Disclaimer: I don't own Highschool DxD.
Above The Earth I Am Transformed
The meeting with the Devils went surprisingly well after that. Joshua was sure that he'd finally be able to relax if he could go through the bunch of deals that involved making Wards for their territories without trouble. Granted, a part of him didn't know if that was good or bad, really. What if they were only trying to give him a false sense of security? It sounded a little elaborate even to himself, but these were Devils he was dealing with, literally, and he knew next to nothing about them, so there was that.
Regardless of his paranoia being guaranteed or not, the general deal had been made already, so he would be hard pressed to go back on his word. He was too afraid of the other party to even try. And even if he wasn't, he really wanted the whole deal with Jeanne to be done smoothly and hopefully without having to bother too much with that. Joshua didn't know how complicated that would be, but he was fairly sure that he didn't want to bother if he could get supernatural beings to take care of that.
'God, that sounds lazy,' Joshua thought with a grimace. It wasn't entirely that though. Jeanne wanted to avoid her past life as much as possible and adopting her into his family was sure to bring up all sorts of questions that would be hard to answer. Not to mention the possibility of having mundane eyes scrutinizing his life. With it being so supernaturally oriented as of late, that was the last thing he wanted to deal with.
So, deal with the Devils it was.
"I really don't know how you manage that, Joshua," Jeanne commented from where she sat on the other side of the table. For once, he could understand where she was coming from. He was currently occupying half of the table completely with the information Sairaorg had provided him for his job. For one of the cities, at that. The one they were currently in, for more detail.
He was going over it to make sure that he wasn't missing any little detail that would mess with his wards. The bits about supernatural beings were interesting, but Joshua had sworn that he wouldn't use that information for anything, not even to talk with those people. After all, they had given Sairaorg their information in good faith since he was the owner of the territory, basically, but it would be bad for him if it came out that he freely shared that information.
So, Joshua would do his job and that would be it. He might not be the smartest, but he certainly knew not to piss off a Devil. Especially one that could apparently shrug off his most powerful wards. It was better to stay on the Bael Devil's good side.
Still, Sairaorg himself had admitted that it was best not to rely on that information too much regarding those matters. After all, Joshua himself knew first hand that things could… slip by. Hell, the whole matter with the wards was because Sairaorg didn't know all that went on in his territories.
"I just do, I guess," Joshua replied with a shrug, his eyes glued to the circle he was currently working on. His fingers absently rubbed the Charm between his fingers.
He'd grown less worried about the little thing after the Blessing. After all, if this being had given him such a boon, it couldn't be that bad, right? Also, after months of being close to it nothing had happened, so he felt like he could at least give this being the benefit of the doubt. Joshua had even taken to carrying the thing around just in case it had some unknown good effect that he hadn't been taking advantage of.
At the moment though, the man was too focused on his task. Yes, a Detection Ward would be the first thing he would set up. Well, several, really. After all, one of those could be fooled easily enough. That's why one had to place redundant circles that did basically the same thing but from different approaches.
After all, if he placed one that detected magical beings, a human magician could slip by fooling the ward making it think he was just a mundane man or woman. Such examples could be made for basically any and all wards, really. So, Joshua's job was basically to make a rule and then find any and all loopholes imaginable to make sure they couldn't be used.
It was not an easy task, that he would tell anyone that would listen.
Fortunately, his new, tentative Devil allies had been kind enough to provide him with some more books he would need for the job. It had cost him, of course. The first city would be basically paid with exactly those books and the little favor of Jeanne's matters. He wouldn't get anything more until the next one.
Joshua was fine with that thought. He'd positively devoured those books as soon as he'd gotten them. Almost forsaking a few days of training. Almost. Besides, he'd barely had time to skim through the books he'd gotten on battle spells for Neutral Magic. He wanted to start with that, yes, but he also wanted to do these deals as soon as possible. Generating good rapport with the Devils could end up being very beneficial and he wasn't keen on leaving them waiting.
It was frustrating, honestly. More than once he wished his days were twice as long.
"I think this one is done…" Joshua decided, sighing, leaning back and wearily looking at the circle he'd just finished designing. "Gotta leave this on the side."
"-And come back to it later," Jeanne finished for him with a slightly teasing tone. "We know, Josh."
"Josh, huh?" He noted with a half-smile. "I don't think anyone's called me that in a while."
"Do you like it?" The girl asked, all but bouncing on her seat, the notebook she used to brainstorm ideas for her swords lying on her side of the table now.
"I think I do, lil' sis," He shot back and if it was possible, the girl's grin widened even more. She was really happy with how things had gone regarding that, apparently. Not that he could blame her. It was nice to have it be… official, in a way, even if nothing had been done yet. It would be soon enough, Joshua would make sure of that. "How are the sword ideas coming along?" He asked curiously.
"Well… I've been trying to get one that alters the mind, like you said but…" The girl then drew onto herself and bit her lip. "I… I don't like using them."
"It's alright, Jeanne," Joshua reassured quickly, already having half expected something like that. After all, affecting someone's mind was, in some ways, much worse than damaging their bodies and such. It was more… disturbing, would be the word, he supposed. "How about just for training, yeah? Just to make sure that nobody uses something like that with us?"
"I guess… I really don't want that to happen," Jeanne nodded slowly, her eyes locked on the notebook in front of her. She was avoiding looking at him, he realized quickly.
"We can just avoid it if you want to, Jeanne. I won't be angry," Joshua told her. It would be a real shame, but he wouldn't be angry with her. She was just a teenager, she shouldn't be dealing with any of this, really. She had to, however. Not only because she was stubbornly remaining beside him but also because she had a Sacred Gear.
"No, I… I can help, if it's just training… Just… not often, ok? I used it once, with Cheshire, and… I didn't like how it felt. It was… wrong. The voices didn't like it very much either," She explained hesitantly, the last part said in a rush, as if trying to add more justification. What was said was enough for him though.
"It's fine. We can do it slowly. It's not like there's immediate danger of that happening," Joshua told her. There were the Devils, but there were several reasons for not counting them much. First, it was already a little late for that, really. Second, his Mind Resistance skill wasn't leveling or seemingly picking up on anything, so he guessed he was safe for the moment. "Wait, you used it on Cheshire?"
His eyes then moved to the cat in question, who was watching them curiously.
Sure enough, there it was.
[Mind Resistance - Lvl 1
Defines the user's ability to resist attacks to the mind.]
"I'm sorry," Jeanne whispered, her voice coming out in this painful sound that Joshua instantly hated.
"Don't apologize. It's fine. I was just surprised," He reassured, putting a hand on her shoulder. "This whole thing was to be used in exactly that way. Don't worry. I just didn't expect you to start without me," He offered with a half-smile.
"I just… She seemed to want that, so… and I wanted to try it out… I didn't know how it would feel, for her or for me," The teen said, still hesitant but no longer looking ready to bolt, at least. 'Progress,' Joshua thought to himself, withholding a sigh. Jeanne was getting better, but she still occasionally looked about to freak out for one thing or another. This Mind thing had truly affected her, it seemed. 'Maybe we can put it off for a bit,' He mused.
"Girl, how was it for you?" The man asked, curiously, then he blinked and almost cursed. That was the worst question he could have picked for that exact moment. If the answer was bad, Jeanne would-
The cat tilted her head at him and he took in her body language. She didn't seem tense, or anything of the sort. She looked calm, curious even. The feline meowed and the man internally sighed in relief.
"See, Cheshire's fine," Joshua told Jeanne calmly, as if that whole thing had been planned. He really needed to watch what he said though. The teenager, for her part, deflated a little on her chair.
"Um… Joshua?" Jeanne started speaking, making him blink curiously. He'd expected the conversation to end there, both of them turning back to their tasks. That topic was closed, after all, and neither he nor she, he guessed, wanted to keep talking about something that made her so uncomfortable. "Do you mind if I cook tonight?"
He blinked again at that.
"Eh, no, go ahead," He allowed easily enough, unsure of why she looked so serious when asking the question. The smile that spread on her face didn't make much sense either. "Do you need help?" Like that, Jeanne chuckled nervously, but not overly so, thankfully.
"I've… never actually cooked much," She admitted, fidgeting a little. That was… actually true, Joshua supposed. She mostly waited tables at the cafe, and he was always the one to prepare meals at home so… 'Huh, I hadn't noticed.'
"Well, guess I'll have to teach you," Joshua said, smiling softly at her as he remembered times when his mother taught him how to cook. He'd had the time, back then, when he avoided the world and its people. He'd had the time and his mother.
"Josh?" Jeanne called as his mind drifted and he shook his head slightly.
"Sorry, just got lost in thought," He excused, his smile growing slightly sad. "So, what did you have in mind for your first lesson?" He asked, his grin reaching his eyes once more.
"Well…" Jeanne started, wearing a smile of her own.
[}-o-{]
"God, that was terrible," Joshua said through his chuckles. Distractedly, he set down his fork on the plate in front of him. The cooking had been… interesting, to say the least. He'd barely managed to salvage the food so that it was at least somewhat edible, which was a relief.
"It wasn't that bad," Jeanne weakly defended herself. That was a lie if Joshua had ever heard one. Every possible mistake she could have made, she had, he was sure. It had been a little nerve wracking for him at the moment, but he was having a great time laughing about it now.
Cheshire meowed from the side.
"It wasn't!" Jeanne protested against that accusation.
Nagini hissed something, a sound that started and stopped repeatedly, like she was-
"Stop laughing!" Jeanne whined. "You are on my side, right, Morag?" She asked at last, using her last resort.
The spider in question made herself as small as possible and took a hesitant step away from the girl.
"Not you too!" Jeanne lamented, deflating on her chair.
[Bond: Cheshire has gone up a level.]
[Bond: Nagini has gone up a level.]
[Bond: Morag has gone up a level.]
'At least that disaster was good for something,' Joshua thought as he continued laughing. 'Here's hoping she gets better with time though. This won't be so funny if it keeps on… Maybe…'
[}-o-{]
'I'm a fucking genius,' Joshua thought to himself, unable to stop grinning. He'd been like that for almost the whole week, really. He'd finally done it, after all, and that was enough to keep his mood up for a while.
What had he done? Well, finished with a new ward array idea, of course.
The idea had started sounding rather easy, but had turned out to be a lot more complicated than he expected. It was rather simple too, at least when said out loud. He'd wondered one day, shortly after he'd started making Weighing Wards to train, if he could make one that would put on just the right weight on the target.
Of course, he'd run into problems back then, like how that weight would be constantly changing and thus the ward would have to be updated every so often. That in itself wasn't a huge problem, really, but when coupled with the fact that making a ward that would target one specific being would drastically increase the amount of magic needed to achieve the same results as a more general one… Well, that certainly put blocks on his path.
Until now, that is. Joshua had started revising that idea after his talk with the Devils and his realization that he could drain the magic away from other people to power his wards. As such, the issue of powering the wards became more along the lines of 'can I cast the ward and then get the power elsewhere?' instead of just 'can I power the ward?'. It had drastically changed his view of how warding could be done.
From there, when he wasn't working in the Devils' wards, he was working on this new-old idea of his. Jeanne hadn't been happy with how much he worked when he wasn't… well, working at the cafe, but she'd understood that it probably counted as him relaxing. Joshua had found that he rather enjoyed tinkering with magic circles. Was that what people that tinkered with vehicles and such things felt like?
Back to the point, he'd finally managed to make his idea a reality during the last week and he'd set out to put it into practice. First, obviously, he tested it on himself and it worked wonders. Jeanne hadn't been a fan of it, but then again, she always complained about training, even if she never said a word about stopping doing it.
What he'd come up with was a ward array rather than a simple Weighing Ward. It still had one of those, obviously, one that targeted only one person in their group rather than several or all of them. There was also a Draining Ward that absorbed magic from that one target and powered the whole array. It was a slow thing, for sure, but that was fine, since there was no need for rapid increases in the Weighing Ward when it came to training.
From there he'd put two Monitoring Wards, a new ward that he'd learned specifically for this. They were actually very similar to the Detection Ward, except that they watched for changes in things inside the wards and not just the things themselves. He'd already been looking into those to add them to the ward arrays for the Devils too, so it worked rather well for Joshua.
Anyway, the Monitoring Wards kept up with two things. One watched the target and checked how they were doing against the strain of the Weighing Ward. When it started becoming too much for the target, they would trigger and stop the Draining Ward. The second Monitoring Ward watched the magic levels of the target and did much the same when their reserves started running low.
Thus, he created a training ward array that was pretty damn good, if he did say so himself. He had some plans to add a Weakening Ward to it, or maybe some other ones, he'd found some rather interesting wards through his studies after all. As it was, he was rather proud of his work results and felt no need to change much about it for the moment. He didn't have all the time in the world, after all.
'And… done,' Joshua thought as he finished setting the last ward of the array, the Draining Ward. With it, the whole thing could finally start working properly. Next to him, Morag sagged a little.
"You are all set up, girl," The man said softly, with an understanding smile on his face. He guessed she was the most affected because even the powered down ward would be quite heavy on her from the start, rather than the slow increase everyone else had had to deal with. "Take your time to get used to it, yeah? No pressure."
"Hm, Josh?" He heard Jeanne call hesitantly. "Something's up with Cheshire."
Instantly he grew worried. Had he messed up one of the wards? Had he miscalculated the one of the Monitoring Wards? He was sure he had done it right. He was alright, Jeanne was alright too. What could have-?
Then Joshua felt two things through his Magic Sense. First was the erratic nature of Cheshire's reserves. They weren't low, as he'd feared, and she was moving somewhat fine, so the weight wasn't the issue either. The second thing was the Charm, which was drawing on his magic and extending a… chord, for lack of a better term, towards the feline.
For a split second, he grew worried that the Charm was affecting his familiar, but that couldn't be it. The magic hadn't reached her yet. This was something else going on.
Cheshire, for her part, approached him then, hesitantly, as if walking was a strange act for her all of a sudden. Hesitant, for a whole other reason, Joshua stepped towards her too, once and then twice, until he was decisively moving towards the cat.
Then the magic string finally reached her and Joshua felt his magic go to the Charm and then to Cheshire. All three of them "shone" in his Magic Sense, but neither of them stopped moving. Eventually, Joshua drew the feline into his arms and held onto her. Their magic drew together with the Charm acting as a link of sorts between man and animal.
It was at that moment that Joshua felt something else, this time not through his Skill though. He felt Cheshire change in his arms. She started… growing, he realized. Her tail shortened, tufts of hair growing on the tips of her ears. Only her meow let Joshua know that what was happening wasn't necessarily bad, since she sounded more confused than in pain or anything like that.
Eventually, she stopped changing.
[Bond: Cheshire has gone up a level.]
Wide-eyed, Joshua looked down to see… something completely different from the Cheshire he knew. Almost on instinct, he used Appraisal on her.
[Cheshire
Title: Familiar of Joshua Davis
Race: Magical Lynx
Gender: Female
Strength: D-
Speed: D+
Dexterity: D+
Vitality: D-
Perception: D+
Magic: E+
Perks: 4
Skills: 6]
'What the actual fuck?' Joshua thought, unable to recover from the shock. 'Did she… evolve, Pokemon-style? What the hell?' Trying to grasp at… something, the man called for his familiar's Skills and Perks, wanting to check if there was anything else that had changed. Sure enough, he was right. There was an additional Perk on her list.
[Lesser Shapeshifting.
The user can change their body within restricted forms.
List of Forms:
-Cat
-Lynx]
He hadn't even finished reading the screen when Cheshire changed shapes in his arms, much quicker than before. One moment, she looked like what he was pretty sure was a lynx, and the other she was back to the cat form she had always been in. 'She changed forms,' He thought numbly.
"Joshua?" He heard Jeanne behind him. "What the fuck?"
He was pretty sure that was the first time he'd heard her curse like that. He didn't, however, have it in him to do the mature thing and chastise her for her language. He fully agreed with her sentiment, after all.
Almost an hour later, Joshua and Jeanne sat side to side, looking on as Cheshire bounced around the forest. The man absently played with the Charm between his fingers. 'Is this a good thing?' He wondered to himself as his eyes followed his first familiar. 'It feels like I should be… but why am I nervous?'
He supposed he was nervous because he didn't understand and humans feared what they didn't understand. He'd only regained a semblance of calm after finding a possible reason for what had happened.
[Cheshire
Rank - D]
His familiar had stepped fully into the Rank D, which he supposed had triggered the… evolution, as it were. He still had no idea how it had happened. He couldn't wait to get his hands on some books regarding magical creatures. Was this normal? He was pretty sure the answer to that question was no. After all, if whatever happened had needed his magic and the Charm, then it certainly wasn't something that could happen enough to be normal.
'How I wish I could talk with the one that gave me the Charm,' Joshua lamented.
"So, that's a thing," Jeanne said, still not fully over what she had witnessed.
In a way, it was funny, Joshua supposed, how they couldn't wrap their minds around Cheshire going from a cat to a lynx when they lived in a world of magic where religions and mythologies were real.
"Yeah," Joshua replied with a nod.
"You think the others will change too?" She asked then and the man felt his eye twitch.
"Probably."
"Well, at least nothing too weird should happen anytime soon, right?" Jeanne said jokingly. Joshua, meanwhile, winced.
"I really, really hope you didn't just jinx us, Jeanne," He all but prayed.
"Oh, come on! What could possibly-" Then she stopped talking as they both saw Cheshire and Nagini turn their attention to Morag, who was currently training and enjoying herself at the same time by weaving a web on the low branch of a tree. Then, they saw the small arachnide raise her front legs in a position that would have looked vaguely threatening if she wasn't so tiny.
Then she shot purple liquid in front of her. It was just a few drops, but Joshua and Jeanne were just close enough to see it. Both humans looked at the spot in the trunk that had been hit. After a second, the area around the drops turned slightly darker and dry, like it was rotting the tree at a rapid pace. It was a small area, but as Joshua stood up and got closer to have a better view, he could clearly see the effects.
"This is hundred percent not my fault," Jeanne defended herself before anyone could express anything.
"Sure it isn't, Jeanne, sure it isn't."
"You can't blame me for that!"
[} Chapter End {]