TSSG - Chapter 10 : Superspy Suspicions..... (Patreon)

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

Lucifaad, Underworld

–Natasha Romanoff–

When she had closed her eyes and accepted death peacefully, she had expected to either vanish into the ether or find herself in hell. Even though she did not subscribe to any of those notions, the thought of there being something for people like her after death was just as comforting as it was harrowing.

The notion of hell, paradoxical as it might sound, actually helped her sleep sometimes. The fact that someday, somehow, she would have the opportunity to clean her ledger of red was the delusion she fed herself to just keep going. She knew it was a fanciful delusion at best, but in the scant few moments she had to herself, she thought of what she had done so far, and what she would have to face for doing it.

After all, the Red Room had to face their due because of their actions of mutilating hundreds of young girls for their cause. They wanted weapons for their cause, so she just gutted the entire organisation, and made sure nothing and no one could revive that practice once again.

After that, it was only a matter of time before something caught up to her on a job, and that was exactly what had happened. Only, instead of the punishments in Hell, or a blank void where her mind ceased to exist, she found herself in a space as a floating blob, without any pain or heat or cold or any of the things associated with hell.

There, she was told that she was dead, and she had been summoned to a different world by an extraordinary soul. Then, a bunch of information was shoved into her mind as she could feel her soul stretch, adapt, and change because of whatever that voice did, before she was thrust away.

When she next opened her eyes, it was in front of him.

Her Master. The love of her life. Shin.

She knew right then and there that Shin was the man she loved most and would not hesitate to do anything for him. All he had to do was ask, and she would do it, no questions asked.

As she leapt over yet another building, she noted that Shin had been remarkably restrained. Even when she purposefully tempted him, he showed shocking amounts of control, even when he must have known on some level that she would never say no to anything he asked of her. Even so, it was so fun teasing him. The way his gaze wandered, his eyes lingered on her, and the way he took extra care not to come off as some kind of pervert just made her giggle inside, and made her adore him all the more.

It had only been two days since she saw him, and she had already fallen in love with him more than she thought possible. 

So, when she realised that Shin was in some kind of danger, and whoever it was, they were very close by or at least had people close to Shin, she had slipped into her persona that would stop at nothing to fulfill a decided goal. In this case, the goal was to make sure her Shin was strong enough to never be hurt, and for that, she would do anything.

Unfortunately, Shin was also clingy enough to never let her out of his sight, not for long anyway. He clearly preferred keeping her in his soul scape, safe and secure from the outside world, not knowing that his life too was in danger, and if he somehow died, then she would die as well.

Even if their bond did not kill her, she would kill the people who killed Shin and bring ruin to every single person who had ever associated with Shin’s kills before killing herself. She simply could not see a future without Shin, and she recognised that at one point in time, that fact would have horrified her, but she no longer cared about that.

Meeting Shin meant that she now had the ability to have kids. She now had a body that put everything she had seen to shame. Maybe if she had seen Captain America in action, she could have compared bodies, but even then, she knew that she was both stronger and more durable than America’s Golden Boy.

To think there was an entire race of people like her, and it contained beings who were so strong they could be called Gods back home. It would have been earth shattering news to her before, but now, she just looked at the so-called Gods and thought of what Shin would do when he inevitably reached that level. After all, with the powers he was given, it would be entirely unreasonable for him not to reach the level of those Satans and even beyond.

She was going to make sure Shin reached that level, and the first step in that direction was to make sure she could move freely throughout the Capital without being tracked to Shin’s home. Neither one of them was powerful enough to handle scrutiny right now, especially in the Capital. A Capital that was likely experiencing a shadow war. While Shin had favourable opinions of the beings who were going to start and then win the upcoming Civil War, she had come to realise that Shin relied far too much on the future knowledge he had of those beings, and did not stop to think of the consequences of relying on information that was already potentially unreliable.

What guarantee did Shin have that the people who fought the Civil War and won were the good guys?

Judging by the current condition of the Capital, she would freely admit that the current administration was not up to par, so maybe the others really were the good guys.

But that raised another question. How much of Shin’s perception of them was carefully curated to come off as kind and welcoming instead of the brutal beings that they were? After all, in Shin’s own words, they had climbed a mountain of corpses, of their own kind no less, to reach the level they would in the future. It would be frankly impossible to think that a bunch of mass murderers, even if those murders were for good causes, could remain the kind of Devils Shin said they would be in the future.

War warped people. People went into War as someone else and came out as vastly different people, and that was for humans. She had no idea what happened to Devils after they went through a catastrophic war.

Even in the best case scenario, she did accept Shin’s characterisations of literal Satans being good people in their hearts; that would be true for the version of these people five hundred years into the future. A lot could happen in all these years, even for Devils, as the ones who were going to lead the Devil race soon were really young right now, not even a century old.

Shin was judging them based on the latter five centuries that would shape them into good people, instead of the initial century that pushed them into a War so catastrophic that, in Shin’s own words, they had to resort to importing humans by the thousands and turn them into bootleg versions of Devils so that they had a viable population.

The Evil Piece system sounded awfully like slavery to her, but even then, Shin reluctantly told her that the intent behind that system was good. It was just that it was abused a lot by parties that the Satans could not really touch. Not without causing more chaos in the Underworld.

The temptation to tell Shin that they too came to power by causing Chaos and then Civil War in the Underworld was strong, but she refrained from doing so. She wanted to do her own digging before she could confront Shin about some of his notions about some of the prominent Devils here that might just kill him later on.

Which is why she had asked for over 4 hours before Shin could forcibly call her back. She barely needed an hour to secure enough clotting for her to last a week’s worth of raids, but she wanted to roam around and get a lay of the land, so to speak. She also hadn't told Shin of the raids she wanted to perform, but she was sure Shin had a hunch because why else would he tell her to gather as much clothing as she could.

It was something she would have killed for in her previous life.

Becoming a more powerful version of Captain America, along with a free escape card, was something that any one of the Widows would have killed for. She supposed she was lucky she was chosen to become Shin’s waifu.

It was an odd title Shin had given her. It was startlingly similar to a wife, just with a bunch of extra sureties that just meant that Shin would be more trusting of her. It was the best thing ever!

Shaking her head, she paused before looking down at a bunch of devils walking around with seemingly no purpose in sight. The day and night cycle that already unofficially existed here was interesting, with people choosing their own cycle based on their routine. She supposed that since the concept of the sun coming up to scorch their eyeballs did not exist, devils could choose to sleep at any given moment.

Normally, these devils would not have caught her attention, if not for the fact that they had been in the same street for quite a while, and most of them were glancing at the store in front of them every once in a while; then their gazes moved onto the entrances and exits of the store.

She closed her eyes before opening them as she recalled this place. Shin had crossed this place while on his way to work, so she knew what the store was.

It was a hardware store on the ground floor, along with a research as well as advanced equipment store on the floors above it. It was the property of House Lucifuge, just like dozens of others that littered Shin’s path to and from work.

Reading Shin’s thoughts when she asked about that store had told her enough of the line of stores that House Lucifuge ran. They were the House that was most renowned for having above average Demonic Energy and being the research kind. They were the ones behind most of the equipment that was variable to Devils who could use it to mine the Pits, guard themselves in the Pits, and overall, defend their Lord’s territories from the many incursions every single Devil Pillar House had to experience in the Underworld.

Sometimes, it was from rogue Fallen, who had whipped up a bunch of Demonic Beast hordes into a frenzy and aimed them at Pillar Houses, and sometimes, it was just a bunch of lords competing against each other, covertly, of course. Wouldn't want the Satan Descendants to know that something was wrong.

Under the rule of the current Satan Descendants, things had deteriorated significantly, as most PIllar Houses just duked it out with each other instead of coming to Lucifaad with an expectation of having their differences resolved.

The control that the Satan names had on the overall underworld was slipping, and the Satan Descendants likely knew that, which is why this whole nonsense of restarting the Great War. Alas, they were just too stupid to realise that by the time the people in power had begun ignoring you as a legitimate entity, it was too late to turn things around. She knew that even without the Civil War happening, the Satan Descendants would have never been acknowledged as the true heirs to the Satans and given ruler positions over the Devils.

The Civil War might just have saved the entire Devil race from fracturing under the weight of incompetent leadership.

She sighed before moving about to get a better vantage position. Thankfully, none of the Devils involved were strong or sensible enough to detect her, which worked just fine for her.

She still had a lot of time before she had to go hunting for clothing and go home. She was going to take full advantage of the window given to her and go home just in time for Shin’s bed time.