TSSG - Chapter 8 : Politics in Hel.... (Patreon)

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

Lucifaad, Underworld

–Shin–

“Alright!” Natasha exclaimed as she paused her pacing, which was good because it was just increasing his anxiety levels, before turning towards him, “Let’s face the facts. We have you working for a Devil House, given a job that should not be given to you, based on the facts that we know of right now. Maybe the memory integration was not done properly, maybe it will take time for all of your memories to return, or maybe your memories were erased before placing you there.”

“But why, though? I don’t have anything special on me. No strength, no special power, nothing on my person. Why would someone just erase my memories, then give me a nice job that came with a house, and then place those two at some distance from each other, which meant that I had to traverse areas that could turn fatal any second.”

“But what if they wanted to make sure you could not garner any attention? Wouldn’t people start questioning you if you just so happened to live so close to the Gremory Estate, a place that someone of your strength should not be able to afford?” Natasha countered his agreement.

He sighed, letting his head hit the wall behind him, as he replied tiredly, “Ugh. All this is just making my head hurt. If there is someone who can erase my memories, then give me a job at Gremory Estate, and make sure that my working conditions are monitored to the point that I don’t even see people until the end of my shift, then that person is so far beyond us, there is no point in even trying to prepare for them.”

“You think this is all a coincidence?”

“No?” he gave her a look before continuing, “What I think is that even if someone did this on purpose, there will be no point worrying too much about it simply because they would be far too above us in power levels.”

Ntasha gave him a look before sitting down on the couch, looking down at him, “Alright, we will put a pin in that. Now, let’s come to the things I have noticed. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary today, other than the killings and kidnappings we noticed that happened in areas they should not have happened in.”

“Yeah, that was really odd for me, too. I mean, for the most part, any disturbance in front of the Six Houses of Lucifers’ businesses would result in swift retaliation. I have memories of so many disturbing punishments that I had half expected someone from those Houses to descend, right then and there, and destroy the entire street to send a message, bystanders included.”

“So, why didn't they?”

He shrugged, “I don’t know, but I can make a few guesses. If there is not an overwhelming response from these houses by tomorrow, then we can safely assume that the event was not a one off thing. The Lucifer Houses are really prideful and will not stand for any single Devil doing something like that. If there is no response, then there can only be one reason for that.”

“Infighting.” Natasha guessed.

He snapped his fingers and pointed at her, “Bingo! I don’t think the Civil War that is coming was a coincidence. I think it should be impossible, even for the likes of Zekram, to arrange such a massive undertaking without anyone from the Six Houses of Lucifer figuring it out. I think some of them know about it and tacitly support the whole thing.”

“You think the Lucifer Houses want to rebel as well?”

He made a so-so gesture. “Not exactly rebel, as that would mean straying from the purpose Lucifer himself gave them, but more likely, they won’t acknowledge the current Satan descendant leadership. With Rizevim clocking out, the Lucifer Houses aren’t really obligated to follow the Satan Descendants, especially into something as stupid as another Great War. The Six Houses of Lucifer must know what that would lead to. And no matter what anyone might say, Lucifer did not want the Devil race to end.”

“So, you are saying that unless and until Rizevim Lucifer, the sole living Lucifer, does not come out and say that he wants the Great War to restart, the Six Houses of Lucifer were not obligated to do what the Satan Descendants are saying.”

“Yup. And that is something the Descendants themselves must have realised."

“And these attacks are provocations to see where the Lucifer Houses’ loyalties lie.” Natasha finished his thoughts for him.

“I mean, it is their whole job to enforce Lucifer’s will. With no will from Lucifer, they must be thinking for themselves for once, and realise that this whole War business was a very bad thing, except when their supreme leader wishes for it. You must understand that Devils, as a race, are really young and, up until recently, had a Supreme Leader who could pump Devils out by the hundreds without any issue."

Amusement danced on Natasha’s face as she pointed out, “You mean to tell me that the Devil race is akin to a teenager that can finally think for itself, and does not have an authority figure to tell them what is wrong? That sounds more worrying to me.”

“Haha, so funny. But aside from that, I can’t see why something like that could happen multiple times without any retaliation from the Lucifer Houses.”

“So, we work with the assumption that the Satan Houses and the Lucifer Houses are engaged in a shadow war right now.”

“That would be the prudent thing to do.” He told her.

She remained silent, and he knew there was something going on in that noggin on hers before she replied, “Very well. Now, come on, get freshened up. I have to head out soon.”

He was about to get up from the ground, only to pause as she told him she was about to head out right now, not when most of the people working in his timeshift were asleep.

Answering his unasked question, “I have to get a lay of the land as well. Don’t worry, I’ll call for you the moment I feel anything is suspicious. We also have to get a lot more clothes for me, if we are going to be leaving around my clothing every time you call on me.”

He made an ‘O’ face at that before pointing at her, “You are a smart spy. Also, that won’t work if someone sufficiently powerful decided to track you down using magic.”

She rolled her eyes as she ushered him into the washroom, despite not working up a sweat with his day job. It wasn’t that hard to do anyway as he worked at it at his own pace, instead of being rushed, “Chop. Chop. We have work to do. Also, I know that magic might negate that trick. Don't you think I would have thought of that as well?”

“Ah, you are so smart.”

___xx___

So, they had a plan for what Natasha had to do in the first run itself. They had established a 20 mile radius around the house. That gave them plenty of places to do a supply run. All they needed right now were clothes, lots of them, and intel about the area around them.

Now, the intel part was secondary, because as long as Nat had more than enough clothing to go around, she could always move about the city to gather intel. At one point, his modest wardrobe would run out of clothes, and he was not about to send Natasha out naked.

That view was not for the world. Not in this world, anyway.

They had talked briefly about the fact that she was played by an actress who was a regular person in his universe, and she had just glossed over that fact immediately, as if she did not care one bit about it. Either it was ROB shenanigans at play, or the super spy mindset she had was just that tough and uncaring about anything that might just give anyone else an existential crisis.

Either way, intel was second on the priority list, as the most Nat could do was gather local intel. He was not interested in that in the slightest, especially since the juicier information could be found in areas he had no interest in probing. He had explicitly told the same to Nat, along with a host of other warnings. 

Even in the short period of time he’d known her, he’d come to realise that he just could not lose her. That would mean that he would be all alone in this terrible world, and while he had warned her, keeping that in mind, it remains to be seen just how much of that she heard or would follow.

He had already set a timer when she’d left, making him think of how units of time measurement were created before. Because Devils too used hours, minutes, and seconds to measure time, as it was used in the alarm system he had at hand. So, either Devils handed out the time measurement system to humans, which might be a good or bad thing to do, depending on what the intent was, or the Creator of the Angels made the system, and it was just so good that everyone else just began using it.

Or the more likely option was that the Creator of Angels forced everyone to use it, using the overwhelming power he had to browbeat everyone else into following it. If so, then he wondered why Devils still used it?

Shaking his head, he realised that this attempt to distract his mind from the worry of Natasha being captured failed very soon simply because he did not have an endless supply of information and entertainment necessary to distract himself for a very long period of time. Books were a luxury, not something he could afford right now.

Plus, he was pretty sure that even if he did find something in the open market, it would be related to learning strong magic or some other fraud like that. Entertainment, especially in the form of books, was not really a thing yet. Fiction was not a thing. All the things that could be used to pass the time did not exist yet.

Entertainment was for the higher class devils, and to most of them, entertainment involved making low class devils do their bidding, and only in some cases was the entertainment involved not harmful to the low class devils, either involving physical damage up to death, or damage to their dignity.

Once again, further lending credence to his theory that all the aggression that was pent up within Devil bodies simply because they were not able to fulfill their purpose and had to redirect all that energy somewhere else. 

…..Or maybe all of them were just that evil. Either way, the lesson to take from all that is that strength was supreme, and he had to gain strength before doing anything else. Anything at all, up to and including doing something to help the Civil War effort.

He was pretty sure that once Zekram was successful in getting Sirzechs on his side, the war would be won, but even so, he could do something to either reduce the losses to the race as a whole, or at least do something that would help him personally.

Because later on in the series, he knew that things ran more on politics and politicking, rather than true strength, atleast initially. Once shit hit the fan, though, he was going to need strength once more, and for that, his perk was needed.

Which is why, when the combination of anxiety regarding Nat’s whereabouts and his anxiety about being really weak hit him at the same time, he just dropped down and began exercising. Even if it took a really long time to get tired and presumably break through his limits, it was something. At least it was much better than just bruising through his mental energy by just waiting for something to happen.