Issei sighed, "Life sucks balls." He leaned over and put his head on the window. This starry sky was mesmerising. "Why can't things be easy?"
Ddriag went silent for a few moments. Then, when he spoke, there was raw mirth in his deep, granular voice, "You slander all my previous hosts, yet aren't you just like them?"
Issei stood up. He grabbed the first jacket his hand found by the hanger, and walked out of the room. He pulled out the expensive phoenix tear vial and a small roll of anti-bleeding tape from the drawer and pocketed them.
There was no point sitting idly and whining all night. It'd be better spent if he could find some skeletons this town hid under its normalcy. For Issei was certain, this town had aplenty. "Explain."
"The arrogance." The dragon chirped briskly, "The audacity to point a finger at the world when it did not function in the way you so desired. They all had that; you have it too, more than anyone."
Issei silently tiptoed his way down the stairs, careful not to make any sound. 'Baseless slander, partner. I am nothing like your previous hosts. Fighting and conquering and all the other things your exes found euphoric- they all seem massively overrated."
"You're more rational, I will give you that." Ddraig chuckled, "But humour me this once, partner. What do you want in this life?"
Issei slipped into the flip-flops and carefully tried opening the front door. It was futile as the next moment he tried to pull the door to sneak away, the old, long-unused hinges snitched on him. "Shit…"
From the master's bedroom, movement followed. His mother's voice, groggy and disoriented, called out, "…Issei…is that you…?"
Issei clicked his teeth. "Yes, ma. Felt a bit stuffy up there. Thought I'd take a walk."
"But it's…" She sounded concerned, "… it's 1 o'clock. What about school tomorrow?"
"Yeah, don't worry. You go to sleep. I'll be back in a minute."
"But-"
"You're gonna develop wrinkles with all that worrying, mother."
"…"
Issei shook his head and stepped outside, gently closing the door behind him. Inside his mind, Ddraig sighed and went quiet. He knew he was getting no answer.
* * *
"Akeno!"
It took him 5 minutes of a mindless stroll to come across a spectacle. The middle class devils fighting against a high-class…thing. Yeah, that was the best adjective for it. It had long stopped being an individual; now what remained was a writhing mass of bulging shadows with long dark tendrils for limbs and multiple meaty sprouts spread all over its form like flowers on a shrub. The meaty sprout thumped every once in a while, spewing corrosive acids.
In place of eyes, it had hollow sockets; for a mouth, it had a crescent-shaped maw that resembled the moon up above, and from the top of its head jutted two insectoid antennae.
Disgusting. And Pitiful.
An explosion took his attention away from the mutation, and he saw the Raven-haired girl, who'd been firing volleys of lightning bolts at it, get stuck with one of the monster's tentacles. She was launched into the walls of the warehouse they were fighting in, her arms bruised.
She looked haggard, her breathing uneven. The side of her dress shirt was torn at the torso, revealing a red swelling instead of pale skin. She had been fighting for quite some time by the time Issei arrived.
Sitting on the terrace railings about a quarter kilometer away, he squinted his eyes at her. He felt a flicker of recognition light in his mind. "Isn't she Akeno? Suzaku's cousin?" He spoke to the wind. "Gawd dayum, she's a hottie just like her."
He watched the girl pick herself up from the rubble on shaky legs and take to the air. She whispered something to the other girl that he couldn't hear from this distance. The other girl, presumably Sirzech's sister, given that striking red head, gave Akeno a resolute nod.
Together, they prepared to launch a combo. "Oho, fusion dance," Issei humoured. He saw two large magic circles form over the entirety of the warehouse, stacked over the other.
Akeno's bright blue magic circle lit up above, its edges buzzing with potent elemental lightning. Above her formed another magic circle, crimson red and proudly carrying the gremory house's insignia, which exuded an air of dread. Both together made quite a menacing scene.
Amusingly, the monster did not attack them during their preparation hour, causing Issei to quirk his brows, "Live I-frames?"But it was not that. The monster- bereft of reasoning, it might be- was not devoid of its living instincts yet. Still, he just watched the two of the strongest devils of this region combine their attacks into one, its maw stretching wider with glee every passing second.
Uh-oh, that's not good. That's not good at all. That thing had been playing with them, Issei realized. He noticed a dark pool whirling at its feet, aimed directly to meet the girls' attack midway. And even that attack, Issei noticed, did not appear to faze the Shadowy monster. On the other hand, the two devils seemed to pale with every beating moment as they poured all of their attacks into the final attack.
Issei's smile slipped. If this kept going, then even assuming that their combined attack triumphed over the monsters, it would have gotten weak enough for the shadow monster to move out of the way.
Should he interfere? Issei wondered, getting on his feet. Who was he kidding? He had to. Not only was Barbell's daughter there, but the scary satan's little princess as well. From the rumour mill, the one thing he had got to know during the month since the meeting was that the Super Devil was a massive siscon. And remembering the relieved expression on his face once Issei agreed, he was prone to agree.
So, if something were to happen to the two, he'd have one super devil and one furious father chasing him to the end of space-time.
"What a pain…" He turned his head to the opposite direction, finding himself roughly exactly between the girls' coordinates and that of the small bird perched on the cables.
[BOOST]
A disastrous cacophony thundered across the warehouse as the two of shadowy maelstrom and the lightning-clad ball of erasure clashed midway. The sphere of destruction followed its instinct and began to erase the shadows, while the lightning bit into the tendrils, shredding them.
The magical darkness fought back just as fiercely. It began to devour the buzzing thunder encircling the sphere of destruction like ravenous beasts. Every instance the lightning thinned, the shadows rushed into the cracks and began to fill the ominous sphere.
It didn't fight it; however, instead of pouring more demonic energy into the maelstrom to reinforce it against the erasure property of the Bael clan's Power of Destruction. The monster chose the strategy to thin out its potency; to strip away the abject horror that power represented.
Indeed, the shadowy stray demon was playing with the girls. Otherwise, with its reserves, it could've easily overwhelmed them. Yet, it gave the illusion of even competition.
Finally, when only the last of their combined spell remained, fighting against the quasar of shadow and darkness, Rias grit her teeth and shouted through bleeding lips, "Now!!"
Their spells diverged immediately. It circled the beam and headed straight for the caster.
"Oh, that is good…" Issei mumbled, "Controlling the projectile of an already conjured spell…" They had better control over their skills than he gave them credit for.
However, the diversion left the beam of shadow uncontested. It followed its trajectory and came near them at an impossible speed. The two girls tried to jump out of the way, but they wouldn't have made it.
Snap
A great waterfall of flame rained down from the sky. It put up an impenetrable curtain between the girls and the shadowy tsunami.
"…I take back what I said, you two get negative battle IQ for the suicidal move," Issei said, rubbing his chin. He tried to make sense of the strategy, and the only thing he could come up with was that they figured out the stray had a boundless reserve compared to them.
It might be a high-class in its output and performance, but now that Issei had gotten a closer look at it and felt the nature of its ability, just in energy reserves, this vampire turned devil stray might be in the upper echelon of the high class. So, the only way they could win against it was to hurt it to the point of incapacitation. Unfortunately, they grossly underestimated its tenacity and intelligence, and overestimated their own survivability.
"Negative might be too harsh. A 3 sounds good."
Rias' head whipped back. Despite the physical and spiritual demonic energy exhaustion, her body instinctively spun on her toes, and her curled fingers swung for Issei's jaw. Similarly, Akeno had pivoted on her hips, and she was about to deliver a roundhouse kick to his temple.
The kick caused her skirt to flutter due to the wind, and Issei ended up witnessing…a memorable sight under the warm lights of his flamefall. The next second, he was behind them, shouting for his life, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, ladies, Chill!" He said, standing back on the concrete floor. He carefully raised his arms, "I come with cheese, I promise!"