Author's Note: For those interested, there are now three advanced chapters (we're on chapter 32) on P-atreon, which you can read for just $3.
Plus I've posted the first 3 chapters of my new story: "Tales of Saiyans, Demons and Gods",for now, I'm prioritizing the multiversal chat story, so TOSDAG updates won't be as frequent as this one, even so, if you can, please check it out, it only costs $3.
Remove the spaces and dash: p-atreon/ Krakenian01
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Ryuichi P.O.V
"You're kidding me, right?" I asked, and I felt like my mood, which after yesterday's nap had begun to improve, experienced a drop worse than the one the stock market suffered in 1987.
"Yesterday we told you that the first weekly check would be carried out today." She responded by huffing a little.
"Look, is this really necessary? I know we said it and all that, but you've seen what I'm capable of, I made my intentions clear not to cause problems, you know where I live, and I'm sure you have someone or something watching me and/or my apartment." I replied while I felt a being with energy similar to that of devils, although much smaller, on the roof of the building.
"Everything you say is true, but a deal is a deal, and we did our part without making excuses, so the same degree of cooperation is expected from you"
The retort was clever and made sense, but that didn't mean I liked it, so I ended up sighing. "I'm going to try to ignore the part where you admit you're spying on me, but okay, you win, so where's the other girl? Her name was Sona, right? Eh… Risa-san?"
"My name is Rias." The redhead crossed her arms and looked a little offended. "Sona had to take care of a very important matter for her, so this time it will be just me"
"Cool." I said, and my sarcastic tone didn't seem to bother her too much.
"Aren't you going to invite me in?" She asked after a moment.
I hesitated, I didn't feel comfortable with this, but the contract would prevent her from doing anything wrong, right?
Besides, leaving her out here and continuing to argue would only draw attention, and I didn't want Karasuma-san to come out, see her, and start joking about me bringing girls home by some stroke of bad luck, I had already been very lucky in the fact that she hadn't seen Kiryu-sensei or Kirisu-sensei, so tempting fate wouldn't be the smartest thing to do here.
"Fine, you can come in." I said stepping away from the door and walking in with her behind me.
"Sorry for the intrusion." She said before closing the door.
"You can sit on the couch." I indicated as I went to the kitchen. "Do you want something to drink? We have barley and orange juice." I offered, I wasn't comfortable with her presence in my house, but if she was going to be here, even if it was for a moment, I would try to offer the basic courtesy.
"Barley is fine." She answered me from the living room, and I poured just one glass.
"Here you go, now, wait a minute here, I have to go change"
She raised an eyebrow as she took a sip of the drink.
"I have a part-time job in the afternoon, and I was planning to take care of some things after that, I wanted to rest all morning, but with you here I don't think I can do it, so I'll finish what I was going to do after work now, you're free to come with me." I explained before leaving her alone in the living room and going to my room, although not before knocking on the door to my brother's room.
"Brother?" He asked from the other side.
"We have visitors, don't come out until I tell you, understood?"
"…"
"Touji"
"Okay." He responded, and I figured that was the best I was going to get, so I went ahead and went into my room to get out of my pajamas.
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Touji P.O.V
I wasn't sure what to do, after Kirisu-sensei left this morning everything had been pretty quiet, and when Ryuichi returned after accompanying her he looked happier, so I hoped that this day would be calmer, and I even planned to talk seriously with my brother, not only so that he could tell me everything he knew, but also to understand what he planned to do in the future.
The idea of him being recruited by Sona or Rias didn't excite me, but I also had to admit that there would be some benefits if that happened, after all, devils were stronger than humans, and with everything that was about to happen an early boost of power could mean the difference between life and death.
But shortly before I decided to leave my room to talk to him, it was Ryuichi himself who knocked on my door and asked me not to leave my room because we had a "visitor" in our house.
I didn't have to be a genius to know that they were Rias, Sona, or some member of their peerage.
I debated internally what to do, I was very curious about who or who had come and for what, I remembered that yesterday while we were leaving they mentioned something about a weekly control meeting and that they would come today, but I had no idea what that meant.
With the acceptance that this would probably get me into more trouble than I already was, I opened my door as carefully as possible and walked down the hallway out into the living room, and there I saw a mop of crimson hair sticking out of our couch.
I couldn't do anything else when the girl turned around, looking directly at me with a curious expression that quickly transformed into a calm smile.
"Ah, you're the one from yesterday, Touji-kun, right?" She asked, moving her hand as if telling me to come closer.
I walked until I was in front of her, and although I was a little nervous I was able to answer her. "Yes, hello emm... Rias-san"
"Oh, do you know my name?"
"Eh, yes, the miss with glasses said it yesterday." I responded quickly.
"Oh, right, Sona did it, right?" She asked, more to herself than to me.
And with that off the table, I wanted to figure something out as quickly as possible. "You… you don't want to harm my brother, do you?" I asked in the most childish way possible, after all, if this Rias was like the one in canon, then she would be more of a girl who tries to appear dignified on the outside, but someone relatively soft on the inside, and even maternal towards some members of her peerage.
She blinked a few times before smiling a little sadly. "Your brother told you what we are?"
"You are devils, right?" It hadn't been my brother who told me everything, and I already knew it beforehand, but I responded anyway.
"And what do you think about that?"
"I do not know." I said, and I could see she was about to say something so I finished speaking before she continued. "But maybe, if there are good and bad people, there are also good devils? Even if they are only a few?"
Once again, Rias seemed surprised, although the next thing she did was change her smile from a slightly sad one to a sincerely happy one before reaching out and messing up my hair.
"You are a rather peculiar child, you remind me a little of my nephew, I am sure you two would get along well." She said, and although I felt like he was praising me, I refused to meet Milicas, because, although I was sure that Rias wouldn't hurt us, I didn't have the same faith in her brother, I didn't have anything against him, but I would prefer to have to see the least possible with the super devil capable of transforming into a disembodied entity of destruction.
"And don't worry, I don't want to hurt you or your brother, and I understand a little why he reacted the way he did the last time, if my older brother had been in the same situation I think he would have reacted in a worse way, and I would be happy if we could at least get along"
"That is something I see as unlikely." A new voice said, catching both my and Rias's attention, and as we turned we could see my brother in a new set of clothes, leaning against a wall and with his arms crossed.
"Touji, are you entering your rebellious phase or something? I told you to stay in your room.
"I'm sorry." I apologized, doing my best imitation of a kicked puppy.
"5 days without video games or computer." He said, and I looked at him with a pleading expression, I liked studying, but every now and then I needed to relax with some video games, so in my opinion, taking this away from me was a bit of an over-the-top punishment.
"Don't look at me like that, for what you did yesterday I was going to give you 2 days of punishment, but disobeying me today shows that you are not so sorry for your actions, so maybe this will make you reconsider a little, besides, you still have the television and the mangas to entertain you." He said, and it was clear that he was serious.
"Fine." My shoulders drooped, and I shuffled towards my room.
"I'll try to get back before lunch, we still have enough pizza, so eat all you want." He told me ruffling my hair as I walked past him.
"Yes." I answered him, and with that, he took a few steps towards the door, Rias got up from the seat and followed him, but before he left I called him.
"Take care of yourself." I said, smiling a little and waving my hand.
"I will." He replied, returning a smile before leaving and closing the door.
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Third Person P.O.V
"You seem to get along well with your brother." The redhead said as we walked down the hallway of the building towards the stairs.
"Of course we do, he is my only family, he can do stupid things and disobey me sometimes, but nothing will change the fact that he is my brother"
"You don't think you were too hard on him? I was honest when I said that I would prefer that we get along, the last thing I need is problems with some supernatural resident of the city that is under my responsibility"
"The way I treat my brother, as long as it is not abusive, is something that only concerns him and me, and I will be honest, just because we now have the contract that protects us does not mean that I blindly trust anyone of you, at this specific moment, with the strength that I have, I do not trust anyone." I was as clear as possible.
Until I had at least double the power necessary to defeat all the devils in Kuoh, I was not willing to let my guard down.
"So what drives you right now is the search for more power?" She said, and I stopped to look directly at her.
"What did you mean by that?" I asked, after all, it didn't seem like just a random question, but something you would say to get attention before connecting that topic to another.
She seemed hesitant before denying it. "It's nothing, it's impossible right now, and I don't understand what your abilities are or how they work, so something like what I was going to suggest is useless." She decided, resuming her walk.
I looked at her for a few seconds before continuing walking as well, I was curious about what she was going to suggest, but if she didn't want to say it then there was nothing to do, besides, I doubted that anything she said would be very helpful to me, from what I had felt from my fight with the blonde named Yuuto I could tell that the energy we used was very different.
"So where are we going? You said you had things to take care of before your part-time job, but what are those things? Train?"
"I won't train today, yesterday's fight was hard, so I want to rest my body for a couple of days before training again." I replied.
"So where are we going?" She asked again.
"We are going to go get manga." Was all I answered, and this time she was the one who stopped, so after a few steps I did too. "What's the matter?" I asked when I saw that she looked surprised.
"Are you going to go buy manga?" She asked as if what I said was something strange.
"Yes, come manga volumes that interest me are for sale, and I received my payment a few days ago." I responded with a raised eyebrow.
She searched her pockets until she found something that looked like it was half wallet, half purse, or something, and respecting her color pattern the thing was obviously red.
She looked inside her wallet-mini-purse-thing for a few seconds before putting it away and looking at me. "I seem to have forgotten something at home, is it okay if we move on real quick so I can get it back?"
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A somewhat short chapter, for now, we will see how Ryuichi's complicated situation with the devils stabilizes or ends up ruined, let's hope that whatever happened does not bring problems in the future.
And I have a couple of bad news, and no, I'm not abandoning the story.
What happened is that on Saturday there was a problem at the place where I live, there was a small fire, nothing too serious, luckily my brother was present and managed to put out the fire relatively quickly with a fire extinguisher, the problem is that the fire started in the office of the department, and my computer was one of the things that couldn't be saved from the fire.
It's annoying, mainly because I had a lot of drafts and ideas for future chapters there, but I can't do anything, luckily my brother's family lives on the floor above me, and until I get a new computer, he allowed me to use his.
Of course, I won't be able to spend hours sitting down and writing like I did with mine, but I can use it to publish the chapters, read them, correct some mistakes, and do other personal activities.
What does this mean for this story? Well, I'm going to slow down the publication speed a bit, it's been 3 months, and I'm almost 30 chapters in and close to 100k words.
From now on I'll be posting one chapter per week (on Mondays) both here and on my P-atreon (if you could give me a hand there that would be great, that way I could get a new computer sooner).
I think this is for the best, because this way, I will have time to rewrite or rethink some things that will happen in this story and avoid creative burnout (plus now I will have to write on my phone and I honestly hate doing that).
I hope this gives me time to get back on track and return to my previous posting schedule.
Remember that if you like this story, you can leave a comment, review, and a power stone, that will inspire me to write more, see you in the next chapter.