Game of Monsters - 107 (Patreon)

Disclaimer: I don’t own Highschool DxD.

Between the Good and the Evil

[Kalawarna]

Things were calm, and that was both worrying and reassuring at the same time.

She was starting to feel like being conflicted about her emotions was going to be the norm, honestly. However, there was an explanation for those. On the one side, being left alone meant that Davis was more likely to just forget about them, or at least focus on them less, meaning that they were punished less. On the other side though, if he was too busy to torture them in the name of training, then he was obviously cooking something.

And that could only mean bad things for someone.

Someone that might be her.

“We can take it easy now, don’t you know?” she asked pitifully as she blocked one of Raynare’s light spears. “Davis hasn’t been looking at us in a while,” she added, trying to make her ex-“leader” see reason. She failed, if the following blow was any indication.

“You are more of a fool than I thought if you think that,” Raynare replied, sneering at her as if she were a particularly mentally challenged slug. “He’s always watching,” she said, a tinge of an emotion in her voice that Kalawarna couldn’t quite place. “And even if he isn’t, his familiars are, and that means he is.”

Suddenly, as her eyes darted up to see the Davis’ spider familiar on the ceiling of the training area, Kalawarna felt like a particularly mentally challenged slug. That is, for the split second it took Raynare to kick her in the gut and send her into a wall. After that, there was a bit too much pain for her to really focus on much else except stopping more hurt from coming her way.

“Besides, even if he’s distracted, he’ll look back at us at some point,” Raynare continued, pressing Kalawarna against a wall with her light spear dangerously close to the latter’s face. “If he does and finds us wanting… Well, you can be lazy if you want. I certainly won’t be. I’m tired of being this… pitiful.”

And with that, Raynare seemed to decide she was done talking for the moment. Kalawarna herself couldn’t have done a lot of that even if she’d wanted to, really. She was a bit too busy trying to keep herself in one piece against the clearly stronger fallen she was facing in a spar. If it could be called that, because she’d have called it a deathmatch herself.

Once Raynare was done with her and Kalawarna was left a mostly bruised mess on the ground of the training grounds, she was finally able to think for a bit. Granted, there wasn’t much more that her brain could process other than exhaustion and hurt, but she managed to get a few thoughts together. The main one was, as it usually was as of late, how to get herself the fuck away from where she was.

It was depressingly sad to admit that she wasn’t seeing many options. Or, maybe it was better to say that she didn’t see any that didn’t have a concerningly high chance of her dying a slow, painful death. She could try to backstab Davis at some point, but unless the situation was perfect, she was more likely to die herself before she got anywhere close. She could try to run away but… The chances of that working were zero, she was pretty sure. She could try a number of other things, but Davis was just too strong, especially under his defenses, which was where they were most of the time.

She was seeing no way out of her situation, but she could be patient. She had literally nothing else to do but try and wait for a chance, an opportunity. That was all that could save her at that moment, and Kalawarna would just have to hope for an opening to appear at some point.

Bruised and weary, she pulled herself to a standing position and finally left the sparring area. Mainly because Raynare had pulled Mittelt to the one next to where she was and she didn’t want to be hit by a stray attack. She might just die if that happened, considering the state she was in.

As she moved, however, she caught movement from the side. Off the corner of her eye, Kalawarna saw Davis’ cat familiar moving, golden eyes firmly on her. After Raynare’s comment, she was especially on edge at that realization.

‘Great, now I’m gonna be even more terrified of the fucking beasts,’ she thought. The cat tilted its head then, and if Kalawarna hadn’t known better, she’d have thought the thing was reading her mind. ‘I’m getting even more paranoid than I need to be,’ she thought, shaking the thoughts off. She needed to keep her mind in the game.

Keep training, so Davis wouldn’t have a reason to punish her, if he didn’t make up one. Keep waiting, so that whenever there was a way out, she’d be able to act. And maybe keep the fuck away from Raynare as much as possible too, because seriously, what had gotten into that woman?

Mittelt was kind of bending over backwards to appear like a harmless little thing that she definitely wasn’t. Kalawarna knew that she herself was basically a desperate woman trying her best to not get herself killed or in a world of hurt. Raynare though, almost seemed to be rolling with the punches, and doing so well at that.

The woman trained like she wanted to, instead of just having to. She hung on to Davis' every word like they were the teachings of a Cadre. She observed the man like she admired him, for crying out loud. Kalawarna was pretty sure she was starting to lose it due to constant fear, pain and helplessness.

There was no way all that was happening… right?

[}-o-{]

[Kuroka]

She sat there, feeling incredibly small in a room where Serafall Leviathan, Azazel, Gabriel and Yasaka sat too. She didn’t know what the most incredible thing happening at the moment was though. Was it that all four of those were working together? Or was it that Davis was sitting next to her, looking entirely at ease in the presence of such a gathering of people while idly working on something on a notebook?

Kuroka honestly wondered if the man was just used to it all, which was a terrifying and also very interesting quality to find out. On the other hand, maybe he just didn’t realize what was going on? Surely he did though. It was difficult for even ignorant people to not be surprised to see devils and angels working together.

Or maybe the man was a little crazy.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t quite focus on the man as much as she wanted to, which was a shame. She already was seeing very little of Davis since he seemed to mostly be out of the house or working on something. That meant that Kuroka couldn’t really try and get involved, else she risked simply annoying him, which would then lead to her being pressed against the ground by his spells…

And not in the fun way.

As it was, at that very moment, Kuroka needed to focus on the conversation of the faction leaders that the man next to her had basically summoned for a meeting. It wasn’t quite how it had gone, but it was how she saw it. He’d called Leviathan to deal with her case, and that had somehow snowballed into the madness of a gathering that she was witnessing.

The fact that everyone seemed to be friendly with Davis was just the cherry on top of the unbelievable cake.

Back to the topic at hand, the leaders were discussing the information she’d provided. They were organizing themselves against Khaos Brigade. Kuroka knew this was massive, especially because the organization she’d been part of wasn’t aware of any of this. They’d just thought the factions were starting to take them more seriously, not that there was an alliance in place to act against them.

Suddenly, Khaos’ chances of succeeding in their endeavors were looking very slim, to Kuroka at least.

More importantly though, they were discussing how good her information was. Was it worth the trouble that she represented on several fronts? Was it worth risking more after confirming some of the things she’d provided intel on?

She dearly hoped the answer to those questions and a few more would be yes, because if not…

“Do you have an opinion on this, Joshua?”

Kuroka was surprised the question even came. She was further surprised that it came from Gabriel. Because sure, he seemed to be close to Leviathan and Yasaka in one way or another, and maybe Azazel would have made sense because he was an oddball, from what Kuroka knew. But Gabriel, the seraph? That was… That was…

“Joshua,” Leviathan called, poking the man’s side with her magical girl staff and snapping him out of his thoughts. The nekoshou was shocked, truly shocked that he could be so distracted in the presence of people that would have most bending at the knees and trembling.

Instead, she saw the man blink and look up like a student that had been woken up from a nap in the middle of class.

“What did I miss?” he asked, casually at that. He was acting like he hadn’t been caught not paying attention to figures that decided what went on in a chunk of the supernatural world. It was… Kuroka didn’t know what that was.

“We were discussing which of these pieces of information we should act on,” Gabriel supplied, apparently unbothered by the disrespect. Maybe that was part of her angel thing? The others didn’t look much different though. “The merits of going for a less important target over a bigger one that might be more risk than we are willing to take considering the dubious nature of the information.”

Davis considered that for a moment, leaning back on his seat and looking up at the ceiling. Then he pulled the file he’d been given, which he hadn’t so much as looked at before. Opening it, he skimmed over it for a moment. There was silence in the room as the four faction leaders waited for him to say something.

Kuroka really didn’t know what to think anymore. As if Davis hadn’t been in her radar enough, really. She could only look at him in awe… But not for long, considering there were four sets of very important eyes around that she’d rather not piss off in any way. She was also fairly sure that Yasaka and Leviathan were onto her, the former because of life sensing and the latter because… she might have been a tad reckless when they first met.

“Small target, medium target, big target,” Davis said in the end, closing the file and pushing it away. “That’s what I think. One from a different territory each. If you attack too many small ones trying to confirm things, then they’ll get suspicious, nevermind the fact that they will when Kuroka takes too long to go back too. Besides, hitting a big target quickly has its own merits too, so there’s that.”

“Told you,” Azazel shot immediately, drawing slightly annoyed reactions from all three of the other leaders. “Thanks for backing me up, buddy.”

“... Sure,” Davis replied, blinking blandly since he clearly had no idea what the Governor was talking about. “I thought I was here mostly as a formality, by the way,” he added, turning his attention back to his notebook as he started working once more.

“That might be the case,” Gabriel agreed with a slight nod that the man didn’t see. “But it’s always useful to have another perspective to problems. One that might be less in line with one’s thoughts is all the better.”

Kuroka wondered if that was all there was to it, because she was fairly sure there was more. She couldn’t pick up much with her life sensing, but there was definitely something there. Especially judging by the narrow eyed look Yasaka sent. The youkai leader was obviously much better than Kuroka herself, or at least enough to have a better grasp of what was going on with the seraph.

“Hm, I guess,” Davis replied absently, fully pulling away from the situation around him again as he continued working.

[}-o-{]

[Joshua Davis]

He sat, as was usual during those days, with a notebook on his lap. He worked through ideas on how to improve his Phoenix Spell prototype, determinedly ignoring the sounds of battle coming from in front of him. Rias and her peerage had dropped by for some training. She’d been fine with training by themselves, in her own words, or just doing so back home instead of at his place, when he’d told her that he’d be too busy to participate himself.

He’d waved off her concerns though, simply setting up the training spells and sicking the fallen angel trio on her group. The two teams could keep each other entertained while Asia treated any wounds. Jeanne had joined the side of the fallen to add a little more balance to the whole thing, and probably because she usually went with them when they attacked somewhere with the fallen too.

He’d mostly nodded at the suggestion and let her do as she wanted. His mind was kind of busy with other things, really. They knew the drill by then anyway, so there was no need for him to get overly involved, fortunately. Instead, Joshua could keep his focus on brainstorming ways to improve the spell he was working on so that it’d be more “presentable.”

The target filter, the wardstone strain, the healing power… All of those he could slowly improve, he knew. The real problem was the energy consumption though. He just couldn’t seem to find a way to optimize that without everything falling apart. He couldn’t cut corners on the other areas, after all. There was only so much he could streamline from the established design.

It just wasn’t feasible to heal someone on the same level as a Phoenix Tear without it costing an arm and a leg in terms of energy. The spell basically had to pull everything together, sometimes even creating new tissue and such from nothing. It had to combat curses and other spell damage. It had to fight off diseases that were, more often than not, magical in nature if not influenced by some other type of supernatural energy.

Joshua just couldn’t find a way to do all that without spending a big amount of power in turn. It wouldn’t have been a problem for him, since the power consumption was more than fine in his opinion. His opinion wasn’t, unfortunately, the one that mattered though. No, he needed to make the spell good for everyone else.

Specifically for people that would try their best to be against it. He needed to make the spell, but make it in a way that would brute force its way through the biases of the devil Houses. That complicated matters more than a little bit, honestly, and it was building a wall that Joshua just kept hitting his head against.

‘Is there even a way to pull this off?’ he wondered, not for the first time. He was starting to think that maybe it couldn’t be done, that the best he could hope for was a bootleg version of the healing effect. Maybe he couldn’t replicate the same thing without some aspect of it falling apart.

If that was the case, he’d better hope that Rias and her group were strong enough to defeat Riser, especially since she didn’t have Issei in her peerage anymore. Still, he was fairly sure that they were much better now than they were before. Joshua was almost positive that they could win that fight, but then again, Phenex. That regeneration power was just bullshit.

Even with Scale Mail, Issei had needed to basically cheat with the holy water and cross trick… Or so Joshua remembered. So, what did that say about the bullshit level the Phenex Pillar’s power reached? Not even a Longinus Balance Breaker could kick their ass, apparently. Granted, that Issei had basically a bootleg Balance Breaker since he had to cheat it into existence with a deal with Ddraig, but still.

With a groan, Joshua looked up and chastised himself for getting distracted. He needed to focus and continue working, not letting his mind go through worthless tangents. Rias was doing her best with the tools he could give her and he needed to make sure she didn’t need to win that fight anyway.

“Joshua?” a voice called from the side hesitantly and he turned to see Asia, nervously shifting on her feet with a tray and a cup of tea on it. “I thought you could use something to relax a bit?” she mumbled, sounding more like she was asking instead of stating. “I can leave if you need space though.”

“No, it’s fine, Asia,” he told her softly, shoulders dropping. “Take a seat, yeah? The girls like you anyway,” he told her, and the girl sat next to him, not quite leaning on Nagini as he was. “Things are going well for you in Kuoh, right? Nothing I should know?”

“Ah, um…” she started, clearly hesitating to say something. Ultimately, her honest, open nature won out in the end. “There’s these two boys at school,” she said and Joshua already knew where things were going. He hadn’t yet killed someone from the mundane world, but he was pretty sure but he could make an exception if- “They were… not that nice,” Asia commented, which might as well be saying that they were war criminals in Asia-speech. That might be a little bit of an exaggeration but still, the point stood. “But everyone helped me when I got uncomfortable.”

“Everyone?”

“Hm.” She nodded. “Jeanne, Issei, Aika, Rias’ group, the kendo club,” she listed off and he nodded. Good, people were having the girl’s back. That was nice, especially considering that she was sort of his responsibility and he hadn’t had much time to help her with things.

“And with the Church?” he asked, because there was a non-zero chance that someone would mess with her over there too, even with the side he was supporting watching out for her. “Nobody is doing anything suspicious or bad, right?”

“No, not that I’ve seen,” Asia answered, giving him a little smile that looked entirely too adorable. She was giving Kunou a run for her money, if he were honest. “They… They ask me similar questions whenever I have to go and heal them… Things are bad, for the Church, right?”

“... I haven’t personally seen much besides the one attack and it wasn’t all that,” Joshua answered, idly looking towards the sparring groups. “But I do know that things are… tense, there are skirmishes happening and ambushes. That’s what I’ve heard, at least. They are tight lipped, at least around me.”

“Hm, I understand that,” Asia replied, looking down while Joshua took a sip from the tea she’d brought him. It looked like she needed a moment to herself, so he gave it to her. “I just… I don’t understand.”

“And that’s what makes you a good person, Asia. No, that’s what makes you a great person. Because you don’t understand how someone could do the things they are doing,” Joshua told her, bringing a hand up and patting her head. “The world should be filled with people like you instead of people like them, like me.”

“But you are a good person too, Joshua. A great person,” Asia told him, pouting cutely as she protested his statement. In turn, he gave her a sad smile.

“I’ve killed a bunch of people, did you know? Most of them I’m not even sure if they deserved it,” he confessed, pulling his hand away from her then as he watched her eyes widening. “I’ve killed Khaos Brigade members and a whole lot of Hexennacht, for the sole reason that they were just that. I don’t know how bad they were, if they’d even done anything at all. But they were part of a group that did terrible things, so I killed them.”

He paused then, bringing the cup of tea to his lips.

“So, I don’t think I’m a good person, but I’m fine with that. I’ll make the world a better place for the actually good people,” Joshua told her softly, a sad smile on his face. “I think I could be happy with that.”

“I still think you are a good person, Joshua,” Asia said, more firmly than he expected, making it his turn to look at her with wide eyes. “You’ve been kinder to me than some of the people that preached to be good,” she told him, giving him a grateful smile. “I think that makes you good. Maybe not great, as you say, but good. And maybe I’m not great either, for thinking that, but I can be happy just being good.”

“Throwing my words back at me, huh?” he pointed out with a smile. “That’s not very nice.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m just a good person and not great.”

“You are going to keep saying things like that, aren’t you?” he asked, drawing an innocent smile that he could almost believe. “We’ve corrupted you, we finally did it.”

Asia giggled.

“And I’m grateful for that,” she told him softly.

“Well, I guess that’s what matters,” he replied with a nod as he took another sip from his tea. And that’s where the conversation ended, with them remaining in companionable silence. After a minute or so, he felt Asia shift so that she was resting her head on his shoulder and he tried to make her new position as comfortable as possible.

Eventually, he was done with the drink, setting it inside a Storage Space to wash later and picking up his notebook again. He didn’t have much better luck than before, but he did find himself more relaxed. That by itself was a win in Joshua’s books, at least. Frustration didn’t really help him work better, after all.

He was interrupted then, when a dagger flew towards them. Looking up, Joshua’s hand shot to the side to catch the knife before it could hit Asia. It’d probably just have graced her, but she wasn’t really a fighter, so there was a chance that she’d flinch or try to dodge the wrong way. Better to be safe.

“I’m so sorry,” Yuuto said, looking genuinely dismayed by what had happened.

“It’s fine. No harm done,” Joshua reassured him. If he hadn’t known how bad the boy felt, he might have given him a harder time, but he did. Besides, he was getting to know him better, since he would sometimes drop by to spend time with Jeanne, there or at the cafe. Bold of him, considering everyone knew he practically knew everything that happened inside his wards. “Be more careful next time.”

“I got carried away. It won’t happen again,” Yuuto replied with a nod and pursed lips. Not that Joshua fully believed him. The boy would certainly try, but one was never in complete control of a fight.

“See that you don’t,” Joshua commented, idly looking at his hand. The dagger had gone cleanly through his palm. Normally, that’d be at least a painful injury but with Set’s blessing, it was barely more than an uncomfortable thing. Pulling the dagger off, he saw the sand that was his body reform into his normal hand.

And then Joshua paused.

Blinking, he stared at his palm before stabbing it again.

“Joshua?” Asia asked, clearly confused, but he ignored her. Instead, he pulled the dagger off again and saw how his hand returned to normal with the grains of sand going back to their place after the hole was free once again. “Is everything ok?”

“Just perfect,” he breathed out absently. Then his lips pulled up into a half-smile. “Yuuto!”

“Yes?” the boy asked, turning around stiffly, his expression worried. Evidently, he was expecting to get into trouble after Joshua reconsidered things or something in that vein.

“You might have just earned yourself my blessing for Jeanne’s hand, just saying.”

“Josh?” his sister said, clearly caught off guard. After a moment, she repeated that, but this time having had enough time to process what he said and being shocked. “Josh?!”

However, he ignored her too, and everyone else for that matter.

He might just have found exactly what he needed.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

The parts that have me the most concerned are the Kuroka part and the chat with Asia. I’m not sure I managed to write the former all that well and I’m not sure if I managed to toe the edgy line in the latter without messing up. I think I did, but I can already see people thinking otherwise…

Kalawarna was fun though, so that was good. And the last part… hehe… Things for the future, I’m afraid. Can’t go around spoiling my own stories.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: What’s the color of the walls around you? In my case, they are white.

See you.