Chapter 14: Grope her chest by accident

'That was way too close. Wayyy too close.' Momonga thought as he looked outside the window of his assigned room in Gremory estate on the Rating Grounds.

Night was starting to creep closer as the eventful day came to an end. Momonga had shared a few words with his Peerage, and it seemed that they had more or less relaxed their behaviour for some reason. Momonga didn't quite understand how it had happened but at that point he was too far gone to even consider trying to understand.

The close calls with Lucifer were starting to fray Suzuki Satorou's mind, while Momonga was busy organizing the web of lies he had made to protect himself. It would be bad if he blurted out something minor, and the small reveal would serve as a threat that when pulled would reveal his whole lie of an existence.

Shadows lengthened outside the window as Momonga watched groups of devils search the grounds for any Undead that would have potentially appeared during 'the Supreme Being's attack against 'The Great Red's Champion', going over each potential hiding spot in the area and moving in well practised patrols throughout the estate and the surrounding forest-garden.

"Haah…" Momonga sighed and downed the cup of tea he had been cradling for a while now, cringing at the taste of cold tea and then putting the cup away. 'It seems that the healing potion did wonders to restore the organs of this body… my sense of touch is much more accurate, as is my taste and my skin has become much warmer…'

He had been surprised by how cold his skin had been before he had consumed the healing item, a change he had been able to tell only because of the difference in the sensation after healing his body fully.

Momonga had also realized that the amount of damage he had received from the healing potion, as well as the reason why the healing had been so extensive, was because of his poor attempts to [Stitch] his body into workable condition. In his attempt to apply a bandaid for a wound that needed suture he had dealt his host body a horrendous amount of non-visible damage. 'Interesting… I'll have to consider this body's limitations if I aim to occupy it. It wouldn't be good if I accidentally lost it because I kept casting high-tier magic… I feel like I could 'survive' just as a skeleton, but seeing me live after getting peeled of skin and organs would likely cause my cover to shatter…'

Momonga clenched his hand and unclenched it, the simple sensation from it seeming quite alien to one who had been accustomed to the limitations and benefits of a skeletal body. 'So, technically, this body counts as a cosmetic item that needs to be regularly maintained, and serves as weak armor for my 'real' skeletal body underneath?'

He figured that the 'skeleton body' under the cosmetic flesh wasnt that of his Overlord self, since it was nearly three feet taller than Issei's body and much wider, but rather a regular skeletal frame that 'Momonga' had commandeered. A thought struck him, causing him to pause. '...Should I start drinking more milk?'

"Ah… Issei-kun. Erm… is this a good time?" a female voice interrupted Momonga's thoughts and he turned around to face Rias who had entered the room as well.

"As good a time as any, please come in. Have a seat." Momonga welcomed his 'wife', with heavy quotation marks around the title as the affair was in truth quite forced and also done entirely without either of their consent.

The room wasn't plain by any stretch of the imagination and Suzuki Satorou had been quite troubled to accept it as his temporary abode, while Momonga had merely considered the strategic applications of the windows and walls before comparing it to his quarters in Nazarik, and coming to the conclusion that he was really not a fan of overly decorated and fancy quarters- specifically if they were only used for sleeping in. Which, additionally, was something the undead couldn't even do.

Nevertheless, Momonga walked over to a small table flanked by three chairs. The table had a small tea set on it alongside light biscuits, courtesy of Momonga asking the service staff for some simple drink and food to test his newly recovered sense of taste. He waved Rias to come and join him.

He could have recovered some food from his inventory, but he really didn't want to bother the very much sleeping dragon within it. However, if Momonga found even one platter of food disturbed, a potion used, or a display case opened, he'd pull the overgrown lizard out of his inventory and throw as many super-tier spells he could manage at it before his new body would turn to ash.

"You… um, look pretty intense. Is everything alright?" a wary voice entered Momonga's ears again and he looked up to discover that he had been lost in his thoughts, staring at his empty cup of tea that at some point had been re-filled with red tea. He glanced up at Rias to see that she was pouring herself some as well.

"I was, hm, thinking about some things?" Momonga conceded, reaching to sip the tea.

"Is it about that red dragon?"

Momonga coughed as he inhaled the tea. 'S-she knows about my deal with Ddraig? How!' "W-what dragon?"

"The Great Red?"

"Ah… that red dragon." Momonga calmed down, and realized his mistake. 'Please, everyone, just leave me alone for five minutes…'

"Y-you know more than one red dragon?" Rias's eyes widened with hope. "Um, h-have you met, well, Ddraig-sama?"

'Oh no… Wait… Yeah, actually, if I think about it... if Ddraig's words are to be trusted, Issei knew about Ddraig, so if Issei was part of Rias's Peerage, he'd have told her about it…' Momonga sighed at his over-reaction, realized that whatever nerves functioned as his stress triggers were on hair-trigger due to the events since his arrival in the world he was in, and he decided to pull an amnesia card once again to confuse the girl from thinking too much into Momonga's blunder. "Ah, that name feels familiar."

"E- ah, I see…" Rias seemed to deflate a bit but hope remained in her eyes. "Um, Issei-kun, Ddraig was the dragon in your [Sacred Gear] and while I don't know much about it, this is what you told me about it…"

The red-head went quickly over the information she had on Issei's [Sacred Gear], which now resided in Momonga's inventory, and the abilities she knew he had.

'Hm, interesting… So it would seem that Ddraig was telling the truth. It also seems that [Sacred Gears] are this world's equivalents to World Items…' Momonga felt his collector's instincts flare once again, but forced them down. 'I'll have to approach this tactically. All World-class items are ridiculously dangerous, or have really powerful gimmicks, I can't just expect to walk up to one and claim it without a serious fight. I have some of the World items from YGGDRASIL in my inventory so I should be able to level the playing field a bit with them, but I had to leave the [Throne of Kings] to Nazarik and the one on the 8th floor as well…' Momonga sighed into his tea. 'I took [Ginnungagap] from Tabularasa Smaragdina's NPC… I was quite conflicted about taking it but I figured that since the server was coming to an end... well, it's not like I can use it without using [Perfect Warrior] to temporarily change my weapon restrictions… '

"Issei…" the soft voice interrupted Momonga's thoughts for the third time, causing him to sigh deeply.

'Few hours, just a few hours without distractions, please!' Momonga looked at the girl once again, and his body blushed slightly as he realized her face was mere inches away from his.

"I know what's wrong." Rias told him gently, causing the frayed stress triggers in Momonga's head to switch to full-auto despite his better judgement.

'And now she's going to say something completely outrageous and incorrect…'Momonga placed a mental bet against himself and listened to Rias.

"...You're under a lot of stress, right?"

'Haah… I lost.' Momonga mentally handed over a few thousand mental-Yen to Suzuki Satorou who mentally fanned himself with the money. Rias was seemingly taking his silence as affirmation.

"Well, I can't blame you. We had a small talk between your Peerage and came to the conclusion that we can't really blame you for what you did to Yubelluna and Akeno… although you should probably apologize to them for not telling them about the 'procedure', as you called it, before you used it." Rias sighed as well and returned to her seat. "A lot has happened in the past few days. I'll be glad to be back in Kuoh."

"Hm, Kuoh?" Momonga asked, hearing the word for the first time.

"Ah, yeah, you forgot… Kuoh academy. It was an all-girls multi-stage school that had elementary-, middle- and high-school as well as college in one huge complex. Originally it was that, anyway. After a while it was acquired by the Underworld's Pillar families in a joint effort to get their sons and daughters a 'hunting ground', so to speak, to allow them to both socialize with each other and to gather talented humans, turn them to devils and recruit them into their Peerages. It was turned from all female to mixed gender a while back, but the ratio is still a bit askew towards females. Moreover, most of the students are chosen for both academic abilities and for magical or physical abilities that draw the attention of the observers, so that the families who recruit from the academy have a selection of brilliant and strong people."

"Ah, so a human feeding ground for devils. Interesting. I'll presume I'm to go there and fill the rest of the vacant slots in my Peerage?" Momonga asked, sighing as Rias flinched from the word he had used to describe the academy.

"Well, I… guess? I was there to socialize with other families and so on, but I also met few of my, er, your current Peerage members there…" Rias seemed to be struggling to word her speech with the changes that had happened in her life since the Rating Game.

The girl seemed to fall depressed afterwards for some reason.

"What's wrong?" Momonga asked, more out of customary than because he wanted to know.

"I… don't know if Lady Phenix would allow you, and us, to return to Kuoh... " Rias's expression was painful. "If she just wants me near her to serve as her hostage... it'd be too big a risk for her if I was in the human world…"

"Eh, I'll have to ask her." Momonga shrugged while Suzuki Satorou seemed intrigued. After all, Suzuki had dropped out of high school to pursue work in order to keep his mother from overworking herself to death for his sake. It hadn't worked as she had died of exhaustion only a few years later, so getting a chance to complete his education seemed quite tempting for Satorou.

'Lady Phenix seemed to open up quite a bit after I healed myself in front of her…I wonder if I could just ask her to come along to this human world if she's worried about the hostage situation? It'd also allow me to get away from the raid bosses in here… my nerves can't take much more.' Momonga thought as he pressed onwards. "Besides, something as mundane as a bit of college sounds just fine right now, considering the excitement of the past few days."

"Um, high school." Rias corrected.

"Right, high- wait a minute" Momonga's words turned to shriek. "ARE YOU A HIGHSCHOOL STUDENT?"

Rias seemed to be taken aback by Momonga's declaration and she just nodded. "Um, in the last year."

"Right, sorry, nothing, I just… I just realized something." Momonga held his head with both hands, emotion suppression working at full force.'I almost got married to a minor. Just one year back and I'd be a criminal… A highschool girl with an eroge-body. This can only mean one thing- in this reality what is real and what is eroge has mixed together to form a habsburg abomination of ero-real where highschool girls have bodies that thirty-year old women would envy… and also reality-tearing monsters and dragons that lurk beneath the surface, ready to tear apart everything until only sea of fire covers the earth.'

Rias, now completely stunned by Momonga's actions, could only stare before she snapped herself out of her stupor and went to hug Momonga.

"Ah, you needn't force yourself." Momonga collected himself, thanked his emotion suppression, and peeled the girl from his chest. 'Those two anti-gravity devices in her chest are seriously bad news now that my sense of touch is back to normal… well, normal for Suzuki Satorou anyway…'

"It's no problem." Rias seemed a bit depressed by Momonga's stern rejection but backed away without a fight. "Um, this is actually my room as well."

"So I've been led to believe. I believe Lady Phenix also expects 'results'." Momonga sighed as he looked outside and saw that only reflective glass returned his gaze, the sky outside having turned pitch black. "Speaking of which, we should probably get some rest. Tomorrow might be quite a busy day, if today is any indication."

"A-alright, listen, um… It's actually my first time, and…" Rias blushed up to her eyebrows and then to her hairline. "I… don't really have any experience or…"

"Ah, you don't have to worry about that." Momonga waved her off as he walked to the wall that connected the bedroom to the next 'Hm… this whole place is saturated with mana, so technically this building would also count as a magic item… I wonder, if I consider a piece of wall to be a magic item, would it only affect that piece or destroy the whole house?'

Desperate for a chance to rest and collect his thoughts, Momonga didn't spend much time considering contingencies for the latter possibility. '[Silent Magic: Lesser Break Item]'

A piece of the wall, roughly the size of a small window, turned to dust at knee height.

"Ah, good, it worked." Momonga congratulated himself as he turned towards Rias while a faint 'Ara?' could be heard through the hole. "I arranged Akeno-san to have the room beside ours."

"Oh." Rias's blush seemed to reach critical levels as she began shaking and covering her chest now that…

'Ugh…' Momonga kept his eyes strictly on Rias's wide-open eyes now that she had pulled her shirt off and had been undoing her bra. He grabbed Rias's shoulders and began leading her towards the hole. "Listen, I know that you have a relationship with Akeno-san. I am not a homewrecker who'd try to break apart love between two girls. Neither am I going to begrudge you for loving someone, after all this union between us was quite forced and mostly politically motivated. Therefore I'd like to propose that you go and spend the night with your lover, and return come morning so we won't raise suspicions should anyone see us leave from different rooms."

Before Rias could formulate a response, Momonga pushed her through the hole.

Or would have, except for her considerable hips that got stuck. "I-Issei! This is utterly outrageous!"

"Don't worry, I'll just push…" Momonga felt sweat dripping down his face as he realized his mistake.

"Akeno, this isn't what it looks like!" Momonga's mood plummeted as he heard the girl's panicked words.

'Right, from an outsider's perspective I'd be 'pushing' a girl who's stuck in a hole, with her barely clothed upper part visible to her lover on the other side… Ugh, I'm turning into a pervert…' Momonga lamented as he pushed the girl's rear and she finally plopped through to the other side. He quickly dragged a dresser to cover the hole and to prevent himself from hearing what might happen on the other side of the wall. 'I hope Akeno wasn't too shocked or traumatized by this… At least Rias's lower half was clothed so Akeno shouldn't get the wrong idea. Seeing one's lover get 'taken' by someone else in front of them would be traumatizing, and traumatized people make poor raid members…'

He sighed happily, knowing that he had averted one tragedy and subsequent inter-team conflict of interests, and flopped over on his bed that was softer than it seemed and swayed gently under him. "Ha ha… Rest, sleep, finally…" 'I can just cut my finger or something to 'mark' the sheets so Lady Phenix doesn't get suspicious, but I can do that come morning..'

Suzuki Satorou closed his eyes.

.

..

…

Five minutes passed and Momonga was conflicted.

On one hand, the undead couldn't sleep. On the other, the amalgamation of undead and fleshy bits that was Momonga's current body could technically sleep, in a sort of odd combination of drowsiness and half-inanimate state where his 'cosmetic' body's brains and thus rest of bodily functions were 'sleeping' but his actual mind was still in normal operation.

'...This feels like if I was wearing ten layers of wet clothes…'

A round of girly giggles, groans and moans coming from the other side of the wall didn't help the matters. 'I should have put something more sound-resistant to cover the hole…'

.

.

"Ara ara, Rias-chan." Akeno was practically rolling on the bed as Rias finished telling her story. The two sat on opposite ends of Akeno's bed in her assigned room. The room was almost a perfect copy of the one where Issei and Rias had been assigned, even the king-sized bed that would fit five people easily was the same. "I just accidentally cuckolded Issei-kun on his wedding night, ufufufu…"

"That isn't funny, Akeno-chan!" Rias groaned into her hands. "Issei was so tense I swore if a needle dropped on the floor he'd turn the room into a sea of flames!"

"I can't blame him either, if he was just attacked by this 'Supreme Being' while he was doing his duty in the restroom." Akeno couldn't stop rolling around as she was doing her best to keep her giggles under a decibel limit so they wouldn't disturb Issei's sleep, the dresser the boy had pulled to cover the hole between the two rooms serving as a poor sound isolator. "Say, how'd he make the hole? The piece of wall just vaporized."

"I don't know… Phoenix fire perhaps? I didn't see any fire though…" Rias shook her head. "That's not important now."

"True, although he could have made a bigger hole." Akeno's mirth was practically uncontrollable.

"Akenoo…." Rias moaned in embarrassment while covering the girl's mouth with her hands. "I don't want to hear it…"

She pulled her hands away from her mouth when Akeno licked them. "Hey! Unfair! Gross!"

"Beep, Beep, Beep!" Akeno let out the beeps of a reversing truck, causing Rias to flop over on the bed.

"I hate everything."

"Ara ara…" Akeno chuckled while she crawled over to the red-head's side of the bed and leaned over her. "Well then, should we go and help Issei unwind?"

Rias froze. "Us?"

"Ufufu, of course. If Issei thinks we have a thing going, then he'd just toss you back here if you went alone." Akeno covered her mouth with her sleeve. "And if he's tenser than a drawn bow, I'd hate to know what happened if he went back to Kuoh and the kendo club girls tried to clobber him over the head with their sticks. I don't think we could identify the bodies."

"Akeno, he's my husband, my duty, I don't want you to force yourself to…"

"Ara, I was planning on taking a spectator seat. Besides, you weren't planning on doing 'it' with him tonight, right?" Akeno's expression turned serious. "At least if he had the sense to listen to you anyway. And if he doesn't, I'll be there to remind him. This new Issei seems to have way too much self-control in regards to those kinds of things. Which, honestly, makes it much worse."

"Worse?" Rias blinked.

"Well, the new Issei doesn't seem to indulge himself, so unless he's turned asexual then he's just bottling it up and when it bursts, there's going to be a lot of property damage and traumatized janitors. That, and if you tease him too much when the lid is about to pop, he's not going to stop even if you ask him to. You can't just tell a volcano that today is a bad day to erupt, after all." Akeno burst into another round of giggles when she saw the look on Rias's face. "Ahaha! Rias-chan is so cute!"

"Akeno!" Rias seemed mortified.

"Ara, well then, miss bride, let's have our little escapade." Akeno went ahead and pulled her shrine maiden-outfit's top and skirt off, revealing that she was wearing fairly traditional underwear in the same theme as her garb, and pushed the clothes aside before crawling out of the bed and going to the hole in the wall to push the drawer blocking it away.

"A-Akeno, are you serious?" Rias choked out.

"Come now. If the worst comes to worst, I can offer my body to save you from doing something you aren't ready to do." Akeno rolled her eyes before crawling through the hole...

And getting stuck by the hips.

"Ara?"

Rias couldn't take it.

"Aha ahaha ha!"

.

.

Momonga felt strangely serene.

There was something strangely fulfilling from letting go of one's stress by just stopping thinking altogether.

Yes, breathe in with one body, wait for two to breathe in, breath out with one body, wait for two to breathe out. One time with a cosmetic body that served no real purpose beside being a cover persona, one time with the human-shaped blob of soft flesh to his left, one time with the human-shaped blob of soft flesh to his right. Both of whom had crawled into his bed and flopped over to sleep soon after he had started to 'sleep' and think about the situation with [Sacred Gears] in relation to world items. The latter of which had been forced into a halt due to his zen of non-thinking.

'Well then, this is surprising. But not unexpected.' Momonga finally broke his self-imposed zen of non-thinking, causing him to assign the names 'Akeno' and 'Rias' to the blobs of soft flesh flanking him. 'Figures that Rias would feel too strongly about her duty and would come back, and as I guessed, Akeno would come with her, unwilling to let her lover be taken by someone else. If this was a cheap eroge I guess Akeno would be trying to seduce me so I wouldn't touch Rias, or something like that? Well, I'm not getting any 'sleep' or proper thinking done if things are like this…'

Momonga felt resigned as he forced his cosmetic body out of hibernation, the sluggish feeling disappeared gradually as the flesh woke up. He glanced down and realized something else had woken up as well.

'Great… Well, at least that proves that the 'thing' works. I suppose the solution to this issue is simple, at least as far as this night is concerned. I'll have to plan a more lasting solution...' Momonga sighed as he carefully crawled out of the bed, pausing to move Rias's sleepily searching hand on top of Akeno's and flopping out of the bed as the two girls hugged in their sleep.

'I'll just commandeer Akeno's room…'

A soft moan escaping from one of the two girls behind Momonga caused him to hurry up in his escape.

.

.

Rias groaned as she felt a hand on her boob, instinctively hugging the soft body next to her closer. Smooth legs entwined each other and she felt one of the smooth legs graze her inner thighs, causing her to let out a soft moan and shudder while she ran her hands down the curvy back of her hug-pillow.

She opened her hazy blue eyes slowly… and saw Akeno doing very much the same, her face less than an inch from her and their lips nearly touching each other, both mouths slightly open for a moan that would escape both of them.

Except for both girls having frozen utterly still as they woke up at the same time.

Rias's mouth opened to form a 'O', while Akeno tilted her head.

"Ara?"

"A-Akeno?"

"Ufu… Issei-kun did a runner." Akeno giggled and flopped on her back, pulling her thigh from between Rias's thighs and causing the latter to blush up to her eyebrows. "Ara, what's this?"

Rias dove out of the bed while Akeno was busy looking at a wet patch on her thigh, the former acutely aware that she slept naked, and that the raven-haired girl's sleepy groping had caused a physical reaction in the redhead.

Rias stumbled towards her clothes which she had dropped beside the bed and quickly pulled her underwear and skirt on in an attempt to camouflage her current state, at least until she got into shower and found a change of clothes. In doing so she found that the hole between the two bedrooms had been fixed, and the table in the room had been cleaned of the tea set from the night before.

She discovered a note on the table, and turned white as the sheets she had been sleeping on as she eyed the contents.

'Rias

If you and Akeno-san pull off your 'switching trick' again, I'll personally sit by and watch as you and my adopted son consummate your union.

Please don't be late for breakfast.

-Lady Phenix'

The note was stamped with the Phenix family's official wax seal and signed by Lady Phenix with two witnesses, namely the matriarch's Queen and Bishop.

Rias turned the note over.

'Ps, Sirzechs-sama made it clear that there would be repercussions if I pulled you out of Kuoh. We've come to an agreement where you and Issei are allowed to return to the academy, but you will change your previous lodgings to an estate near the academy that I shall purchase. My previous point still stands.'

Rias groaned and covered her face with her hands. "I'm so screwed…"

"Ara?"

"...Yes. Literally."

Read, Vote, Review