself. Do [King]'s know the value beforehand or not?
"The issue lies in the fact that said value is not the same as their Evil Piece cost," she continued. "Just as prospective peerage members have a value, so do us [King]'s, and both of these values are used to determine how many pieces are spent reincarnating someone. No one aside from Ajuka knows exactly how it's determined, and it's made more difficult by the fact that a [King] can't perceive their own assigned value, but it's pretty well known that someone worth all eight pawns to a regular High-class devil will take much fewer for someone like my brother to reincarnate."
I hummed at that and nodded. It made sense now, but it also made the whole piece-bragging trend seem really dumb.
Back to the reason for my question, though.
"Why isn't it working on him?" I asked her.
She turned her focus back to him. He and Kiba were talking about their training routines apparently, since Uzumaki was still recovering his stamina. Unsurprisingly, Uzumaki's was just barely on the 'human' side of 'inhuman' on the days that he felt like pushing himself, including endurance exercises that I knew for a fact would kill an un-enhanced human, just for his warmups.
At some point in the conversation, Kiba had switched from using '-san' to '-kun' for Uzumaki.
Rias frowned in thought the way she sometimes does when a move Sona makes in their chess games stumps her.
"Normally when I use the ability, I can perceive a person's defined value as an aura of varying brightness, except I don't actually see it with my eyes. The brighter and larger the aura, the higher the Evil Piece System values them. With him, though…" She placed a hand on her chin like she was trying to solve a puzzle. "With him, I keep getting mixed signals, and it seems like it changes every time I look away."
"Mixed signals?" I asked.
"Yeah," she nodded, her cerulean eyes fixated on the short blonde, "I can't really explain everything because according to Ajuka everyone processes the '[King]'s Sight' differently, but there are moments where it's like he has a small but bright light instead of an aura, moments where the aura is extremely dim and diffuse, barely there at all, and moments where I can't perceive anything at all. People's rating in the system can change, but that's something that only usually happens over long periods of self-improvement, or in more negative cases, giving up and slacking off. That-" She waved a hand vaguely in Uzumaki's direction at something only she could see, "-is not normal, not by any means."
I hummed while she brought a hand up to pinch her brow with a sigh of frustration.
Trying to think of why that might be the case didn't really help since it was completely outside of my experience, but something about calling his aura 'dim' and 'barely there' itched a part of my brain.
"... He mentioned a while ago that he once got injured so badly he almost died and still has internal injuries that didn't heal right. Could that affect it?"
Rias's hand lowered and she opened her mouth to answer, but then closed it, and furrowed her eyebrows in thought.
We both looked at where he was talking with Kiba, the conversation having moved on to opponents they've fought. Uzumaki looked to have almost recovered fully, talking animatedly about a ninja he'd fought who wielded a sword with a blade made entirely out of lightning.
I guess he's completely given up on pretending to be normal here. He probably assumed that I'd told them about him being a ninja. That, or he just got caught up in the excitement and forgot to hide it.
Either one was a possibility with him, I was coming to realize.
He'd probably be ready to start the next bout soon. After the showing he's given, it was a bit hard to believe he still had internal damage. He moved more easily and fluidly than literal acrobats.
"... Maybe?" She answered in an unsure tone. "It doesn't answer why his aura keeps changing, but it might explain why it dims and even… disappears."
Uh oh. I didn't like the sound of her hesitation at the end. Something about the way I reflexively looked at her must have given away my thoughts, because she elaborated a moment later.
"The only other time I've seen a person's aura begin to disappear, was when I reincarnated Kiba." She said in a low tone.
My mouth drooped into a slight frown at the implication.
She'd saved Kiba from the verge of death when she reincarnated him.
"... Something is seriously messed up with his body then." I already technically knew this, having been told by him directly on two separate occasions, but hearing it all but confirmed by the Evil Piece system itself made it even more worrying. Him saying it while walking around doing acrobatic flips and spins didn't exactly drive home the point he was making the same way a system with hundreds of years of reliability did.
Rias hummed in agreement. "Regardless, while it's a worrying implication for his overall health, it's likely that he's stable enough if he's already lasted as long as you implied. I can ask to have one of my family's healing specialists come and take a look at him at some point in the future if you want, and I wouldn't say no to reincarnating him if his situation takes a turn for the worst, but he should be fine for now."
She perked up. "Anyway, enough of this ominous topic. It looks like they're ready to start again."
True to her word, the two boys had separated once more and were taking their stances.
They looked over at us to referee again, and I lifted my arm obligingly.
"Three… Two… One…"
My arm fell, and they began anew.