Chapter - 57

Shamond was burning.

"This is worse than I expected." Naruto marveled to himself as he took in the black smoke filling the sky. They'd had to drop in a dozen miles away from the city to escape the mingled spelldomes that arced over the entire Limbo Strip and the cities surrounding it.

Hoisting himself in the air on his four leathery wings, he glanced down at Sairaorg. "I'm going on ahead." Shrugging off the furious shouts of the Bael heir, he left the older two devils to wait for the rest of Sairaorg's peerage to show up.

Magic began to build in Naruto's veins as he streaked over lush grasslands and the enormous highway that ran unerringly towards the blazing city in the distance. The weight of his shortsword bounced at his hip like a relentless hammer, but the redhead paid it no mind.

Naruto might have taken well enough to the blade and worked it into his fighting style, but he'd never relied on tools in his life as a shinobi. He'd saved the world with his two hands, and it might be time to get back to that.

Letting the wind break over his face as he ate up the miles in a blur of color, Naruto slowly began to draw out the Power of Destruction he'd inherited from his father. Generally, he held back on it and just used raw magical force to avoid killing the people he was sparring against, but the Gremory heir wasn't going to a spar.

He was going to war.

Black magic as dim as the void curled in Naruto's hands, lined by a bright border of crimson. It only took a nostalgic thought to spur the sorcery into a rotation, spinning tighter and ever more violently. Once he cleared the last mile, Naruto dodged around a skyscraper with an adrenaline wracked grin.

It took a moment of searching to pick out the battle lines in the distance, the clash of spellfire and enchanted technology carving out a blazing line right through the city. On his side were the fallen angels and the reinforcements the devils had scrambled to give them. On the other, the teeming mass of bonespiders, omen owls, and cihuateteo.

"Eat this!" he shouted, rushing closer to the front line until he caught the notice of more than one of the Mictlanese. Dodging around the sudden hail of sorcery, Naruto concentrated on the spinning orbs in his hand. Another push, and they began to elongate and hum like buzzsaws. Four spiraling arms arced out of each orb, and then Naruto tossed them.

"Rasenshuriken!"

Sasuke wasn't the only one that could recreate jutsu.

The explosion of black and red that utterly vaporized the two buildings where the seewahs had been stationed on to provide anti-air support was rather beautiful in Naruto's humble opinion. When he'd fed wind into the technique, the end result was pretty impressive. But it wasn't quite as inspiring as the end result he got when bonds at the molecular level were detonated.

More than one horrified gaze stabbed into Naruto's hovering form, and then the spells began to come. Every Mictlan spellcaster that could see him began launching volleys of spellfire.

"Whoops." The redhead chuckled to himself, slamming his hands together before throwing them apart. The motion summoned a shockwave of his power of destruction, pushing back the massed curses and giving him time to descend.

"Who the hell are you?" a fallen angel barked as Naruto dropped to street level and landed behind the Gehennan fortifications. Based on the mix of symbols that adorned the patch on the middle-aged man's shoulders, Naruto guess him to be a major. Though maybe the Grigori denoted their officers differently.

"Naruto Gremory." The redhead shot back, thumping a fist over his chest. The motion drew the major's eye to the green cord that dangled from the shoulder of Naruto's uniform, prompting the man to take a closer look at the fourteen-year old's outfit.

"Clan army, is it?" Shrugging at the insignias on Naruto's shoulders that denoted the young devil as technically holding the same rank, the major refocused on the Gremory heir's face. "Well I'm not going to turn my nose up at a few extra bodies. How many did you bring with you?"

Naruto chuckled awkwardly, reaching up to rub a hand over the back of his head. "It's just me, myself, and I right now. I'm not here in an official capacity. Just wearing the uniform so everyone knows which side I'm on."

"Right." The major rolled his brown eyes after a beat. "Whatever. I'm so far beyond giving a damn right now. Let the brass sort it all out once we stop getting our asses handed to us. I need someone to reinforce the east flank while Vali's out of commission. Think you can follow those orders, soldier?"

"Definitely." Naruto agreed instantly, making to rise back into the air only to have the officer yank him back down.

"Listen kid, this isn't a suicide mission. That light show you gave us was hot shit, but I doubt you can keep it up all day long. There's no telling how long it'll be before we get more reinforcements and drive these fuckers outta here. Stay low and don't get yourself killed."

Grunting in agreement, the redhead yanked his sword from its scabbard and began to run.

By the time Sairaorg assembled his peerage and made it to Shamond, he was officially pissed off. Naruto had been flying half-cocked since that bloody night in the chapel, which was understandable; but the kid was getting reckless. Coriana had once told him some humans couldn't handle the guilt of murder and took themselves out, and Naruto was closer to human than most of their kind.

Hopefully, his cousin's wild need to be doing something wasn't meant to be some form of subtle suicide.

"Liban, Gandoma, Beruka, Ladora." The Bael heir called out, motioning loosely at the darkened skyscrapers towering over them. "I want you evacuating as many people as you can. I know Dad wouldn't promise them anything, but do whatever you can do to get the people out of here."

"Sure."

"Misteeta, Coriana." Turning to face his two Bishops, Sairaorg pointed off to the West. "If I can remember the maps right, that's where some of the hospitals here should be. Shake on over there and get to healing. Try to prioritize getting soldiers back up and on the field."

"You got it."

"Kuisha, Regulus – you're with me."

"Of course." Kuisha smiled.

Regulus flicked his tail with tight agitation, amber eyes flickering over the smoky urban skyline. "You should wear me." The materialized Sacred Gear spirit rumbled. Ever since the Nemean Lion had been tamed by Sairaorg, not a fight went by when the creature didn't ask his wielder to use him.

The power of Regulus Nemea as a Sacred Gear was vast. As one of the thirteen Longinus artifacts, Regulus theoretically had the power to kill gods. When he was being used, Regulus took the form of a great axe – one so strong it was said full mastery of him would let his wielder cut the earth in half. Additionally, he gave his wielder the ability of being immune to all projectiles.

Yet the only weapons Sairaorg used were his own two fists. He refused to take up his Pawn as an armament. The only time Sairaorg would wield Regulus Nemea was when he used the Sacred Gear's Balance Breaker. The so-called 'forbidden move' was the ultimate state of a Sacred Gear, and turned Regulus from an axe into golden armour. When merged with the Iron Skin of the Lion King, Sairaorg had the strength to break a world.

"That would definitely count as escalation." The dark-haired devil commented wryly. There was a pretty low probability that the gods of Mictlan would consider him enough of a threat to assume Gehenna was escalating, but the possibility of it was enough to make Sairaorg wave off the suggestion. Better to get hurt than to end up spurring enemy gods to show up.

"Very well." Regulus' head dipped slightly, golden strands of his mane flowing at the motion. "But don't hesitate to wear me if your life is in danger."

"Fine." Sairaorg agreed, rolling his eyes before turning back to the war-torn metropolis. "Let's just get moving and get in on the action. And keep an eye out for Naruto. Who knows where that dumbass ran off to."

Nodding at the chorus of agreement his two friends gave, Sairaorg crouched low. With a mighty heave from the thick muscles of his thighs, the 'Strongest Youth' launched himself up and forward in a great arc. He leapt from rooftop to rooftop, purple gaze warily scanning for enemy contact.

The slowly shifting explosions a couple of miles in front of him let Sairaorg know exactly where the battle was. But just because the real fight was a hop and a skip away didn't mean the shocks of it weren't far reaching. The roads below him were full of utter chaos.

People shoved and screamed at one another, all worked into a desperate frenzy by the need to survive. Broken windows signaled rioters who had taken advantage of the conflict to enrich themselves. It was sheer lawlessness that made the Bael heir faintly resent the Grigori. If they'd been more focused on ruling and less focused on conquest Shamond would never have become such a ramshackle hyper-capitalist dystopia.

Sairaorg sincerely believed in the right of all men and women to succeed or fall on merit. Everyone should have the chance to struggle to reach their dreams without unnecessary obstacles in the way. But without a central authority whom people accepted as a governor and arbitrator, that freedom was doomed to destruction by the first common threat to their society.

If he'd ever considered himself an anarchist, the sight passing by below him would have convinced him otherwise.