Chapter - 55

Ravel was just about to snap at Kuisha for fretting for the billionth time when Sairaorg poked his head through the library doors.

"Saiarorg!" the older blonde instantly brightened, rushing across the library and hovering around her King like an orbiting moon. The Queen was so obviously in love with the man that it reminded Ravel of her own distinct lack of a love life.

Slamming her book shut with a grumble, the Phenex girl shoved it back into one of the bookshelves before stalking on over to the Bael heir. "About time you got back." Ravel complained stridently.

The rest of Sairaorg's peerage had been sent elsewhere hours ago – it wasn't good to have a bunch of them gathered around if they didn't want the attention.

Which had left Ravel with the increasingly worried Abbadon girl. The Queen was smart enough, but she'd become increasingly intolerable the more worked up she got.

"I was just about to tie this one up and…" Trailing off at the utterly serious expression on the dark-haired devil's face, Ravel swallowed back a sudden frisson of fear. "Where's Naruto? She demanded, mind racing. Had he been captured? Did someone or something give him away? Had the redhead somehow been killed?

"Well, he's… it's probably best if you come see for yourself." Sairaorg muttered, opening the door wider and standing stiffly. "Kuisha, you head on home. I'll just be here for a bit."

"But-"

"Now."

The two nobles watched as Kuisha glumly teleported away.

Tension thick enough to be cut with a knife built as Sairaorg grimly led Ravel through the maze of corridors in the Gremory estate. The mansion seemed deserted, what with most of the older devils gone out to direct the war effort, and the isolation did nothing to calm Ravel's worry.

"Can you just tell me?" Ravel growled when the stress became unbearable.

Sairaorg shook his head slowly. "It's best if you just see it for yourself. We succeeded, but he did all the killing himself. And it got to him."

Exhaling slowly, Ravel considered the implications of that revelation. Digging back through her memories, she tried to piece together the few snippets of psychology she had bothered to study. The study of the human mind had some similarities, but they were a different species from devils.

Like all of their kind, Naruto had been raised to kill. But the Gremory clan seemed closer to humans than many other devil clans, so her fiancé was likely strangling himself with guilt over what he'd done. She just hoped she wouldn't be walking in to see him having a psychotic break.

"This is where I leave you." Sairaorg stopped in front of a door halfway down one of the hallways. "I couldn't get through to him, but maybe you'll have a better shot at it." He offered uncertainly, moving aside. "Good luck."

Ravel straightened her back and nodded before plodding on into the room. It was one of many bedrooms scattered about the enormous mansion, clean and kept in order by a legion of maids. Swiftly she scanned the room, only to find it empty.

Hiss.

The blonde gazed nervously at a small door in the opposite corner of the room. She could hear the faint sound of running water, which meant Naruto was in the shower. Her fiancé was in the shower, steam wreathing his naked form. Maybe he was even running a bar of soap over the young but muscled planes of his stomach.

Heat suffused the Bishop's face. Bad Ravel.

It was not the time to be exploring perverse thoughts. The Gremory heir wasn't in the shower wet and ready for a romp. He was depressed at having murdered a handful of humans. It was more likely he was drowning himself in the tub.

Her face went pale, and Ravel lurched across the bedroom to hover anxiously in front of the white painted door. Pressing a hand against the surface, the blonde gently pushed at it and let the slab of wood swing inward a few inches. "Naruto?"

After a long beat, her fiance's voice echoed through the marble washroom. "Hey, spitfire." The was so much agonized defeat in his tone that before she could stop herself she was slipping into the fog filled bathroom.

Ignoring the wet heat, she cautiously crossed over until she was standing next to the shower stall. Carefully facing away from the curtain, the Bishop mustered up her courage before stuttering out a greeting. "H-hey. I heard you weren't doing the greatest."

The blood rushing into her head was going to make her faint. She knew it. Ravel was going to hit the ground and end up making a complete and utter fool of herself like a ditzy bimbo out of one of Rias' anime.

Naruto's drew in a long breath before giving a bitter chuckle. "So they tell me."

Ravel folded her arms over her chest, gripping so tightly to her biceps that her nails began to dig through the pink satin of her dress. "I won't pretend to know how you feel." she chewed the inside of her cheek. "But I do know you did the right thing."

"Bullshit."

Clenching her jaw so tightly she was surprised she didn't crack a tooth, Ravel steeled herself. Then she spun around on her heel, one manicured hand coming out to catch the shower curtain and tear the sheet of cloth right off its bar.

Well, he wasn't naked.

Droplets of water began to almost instantly sprinkle over her face and chest, but Ravel ignored it.

Naruto was sitting with his knees up to his chest on the bottom of the tub. The shower rained down on the redhead, soaking his red strands until they were as dark as the blood she could see slowly rinsing out of his blue t-shirt and running down the drain.

Brushing off the way Naruto gave her a wide-eyed look of shock, Ravel stepped into the spray and knelt in front of him so she could meet him eye to eye. Her airy prepared curls quickly came undone as her blonde hair was soaked through, pouring down her back in a tumbled mess.

At least her dress was pink and thick rather than white or thin. She hadn't come to give Naruto a show. This time anyway.

"Listen to me." She ordered, bringing her hands up to cup over Naruto's pale cheeks. The sharp points of her thumbnails were scant millimeters away from prodding into the redhead's eyelids, but neither devil paid any mind to them. "There are millions of lives depending on you. Will you have to do things that you don't want to do? Things that you hate? Yes. And I know you'll do them, because I know you, Naruto. You're a good man, and you'd never turn your back on this country when it needs you."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Hmm, let's see." The Bishop decided to sprinkle her example with the truth. "Did you know that because of our healing ability, the Phenex clan prefers corporal punishment? Ever since I was a little girl, if I misbehave my grandfather would beat me until he broke a bone or two."

"What?" Naruto roared, shooting to his feet like a rocket, dragging the blonde up with him. "That fucking bastard! I'll pull his brain out through his fucking asshole! I'll break every god damn bone in his body and see how he likes it!"

Soft laughter burst from Ravel's mouth, and she let her hands drop from her fiance's face to rest on his shoulders. "It's because of that. I know you're a good man, because if I say something like that you instantly forget about your own problems in favour of mine. You are always putting other people before yourself. How could someone like that ever be a bad person?"

Naruto's jaw dropped open as he took in Ravel's impish smile. "But that – but you – huh?" Shaking the frazzled shock from his brain, he glared at the 'trick' before letting his expression soften into a tired grin. "You're a real bitch, you know that?"

"Are you just figuring this out now? Come on, boy. Keep up."

"That was a pretty dirty thing to lie about, you have to admit."

"Well, it wasn't that much of a lie. Whoopsie…"

"Excuse me?"

*

"When exactly did I agree to this?"

"Probably around the time you told Koneko-chan the quickest way to improve was fear of pain, and began to throw your Chidori Senbon at her to get her to move quicker?"

"…Shit."

Akeno winked with sense of sadistic amusement. Then she called up twin glowing yellow runic circles and began to launch volleys of golden lightning at Sasuke. "Less dodging and more casting, Sasu-chi." The Queen sing-songed, floating after the Uchiha's dodging figure and throwing more bolts of electricity at him.

Ducking under a zigzagging crackle of sorcery, Sasuke gave a huff of annoyance and glared at Rias. Truthfully he wasn't enough of a hypocrite to get upset of her dishing out the same tactics he'd used during the few kenjutsu lessons he'd been able to give her before their styles had to diverge, but that didn't make it any more enjoyable.

Rias only favoured her Pawn with an apologetic shrug. "Don't make me come over there. Dodge less or I'll have to help Akeno throw more at you."

Grunting at the warning, Sasuke skid to a stop in the dirt and turned to face Akeno. Dark eyes glittered with resolve as the Uchiha's focus went inward. Deeper, to the flow of supernatural energy running through his demonic flesh. Deeper, to the creative emotional sea that he had unwillingly nurtured since being reborn in Gehenna.

It was not, in the end, that he was incapable of wielding fire. There were very general spells that were commonly taught to all devils, and the ability to throw up a circle glyph and use it to convert magic to a burst of flame or water wasn't overly difficult. The hard part came in converting that very basic foundation into something more powerful and unique. The Chidori itself was powerful because it omitted the constraints of runes and relied only on raw electrical magic folded on itself over and over.

Akeno's elemental magic was so ferocious because she'd bred the devil enchantment with the Shinto hexes that her mother had passed down to her. When the half-fallen-angel was in earnest – rather than just trying to give Sasuke a bit of a sting – her attacks were ten times more forceful than the weak empty flames Sasuke was able to throw back by relying on 'common magic'.

Amber lightning flashed by Sasuke's cheek, almost caressing the skin as it left a stinging welt along the pale flesh of the Uchiha's face. He paid it no mind, circling round and round the course of his thoughts. As long as he stayed still, Akeno's aim would be more than good enough to keep the spells painful but nondamaging.

"Why did you stop?" the Queen questioned, letting a careful lash of her magic flow into the muscle of Sasuke's thigh. Under her stare her friend's leg twitched at the current, but stayed strong and unmoving. "Did you give up? Or maybe…" she lifted a hand to her cheek and gave a slow sigh. "Maybe you decided you're a good little masochist?"

No reply.

Sasuke's black orbs remained silent and sharp as a viper as he weighed the Thunder Priestess. Every pulse of his heart seemed slower, expression going colder and more focused. "Don't stop." he ordered dully, making the faces of the girls grow tighter with concern.

When Sasuke had trained under Orochimaru, one lesson that had been hammered into him time and again was the importance of meditation. The rebel scientist had waxed on and on about the importance of clearing the mind to devote all energy to the pursuit of knowledge. If the mind was as still and sharp edged as a shard of ice, it would pierce the fog of ignorance through the power of reasoning.

The Uchiha had never taken to it like his instructor had. Orochimaru could fall into meditation anywhere at anytime. The sennin could look into the heartbeat of a candle, fall into the wash of chatter in a crowd, give up himself to the flow of the wind. Compared to the scientist, Sasuke had been a fidgeting child, unable to stop focusing on the thirst for vengeance in the quiet moments when left alone with his thoughts.

There were only two ways to meditate Sasuke had ever mastered. The first was standing beneath the crash of a waterfall. Beauty and force combined were able to beat some sensation of serenity into the Uchiha's mind.

The second was what a sadistically amused Orochimaru had called 'the obliterator'. Unrelenting, unadulterated pain. The gleaming edge of agony sliced through the fog of extraneous thought, forcing the body to release a cocktail of hormones in the instinct to fight or flee. Everything was forced back to one purpose, the mind seeking truth like an unerring compass.

It was the second method of meditation Sasuke turned to now, letting the strikes of an increasingly frazzled Akeno roll across the flesh of his body. Lightning was much flashier compared to the venom Orochimaru had preferred, but it did the job. "Don't stop." He demanded again, sinking into the pain.

Everything coalesced into a single crystal purpose: fire.

The electricity of the Chidori was in a way a cold flame. When he had been a shinobi, that similarity between the Katon of his youth and the Raiton of his adolescence had seemed to almost mimic Sasuke himself. Hot fire and cold lightning both twisted unceasingly, looking for outlets to flow through and into the universe.

That was the way of energy.

When lightning magic moved, it did so with relentless icy intent. It ran from his heart to his hand, and out into the air in a flickering storm that sought the way of least resistance. Shaping the Chidori was all about introducing resistance, providing walls shaped of magic that would either contain the electricity outright or direct it.

Fire didn't seek the shortest and most efficient route. Fire burned. It fed on itself and everything around it, raging as it required a constant stream of fuel to survive. The mere existence of a path to travel along was not enough, that path had to be littered with a trail of sacrifices to destroy.

If strong lightning magic required leashing all passions into a common purpose and driving on unerringly towards the end, strong fire magic required freeing all passions and letting them seek what they would. Lightning was a sorcery of the mind. Fire was an enchantment of the heart.

Devils were creatures of passion.

Give in.

Sasuke drew a deep breath, riding the slow inflation of his lungs. Dark eyes fell half lidded, tracking from one devil girl to the other. "Stop worrying." He told them, stepping forward as the last feeble trickle of Akeno's spells cut out entirely.

"I know what I'm doing." The Uchiha informed Rias before turning to a frowning Akeno and letting off a nostalgic chuckle. "You look like my mother."

"What?" the Thunder Priestess blinked in confusion as Sasuke drew nearer.

"She had a similar look when she was worried." Sasuke stopped in front of the befuddled Queen, lifting up his hand to poke her between the eyebrows. "Just like you, she'd get all scrunched up right there. But she never wore her hair like you."

Silence hung as the two women gaped at his sudden flight of fancy.

Shrugging, Sasuke reached up and snapped the hair tie that bound Akeno's midnight tresses up into a ponytail. "The hair is longer, but otherwise you could be her twin." He sighed wistfully, drawing back.

"You don't need to get so worked up." He smirked at Rias when the Ruin Princess made an abortive motion to reach for his forehead. "It didn't scatter my brain. I'm just following the advice you gave me."

"What advice?"

"'Devils are creatures of emotion'. That's what you told me. Anger, hate, love, lust – 'the greater the strength of your desires, the greater your spells with become'." Dropping his gaze to give a contemplative stare to the empty palm of his hand, Sasuke reached.

He reached for the quiet happiness he gained from teasing Koneko and Yuuto. He reached for the utter rage he'd felt when the tengu struck Rias down. He reached for the despair he'd acknowledged when he had decided he couldn't stand by Naruto's side this time. He reached for the shame and desire he'd had, all those months ago in the bath.

Sasuke reached for his magic.

And his magic reached back.

"Koujin".

Fire crackled into existence, filling the cup of his right hand and glowing a mingled yellow and red. Sasuke needed no runic structure to rely on or tool as a crutch.

The only thing he needed was passion.