"So..master, do devils need to take a shit?"
That was the first thing I asked my supposed master. I did not stutter. I, a modern person in both sensibility and belief, had just referred to a high school girl who had been my classmate for the last two years as my master, which should immediately clue you in that something had gone catastrophically wrong with my life.
The crimson-haired, generously endowed girl sitting across from me blinked, clearly having expected a different line of inquiry. Rias Gremory was a resident devil currently in the business of administering Kuoh as her territory, as well as a girl I had shared an academy with for the better part of two years.
She was also the main female protagonist of High School DxD, an anime I had once watched for one reason and one reason alone: the girls and their boobs. Boobs of every kind, perky ones, small ones, jiggly ones, and especially those big anime ones, the soft, smooth, full, long, ample, pear, udderish boob that will turn any man into a caveman. The show had more boobs than plot as far as I remembered, and by the time I finished watching it, I could scarcely name a single character or explain what the hell had actually happened.
Who in hell could have guessed that I would end up being reborn in that borderline-hentai world? Certainly not me. Had I known where my next life would take me, I would have watched every season with the concentration of a teenager watching porn and read the light novels from beginning to end until I knew the setting better than the author. Knowledge was power, after all, and foreknowledge would have been an extraordinary advantage in a world where I had once access to its future. Unfortunately, younger me had been far more interested in watching breasts bounce than learning anything useful, and I was now living with the consequences.
Reincarnation itself had hardly been an obscure idea in my first world. Hindu and Buddhist traditions had developed immensely sophisticated conceptions of rebirth, and the persistence or absence of the self across multiple lives. The Greeks had played with related ideas as well, and Plato imagined souls choosing new lives before drinking from Lethe and returning to mortality. Philosophers had spent millennia wondering whether personal identity could survive such a passage, whether memory constituted the self, and whether rebirth represented opportunity or imprisonment. I had read enough of them to appreciate the irony that none had prepared me for awakening as a Japanese infant with my memories intact.
I, however, had expected none of those possibilities. I was raised Christian, so my understanding of the afterlife involved some combination of heaven, hell, divine judgment, and perhaps purgatory if the Catholics had gotten that particular question right. When I died, I fully expected to discover which interpretation had come closest to the truth.
What I got was a second life in Japan.
I woke up as a baby, spent some time being understandably confused, and eventually adjusted to my new life. Humans are nothing if not adaptable. I had little interest in looking a gift horse in the mouth, especially when the gift in question was another lifetime, so I never wasted much time on existential questions about why I had been chosen. I had received an opportunity countless people would have killed for, and I intended to use it properly.
Armed with everything I remembered from my first life, I immediately threw myself into making the most of the second. I, Haruki Yamashiro, had no intention of becoming comic relief or somebody's tragic backstory, which is apparently why I have no friends and possess terrible social skills, according to my sister.
I worked relentlessly at academics. Truthfully, I had never struggled much with them even during my first life, and beginning again with all that accumulated knowledge gave me an obvious advantage. My pride still demanded absolute excellence, anything less felt like squandering an opportunity I had no right to waste.
I was fortunate in another regard as well. I had been born with exceptional genetics, and combined with training from an early age, that allowed me to quickly dominate people who had committed the understandable error of being their actual biological age. Beyond academics and sports, I threw myself into every extracurricular activity I could find, pursuing opportunities I had once wanted and never received.
Poetry, art, creative writing, debate, natural science, mathematics, you name it, I probably had a trophy for it somewhere. Then came violin, piano, martial arts, tennis, horse riding, and interpretive dance for some reason. I had become something of a one-man Renaissance fair, a prodigy if you will.
It certainly helped that money was never a serious concern. My family was wealthy enough to afford private tutors for practically every subject or extracurricular obsession I developed. Bless their melodramatic hearts. My mother cried when I left for high school, my father begged me to find a girlfriend as though we were negotiating over livestock, and my little sister built a shrine to me in my empty bedroom. I am not even exaggerating that last part.
Which brought me neatly, or perhaps hideously, to my present circumstances: me, sitting on a couch in Rias Gremory's overly elegant room beside some brown-haired guy named Issei Hyoudou. I recognized him almost immediately as the original protagonist and a dedicated boob enthusiast. He looked positively thrilled to be a devil, which made sense from what little I remembered of him. For Issei, this probably seemed like the universe had finally acknowledged his true vocation. I could hardly blame him. There were worse ways to discover that the occult was real. My attention soon returned to the crimson-haired girl responsible for gathering us here.
Rias and I had barely interacted during the previous two years. We were classmates in the broad institutional sense, two people who occasionally occupied the same room without sitting near each other or having any particular reason to speak, and I had deliberately kept it that way. I had never wanted to attend Kuoh Academy in the first place, given that I had lived hundreds of miles away and knew Kuoh would eventually become a magnet for supernatural conflicts. My parents, may their earnest souls be blessed, had insisted because Kuoh Academy ranked among the finest schools in Japan, and Asian parents confronted with the prospect of giving their son the best possible education have a determination of Hannibal crossing the Alps.
My reasons for accepting their decision had been threefold. First, I could see how happy and proud they were that their son would attend such a prestigious academy, and after everything they had endured raising me, denying them that pleasure over dangers I could never properly explain seemed needlessly cruel. Second, I believed simple prudence would keep me safe. Keep my head down, avoid suspicious people - especially the crimson-haired devil and everyone orbiting her - and allow the story to unfold without Haruki Yamashiro becoming a footnote in it. The strategy had worked perfectly for two years.
Whatever catastrophes awaited Kuoh once the canonical story began, and I naturally assumed there would be plenty because this was a shonen series, the town had so far experienced no suspicious epidemic of disappearing students or unexplained homicides beyond the ordinary misfortunes one might expect anywhere in Japan. Third, I had negotiated a compromise with my parents. I would attend Kuoh for high school, while university would take me to Tokyo or abroad.
The arrangement had worked beautifully. Two years had passed without serious incident, leaving me with a single year before I could leave the principal stage of a story whose future I understood only in fragments because my younger self had repeatedly sacrificed exposition upon the altar of jiggle physics.
Then, for some God-forsaken reason, I threw two years of careful self-preservation away on an impulse.
I had been walking home when I saw a girl with crimson hair, and yes, that crimson hair, fighting four creatures that looked suspiciously like cyclopes. Cyclopses? Cyclopi? Whatever the fuck they're called. Rias destroyed three of them with blasts of energy and seemed to have matters comfortably under control until she underestimated the last creature, lowered her guard, and found herself caught in some kind of trap.
So naturally, being the overachieving meathead that I apparently was beneath all my carefully cultivated persona, I saw someone in danger and jumped in before wisdom could catch up to me. Years of gymnastics, martial arts, and ballet had given me excellent coordination, speed, and flexibility, so I put all of that training into a kick against a creature from myth.
It accomplished absolutely nothing.
I still have no idea what I expected. Perhaps some primitive corner of my brain had briefly decided that sufficient athletic training could bridge the ontological gulf between Japanese high school student and mythological monster. I can already imagine someone shaking their head and calling me an idiot, and I have no defense worth offering. It was a decision made in the heat of the moment, with no calculation behind it whatsoever, and I accept full responsibility for being an idiot.
The creature responded by punching me in the stomach hard enough that I briefly became acquainted with several varieties of pain I had previously known only in theory. I felt bones break along with a considerable portion of my dignity, although the distraction gave Rias enough time to escape the trap and finish the fight. So, mission failed successfully, I guess?
I should have died from it.
Rias had other ideas. She pushed a glowing [Bishop piece] into my chest and reincarnated me before death could become permanent, and now here I was, transformed into a devil entirely against my wishes. I had always assumed those Evil Pieces were used to reincarnate humans possessing Sacred Gears or some other supernatural qualification, my knowledge of this world had enormous holes exactly where useful information ought to have been.
Once again, I really should have watched the anime for the plot.
Rias was explaining the rules now. Evil Pieces were, in essence, magical chess pieces through which devils reincarnated humans and incorporated them into their peerages. She was the King, naturally, and everyone beneath her occupied one of the remaining positions on the board. We were her slaves, serf, whichever you'd prefer.
"So I get rewarded for saving your life by becoming your eternal slave?" I asked, deadpan.
"Technically, you died," Rias said, "so I saved your life."
She was correct, technically, which was unfortunately the best kind of correct, the devil in details and all that. I had died, and Rias had restored me to life. Of course, I had died because I had stupidly intervened when I believed her life was in danger, and there remained the inconvenient fact that nobody had asked whether I wished to return as a devil before putting the Bishop piece inside me. Gratitude I could give her freely. Ownership was another matter entirely.
She continued through the advantages of my new existence. "Devils have long lifespans, about ten thousand years, and you can learn to use demonic power to do virtually anything."
Now that caught my attention.
Magic, actual magic, shaped through imagination and demonic power. If Rias's description was even remotely accurate, then she had just handed me the first possible key to my freedom. My body and soul were mine, and on that principle I had very little inclination toward compromise. I could accept debts, promises, and every other restraint that necessarily accompanies living among other people, provided they arose from consent or some legitimate reciprocal duty. A man could willingly bind himself by his word and remain free. Being bound by another person's will was a different condition altogether, and I had no intention of spending ten thousand years under it.
The peerage system, as Rias described it, came uncomfortably close to slavery dressed in feudal language. There was an avenue for advancement. Perform distinguished deeds, accumulate enough merit in service to the Underworld, and a reincarnated devil might eventually be elevated to High-Class status, receive a noble title, and acquire a peerage of his own. But elevation did not sever the original bond to one's King. You could become High-class and still remain subject to the person whose piece had reincarnated you. Pieces could apparently even be traded between Kings, sometimes with very little regard for what the reincarnated devil wanted.
Then there were Stray Devils. According to Rias, reincarnated devils who abandoned their masters were classified as Strays, considered unstable and dangerous, and hunted accordingly. I had no doubt that many genuinely were dangerous. Immortality and supernatural power hardly improved an unstable person's prospects for peaceful retirement. The rule itself cared very little about circumstance, however. Your King could be cruel, abusive, or simply someone you refused to serve, and leaving still placed you outside the protection of devil society. There appeared to be no meaningful right of secession from the relationship, only whatever release your King might voluntarily grant.
That offended something fundamental in me. I had read enough history to know that almost every system of domination eventually discovered respectable words for obedience, and enough philosophy to know that freedom had never meant living without duties. Locke grounded liberty in natural rights and Mill defended the individual's sovereignty over his own life. Their arguments differed, but the principle I cared about was considerably simpler. I would honor debts freely incurred, obey laws that permitted people to live together, and keep promises even when keeping them became inconvenient. I would love whom I chose, serve causes I judged worthy, and accept the consequences of my own decisions. What I would never accept was another person having an inherent claim over my body, my soul, or the direction of my life.
Whatever else becoming a devil had changed, that remained mine.
"You didn't answer by the way, do devils need to take a shit?" I repeated.
"No, devils don't need to… relieve themselves," Rias finally answered, frowning slightly, as though the absurdity of my original question had only now caught up with her.
"Good," I replied. "That means I don't have to worry about hemorrhoids or finding a magical treatment for them."
"…Hemorrhoids? How do you normally treat them?" she asked, somehow allowing herself to be carried along by the conversation.
"With contempt," I answered.
She laughed at that, which suited me perfectly well. Let her think me eccentric, perhaps a little irreverent, and otherwise harmless. I had neither the power nor the knowledge to challenge my circumstances openly, and history had rarely been kind to prisoners who announced their escape plans before discovering where the guards kept the keys.
Rias then offered to teach Issei and me how to use demonic power, and I could tell from her expression that she was genuinely eager to do so. Naturally, I accepted. Magic was my best chance of achieving what I wanted, and I intended to learn everything she was willing to teach me: how demonic power was shaped, how teleportation worked, how barriers and spells were constructed, and eventually how one might reduce an enemy to atoms with a sufficiently imaginative application of force. All in the service of helping my King, of course.
I glanced around the room while she spoke. Akeno stood nearby, quiet and composed, every inch the Yamato Nadeshiko with her long black hair and polite smile. I remembered her as the woman who sucked Issei's finger in that one episode, which is somehow both erotic and confusing in context.
Koneko was the small white-haired girl with a permanently unimpressed expression and an apparent preference for monosyllables. Yuuto Kiba was the handsome blond swordsman, and from what little I remembered in this life, he seemed like a decent fellow. He was exactly the sort of competent, agreeable character who should have been easy to root for, which naturally made him less memorable to my younger self than everyone behaving like lunatics.
Then there was Issei Hyoudou, the actual protagonist, energetic, perverted, and surprisingly capable in battle if my fragmented memories could be trusted. Obsessed with boobs and totally okay with being a devil. Apparently his great ambition was to build a harem, so eternal service under a beautiful redhead surrounded by equally beautiful women probably seemed like an acceptable price. I could hardly fault him for making his own bargain.
That left me as the spare piece, an additional Bishop inserted into the board because Rias felt indebted to the idiot who had gotten himself killed trying to save her. I knew almost nothing about these people beyond fragments remembered from another life. Their position as protagonists suggested they were probably decent people, but literary convention was hardly sufficient evidence upon which to entrust one's soul. I would judge them by what they actually did.
Issei may be happy enough with devilhood and service to Rias Gremory. I decidedly was not. Every promise of longevity and miraculous demonic power came attached to an obligation from which I could see no clean escape, leaving me with a remarkably comfortable form of servitude. Gilding the cage improved its appearance considerably; the lock remained of greater interest to me.
I understood a little more now about how this world worked, a strange simulacrum of myth and genre convention where ancient supernatural hierarchies operated behind school uniforms and adolescent concerns. Somewhere beyond Kuoh waited the larger world I barely remembered, filled with devils, angels, gods, monsters, and whatever else younger me had ignored while waiting for the next fanservice scene. I intended eventually to leave this little corner of it and live according to my own judgment, with neither man nor woman possessing the authority to dictate the course of my existence.
As I was now, however, attempting that would accomplish little beyond securing an early death. Freedom without the means to preserve it could become a very brief experience, and I had already died enough times for one lifetime. So I would cooperate, and quietly search for whatever mechanism held this collar around my soul. Like Bronte said: I am no bird; and no net ensnares me. I was still a human being in every way that mattered to me, had an independent will, and one day I intended to make that independence a fact rather than a private conviction.
AN: So I did the reasonable thing and started another High School DxD SI fic. My other one, where I got isekai'd into Riser, kind of spiraled into something I didn't plan. Don't worry, it's not abandoned, but let's just say Riser turned into a power-hungry, morally bankrupt lunatic, and now I need emotional balance.
Enter: Haruki. This time I'm aiming for a decent human being. Someone who won't commit war crimes by chapter ten. Hopefully.
Will it stay that way? Who knows. Let's find out together.