26

"I'll get it," Maria says, leaping from the couch to open the window for the bat-like familiar. To me, it looks more like a ball with wings, but to each their own.

The window slides open, and the familiar flies straight to Rias. After a moment of listening, Rias nods, and the familiar flies back out into the night.

"The message is from Kiba. Apparently, he's found signs of a stray devil and tracked it to its lair. It's too dangerous to proceed on his own, so I'm afraid we'll need to leave now."

I think I remember the episode where the peerage faces a stray devil. Rias almost gets hurt, but Issei manages to do something right and save her despite the stray's exposed tits. This could be a good experience for Mio as well. I've circumvented a lot of her combat experience from early in the series. I don't want her unable to respond under pressure.

"Why don't we tag along," I say as Rias and Akeno stand up from the love seat. Rias looks at me with an arched eyebrow. "We are allies, and your problems are our problems. Besides, it'll be good for us to see each other in action, right?"

"That's true. Alright, let's go together," Rias says.

Koneko stretches a little and slides off my lap. Maria, having closed the window, wanders back over. "We're going with them?"

I get up and stretch out a hand to Mio. "Yes, it'll be good to understand each others' strengths and weaknesses. It's Rias's show, so we'll just be along for the ride."

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Mio asks. It was obvious that she was nervous. In the last fight we were in, she saw me get hurt, and there may have been more trauma there than I anticipated.

"Absolutely," I say. "It will be a good chance for you to get back out in the field. As much as I want to protect you myself, it would be best if you could protect yourself as well. Let's just say it would give me peace of mind."

"Issei is right," Maria says. "You've gained a lot of control over the last week or so. It's time to test out your training."

"Alright," Mio says, a spark in her eyes. "Let's do it."

Rias and her peerage nod, and we're underway.

.

.

.

We arrive at the edge of a small wooded area a short time later.

"It was originally a devil's servant," Kiba says.

"You mean like you are?" Mio asks.

"Once in a while, there are those who betray their masters, or even kill them, then live as they please. These are stray devils," Kiba continues.

"There are reports that indicate that people have been lured to this abandoned house, never to be seen again," Akeno says. "It's a good sign that there is a stray devil here. Kiba confirmed it earlier."

"Our job tonight," Rias says. "is to put it down."

"Without a master and using their devilish powers without restraint can bring about ugly consequences," Kiba comments.

"Mio?" Rias says as we step through the large double doors into the dilapidated mansion.

"A-ah, yes?"

"Are you familiar with chess?"

"Um, a little. I'm not very good at it," Mio admits.

"I, as master of my peerage, am the king, and I have my queen, my knights, my rooks, my bishops, and my pawns. Though, here tonight, I only have my queen, a knight, and a rook. Devil's with noble titles grant the characteristic of these pieces to their servants."

"What do you mean by characteristics?" Mio asks.

"We call them our 'Evil Pieces.' In any event. You should pay particular attention as my devils fight tonight. I think it will be enlightening for you."

"R-right."

"It's here," Koneko announces.

"I smell something unpleasant," a strange warbling voice calls out from the shadows. "But I also smell something... delicious."

"I made cookies?" I say, holding up a plate of cardamom cookies.

Rias and Mio roll their eyes at me, but Akeno and Maria look amused, and Koneko takes a couple of cookies to pop in her mouth. I don't particularly care what Kiba thinks, but in the spirit of fairness, I note that he seems to be smirking, sword at the ready.

"I wonder if it's sweet. I wonder if it's bitter."

"Mm. Spice cookies. Good," Koneko says. I silently smile and nod to her.

A pale form appears from up high—long dark hair, a pretty face, and a... ahem, well-developed chest. At least, what we can see from the waist up. There was never much of an explanation about this particular stray in either the wiki or the anime. I'm curious, so I have Sage run a scan on her.

"Stray devil Viser, you unfaithful wretch, running away from your master, and running wild to fulfill your lusts, your sins are worthy of a thousand deaths," Rias says. It seems a bit harsh to me, but let's see what we've got on her.

Oh, that's interesting.

[Corrupted Mutated Pawn- belonging to Narnia Naberius- Implanted into Viser]

"Naberius?" I whisper, Koneko turns slightly towards me, and then I remember. Naberius was the house that was doing experiments trying to create super-devils. Kuroka became a stray after killing her master to protect Koneko from becoming another of their experiments.

'Sage. Is it possible to remove that pawn or use Edit to... I don't know, uncorrupt it or something? Basically, I want to return her to normal.'

[Calculating...]

"In the name of the Marquis of Gremory, I am going to blow you away!" Rias says. Kind of a lame line. It sounds like something Sailor Moon would say. Even a simple, 'I sentence you to death,' would have been less lame than 'I am going to blow you away.'

Viser just laughs. "Insolent little girl," she says, rubbing her large breasts. "Would you like me to stain your body with fresh blood to match your crimson hair?"

"The smaller the fry, the wiser their cracks," Rias says. God, their smack talk is seriously lacking.

"Rias," I say. She looks over at me. "Think we could capture instead of kill. I have some questions we might want answers to."

She frowns. "It might be important..." I hedge.

"That's a stray devil?" Mio says in a huff. "She just looks like an exhibitionist to me."

"Don't worry, yours are nicer," I say, and Maria nods.

Viser stretches from the shadows to reveal a deformed centaur-like lower body stretching her to twenty feet tall with massive twisted legs with clawed feet and a vaguely obscene lower body with a snake for a tail. Similar, but a bit different from what I remember from the anime.

Mio draws in a shocked breath. "As we said earlier," Kiba says. "her body and soul turn really ugly."

"Yeah, it's probably an effect of the corruption coursing through her from the Corrupted Evil Piece," I say, and Rias frowns.

"Corrupted?" she says.

"Like I said, there are questions to be asked."

Viser's breasts start to glow, and magic circles form around them. "That's not good," I say and pull Mio out of the line of fire as blasts of acidic spray melt holes in the walls.

"Well, I guess lactation play is out," I say, cradling Mio.

I look down, and her eyes are wide. "Hey," I say. "You got this. Stay aware, and don't let your guard down. Try to make sure no one gets blindsided. Alright?"

She takes a breath and firms her gaze. She nods. "Alright, let's do this."

She steps out, prepared for a fight. "Yuuto," Rias calls out, and he moves, drawing his blade on the go.

"Where'd he go?" Mio asks.

"He's moving too fast for you to see. Yuuto's role is the knight," Rias says. "His attribute is speed and his ultimate weapon is the sword!"

Kiba slashes his weapon severing a clawed limb, causing Viser to scream out in pain as green-black blood sprays from the wound. The corruption in her body surges, and her appearance mutates. I hope we can fix this. 'Sage, how's it coming?'

[Calculating...]

I roll my eyes. 'Calculate faster, please.'

[Calculating...]

A giant vertical maw forms in the center of Viser's centaur-like body, and she lunges towards Koneko. "Die!"

"Look out!" Mio shouts, raising her hand forming concentric magic circles, but Rias holds out her hand to call her off.

"Koneko is a rook and is at least as strong as Maria and maybe even tougher. Going hand to hand with her is pure suicide," I say. "She'll be fine, but good instincts to protect your team. Keep it up."

The giant maw closes around the tiny girl, dripping acid damaging her clothes, but she catches the closing fangs and, with a quick yank, rips two free, shattering the rest with the force of the blow. Maria jumps into the action and lands a vicious kick knocking the corrupted devil into a stone pillar.

As Viser crumbles to the ground, Rias calls out, "Akeno," and the sexy girl with the big smile steps forward.

"Yes, President," she says. "Ara, what am I to do about this, Viser?"

"Watch out!" Mio says, diving in front of Rias with a barrier spell up and running. The limb that Kiba severed earlier launched itself towards Rias, but Mio managed to deflect it from its target. Instead, it came towards me and was consumed by my Banishing Shift.

'That was interesting. What kind of magic was that?' Sora asked.

'I'll tell you about it later,' I think.

"Th-thank you," Rias says to Mio.

"Oh, not at all. My body just kind of moved on its own," Mio says. I'm almost positive that was originally Issei's line. In fact, most of what Mio has contributed this evening was originally said and done by Issei in the source material. That's interesting.

"Akeno," Rias says. "Take her down."

"You naughty little thing. For trying to lay a hand on my president. You must be punished," Akeno says with an ecstatic look on her face. This is that sadist shit that I have to be careful of.

"Akeno is my queen," Rias says. "My unbeatable vice-president, who possesses the attributes of all the other pieces."

"The pieces you haven't seen are the bishop, which possesses extraordinary magical power, and the pawn, which has a unique attribute to be able to take on other piece's attributes through a process called promotion," I whisper as Akeno charges her lightning magic.

"Ara, you still seem quite lively. How about this, then?" Akeno says as a meter thick bolt of lightning arcs from her hands and strikes Viser, seriously injuring the devil.

"Akeno specializes in elemental attacks with magic power," Rias says. "What's more, she is..."

"Oh, my, you're still up and around," Akeno says, licking her lips reminding me of Saeko towards the end of our match earlier.

"... the ultimate sadist," Rias finishes. I personally doubt the word 'ultimate' in that statement since I know there are worse sadists out there. Akeno is just a little bit of a pain enthusiast.

[Results calculated. Request possible.]

'Good timing Sage. What do we do?'

[With the host of the Evil Piece's permission, the user may Edit the 'bound' property of the Evil Piece and remove its target, effectively unbinding the Evil Piece. Any resistance would increase the difficulty beyond current ability.]

'Hence needing her permission. I guess that makes sense... in a someone is trying to maintain the balance of the universe kind of way.'

While I thought about that, Akeno had dropped two more lightning blasts on poor Viser, leaving a slight burning ozone smell in the air. "Rias, I still need her," I say.

"Akeno, that will be enough."

"Done already? That's kind of a shame, huh?" Akeno says. I just shake my head.

I step forward towards Viser. Leaning down, I say, "Don't resist. I think I can help you."

'Let's do this, Sage.'

A black-green glow forms around the body of Viser and gradually shrinks over the course of a moment down to a more reasonable size. As the light fades, the monstrous Viser is gone, and a young girl with short white hair and slightly darker gray highlights is left behind. She's still centaur-like, but instead of a horse, her lower body appears to be that of a large cat, based on the paws and coloration, probably a lion.

"A Sagittary?" Rias says.

On the ground next to the unconscious... Sagittary, I guess, is a small white pawn chess piece with black and green glowing veins running through it. I pick it up and hand it over to Rias, who looks it over. "This... feels wrong," she says.

"It's been modified to gather corrupted energy and flood the user's system," I say, repeating Sage's analysis. "Basically, she didn't leave her master and then got corrupted. She got corrupted and then ran away from her master."

"How did this happen?" she asks.

"From what I know, the Naberius clan has their claws in a lot of different research projects. This appears to be part of the one that Koneko and Kuroka were part of to create super-devils."

"What!?" Koneko and Rias shout, a look of panic on their faces.

"Oh, don't worry," I say, right before twisting the knife. "Kuroka killed the bastard when he was about to start experimenting on Koneko. Him trying to use Koneko in his experiments is the entire reason she killed him in the first place."

"W-what? No... Sister was drunk on her power and killed her master."

"Yeah, that's what the Naberius clan wanted everyone to believe. It's not like they can say, 'Hey, we were doing unethical experiments on children, and one of our test subjects refused to allow her little sister to be used, leading to the death of one of our researchers,' can they?" I ask.

"But..." Koneko is a little overwhelmed. She's always believed that her sister went crazy from the devil power and the mystical arts she practiced. It was a major reason she never tried to develop her Senjutsu, Youjutsu, or Touki before now.

I step past Rias, over to Koneko, and take a knee. She's so tiny that even like this, I'm almost at eye level with her. "Koneko... Shirone, I promise you that everything your sister did back then was because she loves you," I say, and tears start to run down her cheeks. "It may take a little time, but we'll find her, and you can have your big sister back. Until then, I'll do whatever I can to help you, alright."

"He makes a great big brother," Maria says from the side, a lascivious gleam in her eye.

"Just ignore her," I say. Are Koneko and Kuroka on my list of waifu candidates? Hell, yes! Is this the time to bring it up? Hell, no! At least, I'd feel slimy doing it now. That said, she does wrap her arms around me and burst into tears.

There is a lot of guilt running through her right now. She had blamed her sister for the whole situation. I just pat her back and let her cry for a few minutes. Rias and Akeno eventually came over and joined in to form a small group hug, and I'm pretty sure Mio squirted a few tears as well, but it is hard to tell with my head pressed between four large breasts.

Once Koneko released her guilt all over my shirt, and the hug broke up, I wiped her tear-stained cheeks and stood up.

"So, what do we do about her?" Mio asks, pointing at the unconscious woman. "We can't just kill her. She's a victim here, too."

Rias frowns. Killing her was what their mission was, after all, and she did actually kill some humans. Normally, that would be all she wrote, but Mio was right about her being a victim as well. Also, and more importantly, in this case, she is also a witness. Rias looks down at the corrupted pawn in her hand.

"I'll contact my brother," she Rias says. "We can turn over the information about Naberius to him, and he will protect her. For now, we'll take her to the club room. It'll be safe there."

Well, this transport should be fun—a six-and-a-half-foot-tall woman with a centaur-like body but with the fore and hindquarters of a lion. I'm sure that won't stand out at all. "Please, tell me you can teleport her or make her invisible at least," I say.

They all look at me and then at the unconscious woman... and then back at me. I guess that's my hint that I need to fix this. It's a good thing removing the Evil Piece didn't cost so much. I pull a blanket out of my Pocket Dimension. Let's play Harry Potter.

I look at Rias. "I hope I'll get some reimbursement for this," I say, and 'Get Creative.'