DxD : A New Hero : Chapter 17

Not since the fight between the Two Heavenly Dragons during the Great War had the Devils suffused such a loss by a single being. The Devils had forgotten the might of the Dragons. They had forgotten why they should be feared.

Albion reminded them.

The Underworld learned to fear the wrath of a Dragon that day.

...

"I have a really bad feeling I'm really not going to like where this is going," I muttered.

"I'm sure that you are aware that Dragon based Sacred Gears Wielder are notoriously hard to recruit and even harder to control." Rias, having either not heard my words or simply deciding to ignore them, continued.

"What makes them more dangerous than any other type of Sacred Gear Wielders is the amount of damage they could do when they lose control of themselves. 

This is especially true when it came to the Two Heavenly Dragons, as Albion had shown us. So before I could even consider recruiting him, I needed a way to ensure his loyalty.

"Fortunately, unlike the case with the Divine Dividing wielder, Issei's Sin will clearly be Lust. This not only makes him easier to manage but also far more likely to accept being a Devil considering our lifestyle." Here Rias paused a moment, taking a moment to collect herself before forging on.

"But that's not enough to secure his loyalty. We cannot allow another incident like Valantime to happen again. I won't ever allow it allow to happen under my watch. I needed another reason for him to become loyal to me.

"For a while, I was stumped, I couldn't think of a single solution to the problem other than catering to his Lust, and that simply wasn't going to be enough. All it would take for the Fallen or even the Church to send someone to seduce him then he might trade sides at a drop of a hat. 

But then," She reached over to the folder that Akeno had placed on the table, pulled out a photo and slid it over to me, "the answer fell right into our laps."

In front of me was a picture of a young Japanese girl. She had long silky black hair with an innocent almost childlike face and dark violet eyes.

"Her name, or at least the name she's currently calling herself by, is Amano Yuma. Her real name is unknown to us but what we do know is that she is the Fallen Angel we sensed on campus and is currently posing as an ordinary schoolgirl. Normally we would have eliminated her by this point but when we began to track her we were able to discover the purpose of her appearance here."

I'm starting to connect the dots and I didn't like the picture that was beginning to appear. "Let me guess, she was here for Issei right?"

Rias gave me a firm nod at that, "At first we feared that she was here to try to recruit him into the Fallen Angel Faction as they did with Vali. However, it quickly became clear that wasn't the case. Issei's current human body would have made him too weak for him to be of any real use, Boosted Gear or no Boosted Gear. 

There was also the matter of Albion and Ddraig being sworn enemies and same side or not they'll try to rip each other apart the moment they set eyes on one another.

"But the thing that finally convinced us of her intentions was Koneko. When she was tracking her she was able to sense Yuma's emotions."

Koneko didn't even bother to look up from her half-finished plate of sweets as she spoke, "Blood lust."

"So we came to the obvious conclusion that she's here to prevent us from recruiting him ourselves. That she went as far as to pose as his girlfriend just made her goal more obvious. 

We were able to discover that she plans on taking him on a 'date' this evening on the other side of town, a place that's as far as you can get from the heart of Devil territory while still remaining in the city limits. We think she chose that spot because it bore the least likely chance of Devils interfering."

"So do you plan to do?" Despite my question, a part of me was dreading that I already knew the answer. "Are you going to approach Issei now or interfere with the date itself?"

"...No," Rias leaned back in her seat with her eyes shut for a moment and took a deep breath. Then she opened her eyes, which were now hardened with resolve, and stared back at me unflinchingly as she spoke.

We're going to let her kill him

I felt my heart go cold at her words.

For a moment I was sure that I misheard her, that there was no way that they were going to just sit back and watch a boy die. But all I had to do was look at her cold determined eyes, the same eyes that her brother wore, and I understood that this was no joke, no mistake.

Comprehension hit me with all the subtlety of a speeding truck and I realized that they were serious, that these bunch of high school students were gonna let the boy get killed in front of their eyes.

For his credit at least, Kiba looked clearly uncomfortable with the entire situation. Koneko wore no expression at all on her face but the way she studiously ignored everything around her as she stared blankly ahead was as clear a sign of her feelings as anything. 

Akeno however just a wore that serene smile of hers, the very same one she had been wearing the entire so I had absolutely no idea what she was thinking.

The Gremory however just looked determined.

"I can't let you do that."

I didn't even realize I was speaking until I had finished, but I didn't regret what I said.

"You don't have a choice," Rias countered coolly, "I know for a fact that you were ordered by your King not to interfere. And I already requested approval of the plan from my brother, which he gave along with the blessings of the Elder Council. No one is willing to invite another Heavenly Dragon into Devil Society again without taking every precaution, not after Valantime.

"So you see Emiya Shirou, there is quite frankly nothing you can do about it."

I said nothing, unwilling to move or say a thing. Not trusting myself not to lash out, with either words or swords I did not know.

When, after a long long while, I had finally begun to gain some resemblance of control over myself I asked, "Why?" although the word came out garbled from how I had to choke it out of my constricted throat.

Fortunately, I didn't need to repeat myself as the Gremory seemed to have understood what I was trying to say.

"Because it needed to be done," the Gremory leaned back on her seat but she never removed her eyes from mine.

"this isn't some ordinary human Emiya, this a Longinus wielder, people born with the potential to kill gods inside them. 

The last time the Underworld had one, he brought ruin and desolation to an entire city, ending thousands of lives in the blink of an eye. If the cost of preventing something like that happening again is a single human life, then it's a price I'm more than willing to pay."

"Besides," this time she leaned forward, "I think you're misunderstanding something. It's not as if I'm going to let him stay dead, I do plan on resurrecting him. 

And I don't actually have anything to do with his death. I have no intention of lifting so much as a finger to harm a single hair on his head, let alone try to kill him."

"You may not be the one to do the deed but you're not planning on doing anything to stop it either. I thought you Gremorys are supposed to treat you Peerage like family and yet this is what you intend to do to Issei? Someone who you're planning on making a part of your Peerage?"

For the first time, the Gremory's eye turned cold, not determined or hard but truly cold. "For my Peerage, I'll do anything. Give anything. My life, my happiness and even my everything is not too high a price to pay for their safety or happiness."

There was a brand of madness unique to Devils, a type of insanity born from their Sin. It rules them in a way the human mind simply cannot comprehend. And the Gremory's cold eyes now shone with that very madness, of the intensity of her Greed for her Peerage possessing her soul.

When she said her everything, she was not lying.

"Issei, however, is not a member of my Peerage, not yet. He will be but until then he's just an ordinary human to me, no different than any other stranger in this city."

For a long while after that, silence ruled the room, as no one had anything else to say.

I simply sat back in my chair and watched her. Just watched as I tried to understand the person seated before me. It didn't take me long to put the pieces together and start figuring her out.

The sad thing is, despite all the things she's about to do, she wasn't evil. No, not evil, just selfish. Which might just be something worse.

She said that she was willing to pay the price of one human life if it meant preventing another Valantime. What she didn't realize was that she wasn't the one paying the price. 

It was other people. It was Issei who will die, his parents who will mourn him, and his friends that will miss him, they will be the ones who will pay the price, but from her point of view she was taking on the real burden of being forced to choose.

The scary thing is she doesn't see anything she's doing as wrong. In that sense, she's no different than her brother.

Gremorys, no matter what they keep managing to finds ways to infuriate me.

No. No that was unfair. This isn't a Gremory problem but a Pure-blooded Devil problem. They saw themselves so above humanity that they found nothing wrong with playing god with their lives. You just needed to look at how many of them mistreated the Resurrected Devils to see that. 

They believed that their powers made them superior to all others. What they didn't realize was that their very power was given to them by mere chance, that they have done nothing to earn it or the apparent 'superiority' that came with it.

Power earned was better than power given. For all of my issues with Sirzechs, and I have a lot of them, I could acknowledge that he lived by that rule. Even had he never been born with the Power of Destruction I had no doubt that he would have still grown to become powerful, even Maou-Class powerful.

His sister, on the other hand, didn't live by that rule. Everything she had was handed to her. Her power of Destruction, her rank of Heiress and even the privilege of starting a Peerage, everything was given to her. Yet she there was a sense of pride in her, a confidence that shouldn't have been there for her so-called achievements.

It was that sense of pride that her to believe that she, a not-quite 18-year-old girl, had the right to determine the fate of others, to decide if they should live or die.

Typical Pure-Blooded Devil.

Still, all of my complaining wouldn't do anything to solve the issue. I could whine all I wanted later when I had the time. For now, I had to think of a way to fix this mess.

Yet, there has been one thing bothering about the entire issue.

Issei having a Dragon based Sacred Gear.

No, I had trouble believing it. It didn't make any sense. Issei doesn't act like a Dragon, not even the slightest. A Dragon's Pride was a dangerous thing, unforgivingly brittle as it was hard. A Dragon did not run, ever. 

Not even before death, not even the inevitable could sway it from its course. It was something that would rather break before it ever bent and I had trouble coinciding that truth with the what I saw this morning. Of Issei running away from a bunch of schoolgirls that caught him peeping.

It...it didn't fit. That wasn't a Dragon.

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