Chapter 38

Castiel P.O.V.

Since the day that we came back I have been overseeing the training of Rias and her peerage as most of the others that were training them had things they needed to do.

And I must say, I am impressed.

They grow at an unbelievable speed, they must be liberating their potential now and later the speed of advancement will stagnate somewhat, but for now, it would work.

I am now overseeing Issei's combat training. There are 2 days before the match so I decided to do a light spar now that it is closing in on the dusk as tomorrow would be a 'rest' day to be used to recover and heal.

Not that my version of 'light spar' is that light (I blame Lancer-sensei for that).

As I catch Issei's leg that was aimed at my face (he, strangely enough, keeps aiming at it for some time now) I look at him and started to talk.

"You are doing great. Your movements are sharp and precise, while the power is good enough." I said, and I meant it. This guy is surprising me, he actually managed to go through with the proper training with considerable persistence and that I can say is a great thing. "Now let's see what you can do with your magic, you did learn a bit right?"

He looks a bit nervous and started looking to the side, clearly embarrassed.

"Hehe, actually I could not get it right. I just couldn't do it at all when Draig tried to explain to me, and he was the only one I could ask because Mister 2-sensei (writer's note: Bon Clay sometimes call himself Mister 2 due to thinking that the number 1 is Ivankov) does not use magic at all." He said a bit embarrassed.

I nod at that; it was a possibility after all.

"Would you like to learn some of it then?" I asked, already imagining some of the magics I could teach him. Nothing too complicated or time consuming to learn but something basic is possible.

He then started nodding his head very fast, clear excitement on his face. The corner of my lips must be displaying a slight smile, he really reminds me of myself when I was small on this characteristic. The desire to learn a new magic (something cool being preferred) always made me act like this.

As I see this I move my feet a bit and took down Issei as I still had one of his feet on my hand.

THUD

"Ouch," he said as he fell on the ground. "was this really necessary." He asked while getting up, a frown on his face.

"For the training no, but for ogling Miku yesterday it was." I said with a serious face.

Hearing this he could only scratch the back of his head and look apologizing to me. He knows he was in the wrong on that.

As I give him a hand so as to get him up I started to think about what is the best way to teach him.

If I remember right is elemental affinity is fire and imagination (let's ignore his nature for now), so he must try something a bit out there to get the best results.

An idea came to my mind, one that can be very interesting.

"Have you ever watched needless or played mortal kombat?" I asked as I hope he did because it would make things much easier.

His eyes sparkled even more when I said that.

"Of course I did! I quite liked Mortal Kombat, but if I had to choose I prefer Needless." He said while nodding his head. "Needless have a lot of ecchi scenes, a lot of panty shots, but the action is very well developed and very intense. Plus, the comedy is great, truly a wonderful work."

I could not help but nod in agreement. It might be quite a bit over the top but it still is among my favorite anime and manga.

"So you can remember some of those movements? Like 'little boy' or 'volcanic explosion'?" I asked.

He quickly nodded, he seems to remember them well enough.

"If I remember correctly you have an elemental affinity fire and imagination. If you can get a clear image of what the result you want is you could probably use those sort of movements." I said my hypothesis to him.

I cannot say for certain if it will work, but devils have a natural affinity with magic to the point of being capable of skipping most of the process other races need to go through to use magic and, as Issei is one step above that due to his elemental affinity, he should be capable of creating this simple spells very quickly.

As he heard my hypothesis he seemed to get excited and decided to start testing.

He first put his hand back and tried to push magic at it, but when he punched there was barely a spark on his hand.

He tried again but the result did not change even after he repeated it at least 5 times.

"It doesn't work at all, what can I do Emyia-san?" he asked with a confused and upset face.

What can he do, huh?

Now that is a good question, but what can he do to actually use his powers completely?

.

.

.

.

I am an idiot for even asking.

"*sigh* Try to imagine that those flames are burning the clothes of a cute girl." I said, trying to not let my eye twitch too hard because of my own words.

It seemed like my comment sparked an idea in him and he quickly tried again.

"Little Boy!" He said after about 5 seconds to charge as his fist was clad in flames, and powerful ones at that. He punched a rock I had put in front of him and the rock almost melted.

A truly incredible flame, and dangerous too. If only he could reach such results without the need to imagine perverted acts or images I would say that he got amazing talent, but as I know what he is thinking I will never say that out of sheer spite and principle.

I am a petty person sometimes after all, every leader must be in some areas in the end as it helps make them a bit more human (I have no desire to be the 'perfect king' that Saber was in the past at all).

"Good work, now you got to practice that move. Keep repeating it until you cannot any more so as to get a better feel of this magic and to know what is your current limit and see if you can make the activation time faster." I said to him.

This was the way I trained, after seeing what is my upper limit I would start working in how to modify what was necessary and see what I could do with it to make it more efficient (my circuits are trash quality after all).

As he nodded he started using his 'little boy' over and over again and after about 15 hits he could not use it again, to the point that he dropped on the ground out of exhaustion (as it is the first time he is using this spell he might have gone too far without realizing).

I used a blessing on him so as to help him recover faster. The bad side of this blessing is that it might help recover the body faster but is useless in combat as it needs that the one under its effect remains resting during the blessing time.

"It seems like 15 is your current limit. Not particularly great, but it still is not bad for a beginner." I told him. "After you recover you can try to see if focusing more energy on the little boy would make it more effective and how strong you can make one."

He nodded as he recovered from the tiredness. After 10 seconds he could sit up again, he seemed to be a bit better now. This blessing is quite strong after all, even if useless in actual combat.

"Now, why don't you try Scorpio's fire breath?" I said, and he tried as soon as he recovered.

He failed, as expected.

The only thing he managed was to burn his tongue and to liberate hot air. It seems that he doesn't know how much air he needs to take in and how the fire should go.

Sighing I decided to give him an idea of an image to help him.

"Try to imagine that your blow is lifting girls' skirts, but put fire on the blow." I said.

He instantly went silent for a moment before his nose started bleeding.

If it was someone else that got his nose bleeding during magic training I would stop the training (who knows when an accident may happen when training magic after all), but knowing it was Issei I could only say one thing.

"If you are imagining one of the girls that are with me I WILL give you a reason to bleed."

He instantly straightened up and cleaned his nose, taking a serious face.

"No such thing, Emyia-san. I can assure you I was not thinking about their magnificent and wonderful oppai, and what there is under their skirt's." He said that, but I was not stupid enough to believe it. What, with his eyes refusing to look at me and taking such a deep interest in a three.

He is far too honest about everything, would make a terrible leader if that is his normal reaction. I honestly don't even know if I call him too inocent or too pervert for his own good.

"Do you want an invitation to start trying what I said or what? Go, go, go." I said irritated when he seemed to have forgotten what he was doing.

Note to self, train his reaction time and focus. He still is struggling with that.

As he started practicing he could use the breath quite well, but the fire was quite weak. It seems like this one will remain on hold for now, either he will have to practice more or wait until his magic amount is higher.

"Stop." I said making the sign for him to stop. "It seems that this one is quite widespread but weak. The best you can do with this is a firewall to blind your opponents for a while." I told him and he seemed quite dejected by it. "Look at the bright side, now you got two usable spells to work with so you can do more now. What you got to do for the rest of tonight is practice the magic you got. You may actually be the turning point of this match." I said for encouragement, and to be fair, if there is to be a turning point it would be Gasper.

The kid seems to have gotten crazy strong for some reason, and I got a similar feeling that I got from Serenity coming from him, but smaller and far from the same balance and level.

Really strange.

Issei seemed to have taken my words to the heart and pumped his arm while saying 'let's do this'.

Let's leave him with this. I have other things to do and he needs to self-study if he wants truly advance.

///---///

At dinner time we all were in the cafeteria (this place is very well equipped) and I was having a bit of trouble as the twins wanted me to spoon feed them. I have not been spending much time with either of them so I agreed to it.

Their excited face made me feel guilty inside since I am their fiancé I should try to spend more time with them.

Now that I am doing it, a troubling matter is happening. That, while doing this with them in itself is no problem (they are beautiful girls and I liked them just as much as they liked me), but the eyes that the rest of the girls were looking at me was enough to make me sweatdrop quite a lot.

"Aahh~~"

"Pleading. Aahh~~"

You know what? Seeing the two of them like this makes all the water I am losing on sweat worth it.

Suddenly someone approached me, someone that must be so dense that could not read the mood if it hit him on the face.

"Hey, Emyia-san can I ask you something?" Issei said, making Yuzuru and Kaguya pout from the disturbance on our little moment.

I tried to not smile fondly seeing them pout (these two are so cute) as I decided to talk to him.

"Sure, but make it quick as I am sort of in the middle of something here." I said, hoping that he would catch on what I meant.

"Well, here is the thing that has been bugging me. Why did you manage to teach me so fast those magics while Ddraig could not?" Issei asked.

"Simple, because he is a dragon and, for him, magic is different than for a human or a devil. Also, he must have misunderstood how magic for you should work." I explained.

"What do you mean? Is my magic different somehow?" Issei asked.

"Quite. To explain it fully would take way too long, but to make it simple you can think like this: all devils have a certain facility to use magic as it is almost instinctive for them, to the point that some just have to imagine what they want and it happens. While this method is extremely bad in its cost-efficiency on your case due to your elemental affinity being fire and imagination you can use a similar method with a much better cost-efficiency. That is why you can make a few things that, for all logic should not be possible with your magic, a reality." I explained to him.

He seemed a bit lost in my explanation so I decided to put in even simpler terms.

"You can use your magic to make what you imagine a reality." I said, and it was mostly true. He CAN use his magic energy to make a lot of things, but even so, he must practice what he knows until the use of said magic he learned have become instinctive and not wasteful.

As he mulled thing over a flash happened on his eyes as an idea surged on his head (this guy is too open about himself). He then gave me thanks and went out of the cafeteria, probably going to practice his 'little boy' or try to create a new magic.

I guess I will see the result later because right now I have something more important to take care of.

My two pouting fiancés. This two HATE to be ignored, truly and completely hate that, and I have not corresponded as well as I should so this reaction is normal.

The only thing they hate more than being ignored is being apart from one another.

Not knowing what to do to make them happy (or at least not want to kill me) I decided to say what I believe is the best.

"Please don't be mad at me. I was just instructing him as I do need to make sure that he is in the best possible condition for the match." I said pleading my case.

But as all men know, a woman can be crazy and unreasonable from time to time.

"Denial. You just didn't care."

"To think that the one that will share an eternal soul contract with this me prefers to pay attention to the king of lust over me. I am disappointed."

See, totally unreasonable.

In this situations, I cannot just let things blow over with time as they might blow on my face so I did the best I could.

"Please don't be mad at me, you know that I prefer to be with you girls over talking with him or any men in any day or place. It is just that the situation required it." I then had an idea. "How about I take you girls out for a fun day? We can go anywhere you want."

I said to the two of them.

"Wonder. Do you really mean that?"

"Of course. You girls are important so it is the least I could do to make you two more comfortable." I said to the two of them, and I meant it.

After a moment they both put their pinky finger out and asked.

"Confirmation. "Promise?""

I smiled and extended both my hands and did the pinky promise I used in the past with them.

"I promise."

They both smiled and got close to me again, one on each side.

I am happy now (especially since I am ignoring all those envious looks from the other girls).

///---///

Two days later

I am now on a watching room, waiting to see the results of the training that Rias and her peerage got after the training. I can only hope that everything goes according to plan, or I just might lose my hide (Rin does NOT want to see MacGregor, and she might dish out on me if this goes wrong).

As I, the girls, Bikou, Arthur and LeFay (Kuroka isn't here as she 'technically' still is a criminal for the devil community) were waiting for the match to start I heard the noise of people entering the room.

As I turned to see who it is I saw a tall imposing man with long crimson-red hair entering the room, accompanied by two others. One of them is a gorgeous woman with silver platinum hair in a braid using a classic maid uniform, the other one is a slightly slim man, he was wearing a black yukata with the borders in red and in his back a flame symbol, he also was using simple Japanese sandals. He had short straight black hair, pointy ears, pale silver eyes fixed in an eternal glare and a horn right in the middle of his forehead.

These three are the Maou Syrzechs Lucifer, his queen Grayfia Lucifurge and his mutation pawn Hozuki.

"Lucifer-sama, I am glad to see you in good health." I said to Sirzechs, it is necessary to maintain a certain decorum when dealing with important individuals from other groups after all. "While I am glad to see you again after so long I must ask, why did you decide to grace us with your presence instead of staying on your own original cabin? I heard that most of the high-ranked devils are in there after all."

He smiled in my direction and this is probably one of the first times I understood why Issei hated bishounens and ikemen, because I am feeling the same thing looking at Sirzechs pretty face right now.

It is not logical, but fuck logic.

"Ah, there you are. You are the representative of the Tohsaka Tower to watch this game, correct?" Sirzechs said and I nodded. "Good, it is nice to meet you. And answering your question I came here with three objectives, first to greet whoever was on the Tower cabin and give my personal thanks for helping out my sister."

"No thanks are necessary I can assure you. It was a business transaction and, as such, it is only natural to do your part to your very best to do whatever we can to follow it through with the correct amount of respect." I said, giving a little stab at him because of what happened between the Tower and the Gremory clan. We were allied then, but he allowed for some of his subordinates to run rampant in the Tower. Not only did he not do anything to stop it he hasn't even punished any of them for their actions.

At this moment he may have my respect as a superior warrior (which he is, he is probably stronger than most Gods and he got there by training and sheer effort, I can't help but respect that), but his actions let me not being capable of respecting him as a leader. A king should never do things this way, he must know how to keep the correct appearance and respect his allies and to make sure to not allow nothing to tarnish his image on a serious way as long as he can help it.

On this regard, I think Zekran Bael, the oldest devil right now. He is a much greater leader than Sirzechs in my opinion. He knows how to act and has thousands upon thousands of plans, he knows to be firm with everyone, including himself.

"Well, that actually connects to a second reason for me to be here. I cannot allow for my peerage members to follow the contract." Sirzechs said, dropping the smile.

I did not falter because of it, I already imagined that he would do something like this and even guessed that it would be now that the match is about to start as it is the moment when the threat of 'no training' turned useless and even if the contract is undone there will be no real change of stance between the two sides.

But, did he really think it would be that simple.

"And why is that?" I said, pretending to not understand the reasoning.

"Simple, as I am not a Gremory since the day that I took the name of Lucifer my sister cannot order anything from my peerage." He said smoothly. I got to appreciate him, such a thick skin to the point that he is not embarrassed to say such a thing. He even gave his son the name Gremory, making him the next heir after Rias and he took all advantages he could when we were allied to the Gremory clan however now he says he is not a Gremory.

I really got to admire such a thick skin.

Not that I don't have it as well.

"I understand. So that means that the contract is to be turned null and that we don't really get any obligation to help your sister or clan anymore." I said nodding with a serious face, but then a 'passing thought' happened. "it may tarnish Rias name for a while, but it will probably not be anything too much. Especially since with the way things are going on the human world she wouldn't have to mind it at all."

He looked puzzled, the same was true for Grayfia and… probably for Hozuki? I don't know as he always has the same serious face.

"What are you talking about? What things are going?" Grayfia asked, clearly curious and worried about the situation. She was a woman that seemed cold but always put the good of the Gremory house above all else.

She was a truly great woman for a leader to have by his side, attentive, careful and always willing to help. But I still think I got the better deal since my girls are less intimidating... sometimes.

"'The things going on' you say? You really don't know?" I asked with some seriousness in my voice, indicating the danger that is about.

GULP

"Yeah, so tell us what is happening? Is it dangerous for Ria-tan?" Sirzechs asked and I think my and Hozuki reactions are about the same, a twitching eye at the use of that word. Why did he use Ria-tan? I thought only Serafall used such terms.

Breathing so as to calm down I decided to explain.

"Iscariots are acting in Japan and from our last combat against them they revealed that they were creating some monsters that seem especially effective against devils." I said and it was like a bomb to them. I had warned Rias but she did not have time to say anything to her family as she was on training up until yesterday so for them this is news.

Terrible news.

Iscariots were infamous for their hate for the supernatural creatures and devils in especial, so knowing that an organization that dangerous started to act close to his sister's place was enough to put Lucifer in a worried state.

But then he calmed down and said, probably to himself more than anyone else.

"It is okay; we can just send ultimate-class guards or call her back. Yes, that should work." He kept mumbling something along the lines of 'must protect Ria-tan' or something, but I filtered that.

Then I simply shacked my head in denial and said.

"It would not work. The Japanese Pantheon is barely accepting Rias and Sona in Japan, and that only because their power levels still are not developed enough to be any threat. If you send any ultimate-class, it could be seen as an act of war." I said before he decided to do something stupid due to his emotions.

Gremorys are just that emotive and impulsive after all.

"Also, if you recalled Rias it would possible be seen as either running away in the first sign of danger OR that she is abandoning her duty as overseer of Kuoh. In either of them, it would show weakness on her part and possible make the claims of some of the Gods from the Japanese Pantheon to get Kuoh back a reality." I said, cutting of his possible actions.

He seemed lost at those words, not knowing what to do. Then he decided to ask.

"But if we cannot act there that easily, how can you guys from the Tower do any different?" He seemed to have calmed down somewhat.

Before I could talk another voice came from the room.

"Because he is my darling." Miku said as she walked straight towards us, positioning herself at my side.

Syrzechs sized her up and asked.

"And who might you be?"

"My name is Miku Okami and I am the daughter of Ame-no-Muzume-no-Mikoto and Sarutahiko Okami. I and Castiel are engaged and as such the Tower and the Japanese Pantheon are closely linked, so the Tower movements in OUR country is not constrained." Miku said domineeringly, showing a lot of confidence.

But I knew that she was likely scared inside as she was not that used to talks to dignitaries from other species. Knowing that I took her hand so as to calm her down a bit, which seems to have worked a bit as she squeezed my hand a bit.

Seeing our action seemed to have put Sirzechs in a tough spot, and people in tough spots could do things without thinking it through so I decided to take a step back.

"How about we all take a step back and simply watch the match? It is for this that we all are here after all." I said so as to change the course of this conversation.

Sirzechs seemed reluctant but Hozuki intervened.

"That would be appreciated." He said.

Sirzechs turned to him to protest but one glare from Hozuki was enough to make THE Lucifer back down and obey.

Again, Hozuki is scary.

Suddenly I got a thought on my mind and could not help but ask.

"If I remember right you said that there were three reasons about why you came here, so what is the third one?" I asked, making Sirzechs readjust himself and say.

"It is nothing much. It is just that there are some individuals that requested to come to watch this match but their presence would be complicated on the room with the other devils so I thought they here to watch as this is the only room without other devils." He said and even if I was not pleased by it the room we are is devil property so demanding it as ours would not be that appropriate.

I could only accept the fact that the room would have Sirzechs, his group and a few others.

I wonder who they are.

"Hey there Syrzechs, why didn't you tell me that it was this room that we were going to stay? I ended up barging into a room where two female devils were getting kinky and the moment they noticed me was quite awkward, not that I minded the little kinky sho-"

And faster than anyone could react Emily punched the man talking.

Normally I would admonish her for punching the leader of a faction in the face, but considering that it was the father that abandoned his family the moment he heard the word 'pregnant' I could only contain myself not to applaud Emily's actions and join in.

And so entered in the room the leader of the Grigory and the fallen angels, Azazel.