Disclaimer: All characters in this story are over 18. This is all fiction.
Chapter 57:
– Akeno –
Back on Earth…
The nurse's office on the second floor of the medical center wing of SIT.
Akeno stood with her arms folded under her large chest staring across the small room at Natasha Romanoff with the kind of focused intensity she normally reserved for stray devils who needed exterminating.
Beside her, Rias had taken up an almost identical posture, crimson hair spilling over one shoulder, blue eyes narrowed.
Jean Grey leaned against the small counter near the medicine cabinet.
And Emma Frost had claimed the only good chair in the room, perched on it like it was a throne, one long leg crossed over the other.
Four very angry, very beautiful young women, all currently aimed at the same target.
The target in question was sitting on the rolling stool in the middle of the room in her ridiculous tight white scrubs, the ones that hugged her ass and her chest in ways that no actual nurse would ever be allowed to wear.
Natasha Romanoff. The Black Widow. SHIELD's most notorious operative. Currently undercover as a campus medical professional named Natalie Rushman.
Also, more importantly, the last person to see Akeno's brother before he disappeared into a swirling rainbow dimensional portal twenty minutes outside of some dusty New Mexico town.
She is going to tell us where Blake is or I am going to electrocute her until she does!
"What," Akeno said, in a voice she had cultivated very carefully over the years to sound polite while promising violence, "the fuck happened?"
"I can answer that."
Every head in the room turned to Emma. The blonde uncrossed her legs, then crossed them the other way, her blue eyes already drifting in that focused, slightly unfocused way that Akeno had learned to recognize as Emma reading someone's surface thoughts.
Natasha frowned. "Frost. Please don't freely read my mind." The redhead's voice was tight. "I have a lot of secrets. And baggage. Things in there you really, really don't want to see."
Emma waved a hand without breaking concentration. "Darling, I have worse things in my own head," she said sweetly. "And it's too late. I already did it."
Natasha's jaw worked tightly hearing that.
Ufufu. I almost feel bad for her. Almost.
Emma turned away from the spy entirely and looked at Akeno, Rias, and Jean. Her expression had shifted into something harder, more thoughtful. "Blake might have ended up on Asgard," Emma said. "Or, possibly, in an entirely different dimension. Again."
"If he had been sent to Asgard," Jean added quietly from her spot at the counter, "he should have been able to portal himself back to us by now. It hasn't been long, but it's been long enough. He's not on Asgard. I don't think so at least…"
"So what does that mean?" Rias's voice climbed a half-octave, the worry under it bleeding through. "I don't... I'm still trying to keep up with all of this. He can travel to the ninja world any time he wants now, can't he? Isn't that what he proved when he brought Tsunade and Shizune back with him? So why hasn't he just…?"
"Because, darling." Emma's voice softened, just a fraction. "I am fairly certain that when he opens a portal to a dimension he hasn't been to before, his power goes on a kind of cooldown. He can return to a place he's been before more easily, but a brand new world appears to take significantly more out of him."
Akeno's stomach pulled tight. "How long?" she asked.
"I don't know exactly." Emma met her eyes. "Days. Possibly weeks. Assuming he's alright. And of course he is, because my man does not get killed that easily!"
My man, Akeno noted with a small, petty flicker of something hot in her chest. She says it so easily…
"Hopefully just days," Jean said softly. She'd uncrossed her arms and was pressing one hand flat to the counter, like she needed it for balance. "He'll come back…"
Akeno exhaled through her nose.
Rias's hand brushed hers, very lightly, just two fingers against the back of her wrist. A King's silent comfort to her Queen. Akeno didn't look at her, but she let her own fingers shift to catch them for half a second before letting go.
Then, very slowly, all four of them turned in unison and looked at Natasha.
The redhead lifted her chin. She did not look intimidated. She was Black Widow. It would take more than four glaring supernatural women to intimidate her.
"I didn't do anything to him. We were investigating a SHIELD anomaly in New Mexico. Blake came willingly. I literally cannot drag a man with eight wings and a divine bloodline through a magic portal against his will, Akeno, be reasonable," Natasha said.
"You took him on an unscheduled mission with no backup!" Rias said, voice clipped.
"I had backup. SHIELD was the backup. There were agents all over the place nearby! Coulson was there!"
"You took him on an unscheduled mission with no reliable backup," Emma corrected.
"And he's gone," Akeno cut in. Her voice cracked, just slightly, on the last word. She lifted her chin and pretended it hadn't.
Natasha pouted. Genuinely pouted, her full red lips pushing out in an expression that Akeno suspected she'd practiced in a mirror at some point in her life as a tool for getting marks to lower their guard. It probably worked devastatingly well on most men.
It was wasted in this room.
"It is not my fault," Natasha said. "It is not. I just wanted to take him on a mission. To clear his head. Because all of you girls have been putting too much stress and too much responsibility on him!"
There was a beat of silence.
Excuse me? "I'm sorry," Akeno said, very pleasantly, with a hint of static crackling between her fingers. "Did you just blame us for this?"
"I am about to blame all four of you for this very specifically, yes," Natasha said, and she was sitting up straight on her stool now. She lifted one hand and pointed two fingers at Jean and Emma first. "You two first of all!"
"Us?" Jean's eyes widened.
Emma arched one perfect eyebrow in disbelief.
"You two have been pushing him to be a hero. The specific hero you remember him being, from your past, or your future, or whatever weird timeline shit you two refuse to actually explain to anyone else in this room!"
Both of them flinched. Just barely. But Akeno saw it.
"Wearing the suit, patrolling the streets, partnering with Peter, becoming this Avenging Angel or Blood Angel or whatever the hell the internet has decided to call him this week. That is not what Blake wants. That is what the Blake from your past wanted, in your life, in a world that no longer exists. And you have been steering him toward it because, whether you'll admit it or not, you're trying to recreate the man you fell in love with. The version of him you remember. That version of Blake doesn't live in this timeline. He's a different boy now. He had different experiences."
Akeno watched as Emma Frost looked down at her lap and began very intently studying her own fingernails.
Jean's face had gone soft and stricken. "I... we didn't..." Jean started.
"You did." Natasha's voice was firm but not unkind. "I know you didn't mean it cruelly. I know you love him. But love doesn't excuse not seeing him. He likes fighting, Jean. He likes adventure. That boy—no, that man—is built for it, and he's spent his whole life being denied it until recently of course. But he is not some street-level neighborhood hero. That is not what fits him."
Jean's jaw trembled, just once. She bit her lower lip and turned her face slightly away, blinking hard. Emma reached out without looking and took Jean's hand.
But Natasha was not done. The two fingers swung, and now they were pointed across the room at Akeno. And at Rias. "And. You two."
Akeno's entire spine snapped straight. "What about us," she huffed, before she could stop herself, going on the defensive immediately because that was always the best place to fight from.
"Yeah," Rias added, crossing her arms tighter. "What about us?"
Natasha sighed. It was a long sigh. She braced both hands on her knees and looked at the two devils sitting across from her, and the look on her face was the look Akeno's mother had used to wear when she was about to deliver a hard truth that Akeno absolutely did not want to hear.
"You two," Natasha said, "are coming on too strong!"
Rias's mouth opened. "Huh?" Rias closed her mouth.
Akeno was in agreement with Rias' confusion.
"You are both incredibly sexy and horny young women," Natasha continued. "And even if Blake doesn't care about the taboo of fucking his sister, Akeno, is that all you want from him? A relationship based on lust?"
Akeno felt her face go hot.
"That said." Natasha lifted a finger. "...you cannot build a real relationship on that. Or, fine, you can, but only if you want a relationship that is entirely about lust and sex. Is that what you want?"
"I..." Akeno's mouth had gone dry. "I..."
"Because lust burns hot and fast and then it runs out of fuel. And then both of you are stuck with a lot of feelings on the other side of it that you didn't lay any groundwork for. You think the man is going to keep you around just because you can make him hard? Ladies, with all the love in my heart, every woman in this man's life can make him hard. That is not the bar you should be going for!"
Rias made a small wounded noise and crossed her arms tighter under her bust.
"You both need to do things," Natasha went on, voice softening just a little, "the way Tsunade and Shizune did it. The way Pepper did it. They went on dates with him. They cooked with him. They had real conversations with him. They learned what music he likes and what foods make him gag and what nightmares he wakes up from at three in the morning. They built something with him before they got him into bed—well, he and Pepper had a one night stand first—but they built a solid relationship afterwards. And that is why those women are so absolutely cemented in his life that nothing is ever going to shake them out of it."
Akeno opened her mouth. "We did that, though," she protested. Her own voice sounded younger than she wanted it to. "Natasha. I spent months with Blake before this school started. I lived in the same house with him. I cooked breakfast with him every day. I slept down the hall from him. I fought Kokabiel with him. We bonded. I know him. I know my Otouto!"
Natasha looked at her, and her green eyes were very, very kind, and that kindness was somehow worse than the lecture. "Akeno." She said her name gently. "Yes. You did all of that. But..." She paused, like she was choosing her words. "...but you did all of that with him as your brother. Not as your boyfriend. And that is not the same kind of relationship. The dynamics of the two are completely different. You haven't actually had any of those experiences with Blake yet from the perspective as a girlfriend, and not a sister..."
Akeno bit her lip. Oh. That is. That is unfortunately, catastrophically correct. She tried very hard not to look like she had just had an epiphany in the middle of the nurse's office at her stepfather's university while four other women watched. But. She is right. Damn her, she is right…
Beside her, Rias had gone very quiet, which for Rias meant she had been hit hard by something. Akeno glanced sideways at her best friend and saw that the crimson-haired Gremory princess was staring at the floor with a very thoughtful expression, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
Natasha groaned. She actually groaned. A low, frustrated, full-bodied groan, and reached up with one hand to pinch the bridge of her own nose. "Fuck," she muttered. "I am supposed to be a fake nurse."
Akeno blinked.
"I am supposed to be a fake nurse with a fake clipboard and a fake degree, sitting in this fake office, pretending to dispense fake medical advice to dumb co-eds. Fuck. Somehow, in the last forty minutes, I have become a relationship counselor to four supernaturally beautiful women with absurd amounts of trauma and baggage. How did this happen?"
Emma made a small, choked sound that might have been a laugh, behind her hand. Jean, despite the wet shine in her eyes, smiled faintly at the floor.
Akeno felt her own mouth twitch. Akeno took a slow breath. She let it out. She uncrossed her arms.
If my brother is going to be stuck in some other dimension for days, or weeks, then I have time. Time to think. Time to plan. Time to figure out how to do this properly when he comes home.
She glanced sideways at Rias. Her King met her eyes, and something passed between them, the way it always did, an entire silent conversation wrapped up in one shared look. Rias's mouth tugged, just slightly, into something that wasn't quite a smile but wasn't quite not.
We are going to have a very long talk, the two of us. We'll plan out some dates, we'll plan out some better relationship tactics… and then we'll fuck his brains out!
Akeno saw that across from them, it looked like Emma and Jean were having a psychic conversation. They were probably coming up with the same kind of idea!
– Blake –
"...You're a big fucker aren't you?" I muttered it out loud as I stared up at the absolutely massive black goliath looming on the other side of the cavern.
The thing was easily two stories tall. It had two beady red eyes set deep under a heavy brow, a mouth full of crooked yellow teeth, and big slab hands that ended in fingers each as thick as my forearm.
Okay. So this is floor seventeen. Maybe eighteen?
Honestly, I'd kind of lost track.
I'd been moving through the dungeon for hours at this point, and the depth had gotten away from me, mostly because nothing had actually given me trouble. Goblins fell over to chain lightning. Kobolds went down in twos and threes to thrown lightspears. There'd been a few weird hopping frog things on floor nine or ten that splashed acid when they died, which had been mildly annoying but not actually dangerous. A war shadow on floor twelve had thought it was scary right up until I burned a hole through its incorporeal chest and watched it dissolve into magic stone dust.
Stairs. More monsters. More Stairs. More monsters. I hadn't even broken a sweat. So somewhere between I should turn around and huh, I wonder what's down here, curiosity had won, the way it always did when I let it.
And now I was staring up at what was probablya boss.
Eina did mention something about this. Some giant that randomly spawns on seventeen. What was it? Goliath? Yeah, that sounds right. Pretty sure that was it. Except it was supposed to be Grey and this thing is Black.
The cavern itself was the kind of room that practically screamed boss arena. Massive. High ceilings. Maybe a hundred feet from floor to vault. The whole place felt designed, like the dungeon itself had carved out an amphitheater specifically so something this big had room to swing.
Which, hey. It worked for me. I had wings and I could finally use them.
The goliath's beady red eyes tracked the wings. Then it opened its mouth and roared.
I beat my wings once and shot up off the dungeon floor, leveling out about twenty feet up so I was roughly eye-to-eye with the big guy.
The goliath roared again and charged. For something his size, it was honestly impressive how much ground he covered. He came at me in three big thudding strides. He swung. His fist whistled past my left wing, missing by a foot, and the wind it kicked up shoved me sideways through the air.
I corrected, beat my wings once, and slipped away.
He followed up with the other fist. Then a backhand. Then a stomp once I got too close to the ground. Then he tried to bite me. The fucker opened his mouth wide and lunged headfirst, jaws snapping shut on empty air about six inches from where my leg had been a second earlier.
I had a grin on my face the whole time. I couldn't help it.
It wasn't that I was being arrogant, I told myself. It was just that this thing wasn't even close to as strong as a tailed beast. Wasn't even on the same level as a strong fallen angel like Kokabiel.
I let the goliath come in for another swing, ducked under his arm, and rolled in midair so I came up under his elbow. My right hand opened. A blue lightspear formed in my palm with golden lightning crackling and arcing along the surface like the spear was actively conducting a thunderstorm.
I dove.
The goliath was reaching for me with his right arm, fingers spread wide to grab. Big mistake. I came down inside his guard, drove my entire body weight behind the spear, and stabbed it clean through his bicep.
There was a flash. A wet KRZT-BOOM sound. The smell of burning meat. The goliath's whole right arm jerked and locked up as the holy lightning chewed through whatever passed for muscle and bone in his big stupid body, and a hole the size of a watermelon burned clean through his upper arm. Smoke curled up out of both ends.
He roared, but this time it wasn't anger, it was pain.
I shot back up out of his reach before he could counter-grab. Not that he could grab much with that arm anymore. It hung limp and smoking at his side.
But the big bastard wasn't done. He was, somehow, smarter than I'd given him credit for. With his right arm fucked, he reached down with his left, and his giant slab of a palm closed around a boulder I hadn't even noticed earlier, sitting near the cavern wall. The thing was the size of a compact car.
He hefted it. He spun. He threw!
I beat my wings hard and dove sideways. The boulder went past me close enough that I felt the air pressure on my cheek and my hair whipped sideways from the draft. It hit the cavern wall behind me with a sound like a small earthquake.
KA-WHUMP.
Stone shattered. Cracks spiderwebbed up the wall. Dust rained down from the ceiling in thick sheets. The whole dungeon shook.
I whistled. That, I thought, would have actually really fucking hurt if it hit me…
The goliath was already reaching down for another rock.
The thing about Tsunade as a teacher was that she'd beaten one specific lesson into me about a hundred times over those months in the Elemental Nations. Don't toy with an enemy. Don't toy with an enemy. There were shinobi who toyed with enemies and there were shinobi who lived to be old, and you didn't see a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram.
Just because a fight looked easy didn't mean it was. There were always tricks. There was always something you didn't see coming. There was always the one move that turned a casual clean fight into a casket and a closed coffin.
Plus, this was a dungeon. I had no idea if this thing had a phase change. Maybe it could pull off some kind of Dark Souls bullshit that I wouldn't be ready for. Maybe at half health it sprouted wings of its own. Maybe at a quarter health it grew six more arms. I had no idea, and I had no interest in finding out.
The goliath looked up from the boulder he was trying to lift one-handed.
I locked onto his right eye.
I beat my wings, all eight of them, hard, and the air boomed under me as I shot forward across the cavern faster than the goliath's slow brain could track. His expression actually changed. I saw it.
The dumb angry rage flickered into something a lot more like oh shit, and his mouth started to open to roar again.
He didn't get to finish.
I drove my blue lightspear straight through his right eye socket and into his skull!
The lightning discharged inside his head.
There was a wet, crackling, pop sound, like a pumpkin getting hit with a baseball bat, except about thirty times louder. His enormous body jerked once. His remaining eye crossed in a way that would have been comical if I hadn't been six inches from his face. Black smoke curled out of his ear.
He went limp.
I yanked the spear free and beat my wings to get clear before the dead-weight goliath came down on top of me.
But I didn't need to because he fell backwards instead.
The dungeon shook again. A handful of crystals popped loose from the cavern ceiling and rained down in a glittery little cascade.
His body started to dissolve almost immediately, the way every monster did down here, breaking apart into ash and flickers of light. I caught the gleam of something heavy and bright at his sternum, his magic stone, way bigger than any I'd pulled today.
I made a mental note to grab it once the dust settled.
"HOLY FUCKING SHIT! HOW!?"
I spun in midair and looked down toward the entrance to the cavern, the one I'd come in through about six minutes ago, completely fucking certain that there was nobody else on this floor. I guess I got distracted while I was fighting and stopped passively sensing my surroundings.
The Loki Familia was here again.
The shout had come from one of the twin amazons, either Tiona or Tione, I genuinely couldn't tell from this distance and angle.
Bete the werewolf, the asshole I'd called Fido in front of everybody, was standing slightly off to the side with his mouth literally hanging open. His ears were pinned all the way back. His tail was puffed up like a bottle brush. He looked like a dog who'd just watched the squirrel he was about to chase get hit by a truck.
Riveria, the epic fantasy elf princess, who I had embarrassed yesterday by accidentally calling her exactly that out loud, was standing at the front of the group with her staff in one hand and her jade-green hair flowing perfectly down her back like the dungeon had a wind machine just for her.
As for the others…
The Captain, Finn, was staring at me warily.
The blonde girl, Ais, was staring at me blankly. And her elf friend Lefiya was babbling something in shock hiding behind her.
For about three full seconds, nobody moved.
I just hovered.
They just stared.Then I pulled my wings back into my body. My feet hit the dungeon floor about two yards from the goliath's dissolving corpse.
I raised one hand and waved.
"Yo," I said. Easy. Casual. Friendly. "How's it going?"
"You cocky bastard! You lied to us!" Bete's voice cracked off the cavern walls in a snarl loud enough that Lefiya flinched behind Riveria's robes and made a tiny squeaking noise. "You said yesterday was your first day in the dungeon and you were level one!"
His clawed hands were curled into fists. He took half a step forward. The full-step never finished.
Riveria gave Bete one look out of the corner of her eye that could have flash-frozen lava, and the werewolf's foot froze mid-stride. He stayed there for a second, leg up, weight off-center, like a paused cartoon. Then he very slowly lowered his foot back down to the stone, his ears pinning flat against his skull, his tail dropping a couple of inches.
I snorted. Out loud.
Bete's head snapped back to me and his hackles went right back up.
Yesterday was my first day in the dungeon, you fucking moron. I never said anything about being level one. Yesterday I literally didn't have a level. You assumed.
I did not say any of that out loud. I considered it for about half a second. Then I dismissed it. None of it was their business.
So instead of explaining anything, I just chuckled, shrugged one shoulder, and gave them my most disarming smile. "You got me," I said. "I'm actually Level Six."
"WHAAAAAT!?" That was Tiona. Probably? The twin in the looser, more revealing wraparound thing. She'd thrown both hands into the air in a delighted what the hell gesture. "The same level as Captain Finn? Wow!"
Bete, meanwhile, growled again. He was trying to claw back some pride after Riveria froze him with a single look and getting 'outleveled' by the guy he'd called weakling trash twenty-four hours ago wasn't helping his disposition.
I made very deliberate eye contact with him.
I did not say Fido out loud. I did, however, very deliberately not say it, in a way I hoped he could feel.
He snarled, looked away, and crossed his arms.
Hehe. Yeah, he felt it…
I pivoted hard, both physically and conversationally, and gave the entire group my best we're cool right smile while turning my attention to the actual most interesting person in the room.
The elf woman with the jade-green hair. Riveria. She looked, frankly, like she had been carved by an artist who wanted to make the hottest fantasy elf possible and succeeded.
I gave her my best easy grin. "Yo," I said. "Do you come here often?"
She blinked at me, once, slowly. Her face did not change. "Yes," she said.
That was it. That was the entire response.
I just stood there for a second.
Okay, ouch.
I smiled at her. I think it came out a little weaker than I meant it to. I had just opened my mouth to make some kind of recovery comment, who knows what, the weather's nice down here or some equivalent nonsense, when somebody blonde stepped forward through the rest of the group.
Ais just kind of flowed out of the group. She stopped about ten feet in front of me.
Behind her, Lefiya, the cute young elf girl, lunged forward with both hands out and grabbed the back of Ais's belt with the panicked grip. "Ais, please, no, please, oh no, please, Ais, no..." Lefiya was leaning back hard, her whole tiny body weight dedicated to trying to pull Ais backward.
Ais didn't even seem to notice. She was still walking, and Lefiya was sliding along the dungeon floor on the heels of her boots like a wagon being pulled by a determined horse.
Ais stopped. She looked up at me. Her golden eyes did that thing they had done yesterday, that focused, unblinking, measuring thing, and it was somehow even more intense up close than it had been at conversational distance.
And then she said, in a voice so flat and quiet it almost didn't carry across the cavern, "You are strong. That wasn't the regular Goliath, that was a variant. You beat it by yourself. You are strong."
I blinked. "Huh, it was a variant? And thanks for the compliment?" I said in a question-like tone.
She nodded. "Yes. Let's fight."
I blinked again. "Huh?"
…I wasn't expecting Ais Wallenstein to draw her rapier and come at me at full speed.
In retrospect, I should have been. And damned if that wasn't exactly what she did.
One second she was standing ten feet from me, golden eyes locked on mine, perfectly still.
The next second there was a whssssht of displaced air and I was looking at the empty space where she had been and a blur of gold and silver coming straight for my face.
"Yo!" The sound that came out of me was not exactly the cool battle-cry I would've preferred. It was somewhere between a yelp and a swear and the kind of strangled half-laugh. My body moved before my brain caught up, I dropped my chin to my chest, bent at the waist, and let her rapier hiss over my hair.
I felt the breeze of it on my scalp.
Holy fuck. She is fast. She is so, so fast.
The blade of her rapier came back around in the opposite direction even before I'd finished my duck, a clean horizontal cut aimed at the side of my neck like she was checking to see if I'd panic.
I rolled my left shoulder, bent backward at the spine, and the tip of the rapier whickered past me by maybe two inches.
She is an agility build. I am a caster type. I am not built for a close-range duel. Especially not against someone who fights this well with that kind of footwork. If she pins me down inside her sword range I am going to look very stupid very quickly.
But!
My ninja mother and Hokage girlfriend didn't train no bitch!
I summoned a lightspear into my right hand as I stepped back.
Ais came in again.
She thrust this time.
I parried.
My lightspear met her rapier with a clang of light against steel and a brilliant burst of sparks. I expected her blade to either melt instantly from the holy heat or just shear in half, the way I'd been quietly cutting through monster claws and goblin daggers all morning, and I started to pivot off the parry to throw a counterattack into her exposed flank.
Instead her rapier was fine.
The hilt of my recovery thrust was already sliding for her exposed side and she was already moving out of it, and the chase was on.
"He blocked Ais with a conjured weapon!? What kind of magic is he using?"
I didn't dare take my eyes off the blonde swordswoman in front of me, but the voice from somewhere off to my right was actually from Riveria, and her tone had changed completely. The cool I am too dignified to acknowledge anything tone had cracked. There was actual interest in her voice.
Huh, I wondered if she was some kind of secret magical nerd? Kind of like the way Rias was when it came to anime. Was Riviera's 'Ojou-sama High Elf woman thing' an act all along?
I didn't have time to think on it more, because Ais was on me again, and her thrusts were coming in fast clean patterns, two and three at a time, varying angle and target. I caught what I could on the spear and dodged the rest, but not all of the rest. The hem of my shirt caught her tip on the second exchange and the fabric parted in a clean cut, and the third exchange clipped a thin slice across my left forearm, light enough that no real blood came out, just a faint sting and a thread of red.
Damn. She is good. Realistically? She is jonin level. Pure speed. Pure swordsmanship. Fuck. Fuck I love this.
I felt the grin coming. I tried to suppress it. I failed.
My chakra pulsed under my skin. My fallen angel blood was up, my heart hammering hot and fast, and my eight wings burst back out of my back in a single explosive fwoom. Holy lightning crackled to life along my arms, my shoulders, the edges of my wings.
Ais stopped about three steps out. She was breathing a little harder than before, just enough that I could see her shoulders move. Her stance reset, both hands on her rapier now, weight forward, knees soft, that focus in her eyes locked onto me with absolute clarity.
And she was smiling. It was the first real expression I had ever seen on her face.
Damn, she's a little battle junkie too. Are all the female adventurers in this world like this? Are they all this hot and this completely unhinged?
I beat my wings once, the air thumping out of them in a hard fwoom, lifting me a couple inches off the dungeon floor as I prepared to rush forward. This time I would be going on the attack.
Ais shifted her weight. Her smile sharpened as she prepared to counter me.
There was a flicker of motion and then a very small body came in like a missile and tackled Ais sideways across the cavern. The two of them went down in a tangle of armor and limbs and a brief confused yelp, and then the small body was on top of Ais, planting two hands very firmly between her shoulder blades and pinning her down.
It was Captain Finn. The Loki Familia captain. All four feet and change of him. "That's enough, Ais," he said. His voice was not loud. He didn't need it to be loud. It was the voice of a man who had been giving orders to people much bigger than him for so long that he had stopped needing volume to make them work. "That's enough."
Ais lay flat on the dungeon floor for a moment but was not even looking at him. Her golden eyes were still on me. "Captain… Get off. He is strong…"
"Ais! Attacking someone unprovoked, in the dungeon is exactly how wars between familias start! You know better than that."
Ais's expression shifted. This time she had a genuine pout with puffed out cheeks and everything. She looked like she wanted to argue again but decided against it and gave up with the glare her captain was giving her.
I was already powering down. The eight wings folded back into my body. The lightspear in my right hand dispersed into a soft puff of cold blue dust.
I rolled my neck out, let out a long breath, and chuckled. "Hey, it's fine," I said, raising both hands palm-out to Finn and to the rest of the still-watching Loki Familia. "Honestly. No harm done."
Finn glanced up at me.
"But yeah," I added, "you're right. The dungeon probably isn't the right place for us to have a duel, is it?"
Ais, still pinned, made a small noise that might have been mmf.
Finn's mouth twitched. "Thank you, Blake Himejima." He pushed himself up off Ais's back with a smooth, neat little hop, brushing dust off his palms. "Your patience for the antics of my Familia member is appreciated…"
Ais sat up slowly. You know, she kind of reminded me of Asia a bit. I was getting 'protect the innocent blonde girl' vibes from her, the same way I do with Natasha's adopted daughter.
I scratched the back of my head and made a mental note to bring her a snack the next time we ran into each other. I had no idea why. The instinct was just there…
I started to turn away, intending to walk over to the dissolving remains of the goliath and grab the magic stone before the dungeon ate it, when somebody appeared at my elbow.
Suddenly Riveria was standing eighteen inches from my left side. Her staff was clutched in both her hands, gripped tight enough that I could see the pale skin of her knuckles. She had risen up onto the balls of her feet, just slightly, and she was leaning, ever so faintly, toward me.
Her eyes, which had been so cool, so composed, were now wide and bright and intensely focused. On me. "What kind of magic was that?" The words came out fast. "How do you have wings?" Even faster. "You have a lot of secrets, Blake Himejima!"
I blinked down at her.
She was so close I could see the individual long pale eyelashes. The fine point of her ears under the flow of her hair. The very slight flush along her high cheekbones that I was absolutely certain had not been there ten seconds ago.
Oh, my god, you are a magic nerd…
She caught herself. She straightened up. Her hands tightened on her staff. The flush along her cheekbones got noticeably brighter and she lifted her chin and produced an expression that was clearly intended to be I am a serene high elf and you are a curiosity I am not particularly interested in, but the eyes betrayed her.
"...Forgive me," she said, and her voice was a touch cooler again, but the cool felt forced now, like she was holding it together by sheer act of will. "It is rude of me to interrogate a stranger about their abilities..."
"Eeeeeeeeeehhh." Tiona shouted. "What is happening right now!?"
Tione nodded excitedly next to her twin. "I know right! I have never seen Riveria act like this towards a GUY! I thought she was A-sexual at this point!"
Riveria's spine went stiff. Her ears twitched once, which was adorable. She turned around and gave both Amazons a glare that was even icier than the one that shut down Fido a couple minutes ago...
XXX
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