Me? Human? : Chapter 8: The Crimson Ruin of Princess and her Bond themed Chair....

Disclaimer - I don't own any of the characters appearing in High School DXD or the Anime or the manga whatsoever.

Kuoh, Japan

–Motohama Kenji–

So, he went to school, attended the lectures, did not see Rias or Akeno, which was fine since they would just distract him, momentary as it might be, and after dodging his only two friends, he went back to the hill to train.

Sona was the only devil he met throughout the day, who seemed surprised that he was early and in a proper uniform for the second time. She wrote something in her notepad with a pleased hum when she saw him in the morning. He even nodded at her, and she returned it! So progress.

Anyway, coming to his training, he now stood in a clearing, the area full of dry twigs that he’d gathered for a specific purpose, along with ten times the mass of wood right behind him, for food.

After last night, he’d adapted to a lack of air, not by getting the ability to not breathe or breathe through somewhere else, but by making do with his existing reserve of air still in his lungs. So, his power had chosen to make his lungs more efficient. He supposed that it was because there was some air still entering his system, even with the plastic bag, or maybe something else influenced the direction of the adaptation. Either way, he supposed that the response of his power would be different when he was exposed to water or maybe a vacuum. Both things that he either had no way of accessing or had no interest in testing. For now, he was satisfied with having a larger lung capacity, which he tested this morning by running to the school, an activity that would have tired him out halfway through, but this time, he didn't even break a sweat as he waved at Sona, entering the school.

Shaking his head, he realised he was subconsciously trying to delay this. It was understandable. The fear and fascination of fire was embedded deep into the Human genome, and the genetic memory was more than enough to tell him that this was a profoundly stupid way to get trauma regarding fire, and yet, this was the best way to adapt to the fire.

Which is why he sprayed the perfume on the stack of dry twigs, before throwing the can in the fire as well. After only a little bit of hesitation, he lit up a piece of paper before throwing it under the mass of trees, watching as the fire blazed a bit before the twigs began heating up. Soon enough, the entire clearing was bathed in a subtle orange glow. 

He made sure that there was nothing flammable around the fire. Wouldn’t want to burn down the forest now, would we? Especially since it had all the food he needed for his powers to work properly. Otherwise, he might just have to genuinely go garbage hunting, and that was not..nice. It was much better to eat wood, however weird that sounded.

Once again, realising that he was just delaying the inevitable, he raised his hand, closed his eyes, and just thrust his hand in the middle of the hot wood. 

He tried. He really did. 

But whatever he had in mind when he thought of the pain of being burnt, it was way worse than that, as he retracted his hand, only to make things worse, as pieces of burnt wood stuck to his hand.

A pained scream finally tore itself out of his throat, one that he instantly stopped by putting his other, non burned hand on his mouth, stumbling back as he fell on his ass. After what felt like an eternity, he finally calmed down a bit, stopped screaming, and reached for the pile of wood to get his power going.

And to think he still had to adapt to a few other fire related things after this.

Sigh.

___xx__

Occult Research Club, Kuoh High School

–Rias Gremory–

“Are you sure it’s him, Koneko?” She asked her cute little Rook, who just nodded while continuing to nibble on her favourite cookies, the ones that were always on backorder back in the Underworld. Koneko insisted on a monthly order, and she agreed, but with a twist. She held back the cookies until Koneko did her basic duties, which was just what was expected of a Reincarnated Devil.

It was a song and dance between them. Both of them knew that Koneko would do the tasks assigned to her either way, and that she would give Koneko her cookies if she just asked, but they both liked playing the game, so it continued.

“Yes, Rias. He smells the same as the scent in the forest, just a little different.” 

“Hmm,” She nodded and handed Koneko the weekly consignment of her favourite cookies, and watched happily as Koneko’s ears twitched, expressing her happiness even as she maintained her stoic face, leaving her face with a slight skip in her step. Or maybe she was just imagining things.

As the door closed, her gaze went to the sofa in the corner, with Akeno working on her magical theory. The girl was diligent like that. She was probably the most educated in her peerage, both in terms of magical education, general supernatural education, and human education.

It helped her in more ways than one. She was actually the first one to suggest sending in someone to check on the oddities in the forest on the other edge of the forest. She, however, had been too lazy to check on something that was clearly just a prank or a wild animal making all the noises, as the magic detection matrix that was deployed all over Kuoh hadn’t detected any spikes at all.

Even Koneko going to the edge of the hill before checking everything manually hadn’t resulted in any magical result. She would have chosen to give up then and let things be, choosing to handle it if anything did come up, but Akeno was insistent.

Which is why Koneko had spent an entire night surveilling the entire hill and the forest all around it for any anomalies. She had a hunch that Koneko did not need the entire night and just had her fun while moving about a forest that housed nothing that could even remotely threaten her, an experience she no doubt enjoyed.

Unfortunately, Akeno was proven right, as Koneko found some blood, some burnt skin, some chipped teeth, along with an entire clearing with barren or half eaten trees. Yes, eaten trees. No magical residue on them, either, which was the strange part.

Clearly, someone or something magical had torn apart the clearing, uprooted some trees, and eaten most of it, either using magic or by pure physical force. Either way, it should have left behind some residue, but aside from a weird smell, which was just Koneko’s way of saying that the smell was mixed in with pheromones that were secreted by humans whenever they were experiencing some intense emotions, there was no sign of magic there.

That had piqued all of their interests, but who knew that the answer to their question was so close to them?

Koneko had just identified the student to whom the scent belonged. There was some other anomaly about him as well, something that Sona sent to her, as part of the file sharing system that Sona insisted on everyone following, as part of both of them being equal parts overseer of the town.

Leave it to Sona to make an entry into their file simply because of the fact that they arrived at the school earlier than usual for an entire week. It was just too much work, she added to her plate. Usually, she would have been right, but today, she had been forced to eat her words.

For the name that Koneko told her and the name of the file that Sona sent her was the same.

Motohama Kenji.

She giggled lightly as she recalled the actions of the chaotic Trio Kenji was part of. They were called the Perverted Trio. Her very own perverted squad in her school. The fact had tickled all the right parts of her brain, which is why she personally intervened many times to make sure that all of them were not kicked out of the school by Sona on the first day itself.

No, if things went according to Sona’s wishes, not only would all three of them be shown the boot, they would also get a permanent mark on their record, forever barring them from any reputable school.

Shaking her head, she opened the file, and the sound of Akeno’s idle hum entered her ears as her Queen took the file and began going through it. She shrugged. That was fine. She didn't want to read that stuff anyway.

Reclining into her Bond Chair(She specially had this made and shipped from Britain, after all.), she commanded her Queen in a haughty manner, “Read to me.”

Akeno took one look at her and realised what mood she was in, before giggling and replying, “As you wish, My King.”

As Akeno read through everything, she realised something was wrong. Kenji displayed no symptoms of having any Sacred Gear, weak or otherwise. Sure, the weaker Sacred Geras gave off little to no magical energy and didn’t even change anything about their wielder’s bodies, but even stuff like that should be catalogued by the wards in the school. Failing that, Koneko’s senses had never failed them.

It was why they knew about Saji and his Sacred Gear. It was pathetically weak, which was not concrete proof of the Sacred Gear’s strength, but it was enough for them to confirm that he had a Sacred Gear. They could wait until it changed or displayed something that indicated its strength, or if either one of them were desperate enough to reincarnate the man with an unconfirmed Sacred Gear.

Both Sona and her were of the thinking that Peerages were for forever, for different reasons. She believed that her Peerage was like her family, and you don’t trade your family. Sona believed in it for a far more tactical reason. In her mind, she would much prefer having peerage members who have had practice and synergy that she could guide from the get go, instead of getting someone clearly practiced and used to their society. 

It could disrupt the carefully crafted strategies I have crafted for the Peerage I have in my mind. Sona’s words, not hers.

Either way, it meant that neither of them could afford to reincarnate just anyone, even if they had a potentially strong Sacred Gear. They needed to know about the Gear or have confirmation about its strength at the very least before either of them could commit one of their limited Evil Pieces.

“So, what should we do about him?” She looked up as Akeno’s bright violet eyes looked at her.

She thought of it for a moment before shrugging, reclining further into her chair, “Nothing. It could be a Sacred Gear, or it could be nothing. Either way, he has no magical emission, and we have confirmed his genealogy. No reincarnation or Hero descendant. So, we’ll wait and watch. After all, the school year has just started. We have more than enough time to make a decision.”