Game of Monsters - 140 (Patreon)

Disclaimer: I don’t own Highschool DxD.

So Fly on Your Own

“So, what do we do now?” he asked, moving to sit at the island of his kitchen opposite from Serafall. They’d gotten up a little late so Jeanne and Asia weren’t around. Which suited them just fine, since it allowed them the chance to have some more time alone to themselves. “I imagine this will be troublesome… again.”

“Gee, it’s almost like you did something that was previously thought impossible… again,” she told him, both amused and unimpressed. “Who could have predicted this, right?”

“I just… could do without the stuffy party, that’s all. I’m enough of a recluse that the rest of the mess doesn’t really affect me,” he commented with a shrug, bringing his cup of tea to his lips. “Anything else I should be aware of?”

“Well, for one, we’ll keep it hush-hush just yet. We aren’t sure that you’ve cured it, at least for those not asleep. So it’s not really that much of a problem,” Serafall said, much to his relief. “I’d say you need to prepare yourself for when you do get it done though. That’s when the stuffy party will take place,” she told him with a grin that only widened when he sighed.

“I can tell you that I’m not looking forward to that,” he replied, running his fingers through his hair. “I almost want to delay the spell,” he commented, taking another sip from his drink. “Almost, but not quite.”

Because he had promises to keep with Sairaorg and because he wanted to further reassure the Sitri family. It’d be annoying, but it would all be worth it. Certainly more worth it, for him, than the Phoenix Spell. That one had all been about favor and standing with a little bit of helping Rias and doing a smaller favor for Sairaorg on the side. This one was almost fully personal really. It wasn’t like Joshua felt like going through all the trouble that would be healing countless diseases and such.

Maybe with time, but at that very moment? He had a lot more pressing matters to deal with. Khaos Brigade, Ophis, Trihexa, those were his worries. Which was why he needed to continue building his public persona and maybe pull more people into the mix. People in the DxD world seemed to take debts and favors very seriously.

He planned to take advantage of that.

“I know that face, are you thinking about spells or plans?” Serafall asked curiously, her upper lip sporting a stain of the entirely too sweet drink he’d prepared for her. “What is it, what is it?”

“Plans, right now,” he answered with an amused smile. He did have some plans for the future. He just needed to open some time slots to take care of that. As it was, he was a little busy with all that he had in hand. Maybe once he was done with the Sleep Disease, he’d have a chance of starting to make some moves.

“Anything I should know?”

“Probably,” he acknowledged, closing his eyes for a moment. “I’d rather not talk business right now though,” he added, taking a sip from his cup of tea. “Are you gonna spend the day with your family?”

“I wish,” the woman answered with a groan. “I can’t tell the Underworld that we think we found a cure for Sleep Disease just yet, so I don’t have a proper excuse. I’ll visit them after I leave here though. After that, it’s back to work with me,” she explained, ending her little speech with a mighty pout. “I don’t wanna deal with the stuffy people, Josh!”

“What do you want me to do about it?” he asked with a raised eyebrow and a smile. “Why do you think I prefer being a hermit?”

“Can I be a hermit with you?” she shot back, batting her eyes at him.

“No, you’d drag all the stuffy people to my cave,” he replied mercilessly. “You can use the Phoenix Spell and the Sleep Disease cure whenever it’s done if you want though,” he added. “You’d know how to work with the devils better than I would anyway.”

“You are the best, Josh~!” she cheered childishly, making him chuckle.

“Happy to help,” he said, leaning forward and resting his head on his palm. He was feeling a little sleepy still, but the day was underway already. If things went well, maybe he’d be able to get a nap in between things.

He’d have to check with Ravel, he supposed.

He was still getting used to that.

“So, you’ll be busy for the rest of the day?” he asked.

“Seems like it,” Serafall answered, making a show of looking disappointed about that. “Already making plans to spend that time with Yasaka, aren’t you?” she added with a point.

He just raised an eyebrow at her.

“Not really. Just wanted to see if I could think of something for whenever you are free,” he answered calmly. He was fairly sure that the two that had practically shoved him into the weird relationship they had were the least inclined to make actual problems about it. At least, so far as he didn’t mess up somehow, which he tried to be careful not to.

“Then it’s all fine~,” Serafall said, shifting back to her cheerful persona like the Serafall from a few seconds before hadn’t even existed. Joshua wondered when he’d gotten used to that part of her. Ultimately it was a good thing he had, otherwise she’d be very exhausting to deal with. “I’ll try to surprise you, but no promises,” she added, deflating a little bit.

“I mean, I expect any time you make will be to spend with your family. I appreciate that you came with me last night, but go celebrate. I might drop by over there to check on Soren a few times. We might cross paths there,” he told her, optimistically. His visits weren’t going to be long and Serafall was unlikely to make much time in her schedule considering she’d already done so the previous day for the Sleep Disease treatment test.

“Here's hoping,” she replied with a smile, before standing up and walking around the counter. “I have to go though,” she added, pulling him into a long kiss. “Don’t miss me too much, yeah?” she asked when she pulled back, smiling and winking at him.

“No promises,” he replied with a smile of his own. “Good luck.”

“I don’t need no luck, mister,” she told him, fake scandalized before winking again and sticking her tongue out as she started teleporting away.

‘Well, I have things to do on my end too, I guess,’ he mused, finishing his cup of tea and considering how to proceed with his day. There were things he needed to address, some more important than others… ‘No rest for the wicked.’

[}-o-{]

[Agnes Waterhouse]

She took a deep breath in to calm herself.

It was fine, this wasn’t the first time Joshua visited her office. Not even the first time he came on his own accord, for that matter. It was fine. There was nothing for her to worry about. There were no problems with his classes that she knew of, not even from members of other associations. It was fine. She’d even checked the information she’d sent to fulfill the “favor” he’d asked from her when he wanted to throw his weight around a bit.

It was fine.

Agnes still couldn’t help but feel uneasy though. No matter what she did, she still felt like she was a breath away from getting in trouble. Joshua was just someone that she couldn’t afford to annoy. He had the full backing of the pantheon that had allowed House of Water to remain relevant when they were a second rate association. He was the very reason they’d stepped up to the big leagues.

If he turned on them, they were as good as done.

Agnes was keenly aware of that fact every time she had to deal with the man those days. Sure, the man was kind almost to a fault, but that just made her be even more on edge. After all, she was used to dealing with people that had clear lines for her to dodge. Joshua, however, was so nice that she couldn’t see any traps, but she knew they were there. Everyone had things that could trigger them. Not knowing which were Joshua’s just made her feel more nervous.

‘Nothing to do but deal with it,’ she told herself, gathering herself as she felt the man approaching her office through the wards around the place. Wards that the man himself had improved, she reminded herself. The small, scared voice in her mind wondered if his spells told him when she used them consciously like at that moment. Agnes wouldn't have been surprised if that was the case.

With Joshua, it was easier to assume that he could do anything, at least when it came to spells.

Soldiering through that uneasy thought, she focused on the second presence that followed Joshua towards her office. The devil, Ravel Phenex of all people. Agnes would be a liar if she hadn’t wondered if she could pull the devil to their side. Having a secondary backer besides the Egyptians would be nice. Ultimately though, it wouldn’t get rid of the main problem she had to deal with at that very moment, which was her dependance on Joshua.

Then again, she was unlikely to be able to do that anyway, she supposed.

‘Head in the game, Agnes,’ she told herself as the two reached her door and knocked. It was a small gesture, but considering how much power he held over her and her association, it was nice of Joshua to at least show respect to her. Nobody would have batted an eye at him sauntering around like he owned the place.

As it was, he could own the place if he wanted to.

“Come in,” she replied quickly, but not too quickly. “Joshua, Miss Phenex,” she greeted as they walked in and saw the girl narrow her eyes. Immediately, she feared having messed up but she didn’t know where. Ravel wasn’t lady of her house and she was far from the heiress position, what with having three male siblings older than her. Agnes knew that much.

“Agnes, good to see you again,” the man replied easily, ignoring whatever issue his… What even was the Phenex to him? She didn’t know and he’d never explained. He’d just asked if he could bring her around and Agnes didn’t have much of a choice when she said yes, really. Neither had she wanted to pry.

She couldn’t help but picture the young devil as a secretary though, what with the way she followed Joshua around, carrying a notepad in her hands.

Surely not, right?

“I could say the same,” she replied, forming a smile on her face. “I trust the resources I’ve been giving you are to your liking?” she asked then, wondering if that was what he wanted to talk about. Why the man wanted books and tomes on different magic systems, she couldn’t fathom. It was basically useless to learn another system once you had one down and he certainly had the one he was using very well in hand.

Agnes wasn’t about to actually question him on that.

The man’s mind worked differently, she knew.

“Yes, they’ve been helping a bunch, actually,” he answered, clearly not just saying that. She was almost scared to know what he was working on, to be honest. “I don’t want to bore you with my tinkering though,” he added then and Agnes almost told him that she didn’t mind at all. She was almost jealous of his students, after all. She had recordings of his classes, of course, but it wasn’t the same. “I’m here for something else anyway,” he added then, turning to look at the Phenex that had sat beside him and had her notepad ready.

“Lay it on me then. What can I do for you, Joshua?” she asked, preparing herself. Sure, he hadn’t asked for much of her so far, but one never knew. Besides, if he’d taken council from a devil then-

“I want an official position within House of Water,” he said without preamble or beating around the bush. The direct way he said that completely blindsided Agnes. From all the possibilities her mind had conjured, that wasn’t one of the options her mind had conjured.

“A high one,” the Phenex beside him tacked in, staring straight at her as if Agnes would have dared to give Joshua a regular member position or something. She was sure her own association would have torn her to pieces if she had the audacity to pull that stunt off.

Joshua, for his part, just rolled his eyes.

“What she said,” he commented.

“Any position in particular you were interested in?” Agnes asked, her mind racing with possibilities and what each of them could mean for her and House of Water. Joshua officially being part of their association would be huge. So far, he was more of an independent party that just so happened to work with them instead of anyone else. If he joined though, all his pull, or his power and all his standing, would as well as be House of Water’s.

There was, however, the drawback of House of Water being even more under Joshua’s thumb. Because they could get away with paying their debt back, even if it took a lifetime or ten to do so. If he joined them, however, there would be no escaping, no paying back. Because Joshua himself being there would be a huge semi-permanent favor to them, for as long as he remained a member.

“Not really,” Joshua answered with a shrug, as if what he was asking was no big deal. Agnes supposed, to him, it probably wasn’t. “To be honest with you, I don’t care for it. I probably won’t even use it. It’s all mostly so that I have a solid position to go with the reputation I’m building.”

That… made sense? But only just barely. Agnes could confidently say that she’d never met a magician that didn’t care for a high position in an association. Even those rare ones that were less selfish, much like Joshua was. Then again, what benefit would a high position with House of Water bring him that he didn’t already have.

The whispers were already spreading that he was in a relationship with both the West Youkai Faction Leader and the Satan of Foreign Affairs. He was also the Pharaoh of the Egyptian Pantheon. On top of that, there was the power that he held just by himself as one of – if not the – best Ward Magic users in the world… together with being very good on a bunch of other branches.

House of Water had only been raised to the position it was in through him. So, there was little they could offer him in terms of things he couldn’t get on his own, really. So, jarring as it was to realize, Joshua really meant what he said.

“It can be done, yes,” she said in the end, because what could she do? Deny the man what he wanted? She’d already tried that when he had wanted to place wards around her association’s base and look how well that’d gone. And that was because there hadn’t been any clear benefits to himself, other than maybe place backdoors and such, which she rather doubted he needed, really. Now that it was almost definitely a solid thing for himself…

Well, she didn’t have much of a choice, really.

“Great,” Joshua replied, smiling at her in a way that made him seem harmless. Agnes knew better though. “It doesn’t have to change anything about how we work, honestly. I mean it when I say I don’t care.”

“I might act on Mr. Davis’ behalf, however,” the Phenex added there at the end, sitting straight and prim on her armchair. Agnes took note of the fact that she called Joshua “Mr. Davis” which was interesting. The man always asked others to call him by his name, so either he hadn’t done that with this girl or she chose to ignore his request. Both had about the same implication and that was that the devil was the one below Joshua in the totem pole of their relationship.

Very interesting.

Some theories about Joshua having a reverse contract situation with the Phenex girl were looking pretty likely for Agnes at that very moment.

“She’ll run everything by me though, but she is the one that understands how all this works better,” Joshua admitted then with a shrug and a self-deprecating smile. If he’d been politically inclined, Agnes would have seriously been twice or thrice as scared as she already was of him and that was saying something. “If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to bring them up with me and we can discuss them,” he told her, which didn’t seem to please Phenex overly much, but the girl reluctantly nodded.

Curiouser and curiouser.

“Well, that was all. I’ll leave you to your work, yes?” Joshua continued then, calmly standing up. “I have work of my own to get to, I guess.”

“Ma’am,” the comms with her secretary sprang to life then. “Mr. Davis. Mrs. Báthory is here to see you.”

“Both of us?” Joshua asked, seemingly a little confused by the message.

“Let her in,” Agnes said, already not looking forward to dealing with the thorn on her side. Hopefully, having Joshua metaphorically standing next to her in the association would make Báthory less of a pain in the ass. She wasn’t getting her hopes up though.

“Waterhouse, Joshua,” the woman in question greeted as she came in.

“Báthory.”

“Elizabeth, thanks for saving me the time looking for you,” Joshua greeted then, actually looking pleased and very much getting both of their attention with his words. He wanted to talk with her too? Was it for the same reason or-? “Here,” he said then, summoning a… notebook. “What you wanted,” was all the man said and Báthory in an uncharacteristic move rushed to take the object, looking almost like a child afraid to have their favorite toy taken from them.

“Truly?” Báthory asked, opening it. After scanning the first few pages hurriedly, Agnes saw her eyes widen. Then the woman turned her eyes towards Joshua.

“For what you’ve done for me so far… and a forward payment for something else I need from you,” he said.

“Anything,” Báthory said instantly, making Agnes’ eyebrows raise.

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Joshua replied with a grin that was decidedly less kind than his usual. “I need information about vampires.”

[}-o-{]

[Raynare]

“You ready?”

“I couldn’t be more ready if I tried,” Raynare replied, some of her less than friendly personality bleeding into her voice due to how impatient she found herself. Almost as soon as the words left her mouth, however, she had to hold back a flinch. She was barely getting into Davis’ good side, if it could even be called that. It wouldn’t do to shoot herself in the foot at that moment.

Especially at that moment.

“Ok then,” the man replied, apparently not caring for her tone, which was a huge relief. If she ruined things for herself, Raynare might just cut out her own tongue to prevent it from happening again. That was how much she wanted to not mess up things.

Not only was Davis making her stronger than she’d ever dreamed, but what they were about to attempt?

It meant everything.

“Brace yourself. This could… get ugly,” he warned and she nodded, clenching her jaw and doing as he told her. Because if the man that had been on the edge of torturing the fuck out of her and her fellow fallen was warning her like that, then it meant that things would get really ugly. She still couldn’t wait though. “In three… two… one.”

And then he started casting, again and again and again.

And Raynare felt it all, the spells washing over her, wards, hexes, boons. All of it formed around her, loomed over her, and then, they started diving in on her. She felt them prodding her, checking her and then… they started actually working.

Raynare felt them seize control of her energies, because there was usually a modicum of chaos, a measure of variance when. There was fluctuation in the magic and the tainted light that resided in her. At that moment, however, Davis’ spells had taken control, keeping them going as normal, but in an uncanny, unnatural evenness that she couldn’t describe. Like someone had made an unnerving copy of how her magic should look like when “normal” but without those little quirks that made her a living being.

It was strange, it was concerning and, in the privacy of her own mind, Raynare would admit that it all scared her more than a little.

She didn’t say anything though, because there was no way she was backing down.

So, she stood there, even if she so dearly wished to move, to try and make her energies move differently, to show that they weren’t that strange robot-like presence all over her existence. She needed to stay put though, she knew. So she did, eventually noticing how the energies started shifting differently, but not as usual. No, Davis’ spells were doing their work, whatever it was that they were doing.

And she felt it, especially on her wings and her back, but through her whole being too. She felt the energies shift as if trying to add another set of wings where there was none. That wasn’t all though. It wasn’t that simple, Davis had explained during another testing session. There was another change, much more subtle, going on with her energy.

The magic and the tainted light in her changed ever so slightly, like the shift between red and an ever so slightly lighter or darker shade. Almost unnoticeable, especially if you looked at it on its own. Raynare was looking at it as it changed though, she was connected to the energies changing and it was, arguably, much more allowing view than just putting both colors side to side.

Raynare was having trouble breathing, not only because of the disturbance in the energies that made her her, but also because it was putting a strain on her like she’d never experienced. Her muscles burned, her bones ached and the blood on her veins seemed to flow forcefully, if that made any sense. It was… It was…

“I guess it’s too much,” she heard, the voice somehow piercing through her suddenly numb mind. She hadn’t even realized that she was so out of it. “I’ll have to make adjustments, but for now, this is-”

“No!” Raynare cried out, because she might not fully understand what was going on, with her body, with her surroundings, or much of anything… But she knew that this was to be stronger. She couldn’t let it stop just because she wasn’t comfortable. “I can take it! Keep going!” she demanded.

She didn’t get an answer and the shift didn’t continue…

Until a few seconds passed.

“So be it, then.”

She would have cheered if she weren’t feeling like she’d collapse any second. She’d been feeling like that for a while, actually. Raynare imagined it was the energies and the spells keeping her up, not herself. Otherwise, she couldn’t fathom how she was managing.

The strain grew, together with the uncanny feeling and the shift in her energies and her very self. It pulled her, it squeezed her and it also charged her, whatever that might be. It was disorienting and maddening but it kept going and she had to struggle to think at all.

And then…

Then it all stopped.

Suddenly, there was no strain. Her mind started pulling itself together and then. The uncanny feeling receded. She started feeling like herself once more.

No.

Not like herself.

“It worked?” Raynare mumbled and it was only then that she realized that she’d fallen to her knees at some point.

“Looks like it did,” Davis answered, sounding like he didn’t know if to believe it himself. “We’ll see, I guess… but it seems to have worked.”

And those words were music to her ears.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Joshua just can’t go a few chapters without defying the logic of the world anymore, apparently. Fun stuff for the people of DxD, I imagine. I’m sure they are having a great time watching their world’s rules being torn apart.

Anyway, I hope you liked the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: I don’t know. I’m feeling lazy. Anything you wanna tell me?

See you.