8 Chapter 8

Moving through this huge mansion Ace started cursing himself for not being greedy enough when negotiating with Sirzechs. After talking about what they knew of the incident, including the ones that attacked (not that Ace thought Sirzechs would do anything about it. The man is far too passive for Ace's tastes), Ace was allowed to move about in this place for the next three hours.

This was Sirzechs' summer mansion in the mountains (he had another for lake side and one more for beachside, and that was only for his summer mansions), where he would come every once in a while when he didn't have much to do(or when he managed to dump everything in someone else's plate, mainly Serafal). He was authorized to walk around freely due to Sirzechs wanting to spend some time with his daughter. To properly talk and get to know each other. The man wanted to make sure she knows she could count on him, even if in truth he wasn't really the most present father possible due to his position and all that.

To be honest Ace would prefer to be back in Karakura already, he wanted to make sure that what happened had not created any trouble for the kurosaki's family and his other friends. Especially Orihime, since she lives alone. Other than the kurosaki's family he was closest to her, since she often hires him to teach how to cook. It was the one job Ace still failed miserably in.

But in the end Ace was being paid for a job here. He could try and push it, however his contractor was Sirzechs so it was best not to annoy him. Especially since he would probably be able to face Aizen head on.

Ace liked his head attached to the rest of his body (preferably intact), thank you very much.

The more Ace explored the mansion the worst he felt. Even though he obtained so many great fruits, he regretted not hiking up the price, seeing how loaded Sirzechs was.

'The fuck, just one of this cars would be worth as much as my rewards!' Ace felt like crying seeing rows after rows of sport cars of all types and ages, all in pristine conditions and some he could only assume were entirely made out of gold! He was quite sure that Porsche was entirely made out of gold with the hubcaps made out of rubies!

"Hyoudou-sama, is there anything troubling you?" The maid helping Ace to his destination asked, to which he just shook his head.

"No, just realizing how unfair the world can be at times. Don't mind me, just take me to the dungeons." Ace said as he tried to concentrate on what he got from this whole situation, instead of the fact that he could have probably asked for 10 times the amount he got without much issue.

Ace came to the decision that, from this point on, he will never again be so generous to devils of nobility when they want something from him. If they can flaunt their wealth in the displays he just passed or in the statue he saw in the front of the mansion (which he was pretty sure was a 5 meters tall statue of Rias made entirely of gold with precious gems all around) then they can pay extra!

"... I see." The maid said with a restrained smile, thinking pretty much the same as Ace, how unfair life can be. She does so much work and gains so little, while the house master spends so much on statues and cars.

The two then moved in silence until they arrived at the dungeon.

To call the place unpleasant would be a major understatement. The whole place had a stink of iron and salt, there were clearly multiple torture devices and Ace was quite sure that this place much have had multiple prisoners over the years for it to have such an unpleasant feeling to it.

Going to the furthest end of the prison ace could see her.

Zest was chained to the wall, all her limbs stretched as she hung there, weak and battered. Her tanned skin had multiple purple marks, clear signs of bruises from lashings, as well as multiple cuts. Blood leaking out of her mouth noting that she had suffered great injuries not only from the short skirmish with Ace, but mostly from whatever happened to her here. Heck, from a glance it was visible that there was still blood flowing down her back. having been lashed multiple times over. What little of her clothes were still on were mostly torn, her breasts being clearly visible and Ace could only guess they didn't take off her panties because they wanted to 'leave the best for last'.

As Ace approached she glanced at him with empty eyes. There was no will to live in them and Ace could say that she was dazed and losing too much blood. If this continued then she was sure to perish soon. Ace frowned, she might have been an enemy but this sort of treatment was beyond repulsive in his eyes. Zest hadn't actually hurt Mio personally, to do this much in such a short time, it was clear that this torture was mostly for the sake of inflicting pain and not for information gathering or anything of the sort.

It was barbaric. Something Ace would only approve for those who truly did something to deserve it (like Diodora. The fact that the asshole exists should be a crime).

As such Ace moved to the chains, having equipped the Mera Mera no Mi he was now a fire human, so he could freely use and manipulate fire. With his flames he melted the chains away.

He might not be confident enough to use the fire in any big volume and he sure as hell won't do anything too big with it just yet, but a small jet of fire was simple enough. He also took care not to let the melting steel drip on Zest's body, with the damage it sustained Zest was in a fragile state and Ace didn't want to worsen it, if he could avoid doing so.

As he melted all four chains, Zest fell like a sack on the ground, her body too weak to sustain herself to standing up properly.

Seeing her situation Ace's brows twitched in anger, a vein popping on his forehead at this sight. She might have been an enemy, but he didn't want to see her suffer pointlessly. As far as he is concerned, she was doing her job and he was doing his, if he killed her during a job then so be it. But torturing defeated enemies like this for no reason was not on his list of 'okay' things to do.

Moving closer to her, he saw that she had already passed out before he could even speak with her.

"This place is unsanitary, let's move her to someplace else." Ace said to the maid who nodded and helped him in moving to an unoccupied room just outside the dungeon.

The room was just one of many, but the bed was comfy and the whole place was quite nice overall.

Putting Zest in the bed Ace examined her body, seeing clearly how much damage she had sustained and how critical her situation was, despite having not even one day since capture.

'Fucking devils, act all elegant and shit but are all fucked up in head.' Ace grumbled to himself as he searched his inventory for what he was looking for.

Before long he found several medicinal tools and began working. With his Doctor skill at 60 out of 100, he could confidently say that anything short of surely absolutely fatal wounds could be solved quite easily. Moving his hands dexterously he closed her open wounds then moved to fixing any damage he could find, as well as cleaning the wounds and ensuring she would be fine.

After going through that he prepared some ointment and applied them to the several wounds, before long she was covered in bandages and she quickly started to improve.

It wasn't long before she opened her eyes. Despite no longer being chained and tortured she still looked broken.

"I failed, kill me." She said without emotion, as if this sort of conclusion was the logical one.

"Let's go with NO." Ace said easily enough. "I only kill if it is in self-defense, for a job, when decidedly necessary, or when I deem the person to be truly evil. You don't qualify for any of those, so I won't kill you."

"Heh, it doesn't make a difference either way. I am dead already. I am useless." Zest said with a mocking smile at her own situation, despair clouding her golden orbs, as she thought what use was there from a failure like her. Ace only sighed, exasperated at how those supernatural beings sometimes almost looked like they were made of a mix of idiocy and angst.

"Why do you think you are useless? From the fight we had earlier you clearly aren't. If anything you are quite strong. If you weren't limiting yourself so as to not injure Mio, then I might not have been able to escape with her, much less defeat you." Ace said. For this was the undeniable truth. Zest was strong to a considerable degree. He knew that she could easily clean the floor with most weaker devils without issue. Heck he was quite sure Zest could defeat Rias and her entire peerage by herself without much trouble. Hearing his words, she turned her head towards Ace's to look at him instead of the ceiling.

"I failed a mission my master gave me. He has made it abundantly clear to me from the moment I was born that, should I fail in anything he orders, I can kill myself as he will make another improved 'me' to replace the me right now. From the moment I failed he would have started making another one. I am already an outdated model, with no value. So just let me die already." She said and Ace rubbed his temples in exasperation at the utter idiocy of such an order.

He honestly could not comprehend the mind of someone who could so easily throw away his subordinate like that. It disgusted him in how someone could so callously do something like that.

"Look, you really intend to die for something so meaningless as one, just one, failed order?" Ace asked for clarification, not really being able to agree to this sort of idea.

"I am worthless now, I shouldn't waste the air I breathe by being alive." She spoke and Ace looked right at her, in his mind he wondered what sort of place she grew up in.

This 'waste air' stuff, it sounded almost like something Tenryubito would say, and for that alone it made the one who said such words deserve to get anything and everything coming their way.

Ace needed a way to make her stop this way of thinking. Something to turn things around. Suddenly he had a thought, something honestly stupid overall and could come to bite him in the ass later, but it was the best solution he could come up with on the fly, considering Zest was clearly having suicidal thoughts.

"So, if you are worthless, what if I buy you then?" He said and she looked at him as if he was dumb. "You, yourself, said you are worth nothing, so I will buy your everything for this."

As he said that, Ace took out one single coin from his pocket. A 1-yen coin.

"You will be bought for one yen, it is next to nothing in the great scheme of things, and it is very little, but it is not nothing. If you accept this transaction you will be worth something and be my underling from this day forward. I will take care of you, feed you, make sure you have a roof over your head, and protect you when you need to be protected. If you fail a job or an order that would be fine. I am not some perfectionist, I will not throw you out because of that. I will let you decide, if you will want to follow me or not. It is up to you." Ace said as he stood up.

Turning around to leave, wanting to give her time to think.

To follow him or not, that is entirely up to her.

What he failed to see after he left, was how Zest moved her hands slowly to the single coin he left behind, and with that small coin in her hands she began to weep.

She may already be fully developed both mentally and physically, but her actual experience was short. She has only been alive for a little more than four years. She is Zest model 129, she was just another one in the production line and from the moment she was born in the world certain orders were implanted into her very being.

- Obey you master above everything else;

- If it is in order to complete an order, regardless if this order is meaningful or just a whim, your life is not important;

- Failure means you are imperfect and thus worthless;

- If you are worthless, you don't deserve to live.

She has suffered plenty in the house of Zolgear. As a chimeric devil, a devil created via alchemy and mixed with the DNA of other races', as well as from multiple devil clans. She was not seen as even the lowest of the low ranked devils in the Old Satan Faction. She was seen as an exotic pet, a tool that can be replaced with the push of a button. She can even remember her first order when she woke up was to dispose of the previous version of herself that had failed at something their master ordered.

Living in the house of Asmodeus she had seen all types of debauchery and things that would make even the dirtiest of whores blush. She lost count of the number of guests who would play around with her body, groping, striking, and whatnot, all trying to get different reactions out of her for their own amusement. Not that any of them would ever truly have sex with her, she was seen as too inferior for them to do that, thinking and telling her how they wouldn't do it as they didn't want to risk offspring in such unsightly being as her. Who would want to have sex with something they saw as an animal. They might hit a dog or a cat, they might stick a rod up its ass to see it react. But very few people would want to perform sexual activities with an animal.

She suffered a lot while there. But she did it all without complaints as servicing those guests were her orders. And she completed every order, absolutely all of them, so as to not to become useless. To make sure she would be useful and not be thrown away.

However, she failed. Even if it was only once, she failed all the same.

The coin in her hand could mean she wants worthless. Was she really worth something? what SHOULD she do? Her programming was to die the moment she became worthless, but Ace bought her. He gave her worth, even if it was little, even if it seemed completely insignificant, it still meant she would not be worthless if she agreed. That she could continue to survive, even if she would be changing who her master is.

She closed her eyes, not sure of what to do.

For the first time in her life she would be the one to decide what she would do with herself and it terrified her.

///---///

It was a bit disappointing for Ace when Zest didn't come with him. He asked the maids there to take good care of her. Apparently she fell asleep before deciding anything and it honestly didn't really surprise Ace all that much.

Considering her physical and likely mental condition, she would need to rest anyway. Passing out and sleeping was something Ace could understand.

Mio was by his side as Sirzechs prepared to teleport them back to Karakura town. She looked a bit uncomfortable with the intense gaze her biological father was giving her, but she was also brimming with confidence, as she thought of how there's a chance that the parents that raised her could still be saved.

"Take good care of her." Sirzechs said to Ace. "If I hear of her getting injured under your watch I WILL make you pay 100 times over the damage she takes."

As Sirzechs said that a slight chill ran down Ace's back. Yeah, he did NOT want to provoke this dude.

And so both Mio and Ace were teleported back to Karakura.

The moment they got teleported Ace checked his phone and didn't see any message, but he looked at the time and noticed that right now it was already the next day.

That means not only Isane's parents must be worried about Ace but that Mashiro was STILL in Ichigo's house.

"Mio, we need to pass somewhere real quick before we can get going and see your parents." Ace said and Mio nodded her head.

"I understand, if there is even a chance to get them back to life I want it." Mio said as the two started walking to the Kurosaki clinic.

After about twenty minutes of walking they could finally see it. The place was a two storey building, one side was a clinic and the other being the house. Without hesitation Ace moved to the house and knocked on the door.

Not a single second later he pushed Mio out of the way as he avoided the front of the door as an old man came jumping towards where Ace was moments prior. Feet first.

"Ace, you finally arrived." Said the man as unashamedly tried to kick Ace's head.

With his short black hair still swinging due to the momentum of the kick. "Finally you're here. Can you please take that girl away already? She's nuts!" The man said, as Ace unceremoniously ignored him pulling Mio along inside the house.

As Ace passed him, the man finally noticed Mio and his eyes widened.

"That, it can't be. How can someone who is so fascinated with money, that it fills their dreams be walking around with such a cutie? Did you kidna-"

"Oh, dear. What are you saying to our guests?" A woman's voice came from right behind the man who slowly turned his head to see his beautiful and gentle wife, groceries in hand as she was just returning from the store. Looking down at him with what SHOULD be a beautiful smile, but only caused dread and fear in his heart. Despite having fought countless monsters through his life few things could terrify this man more than this particular smile that promised only suffering.

"M-Masaki, my dearest wife, I don't mean anything bad by-"

"Ara ara, and here I could swear my most understanding husband was talking bad things about Ace-kun. You know, the one who has helped us so much over the years, and over something you should know perfectly well isn't really true." Masaki said and Isshin had to nod his head, as certain memories flashed through his mind.

Of just how close he came to loosing the love of his life. However-

"This and that are not the same! He brought a girl we have never heard of before here, after he sent that crazy one to wait for him! He is using our house as a meeting place for cute girls!" Isshin said and Masaki looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"And?" She asked. Due to her upbringing she was used to people not being nearly as uptight as Isshin usually was. The quincies were a species close to extinction, as such they were raised to believe in free love and in 'spreading the seeds', something Shinigamis were averse in some cases due to their basically eternal lives and extremely uptight society.

How someone like Yoruichi could be born from that place was a mistery for Masaki. In truth, Masaki was also quite sure that the only reason Ichigo didn't already have a girlfriend or five already (possibly at the same time) was because of Isshin's bad influence.

"And what if he tries anything with my precious darling angels? Nooo, I won't allow it! I won't let any boy near my cute little angels and... Where is everyone?" Isshin finally noticed that after he began his rant Masaki had long since entered the house with Ace and Mio.

With tears of dejection running down this face due to being ignored, Isshin finally entered home to a sight he really didn't enjoy seeing.

Ace was sitting at the table with Mio on one side and Yuzu on the other, with tea before them as they talked animatedly while eating cookies. In front of them was Karin, playing on her phone but she would naturally join in on the conversation every once in a while.

Looking at how harmonious this whole thing looked, Isshin was wondering if he should just try and use his Zanpakuto to slice Ace in two already. His powers had already returned a while back, and he would really like to make sure that Ace was as far away from his pure angels as possible.

He was pretty sure that he could disintegrate Ace if he wanted to, and damn was it a thought that crept in his mind whenever Yuzu gave that special smile that made Isshin remember his own wife's smile.

As he was starting to move towards Ace, with a creepy smile on his face preparing to have a "talk" with him (and possibly castrate the boy before he could tarnish his precious angels), Masaki came from behind and caught him in a stranglehold that would make professional fighters proud.

Seeing this, everyone stared for a moment before ignoring it. Being used to this sort of thing. Only Mio looked confused, as Karin told her.

"Don't mind the dumbass. Mom will teach him to not be an idiot, or at least try."

"It is a work in progress." Masaki said as she could see her husband's face go purple and he stop reacting.

Yuzu, meanwhile, gave a slight giggle.

"Hehe. Dad is a bit eccentric, but he is a good man. I am sure he will like you very quickly if you talk with him for a bit." Yuzu said as Mio gave a restrained smile.

This was not the ambiance Mio was used to, but overall she was not opposed to it. This only served to reinforce her thoughts about wanting to see her parents again.

As for Ace, he has already asked about Mashiro but unfortunately she was asleep. The girl had spent all her energy playing pranks on Isshin and playing with Yuzu and Karin.

Looking at the two Ace had to admit that they were not quite like the characters he remembered from the Bleach anime. Yuzu was a girl with light blond almost brown hair that reached a bit over her shoulders, styled in twin tails. Soft brown eyes, a cute face and a A cup pushing into B, who was currently a first year in Highschool.

While Karin has dark grey eyes. Black straight, cropped to hang around her face, just above her shoulders. Being quite a bit more boyish. But she has a bigger bust than her sister being a double D cup.

Honestly, Ace wondered sometimes if them being older and this world being a mix of DxD and Bleach (as well as apparently Shinmai Maou Testament) was the reason why those two were so much prettier than he remembers.

Regardless Ace just took his time, enjoying some tea around people he actually liked, instead of the complete craziness that was his own town. Constantly avoiding attention from the devils and Isane and her shenanigans, was stressful. Sometimes it is good to just relax.

///---///

AN:

Hope you all enjoyed this chapter. So, Masaki is alive.

How is she alive? What does her being alive change things? Guess we will find out soon, huh.

On Zest, I just wanted to show you all a bit more on her. Hope you guys liked it and would be interested in seeing more on her, and yes Ace was a bit of a miser there with her, but that was more symbolic than anything else. It is him telling her that if she follows him she won't ever be worthless.

Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed it and I am open for ideas. Don't forget to leave a review and tell me who you want in the harem.

Oh, one last thing. Yuzu and Karin, should they get Zanpakutous like her brother and, if so, what should they do?