(New Leaf) Accretion 7 (Patreon)

Naruto

"-and that is why the battle of Lake Trasimene is still considered to this day to be the largest and most successful military ambush in human history. Any questions?"

The school speaker system rang out in a pleasant sounding chime, signifying the end of class.

"Oh! I seem to have lost track of time and rambled on too long," Takeda-sensei said with a chuckle as he picked up the blackboard's eraser. The man was just a little bit overweight but constantly wearing suits a half-size too small for him, leaving the buttons holding them closed straining with every motion. He was an older man with bits of gray streaking through his neatly combed black hair, thick glasses, and a jovial attitude, who was just a little bit scatterbrained when it came to teaching his lessons.

If you believed him at his word.

After the first couple of weeks of experiencing his teaching, there probably wasn't a single person left in the class who didn't realize he did it on purpose. Every period we had with him, without fail, he would end the lesson with the same question to his students, just seconds before the intercom dismissed us, immediately followed by him rushing to clean up his materials and scurry out the door without students having a chance to ask anything.

I frowned when my pencil tip snapped for the fourth time today while I was trying to jot down the last of the notes on the board before it was erased. By the time I found and pulled out a replacement, it was already wiped clean, our teacher halfway out the door.

"–and remember everyone, five paragraphs on page fifty-seven's prompt by tomorrow!"

The door slid shut behind him before anyone else had even finished putting away their notes.

"What's up with you today?" While I was pulling out the next class's textbook, a familiar voice spoke from my side. "You've been pouting for, like, the entirety of World History."

"Who the hell's pouting?" I grumbled, shooting a glare Mitsuri's way as she leaned back against Koneko-chan's desk, her hands planted behind her for support. I just barely stopped my eyes from dropping below her face.

A pose like that was dangerous on a girl with her figure.

"And nothing's 'up' with me," I asserted aggressively, "other than the fact that I keep breaking my stupid pencils by accident, and World History is my worst subject!"

The redhead just smiled patronizingly, speaking in that husky tone her voice defaulted to. "Sure, sure. You're just frowning a normal, totally-not-a-pout, frown." The smile disappeared, replaced by a deadpan, half-lidded glare. "You and Koneko disappear for two weeks without a word, and the day you come back without her and constantly frowning, I'm supposed to believe nothing's up?" She scoffed. "I know it's hard for you to accomplish, but don't be an idiot."

"I'm not an idiot, idiot!" I scoffed myself, but then considered the rest of what she said for a moment, rubbing my chin with a hand. "Hmm…"

"You really didn't even notice, huh?" Mitsuri asked dryly.

"Koneko-chan's club is still dealing with a whole thing with Red's family," I flapped my hand at her while I explained distractedly. "Dumb rich people stuff. I know what they're doing, and I'm, like, ninety percent confident they'll succeed, so that has nothing to do with it. Now shaddap, I'm trying to think."

"Don't hurt yourself," she said airily with a smirk.

I idly flipped her off.

'I know for a fact that I only started getting annoyed when my pencil broke the second time,' I thought to myself, 'but that's because I keep getting distracted and wind up using too much force in a hurry…'

But that only made sense on the surface. Why did I keep using too much force in the first place? I should have better control of my body than that. Maybe it was because I'd kept getting more of my strength back, but hadn't had time to really keep up my morning training while directing the others?

'No way,' I dismissed that idea a moment later. I'd done enough sparring across the training camp to know my control hadn't slipped at all even with any strength increases I'd gotten. 'Maybe I'm looking at it wrong… maybe it's something super complicated and psychological that isn't immediately noticeable, or maybe it's something super simple that will just resolve itself if I don't think about it?' Whatever it was, it probably did have something to do with the two weeks spent out of school, but nothing was particularly clicking.

I finally shrugged, liking the sound of the second possibility. "Eh, whatever. I'll just deal with it, whatever it is."

"Truly, you'd make an outstanding therapist," Mitsuri mocked, rolling her hazel eyes. "Something bothering you? Just ignore it! Surely it will go away eventually…"

"Exactly!" I nodded with a grin. "See? After you pointed out the problem to me, I can already tell I'm feeling better. Works just fine for me!"

She snorted, shaking her head. "Whatever. You said the pipsqueak's club was dealing with some rich-people stuff?" She changed the topic with a question. "The hell is it they're doing that got the school to excuse two weeks of absences for you all?"

"I'm not sure how much I should tell you before Koneko-chan get's back, since it's kinda private, but that was the simplest part of the whole thing." I glanced around at the rest of our classmates in the room to make sure no one would overhear me. Norika was at someone else's desk, chatting surprisingly energetically with a girl whose bangs covered her eyes.

'Huh.' The girl must have found some more friends since we've been gone. 'Good for her.'

But yeah, the actual details could wait until Koneko could tell Mitsuri herself. "Red's family basically owns the whole school. They're ridiculously rich," I emphasized.

"For real?" She looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "It's kinda obvious to everyone she's a rich girl, but to own Kuoh Academy?"

"Yep," I nodded. " They have a ton of control. Everything got sorted out with just a phone call from Red, after school had already ended for the day." I paused, before rubbing the back of my head. "Sorry for not letting you guys know we'd be gone by the way, but, uhhh… I still don't have you or Norika's phone numbers, and I didn't even know I was gonna be joining them until the night before we left. They kinda offered to hire me on the spot."

"Hold on-" Mitsuri quickly stepped over and leaned into my personal space, grabbing my new pencil and scribbling a pair of usernames and numbers onto my notebook. She set the pencil down and stepped back. "-There. Now, what? What would a bunch of rich people hire you for??"

"Ninja," I said simply, not explaining further. I grinned smugly at the blank look on her face and looked at the clock on the wall. "Looks like the next class is about to start."

"But- what- why the hell did they need a–!"

Sure enough the next teacher walked in at that moment, cutting her off.

As the next lesson began I wondered how much longer it would be before the others finished fighting, and if Koneko would be back today or tomorrow.

'Who knows, maybe they already kicked that guy's ass, and are throwing a rich-person victory party?'

-----

Koneko

'... Ow.'

Exploding sucked.

It hurt. Really, really, badly.

It was also really, really loud.

My body ached and my limbs burned as I forced myself to stand from my position on all fours, my dominant hand ripping out of the ground in a loose fist. My ears rang, both sets hearing that high-pitched sound you hear in shooter games when your character gets flash-banged, and I stumbled as I got upright, barely catching myself with an instinctual use of chakra sticking when my knee buckled for a moment. My balance was shot, and I was seeing double with my vision still blurry from the sudden flash of light, but it was rapidly clearing up as I restarted circulating my chakra.

Even expecting it, I'd only just managed to get my arms up in time to protect my head, forcing my chakra to the surface and locking it into place around my body in a way that made it act like a shock-resistant shell, at the cost of my own mobility. Even with that, the explosion cracked through the shell like an egg. The force of the blast had sent me tumbling away from its ground-zero, so I wasn't really that burned by the heat, but the skin of my arms and legs still felt a slight tingling sting.

Where my uniform wasn't torn by the attack, it was coated in soot and dirt. My stomach was left almost entirely unguarded compared to my upper body, so that's where I took the most damage. I gingerly cradled the area with a hand, gloved palm on bare skin. The explosion had shredded the lower half of my uniform shirt, leaving my belly button exposed and heavily bruised.

Despite my preparations and expectations, I was still surprised by how much it hurt, my muscles feeling like my entire body had been hit by a massive hammer. It was a sort of bone-deep ache that I knew would leave me sore for a week if not for Asia's [Twilight Healing].

Looking across the grounds, there was still a bunch of smoke rising and dust hanging in the air from where the spell struck me, most of the grass in between the gym and the training hall either scorched and flattened, or completely gone outright.

I felt twin trails of warm liquid drip down my jaw, saw a drop of red slide down one of my loose bangs, and realized at least three of my ears were bleeding. Suddenly my unsteady balance made a lot more sense, and as if me noticing it made it real, I grit my teeth as the pain of multiple ruptured eardrums assaulted my head.

'... Fucking ow.'

I could easily understand why Yubelluna was called the [Bomb Queen].

Exploding really fucking hurt.

But I was durable enough to stand back up.

As long as I didn't get Retired, I could fight. As long as I could fight, I was strong enough to be a problem, to be the wall our enemies broke themselves against.

A winged shadow flew across the ground in front of me.

"Hohh?" I heard the haughty voice in my remaining uninjured ear.

I looked up.

Locks of her purple hair draped slightly over one side of her face, covering one of her matching purple eyes, the obsidian and amber circlet she wore only partially visible through the split in her bangs. With the blue thigh-slit dress/corset thing that showed off her stockings and barely covered her giant chest, as well as the jeweled gold neck ornament and black collared magician robe that hung off her shoulders, she looked more like some sort of sorceress villain from a hentai, instead of the [Queen] of a noble Devil's… harem…

'Wait a minute…' My eyes opened just a tiny bit wider. '... aren't those practically the same thing?'

My tail stiffened on instinct, but before I could move out of the way, a pink magic circle passed through my body from above, the magic seeping into my body to lock my limbs in place, knocking me out of the weird mental tangent.

It's possible I may be slightly concussed.

I pushed against the sealing spell despite my soreness, and found that I could still move a little bit with some straining. Just a few centimeters, but already more than the one other opponent she'd used it against in her public rating games.

I could do without the annoying pink glow coming off of my body though.

"You're a tough one, aren't you?" Yubelluna drawled with a thin quirk of her lips. "To not just make it through my attack still conscious, but to sense me before I even finished? Honestly, I'm impressed."

She was leaning forwards, propped up by nothing but a Devil's inherent flight magic while lounging in the air. My eyes zeroed in on a singular crystal vial, partially hidden in her cleavage and hanging from a thin wire necklace.

'The Phoenix Tear,' I recognized.

A lock of my hair slipped from its place and fell to cover my cheek. It felt like I was watching in slo-mo as one of my black cat hair pins slid from the white strands and fell towards the ground, clearly broken.

"..."

Okay, that's it. I've already had enough of this bitch. Now I'm mad.

I focused my demonic power into my limbs, and surged my chakra to force my body to move. The magic sealing away my ability to move held under the strain, but then I released my energy in a blast that washed away the foreign magic as it left my body, and took a slightly tired step forward with something like half the gas left in the tank.

My fur stiffened, and I instantly jumped back, watching as a second pink magic circle appeared just above where I would have been standing.

"... Li and Ni were right about you being someone to watch out for." Yubelluna gave a dramatic sigh. "It seems this confirms it, our information on you is significantly outdated. To think, in just barely more than a month's time, you went from a weak little youkai barely better than an average [Rook], to someone I'd have to personally dedicate some attention to."

"Eat shit and die." I flipped her off with my left hand.

"Rude." Yubelluna's face scrunched in disgust, before she gave a twisted, mocking smirk. "I wonder; this power that you've shown– is it a glimpse of that same potential The Black Cat had? Before she went insane and slaughtered her [King], that is."

Her head tilted to the side suddenly, dodging the rock I'd thrown with my right, having discreetly picked it up when I first pushed myself up. Her smirk grew, and I already closed half the distance between us, having kicked off the ground to fly up at her with my own wings spread out behind me.

I was thinking clearly, almost perfectly in control of my actions. If she thought I would fly off the handle or freeze in place at the mention of my publicly known history, she was dead wrong. Aside from the split second of surprise at my criminal sister being brought up, all it did was firm my determination to never lose control of myself like she did.

Yubelluna didn't show any sign of disappointment that her verbal jab failed though, so it was totally possible it was just her being petty. She seemed the type.

Instead, she just lazily lifted a hand, a finger outstretched.

My instincts blared like a warning siren and my wings flared with a twist without my conscious input, allowing me to abort my charge and bank to the side just as the space I would have flown into burst in a wave of heat and force. The explosion was much smaller than the one that got me in the first place, barely any bigger than my whole body, but with how quickly and easily she cast it, if I got hit once, she would be able to keep chaining more on top of it while I was disoriented, something she had a habit of doing against more durable opponents in her rating games.

I caught a glimpse of her swiping her finger horizontally in my direction and I immediately shot up, a sequence of blasts buffeting the air below me in a line, the sounds straining my last functional ear.

Her finger followed me, and I shot off in her general direction, doing my best to fly in an unpredictable pattern. Between me having to dodge her rapid spells and her being a much better flier than me, she managed to maintain enough distance to keep up her barrage and prevent me from being able to actually attack her. All of this, without even using her staff.

I raced around the air above the grounds, circling and chasing Yubelluna through the air while she tried using her simpler spells to box me in without committing too much power to take down a single [Rook].

Annoying mages, always trying to ration their resources even when they could just finish things with overwhelming force.

I ignored the fact that I was doing basically the same thing with my chakra, while I weaved my way through a practical minefield of explosion spells that nearly seared my wings. My side was outnumbered, I had a legitimate excuse for it.

A flash of crackling blue-white electricity burst out from the forest canopy near our base, easily visible to us in the sky.

["Two of Riser-sama's Pawn's, Retired."]

'Heh.' Despite the intensity of the one-sided fight I was currently in, the corner of my lips lifted up into a little smirk. 'Yuuto-senpai started right on time.'

On the flipside, the smirk on Yubelluna's face dropped into an annoyed frown and she looked towards the woods.

"Enough of this game of cat and mouse. I've spent long enough on you as it is." She reached towards her staff where it hung from behind on her mage robe. Almost idly, she flicked her finger my way one last time to keep me occupied.

I was already beginning to slow just a little bit since I rarely pushed myself in flight, and rarely practiced enhancing my wings with either my chakra or demonic power, but there were still two silver linings. First, I don't know exactly why, but my body seemed to be reacting to her spells before I could even consciously notice any tells, so I'd been able to keep moving and keep dodging much easier than expected.

Secondly, I wasn't trying to attack her.

Flinging myself back out of the way of the explosion with my arm held up in front of my face, my lips moved while out of Yubelluna's line of sight.

"Now!"

As long as I was strong enough to be a problem, someone stronger would have to deal with me. Someone like Yubelluna had to focus on me.

"Alright! [Boost!]" Issei cheered. The reptilian scent that had hung around just underneath the smoke, the scent of a dragon's power, doubled, before suddenly disappearing all at once. "[Boosted Gear Gift]! [Transfer!]"

In that instant, I saw as the Bomb Queen's face widened into one of alarm while in the middle of bringing her staff to bear. I flew away as fast as I could without turning my back on her, just in case she chose to take me out in a split second of spite. I watched as her body tensed and demonic power flared into a visible aura as she twisted in the direction of the training hall, a hand reaching up to her neck–

–just in time for a crackling beam of white-blue light as thick as a bus to burst into existence, enveloping her almost instantly with a clap of thunder. It was so bright, the rest of the world seemed to darken around it, electricity sparking all over. The sonic boom crashed into me like a physical wall, almost knocking me out of the sky when my final eardrum burst and the last of my equilibrium left me.

My fur was completely stiff and frizzy from the static in the air, and I flew shakily towards the forest where Asia was hiding as the beam dissipated and Akeno took to the air in her Thunder Priestess miko outfit.

We had hoped that would have been enough, but Yubelluna's form remained hovering in the air, clothes tattered and skin visibly burnt red and blistering, even charred around her arms where they'd been held in front of her. Layers of shattered magical shielding scattered around her like broken glass, and while her grievous wounds were already visibly healing rapidly, thanks to her immediate use of the Phoenix Tear vial she was holding in a shaking grip, it was clear that she'd only barely avoided being Retired and was now on the backfoot.

I turned my back and let my attention drop from that confrontation in order to look where I was going.

Akeno would handle it.

"Coming down for healing." I said the words, but it sounded like I was underwater, only hearing myself through the vibrations in my skull. I couldn't tell if I got a response from the headset or not through the ringing in my ears, so I just followed Asia's scent. The ear piece could have been fried by the charge in the air for all I knew.

While I couldn't really hear anything at the moment, I still felt the dull thumps, vibrations, and static as the two [Queen]s duked it out. It almost felt like I'd fallen into a different reality, the near-silence filling my head despite the chaos unfolding behind me.

I unsummoned my wings as I approached the tree-line at speed, the appendages folding back into my body where they were reabsorbed as pure demonic power. The fall was fast and the impact sudden, rattling painfully through my sore limbs, but I made up for my failing sense of balance with my sense of my chakra, relying on my tail and my mental map of the energy circulating in my body to keep me upright as my feet dug a trench in the forest floor with my violent landing.

When I came to a stop, I sniffed the air twice. Underneath the smell of soot, freshly unearthed soil, and the weakened scent of a dragon, I caught a whiff of the strawberry-vanilla scented shampoo Asia used somewhere off to my left, fast approaching. She'd moved from just behind the gym with me at the start, to closer towards the training hall, placing herself further from enemy controlled territory. Whether she understood that when she moved, or she just felt safer being closer to Hyoudou's position, that was a fifty-fifty.

I gingerly made through the trees to meet her halfway, still hurting from Yubelluna's attack, careful to not leave a trail as I left my crash trail, just in case someone else on Riser's side was watching when I landed and came looking around to attack.

Just a few seconds later, a flash golden blonde caught my eye and the former-nun came into view, dashing through the trees at a respectable speed. Her green eyes widened when she saw me and her mouth opened in a gasp as she rushed towards me, her hands already up and glowing. Her lips were moving, but the only sounds that reached me were entirely indistinct and muffled, like she was in a far-off room.

I pointed to my bloody ears and shook my head. "Sorry, can't hear you right now."

Her brow scrunched up in worry, but her mouth closed and she nodded firmly with a determined look in her eyes, reaching down to cup my head inside her Sacred Gear's aura as I looked up at her.

In just a couple seconds of healing, I was already able to notice the difference. The distant explosions and lightning strikes went from nothing but thudding shockwaves I felt through my fur, to distinct cracks I could tell apart from based on the sharpness of sound. Lightning was more of a rolling rumble, while the explosions were singular bangs over in a moment.

I sighed in relief, almost sagging in place as a tension I hadn't really noticed left me.

"Thanks Asia." I nodded seriously at the [Bishop] as she let go of my head and let her healing aura spread to the rest of my body. "That helped a lot."

I'd gotten so used to hearing everything around me, all the time, that I almost felt claustrophobic with it taken away from me.

"Ah, you don't need to thank me Koneko-chan, really!" The golden retriever in human form smiled brightly at me. "I'm just doing what I can. You all are the ones bravely putting yourselves in danger, so this is the least I could do to help my friends!"

'Yep, sickeningly sweet.'

My lips curled into a small smile anyways. I opened my mouth, about to bully her into accepting the thanks she deserved, but my nose twitched.

Hyoudou's dragon smell– which had already increased in strength twice between me entering the woods and now– doubled in intensity again, now at a level that was hard for my nose to miss.

Then the emerald beam of his [Dragon Shot] blasted into the side of the partially destroyed gym, shattering the remainder of the wall on this side.

["One of Riser-sama's Rooks, Retired."]

"I finished off Xuelan, huehuehue. Her amazing thighs didn't stand a chance against my 'touch' once I made contact!"

I just looked at Asia with a raised eyebrow.

"... That's the boy you like?"

She just fidgeted under my stare while pouting.

"Thanks for helping me train 'that' move by the way, Asia-chan!"

…

'...Is he talking about that stupid [Dress Break] thing?'

I deadpanned at the girl as she turned beet red and tried lowering her head to hide her face.

"Auuh…"

Asia helping the perv train a forced stripping technique aside, I put a hand to my ear piece, which apparently survived. "Quit perving out," I said over the open comm channel instead.

"Good job Ise," Rias-senpai's approving voice crackled on the comms, ignoring the byplay. The sound of wind was heavy on her end. "You too, Koneko-chan, Kiba."

'She's probably flying right now,' I thought idly.

She continued. "With both their forward teams taken care of and Akeno stalling Yubelluna's defeat to keep Riser from taking to the field, let's all regroup at the edge of the woods near the sports field. We'll make a final push from there to take out the rest of their defenders, before moving on to Riser himself."

Huh, I must have still been temporarily deaf and missed the announcement when Kiba took down the last of the three [Pawn]s in his region.

I looked up at Asia, who met my gaze while continuing to heal my full-body bruises.

"Piggyback, or princess carry?"

"Eh?" The uncomprehending look on her face was perfect.