Koneko
(Tuesday, May 15th)
The whole peerage with one obvious exception sat or stood around the club room, waiting. We arrived back in Kuoh yesterday just after noon, leaving everyone the latter half of the day to unwind. Earlier this morning, Uzumaki-kun had shown up before classes to express his confidence in us– ("Who needs luck? You guys will win for sure, believe it!")– and then left to get to our homeroom before the bell. Since this wasn't an officially sanctioned match, spectators other than people from either family or close allies of the families weren't allowed, so he decided that it was pointless to take another day off when he could get back into the swing of school.
After almost two weeks of constant training and activity, it should have been refreshing to be sitting in the club with everyone again, but that wasn't the case. Out of everyone in the room, Rias-senpai was the only one who could be considered at ease while we waited for the start of the match, despite being the one most affected by its outcome.
I was sitting still, but I couldn't help the agitated flicking of my tail. While I could sometimes actively control it when I was calm, it usually moved almost entirely by instinct or reflex, like the equivalent of breathing or coughing.
While Kiba's calm expression seemed more relaxed, it was just his usual poker face he wore out of habit. He wasn't moving much from his standing position near Buchou's desk, but the movements he did make were sharper, much more deliberate than usual.
Akeno sat to the side with closed eyes and a resigned expression on her face, while Asia had her features scrunched up in an earnestly determined expression that just made her look cute instead of serious.
Hyoudou on the other hand, was clenching his fingers and flexing his arms and legs, trying to get used to his new upgrade.
Buchou was currently sitting at her desk, leaning on it with her chin propped up by a palm, while she watched the perv with a small smile.
"How do you feel?" She asked him.
"Like I could easily punch that jackasses face in now!" He replied with heated determination. I idly wondered if he was talking about the fried chicken, or Naruto-sensei. After the "rough" training he was put through, either choice would be in character for him. "It's kinda crazy, to be honest. I've never felt better and stronger in my life."
After Rias reincarnated him, she'd had to seal away most of the power that he'd gotten from the eight [Pawn] pieces she'd used.
Turns out, when your physical condition and natural potential can seriously be described as "non-zero", having the full power of eight Evil Pieces flowing through you was a no-go when it came to the whole "not exploding" thing.
With the training he'd gone through though, she was able to safely undo his seal a little bit, bringing his power to about three times what it was previously. This didn't really scale linearly to his physical stats, so he didn't suddenly become stronger than his previous self Boosted once, but it was close, and without any of the strain his Gear would have put on his body.
It wasn't long before a short series of quick knocks on the door rang out, and it opened to reveal Sona-kaichou and Tsubaki.
"Sona, Tsubaki," Rias smiled as the two walked in. "As good as it is to see you two right now, don't you have class? Is Miss Student-council President actually skipping?" She said it with feigned shock.
"Don't be a fool." Sona just scoffed. "As if I would let you leave for something like this without coming to see you first. What kind of friend do you take me for?"
Tsubaki stepped forward. "Sona-sama has been formally excused from class until the lunch period by school leadership, as she has multiple important meetings with various club heads to attend to."
Buchou got a sly look. "Oh? I wonder who exactly excused her?"
Tsubaki smiled wryly at the correct implication. "The student council did."
Rias giggled while Sona tried in vain to keep the flush from ruining her poker face, embarrassed at getting caught abusing her position's unusual power over the school. 'Sold out by her fuku-kaichou, no less.'
"You mentioned multiple meetings," Rias pointed out curiously. "Did you really set up other meetings just to excuse seeing me?"
"Ahem," Sona recovered and coughed into her fist. "No, actually. The president of the Computer Club had actually requested a meeting regarding the conduct of one of his clubs newest members, and potential disciplinary actions. Apparently, the student in question applied to join, and hasn't been back in the two weeks since, all without a word to the club's leader or supervisor ahead of time," she said in an airy tone.
I fought back the urge to react in amusement, but Kaichou looked me dead in the eye anyway
"I'm sure you're familiar with the student in question," she said dryly, looking at me knowingly. "While the school excused his absences at Rias' behest, please inform Uzumaki-san that in the future, if he should be unable to make it to his club for a significant period of time, to be sure he informs his club leaders of that fact as soon as he is able to."
"Mm." I nodded. "Can do."
"Anyway, it's almost time, and I have another meeting to get to, so I shall leave you all to it." Sona nodded to all of us, sweeping her serious eyes across the room. "Good luck Rias, everyone."
As we all either said our goodbyes or waved, Tsubaki led the way, holding the door open for her master. Sona paused in the doorway for a moment, glancing back over the rim of her glasses with one pinkish-purple eye as she was leaving.
"I fully expect you to regale me of your victory later, Rias. Until then."
With that, they shut the door behind them with just seven minutes until the clock hit 10 AM.
Less than five minutes after they left and before the hour turned, our proctor– Grayfia– appeared in the open space of the room with the signature red glow of the Gremory sigil.
My chakra began to swirl faster and faster, racing beneath my skin in anticipation.
It was almost time.
The transition from Kuoh to the Game Field was completely seamless. Way more than usual teleports were, for the simple fact that it didn't even look like we'd changed locations at all, except for maybe being a little dimmer. Just as Rias-senpai had asked for, the arena was modeled after Kuoh academy.
Everything was the same, from the furniture, to the curtains, to even the trees that I could see outside through the windows. I stared at the leaves swaying in an artificial breeze.
The only real difference was the ominous shimmering green of the artificial sky, the barrier that contained this space in the Dimensional Gap.
'... Freaky.'
Despite already knowing how accurate and detailed Ajuka and the technicians designed the arena space to be from watching official matches on DeviTube, experiencing it in person for the first time was all kinds of disorienting. It almost felt like we were getting ready to storm the school for real.
"Both peerages are now in place," Grayfia announced, getting our attention. "There will be a five-minute countdown beginning shortly, after which I will announce the start of the match as the standing referee. You may use this time to prepare and plan as you wish, so long as you remain within the borders of your designated base until the match begins." She bowed, before disappearing in a flash of red before anyone else could speak.
There was a moment of quiet, before our [King] broke the silence as she walked over to her replica-desk.
"Let's go over the plan once more, while we have the time." She summoned a rolled-up poster and unfurled it over the surface as we gathered around, revealing a familiar diagram of the school grounds that she'd shown us yesterday. We'd spent that last half-day at the villa discussing tactics as a team and going over the files on Riser's peerage.
"With our base being the old school building and theirs being the new one, we have a couple of both major advantages and minor disadvantages in terms of territory. First, the forest." She swept her hand across the area surrounding the space marked as our base. "It leaves us plenty of cover to make use of for trapping and ambushing any attempts from them to get their [Pawn]s here for a Promotion, while flying over it would make them too easy of a target for me or Akeno. This will make it easy for us to use hit and run tactics to thin their numbers if they try to make a push. The downside is that their combatants outnumber ours almost three to one. If they decide to rush us all out as a full peerage, there's pretty much no way we can stop them all."
She pointed to Kiba.
"In that case, if that happens, it will be your job, along with Akeno, to burn down the forest as fast as possible, forcing them to take to the air where Akeno and I can then finish them off."
Kiba nodded. "Right."
"Of course, Riser is unlikely to take that course of action, so we probably don't have to worry about that." She gave a half-shrug, before continuing. "Next, their base is larger than ours, and has two other buildings connected to it that can be snuck through as well. That means they have a larger area they need to keep an eye on if they want to keep Ise-kun from Promoting, but it also doesn't help us much, both because they have greater numbers, and because Riser is most likely going to sit back and wait for us there, like he has in his other matches." Rias's red hair swayed as she shook her head. "No, it wouldn't be a good idea to push that far without all of us ready just for one promotion, and his number advantage should already be shifted in our favor by the point we'd be ready for that anyway."
"With the fields being too open to us attacking from the woods on both sides, and the training hall being too far from their base compared to ours, his sister Ravel is most likely going to send a group around through the forest on the tennis court's side to flank, while another group focuses on securing the gymnasium," Akeno suggested a potential scenario.
Rias nodded. "And while the training hall is too far from them to make use of before we secure it, it would make a decent backup-staging ground for us if we fail to secure the gym first. Something that Ravel will understand, meaning she will likely have someone capable of ranged magic watching it carefully from their territory on the other side of the grass."
"Yubelluna, then," Akeno stated, eyes closed in thought. "It would keep her central enough to respond to any area that needs her assistance quickly, without having to tie up more resources watching a potential weak point."
"Most likely." Rias nodded again in agreement. "In more than half of his matches, her and Riser were the last two to take to the field, and always to either assist or clean up after the rest of their peerage. They aren't very strong as a whole, with only her and the Phenex siblings being exceptionally powerful on their own."
I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
"Duh. Most of them are just a harem that sometimes fights." I recalled what Riser said back during that meeting in the club room, about his peerage crushing us with numbers and experience.
'What a joke.'
Sure, they had more experience in a Rating Game setting than us… but Rias and Akeno did their research. We've seen the files, we've seen the matches, and they were barely more than somewhat practiced amateurs.
Even each of the Fallen from three weeks ago could probably beat any single one of the chaff one-on-one with only a few exceptions.
His nekomata twins were wary of me when I was just barely running on fumes after training, and before we got our two new members, I was the weakest link in our peerage.
Even now that I'm catching up to Kiba in speed and skill, he still beats me more often than not, because his Sacred Gear is bullshit enough to let him basically ignore my durability with the right swords. His versatility is a bigger advantage against me than my extreme durability and strength is against him.
"While that's true to a degree, and something we'll use against them, it's better to overestimate them than to underestimate them," Rias warned, blue eyes staring at me seriously enough that my ears flattened a little. "Don't forget, under Ravel Phenex's strategic direction, their peerage has contended well against peerages decades more experienced than them, even before Yubelluna or Riser entered the battle. They may all be weaker than us individually, but they work best as a team."
I nodded silently, sufficiently chided.
[Ding]
A sound almost like a train station intercom rang out as if it was coming from all around us at once, getting my ears to perk back up in a swivel. Most of us glanced around reflexively to look for a source that we wouldn't find. Magic tended to be like that.
["The match will begin in five minutes."]
The announcement was made in Grayfia's voice, but with a lot more energy than her usual way of speaking, so it ended up sounding like she was a professional game caster. Or maybe like those recorded messages telling train passengers the doors would be closing soon full of artificial energy.
I looked at my [King] with raised eyebrows, and she just shrugged, already knowing what was going through my head. "She likes watching rating games with Millicas when she's off duty. He liked the way the announcers spoke as a child, so she practiced speaking like that to amuse him."
'Huh.'
Sometimes it slipped my mind that Grayfia was also a mother. Even when she'd helped take care of us as kids, she almost always stayed in her strict maid persona.
"Anyway, we only have a couple minutes left," Rias-senpai shook her head. "Let's hurry up and finish going over our plan…"
I stepped out of the woods , stopping just a couple meters away from the gymnasium's rear exit, my support following relatively closely behind, but far enough to remain hidden. I closed my eyes and focused on my other two primary senses.
I sniffed once, then twice just to be sure. Three distinct scents, with one of them being recognizable enough just based on how unique it was. The smell of oily lubricant, the type used to maintain moving parts in machinery, not blades.
'Ile and Nel.' The two chainsaw twins for sure, identical in every way except for the side they tied their green ponytails.
"–following Ravel-sama's orders, but I wish we could go out and–" My ears twitched in their slow scanning and locked on to the area I'd heard the snippet, recognizing the girl's voice.
'Mira.' The weakling with the staff who I stopped from knocking out Hyoudou.
"Let it go, Mira. Ravel-sama already sent Shuriya, Burent, and Marion out, so it's up to us to hold the line while they attack!"
We weren't able to get ahold of clear audio from their whole peerage, so I didn't recognize the voice of the determined girl, but she potentially gave me good info. At least three of their [Pawn]s were sent into the forest, while there were up to four members inside the gym, with three of them also being [Pawn]s.
"Give it a rest Bun-bun!" "Yeah, aren't you the same?" "All of us want to get some action-" "-but that doesn't mean we'll go against Ravel-sama's plans!"
'"Bun-bun"? Probably Xuelan then, that Chun-Li rip-off.'
That also confirmed the twins were together, not that I expected anything different. Now we knew what at least half of their members were up to, not even including the Phenex siblings. Riser usually let his peerage do the work, and Ravel never involved herself in the fighting itself.
I opened my eyes.
Three [Pawn]s and a [Rook].
Xuelan was probably the strongest of their peerage other than the obvious three, sitting just above the [Knight] Karlamine. There wasn't any public info on the Chinese girl from before she became a Devil, but it wouldn't surprise me if she spent her life learning her kung fu in a formal setting with other students, instead of with a dedicated master that had been in actual battle. She fought too smoothly, her technique flawless, but almost predictable in the way she moved.
'Easy.'
The chainsaws were the biggest danger to me of the group. Xuelan hit harder and faster than an average [Rook, and was skilled in her martial arts… but I was even more so than her now, even without actively using chakra. The chainsaws, on the other hand, would actually be able to cut through my durability if they hit.
I tapped the device in my human form's ear, a mundane radio earpiece.
"Three [Pawn]s approaching from the left side. Shuriya, Burent, Marion."
"-nderstood, I'll -andle them." Kiba's voice crackled slightly with the trees obstructing the signal, dropping a couple sounds, but the woods were thin enough that he came through clear enough.
"I'm starting now," I announced for everyone else listening. "Gonna make some noise."
"Ufufu, try not to have too much fun~"
"Kick their asses!"
"Good luck Koneko-san!"
"Good luck Koneko-san!"
Asia's encouraging voice reached my ears twice, playing from the earpiece on a split second delay.
I didn't respond, walking forward a couple steps until I was a few arm-lengths away from the building. My chakra strained against my grip as it raged beneath my skin, spinning faster and faster until it threatened to escape my control.
I chambered my leg with a little twisting step forward, and let loose, unleashing the full force of my power in a snap with a spinning back kick.
A shockwave of light and noise and wind blasted out with the impact of my heel, blowing back both my hair and my skirt while the sounds of crashing rock and twisting metal filled my ears.
Almost the entire concrete wall and parts of the roof shattered inwards and upwards at speed, with the visible explosion of bluish-white chakra extending just barely above the building as the built up energy rushed out of me.
I held the pose for a moment, leg extended upwards as I listened for an announcement of some kind, but none came. Just the sound of rock and gravel from the roof continuing to crumble now that an entire outer wall-worth of structural support was very suddenly missing. That, and the confused shouts from the girls inside.
I frowned slightly, lowering my foot and letting my skirt fall back into place before beginning to step through the dust and debris towards the sounds of coughing.
'Not even Mira?' I complained in my head as I stepped into the ruined gym. "Nn. Annoying."
Just causing a big enough distraction to draw everyone's attention was part of the plan anyway, but I used a pretty big chunk of my chakra to do that as visibly and suddenly as I needed to. It would have been really convenient if even one of my opponents had gone down in the process.
'Oh well.' I'd just have to converse my energy just a little bit more carefully from now on, until the final battle. 'I'll just pound them with my fists then.' I was going to do that already anyway, but now I had decided I wasn't going to get fancy with it.
No chakra-sticking or enhanced strikes unnecessarily, no wasting chakra to deliberately boost my speed or tank hits, I'll just outclass them with my passive physical stats until I'm ready to finish them.
I had to be quick about it though, for the plan to have the best chance of success.
I hopped up onto the mostly destroyed stage and scanned the dust filled gymnasium, my head turning as I swept the large open room with my eyes. Most of the rubble ended up near the back of the room (or was that technically the front?) and the sides, piles of busted concrete mixed with wood and rebar.
"Mira!" x2
The two green-haired girls that yelled out their friend's name were standing in defensive stances next to each other in the middle of the open area, with their blue chainsaws already spinning, and four large, roughly-split chunks of stone sitting far behind them, at the ends of trails of torn up flooring. Ile and Nel's faces were twisted in a mixture of worry and anger.
A hacking cough drew my attention to the blue-haired staff user, lying on her side a few meters away, and struggling to pull her wounded body out from under another chunk of the building that was pinning her legs. She was covered in little cuts and bruises that were visible through torn clothes, her staff lying broken in two pieces nearby.
"Oh, so I did get one of you." I nodded once in satisfaction. "You were just too stubborn to Retire yet."
"Khuh– Y-you!" She grimaced. I think she was trying to glare at me.
I hopped down to the floor then took a step towards the downed girl, and the twins charged forward, each one rushing to either side to pincer attack me. I couldn't remember which one was which, but it didn't really matter because they fought the exact same way as each other anyway. I had a moment before they reached me, so I idly kicked a small piece of rock near my foot.
It smashed into Mira's forehead, and she disappeared in the flash of a teleport.
["One of Riser-sama's Pawn's, Retired."]
"You bitch!" "Don't ignore us-"
"-or we'll tear you apart!" x2
They swung their chainsaws at me from either side, the one on my right slightly delayed. I sidestepped the diagonal swipe coming from the left in a way that let me duck under the right one and slip between them towards the center-court, just in time for the one on the left to come back around from below, as the girl wielding the power tool spun around with her momentum from the first miss. For a dozen seconds or so, they chained their attacks perfectly in sync to try keeping me stuck in their pace without a moment to think, forcing me to either move or get 'torn apart' like they said they would.
The issue was that they couldn't hit me. They were just too slow, and their weapons too unwieldy too. As good as the two were at making them work, they should have just stuck with machetes or something instead of chainsaws.
The twins were agile and well coordinated for sure, but I was faster, smaller, more agile, and more experienced fighting people (Naruto-sensei) who attacked from weird angles. Even as they pushed me towards the left-side wall, I had plenty of time to think and position myself for my next few dodges.
The twins' eyes lit up as they directed my retreat. A few meters away from the wall, the back of my heel caught on one of the chunks of rubble as one of my dodges had me backpedaling, and I tipped over, falling backwards.
"Now!" They shouted together with matching smirks as they raised their weapons for a finisher.
"Hahh!"Xuelan burst out of the debris behind me in a kick, a flaming heel rushing down towards me.
'Finally.'
My fall stopped as I stuck the sole of my foot to the floor, and used my core muscles to launch myself forward, ducking into the surprised twins' guards as the other [Rook]'s foot crashed into the ground. The two [Pawn]s' eyes bulged out and spittle flew from their gasping mouths when my fists crashed into their guts, folding them over like laundry. With planted feet and flexing muscle, I followed through, throwing them off of my fists to bounce across the gymnasium once.
They were teleported out an instant before they would have crashed into the wall.
["Two of Riser-sama's Pawns, Retired."]
"Hyah!"
I spun as she shouted, swinging a leg around in a high kick that batted Xuelan's dropkick aside. She recovered mid-air, twisting to swing her other leg out in a decapitating head kick.
"Eh-?!" I caught it on my forearm with just a wince and ignored the heat of her fire burning my skin, much to her shock, and twisted my wrist to clamp my hand around her ankle before turning and running, dragging her helplessly behind me as she desperately tried to regain her bearings and break my grip. I didn't give her the moment she needed, whipping around in a single spin and throwing her with all my strength at the right-side wall. Her back hit it with a crashing sound as cracks spread through the surface and she coughed out a gasp, but before gravity could pull her down, my foot crashed into her center mass, launching her fully through the wall and onto the field outside with a boom.
I landed lightly next to the vending machine in a three-point crouch, before rising and walking deliberately slowly along through the trail of debris. There was a long furrow of torn up grass kicked up dirt to where Xuelan had finally stopped, in between the gym and the training hall, the [Rook] beginning to force herself up from all fours with a wince and an arm cradling her ribs.
"You're pretty strong," I called out in compliment to her. I already knew she was a bit stronger than average from watching her fights, but I didn't expect her to be as durable as she is.
"And you… strike very hard for your size," she returned it with a pause to catch her breath. "Fast, too. I pride myself on being much more agile than the average [Rook, but you are almost as quick as a [Knight]."
One of her buns came undone, the dirt-covered white cloth covering floating lightly down to the ground as her black hair fell to messily cover the right side of her face.
She straightened the rest of the way up and made to get into her stance as I slowly approached within a dozen meters, staring her down.
"A worthy opponent to push my limits against." She put her hands up with a determined smile, fingers lightly curled.
As she shifted, she froze suddenly, and I paused mid-step. One shoulder of her skimpy qipao slipped down, revealing that it had torn during her sudden introduction to the ground, and I suddenly had an eyeful of a very large, round, and soft-looking naked breast.
Huh.
To my shame, my first thought was 'Nice,' and my second was to mentally compare hers to Akeno's udders, and found the [Rook] lacking.
"Mm, pink. Nice." I gave her a thumbs up and an appreciative nod, "-But I've seen bigger. Eight and a half out of ten."
My third thought, courtesy of lessons with Naruto-sensei, was 'That might throw her off balance.'
Her arm shot up clamped around her chest as her face reddened in embarrassment, blinking at me in open-mouthed mortification.
She just barely managed to sidestep my punch with a yelp as I crossed the distance in that split second, and before she could retaliate, I spun into a roundhouse heel-kick that she backpedaled away from. I dashed towards her, but she warded me off with a series of flaming kicks and punches that carried enough force that I felt the air being pushed around. I could have just bulldozed through her guard, eating some damage to knock her out, but it was almost time.
I kept her on the backfoot without committing to any full on attacks, getting in too close for her comfort and forcing her to do her best to keep me at a distance where she could take advantage of her greater reach, while making my expression seem bored.
Xuelan's brows were furrowed in confusion the whole time, and I finally found my opportunity to act.
"Why are you holding ba-kuh!" She crossed her arms in front of herself just in time to block my punch as I finally decided to break through. With a meaty thud and the feel of bone cracking beneath my knuckles, I sent her flying across the grounds between the training hall and parking lot.
I carefully kept myself from giving anything away as I prepared, popping my knuckles and walking menacingly in her direction while keeping my back towards the main school building, senses peeled. A faint reptilian scent reached my nose, just a hint of something on the edges.
The fur on my ears and tail stiffened, and my instincts screamed at me.
I snapped my head around and up, looking right into Yubelluna's single visible purple eye as she hovered above the field with her wings stretched out, finally showing herself now that all her teammates were clear of me. She smirked and did one of those stupid high-society waves that was really just bending your fingers a little, her staff pointing directly at me all the while with a red magic circle spinning at the tip.
Then I exploded.