DxD : A New Hero : Chapter 15

As she stepped into the room a wave of power followed her, one that was notably higher than any of the other Devils I had met so far. Even Sona's. Yet as I took measure of her strength instead of impressing me all I felt was a mild sense of disappointment.

I had been expecting...more.

...

Unlike Sona who I met multiple times before, if only briefly, this would be the first time I got my first proper look of Risa Gremory, the famed Crimson-Haired Princess of Ruin and sole sibling of the Devil Lucifer himself, and I had built something of a mental image of her in my head.

Simply put, I thought I would be meeting the second coming of Sirzechs. She was called the Crimson-Haired Princess of Ruin by some and was known to be stronger than many of her peers from her generation, so I had genuinely expected I would be meeting someone that would one day become her brother's equal.

What I saw before me fell far short from the monster that I held in my mind named Sirzechs.

There was no other way to describe him. Sirzechs was an absolute monster. Even when compared to the Heroic Spirits of the Holy Grail, he could have stood among the strongest among them and not be found wanting. 

For all of my distaste of the man, even I couldn't deny his strength. Just standing in his presence had caused my newly awakened Devil ability to sense magic to become overwhelmed.

That truth had only been made even more apparent after our fight.

It was hard to describe what had happened. In my Reality Marble, in the seat of my power, I thought I had a real chance despite the wide gulf in raw power. At one point, near the end, I even thought I won. 

Then he revealed his true form - showed me what he really looked like beneath the thin veneer of humanity he wore like a second skin - and it as if reality simply was unable to function in his presence. I couldn't even begin to describe what I had seen. I barely had the chance to take in what was happening before he overwhelmed me with nothing but pure power.

It was made clear to me that day that Sirzechs was an absolute monster, while Rias...simply wasn't.

A part of me pointed out that I was being unfair, that Sona herself was equally as lacking in power when compared to Serafall yet I never held that against her. It was galling to admit, but even I could tell that I was letting my distaste of Sirzches leak through.

"You must be Emiya Shirou," Rias Gremory said as she approached me, pulling me free from my inner musings. She stopped a couple of paces away from me, crossing her arms before her as she took a moment to look me over. 

"While we didn't have a chance to be properly introduced before, this is not the first time we had seen each other. I was a member of the audience when you fought my brother. I am Rias Gremory and I'd -"

As she went through the formal introduction ceremony that I've now come to expect whenever I meet a new high ranking Devil, I couldn't help but think about what had just happened a few second earlier.

'Are...are we seriously going to ignore the whole shower thing?' I mentally asked myself, unsure if I should have felt relieved or not. Either way, I don't think I'll ever be able to wipe my mind clean of the knowledge that the entire Gremory Clan were all secretly nudists or an exhibitionist in this case.

"What!" Rias yelped, cutting herself off in the middle of her introduction as her face a flaming red from a mix of embarrassment and indignation, and I suddenly realised that I must have my thoughts out loud. "I'm not an exhibition." She insisted with a stomp of her foot.

I couldn't stop my eyes from drifting over her shoulder towards the shower behind her, no seriously there was a shower in the middle of the room with a single semi-transparent door, before looking back at the girl. "If you say so."

She mustn't have believed me because her face flushed into a shade of red that easily matched her hair. Off to one side, Akeno had her arms wrapped around her middles as she leaned over, trying and only partly failing to contain her laughter.

Rias just continued to glare at me for a long second before she slow broke out into a serene smile, her entire face undergoing a transformation.

"Whatever you say...Queenie." She said, and I felt my eyes twitch at the sound of that accursed nickname

And just like that, I knew she was Sirzechs's sister. Only that jerk ever called me that.

"Ok children, that's enough." Akeno clapped her hands twice and stepped in between us. "As much as I enjoy watching you two squabble, and trust me I really do, I believe you had something important you wanted to talk to Emiya-san about Buchou."

Rias, whether at her Queen's words or her ability to get in the last parting shot in, nodded her head in acceptance. She took a moment to compose herself before she waved a hand towards one of the empty chairs. 

"Emiya, if you would please have a seat I'll get to the point of the meeting."

Seeing her trying her best to pretend that the last minute or so hadn't happened, I decided to follow suit. Seating myself down at the chair while Rias and Akeno occupied the sofa directly across from me, a long coffee table between us.

Rias cleared her throat before speaking. "I'll get straight to the point. Seeing as you just have recently arrived, while you may have not realised it but there is currently a Fallen Angel masquerading as a student on campus."

"Wait, there is?" I asked, surprised before shaking my head, "I hadn't realised." I answered honestly.

Which was weird.

Not that I didn't notice the Fallen, Kuoh Academy was a big school with a rather large student population and I had already arrived this morning, no what surprised me was that the Fallen was still here.

I'd have figured that either Sona or Rias would have driven them out by now, considering how enthusiastically they've been defending their territory so far. So why hadn't they gotten rid of it, and why are they telling me. Unless...

"And you want me to deal with them?" I ventured, my voice sounding incredulous even to my own ears.

I was honestly surprised, I never thought she'd be willing to let me help out. Rias, just like Sona, was adamantly against accepting any help from her older sibling. 

When she had called me out here I was pretty sure it was to tell me to stay out of her way, in the most polite way possible while still clearly meaning 'butt out'. That she was going to ask me to lend a hand was unexpected, to say the least.

The only thing that I could think of that might have changed her mind was if a particularly powerful Fallen or Stray had entered her territory, but that shouldn't have been possible.

Still, this was good news at the very least. Unexpected, but not unwelcome. It made my job a lot easier if I could work alongside them.

"No, quite the opposite actually." She said, instantly dashing any hope I had. "I want you to stay away from her."

"Because you want to deal with her yourself?" I asked, disappointed but not surprised that she wanted to handle the Fallen on her own.

This was her territory and for a Fallen to wander into what was the heart of it was nothing short of an insult.

While there was no official cease-fire between the Three Factions, there were certain unwritten rules that both sides tacitly agreed to. One of which was basically that any members caught in the territory of an opposing faction was free game, and could be dealt with however the owner of the territory wished. 

That the Fallen would enter at all meant they were either confident that they wouldn't get caught or believed that the owners were too weak to do anything to stop them.

I also wasn't worried about the Fallen being something that they couldn't handle. The guards that patrolled the city's borders would prevent any dangerous strays from entering and would have informed me if any powerful Angels, Fallen or otherwise, were seen entering the city. Though that was also unlikely to happen.

The other two members of the Three Factions are no doubt aware that the sisters of the Maous are in this city and are simply not willing to send anything that may threaten them. 

Not only would it send the wrong message, but there is always the small chance of a scuffle breaking out. They didn't want to risk sending anyone that may actually have a chance of killing one of them and kick-starting another war.

There was a reason why nothing higher than two-winged Fallen exist within the borders of the city. Their job wasn't to fight anyone here, just to keep an eye on things and report back to their superiors if anything unusual happens.

"No, I do not want the Fallen to be harmed in any way. In fact, I don't even want her to know that we are aware of her presence." Rias smirked, "It seems like the little crow tried to sneak in and believes she had gotten away with it."

"Ok, now you lost me." I told them frankly, "Why aren't you doing anything about her and why bother telling me about it?

"The reason why we're informing you is that we were worried what would happen if you accidentally stumbled on the Fallen." It was Akeno that answered me this time. 

"I'm not sure if you're aware of it but despite only recently becoming a Devil you've begun to build quite a reputation for yourself in the Underworld. 

You're renowned as a busy body, sticking your nose into everything and helping out anyone in trouble no matter what kind of mess it will drag you in."

In my defence, most of that wasn't my fault. It not as if I had been actively looking for trouble since becoming a Devil. It literally came looking for me, or at least it certainly felt as if it.

It wasn't like I meant to walk a Cthulhu Ritual where a bunch of Devils were trying to summon a Great Old One by sacrificing a group of children. I was just looking for the bathroom. And needless to say, I spent the rest of the week cleaning that mess.

Serafall did warn me about how my luck will change as Devil, I just didn't understand the scale it would change. When I told her what happened she just congratulated me on my first accident Cthulhu ritual discovery. Apparently it happens often enough that the Maous consider it a rite of passage into becoming a true Ultimate-Class rank. It had personally happened to Serafall three times so far, while Sirzechs held the record at five.

It was disconcerting, to say the least. I couldn't tell what bothered me more, that Cthulhu rituals were a thing in this universe or that it apparently happens often enough that people kept stumbling all over them.

"Ok, I could see why you might be worried about that. But I still don't understand why you're allowing a Fallen to roam unopposed right in the middle of your territory."

Instead of answering, Akeno pulled a folder from beneath the table. Opening it, she began flipping through the pages before apparently finding the one she wanted. Puling out a single sheet of paper from the folder, she placed it on the table before sliding it over to me.

"Hyoudou Issei," Rias began to speak as I quickly scanned the paper. It contained the basic information and a picture of the boy in question. "A sixteen-year-old boy who's currently enrolled Kuoh Academy. A mediocre student at best, who had barely managed to make the cut-off point for the entrance exam last year. Though that was in part due to the Academy lowering its standards for male students in an effort to bolster its male population after having recently turned co-ed.

"Athletically he's roughly average, at least for a student who's not a member of a sports club, without any history of serious injury or illness. Despite his lack of ability, he is renowned across Kuoh Academy as a member of the Perverted Trio, a group of boys who continually attempt to peek on the female population of the school whenever they can."

"Perverts." A voice to my left interjected. I turned to find Koneko sitting on a sofa that she was sharing with Kiba. There was a plate of Yokan, a type of traditional type of Japanese sweet, before her. 

Having said her part, she now turned back towards her interrupted meal.

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