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Naruto
(Nighttime, Downtown Kuoh)

Rooftop-running was a basic skill for any ninja worth their forehead protector back home, and something that even most academy students had no trouble with. With chakra, any seasoned genin could climb any vertical height, stick to any solid– or even liquid– surface. Even without the tree-walking training to just walk up a building, only the most physically unfit ninja would struggle to overcome a two-story height difference, or jump across entire streets.

Back home, just a little bit of physical training and having your chakra running through your body were enough to open up an entirely new dimension of movement options.

Roof running in Kuoh was a bit different from back home, and that was only partially because I don’t have my chakra anymore.

Konoha had plenty of wooded areas, and most of the buildings were within one to four stories tall, and most streets were only just wide enough for merchants to pull their carts through, making it generally very easy to cross distances and move up and down buildings without losing speed and momentum. In Kuoh on the other hand, the layout of the streets and buildings changed a lot more depending on where you were.

The north side of town had a bunch of parks and open spaces, separated by woods and hilly areas, as well as a few rural communities. Tree running was alright over there, but the trees and their branches were much smaller than in Konoha, so it was more like tree parkouring than actual ‘running’. To the west, it was mostly residential with narrow streets, densely packed homes and apartment buildings, with many of them being similar in height. In a lot of ways, this was the area most like Konoha for quick movement. The south side, where the academy and our favorite karaoke place was, was about an even mix between the north and west in terms of the buildings-to-woods ratio.

But downtown Kuoh in the center, full of wide streets and seven-story mall complexes next to single-story convenience stores? The business district to the east, with all the squat factories and warehouses and parking lots sitting next to gleaming-glass office buildings that jutted up twenty or more floors into the sky?

Trying to travel across the rooftops in these parts of town fucking sucked without chakra, especially when you had to keep ‘supernatural’ capabilities secret from the public, unlike my home world where everyone knew about ninjas.

“Quit squirming,” Koneko-chan ‘requested’ while she scanned the area with her senses, taking slow steps across the rooftop while her head turned this way and that way. “It’s distracting.”

We’d started out our search by heading back towards the area we’d last seen Kalawarner, moving north from the south side of town where the academy sat. The goal was to then go to the clocktower at the center of town, to see if Koneko-chan could pick up a scent trail or something, and if we didn’t find any leads there, move towards the east where there were plenty of mostly empty buildings for a Fallen to hide out in at night. The fact that it also held the red-light district just made it an even more attractive hiding place for a Fallen Angel laying low in a town run by high schoolers.

“I’m not squirming!” I said as I very carefully stilled.

I was absolutely squirming.

To be fair, I was pretty distracted myself, at the moment.

Without chakra or wings of my own to help me keep up with her, she’d decided after I’d fallen behind the first time that the best solution that kept her arms free, was to carry me with a piggyback ride as she ran at speeds and jumped heights that I couldn’t match with just my physique.

So here I was, arms and legs slung over her shoulders and around her waist like an oversized backpack, my body awkwardly glued to hers with chakra so that I wouldn’t bounce around whenever she moved.

“And let me down now, will you?!”

Sure, it wasn’t as humiliating as a princess carry, but… I’m a guy. Going through puberty for a second time was already rough, but pressed up against a girl I like, physically unable to pull my lower half away to make some needed space? It was fine when the adrenaline of speeding across downtown without my own input kept my mind occupied, but the slow, plodding movements on this rooftop were dangerous. If she noticed the result of my hormones screwing me over, I wouldn’t be able to live through the embarrassment.

Koneko-chan froze mid-step.

“...”

‘Uh-oh. I’m dead,’ I thought– probably overdramatically– while going limp, resigned to my fate. ‘It’s all over for me.’

I almost missed it when she said something under her breath, only coming out of my mental spiral in time because she turned us to face the nearby clock tower directly.

‘Wait, did she not notice? Safe!’

“One… no, two…? And a barrier…” She mumbled, before nodding to herself. “Uzumaki-k–”

She froze again.

“Oof!”

Completely unprepared to actually tighten my grip on her again, I abruptly fell on my ass when Koneko-chan let go of her chakra’s hold on me. I looked up to see her step to my side and wordlessly offer a hand to help me stand, though her head was still turned towards the tower in a way that prevented me from seeing her face.

I took her hand and was standing at her side within a second, both of us looking at Kuoh’s central landmark.

“... Sorry. I didn’t think you would fall.”

“Ehh, don’t worry about it.” I waved it off, before moving on to business. “Is she in there?”

“Nn.” She shook her head in the negative. “There are two humans. One’s really weak, but I think they’re from the Principal clans.”

“And they aren’t supposed to be within city limits, right? Though, you did mention a barrier...” I scratched my cheek, trying to think of what that could mean before shrugging. “Wanna bet it’s something to do with the reason they’re in Kuoh? The clocktower’s in the center of town, so if their job is to contain a disaster, maybe they’re using it as an inner anchor point for a giant barrier?” 

I was talking out of my ass. I have no clue how things like barriers and fuinjutsu worked, but it was the kind of explanation an anime would use; vague and plausible-sounding.

“Hm,” she made a sound of acknowledgement. “... Should we take a look, or just report it to Buchou?”

“I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t know the first thing about barriers or seals.” I scratched my head. “We could go in and investigate, but I don’t know what we’d get other than just talking to them, and I don’t really know the politics of what’s going on other than what was mentioned earlier.” I shrugged again. “It’s up to you to make this call.”

Her head tilted in thought for a moment, before she hummed.

“I’ll text Kaichou later, after we grab the crow.” She nodded decisively. “Buchou might bring the cow with her, which might cause a mess.”

“Did you just call Akeno a cow?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. The [Queen] was most definitely not fat, and had almost as small of a waist as Koneko did despite the size difference between them. ‘N-not that I’ve been looking, of course!’

I coughed into a hand. “Why a cow? I think she acts more like a snake...” I paused for a moment as a thought occurred, and I compared her to Orochimaru.

Yeah, no. Nothing alike aside from the sadism, and even that was a stretch. “... if that snake was actually a fox disguised as a snake.”

She was a mischievous trickster that pretended to be venomous, so my comparison is perfect. No, you’re the idiot. Shut up.

Koneko-chan turned her head slightly to glance up at me from the corner of her eye. “Two big reasons,” she said, holding both her hands up so the palms were cupped towards her, almost a foot away from her chest. “Her big fat udders.”

She mimed squeezing.

I facepalmed. “... Did you really need to do the hand thing?” The problem wasn’t the pervy gesture itself. That sort of thing was way less creepy when it wasn’t a grown-ass man doing it.

“Yep.” I saw Koneko-chan turn to face me through my fingers, but her eyes were blocked from my sight.

The real problem was that she really went and put that image of our friend in my head, and right after I’d ‘calmed down’ too.

She turned her back to me a moment later and crouched to a knee as I let my hand drop. “Let’s go. Still have to find the crow.”

And now I’d have to try enduring another piggyback of shame.

I shifted awkwardly, subtly adjusting myself out of her sight. “... Right.”

Joy.

------

We were bounding across town soon enough, modern and inviting looking shopfronts being replaced by structures that looked more cheap and utilitarian. Bright paint turned into gray stone and metal, and business front signs made with real creativity became big blocky letters and harshly glowing neon. It made me vow internally, that if fixing my chakra network turned out to be a bust, that I would never wind up as a nine-to-five salaryman if this was what awaited me.

The only desk job I’d willingly take was the Hokage’s.

We only stopped once near a seedy looking bar where Koneko-chan caught the smell of our target, though it was a couple hours old by now, and she only caught it because of the unique scent of tainted Holy power that humans couldn’t smell.

According to her, very few species could actually sense different powers through smell the way a nekoshou could, and there weren’t really words to describe the scent of Fallen Light, other than by saying it was like ‘if moonlight could mildew.’

Either way, it gave us our lead, and we were quickly on our way to tracking the Fallen towards a run-down industrial zone near the edge of town.

It happened just after Koneko jumped high, launching us off of a warehouse up and across towards the roof of an office building to use as a vantage point.

Her head snapped to the side as we rose through the air, and she swung her arm out and down with her fingers curled like claws.

Blue-white strings of chakra sliced out from each of her fingers to intercept the three blood-red Light spears flying our way, redirecting them to pass below us towards the empty street.

We landed on the roof a second later, the echo of the asphalt shattering below us reaching up here like an explosive tag going off. 

I hopped off her back the moment she let up on her chakra hold, a pair of kunai already held at the ready in reverse grips before my feet hit the ground. Koneko had more chakra strings extended from the fingers of both hands, fluttering around us like the butler from that vampire anime as she glared in the direction the spears came from.

After watching that one with her, I’d made a comment about how it reminded me of puppeteers back home, and she’d immediately decided she wanted to try learning the technique after knowing it was possible.

Her version was a lot different from the standard Puppet Strings in a couple ways, being more flexible in how they could be directly used at the tradeoff of using enough chakra to be visible most of the time, but they also couldn’t really puppet things with any precision as far as we were aware. She could control the threads themselves really well, and use them to roughly pull things in one direction or another, but in computer terms, they didn’t really “transmit data” at all. She wouldn’t be pulling a Kankuro or Sasori anytime soon, if ever.

“You see anything?” I asked with my back to her, keeping an eye out for any sudden lights in the other direction. I was basically running blind at this time of night for trying to spot anyone flying against the night sky, but I’d catch a flash of light heading our way immediately.

“Nn,” She denied, before sniffing the air for a few seconds. She finally grunted, reeling the protective net of strings back into her chakra reserves. “... They left. Probably teleported.”

I clicked my tongue in annoyance, sliding my knives back into my sleeves and turning to face her. “How the hell does a fight ever finish if all you guys can just teleport away before it even really starts?”

“Arrogance,” Koneko shrugged. “Speed. Both, probably. Most factions think theirs is the best, and teleporting takes a couple seconds.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, remembering that guy that Red had erased, and how confident he was that he could defeat a High-class Devil and her [Queen] just because they were teenage girls. How he was gone before he could even react. “That makes a lot of sense, actually.”

We– just Koneko-chan, really– spent a few minutes near the edge of the ten-story building, looking out at a particular warehouse that still had its lights on, despite it being just past midnight at this point.

I walked up beside her, stretching out my arms and legs as I walked to limber up in case our ambushers decided to try their luck again after a fake retreat.

“Think that’s where they’ve been hiding out?” I asked idly.

I squinted at the building several blocks away, trying semi-seriously to see anything of use. Of course, her eyes were so much better that it was basically impossible for me to catch something she’d miss, but I basically hadn’t done anything yet other than get carried around. I was itching for something!

While there was light shining through the visible windows, the actual parking lot and work area spotlights outside the building were darkened for the night. There were a couple other warehouses around it, all sharing the same giant concrete lot, but none of them had any lights on or signs of activity.

On the front side of the building was the main lot, mostly empty and flat aside from a few groups of stacked pallets and small shipping containers. To either side of it was wide empty space, acting as buffers between it and two other warehouses, both leading towards the rear of the building. While there was a decent amount of space behind the line of warehouses, it didn’t extend far, the property closed off by a fairly tall brick wall, blocking off the forested area behind the complex. 

“Mm.” Koneko-chan nodded. “Not sure if anyone’s still there, or if they all left a few minutes ago. Not seeing any movement, but that doesn’t mean much based on the old church.” She tilted her head. “But it reeks of Light, sort of. It’s weird. Can’t feel it, not really, but I know it’s there.”

“Strange,” I hummed in agreement. “The lights are still on. What are the odds they were just in a hurry to leave and don’t care about the electric bill, compared to them having a welcome party prepped just for when people like us come snooping around?”

“Twenty five percent for one, twenty five for the other, fifty for both,” She said matter-of-factly.

“And can’t Angels see in the dark like Devils anyway?” Koneko-chan nodded in an affirmative to my question. “So either way, it seems like high odds they had the lights on for a reason.” I grinned and rubbed my hands together. “Sounds to me like it’s time to do some sneaking!”

“Yep.”

I had a brief moment of surprise as one of Koneko-chan’s arms suddenly slipped around my waist and hugged me close to her side. “Uh-?”

And then she stepped over the ledge, pulling me with her.

“Bwah?!”

Off the ten-story building.

Now, I’d gotten back some of my strength and speed over the past couple months, but I was still a human without chakra. That is a long fall without chakra.

I may have screamed just a little at first.

We weren’t in free fall for long though, because halfway down the building we actually started slowing down. Koneko-chan was holding her other arm up, and in her grip was an extra thick blue-white chakra cable, stretching all the way back up to the roof.

As our descent continued to slow, the cable stretched thinner and thinner, until Koneko released it from the building when we were only about a story and a half above the sidewalk, a height that was child's play to land safely.

Even as I calmed the pounding in my chest and wordlessly pulled my arms from where they’d wrapped around Koneko-chan reflexively, reminding myself that she could have pulled out her wings to slow us at any time, I caught her muttering something like ‘properties of both rubber and gum’ to herself under her breath with a tiny smile.

I shrugged mentally, my mind turning to how we would approach without being seen, since the building was surrounded by open space.

Technically it would be easiest to stay out of sight coming from the sides, if only because I could climb one of the other warehouses and jump across the gap between buildings since people, even people who can fly, don’t tend to look up.

The issue with that, was that it assumed there was no one still around staying hidden, and that anyone still around wasn’t on the lookout from a different building to get better sightlines. Coming from the side in that case, while keeping me hidden from the target, would make me obvious to almost any other angle for a decent chunk of time while on the approach.

That really only left the front or the back, which were the most stereotypically obvious ways to approach an enemy stronghold.

I went back and forth with Koneko-chan on all this while we walked the remaining blocks to the industrial compound, passing by cracked sidewalks and run-down mechanic shops and delis.

“So we’ll do both.” She nodded her head like it was already decided. “I’ll walk up to the front door, and if anyone’s home, I’ll get all their attention while you sneak in from the forest.”

“I– Ugh, fine.” I deflated at how simple it was, and the fact that it was the best option we really had on short notice. I never was the best at coming up with great plans outside of combat, and Koneko-chan usually preferred taking the most straightforward path available. It would have been fine for snooping at the clocktower, but that was a different circumstance and a different faction involved.

We were just down the street from one of the compound’s main entrance gates, standing beside an alley that led to a different side-street, when we decided to finally split up so that I could circle around and approach from the back. Before we actually did though, I remembered something.

“Oh, hey, do you mind teleporting to my house real quick to get my sword, just in case I need a stronger blade?” I asked sheepishly.

“So unprepared,” Koneko-chan said with a sigh and a shake of her head, clearly teasing me. “So much for a professional ninja.”

“I still have one of your circles on me, so I can summon you back here if you text me when you have it!” I rushed to explain with pleading eyes, playing along. “It’ll be in and out, I promise! I’ll even make it up to you with a portion of my bento at-”

“Deal.” She cut me off with a smile, disappearing in a flash of red.

“-school.” I stood there for a moment. “...Huh. That was fast.”

I walked over to lean against the wall of the alley and wait, when something else occurred and I face-palmed, pulling out my phone. I had forgotten to tell Koneko-chan where my sword was, so I quickly pulled up her contact and texted her, before settling back to wait.

After a few minutes of waiting with no response, I checked my phone again with a frown, debating if I should send another text just yet.

Right as I made the choice and began typing out a message, I snapped my head up when a distant clang of metal dropping onto concrete rang out from the direction of the warehouses, grabbing my attention with narrowed eyes. 

Leaning just a little bit out of the alley to look through the bars of the entrance gate didn’t show me anything, especially with the light of the streetlamp above it washing out the sight of anything past it, so I made the snap decision to move up and get a closer look.

It took just a couple seconds for me to dash down the rest of the block and reach an unlit part of the wall for me to climb. I hopped up and caught on to the ledge with my fingers, pulling myself up just enough to peer over the edge without making a big silhouette for anyone on the other side to spot.

Quickly finding the warehouse we’d had our eyes on, I didn’t immediately notice anything off about it, like newly opened front doors or garage shutters. It took a few seconds of scanning the area, before I caught a glimpse of a dark shape shifting around at the back of the gap between buildings. It was hard to tell at this distance with the lack of light inside the compound grounds, especially since the moon was barely a sliver in the sky right now, but if I squinted hard enough, it almost looked like…

‘There!’

A second, definitely human-shaped figure dropped down from the rear wall before moving to the side and disappearing behind the building.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath. Either another group was here first, or this wasn’t even the Fallen’s hideout to begin with. ‘And what’s taking Koneko-’

My pocket vibrated and I instantly let myself drop to the sidewalk to pull out my phone. By the time I unlocked the screen, it vibrated two more times.

----
Today 12:19 AM
Koneko1123: sorry, issue came up
Koneko1123: tell u l8r
Koneko1123: ready now
----

I fished out the contract leaflet and bit through the loose skin of my right thumb’s knuckle to draw blood, immediately smearing it on Koneko-chan’s summoning circle, before tossing the paper away.

Biting the tip of the thumb made it annoyingly uncomfortable to keep a firm grip or tight fist for the few minutes it took me to heal, and was really just the least-worst spot someone with a summon-clan contract could use for the Kuchiyose no Jutsu, since the technique needed the blood to make contact with the summon shiki you slam onto the ground. It wasn’t something I’d ever really thought about before, until I met Koneko and started using her circle. I was so used to just doing it the way Ero-sennin originally taught me, that I never bothered wondering why it was done that way.

The disposable summon paper dissolved into particles of red magic midair, expanding into the Gremory magic circle and depositing Koneko-chan on the sidewalk in front of me, my cane-sword held with one hand, and in the other-

I blinked.

“... Why is Kuro with you?”

-was the jet black stray cat I’d adopted off the street months ago, looking like she was particularly annoyed and sulking limply in Koneko’s arm for some reason.

I shook my head. “Never mind that for now, we have a bigger problem right now.”

“Mm, she’s safer with us right now. I’ll tell you later,” Koneko picked up on the urgency quickly, holding out my weapon. “What’s the situation?”

‘Gee, that’s not concerning at all,’ I mentally snarked at the first statement.

I accepted my sword and held it by the sheath in my off hand near the hip, briefly considering the doability of crafting a belt clasp to clip it in place at my side in the future.

“I heard something about a minute ago and came closer to get a better look, and I just saw a couple figures coming down the back wall and moving towards the building,” I relayed quickly. “Whoever it was, something tells me they weren’t with the Angels. Doubt it’s a couple civilians messing around either, since they came from the woods.”

“Got it,” Koneko-chan nodded. “Give me a second, I’ll check it out.”

She lifted her free hand in a half-ram seal and closed her eyes, her cat ears perking up as she focused.

Even without a chakra network of her own, Koneko had insisted on learning about the hand seals I knew and how they worked, so I’d made diagrams and explained how they affected chakra in order to help her understand how to mould her chakra better through her own efforts, and she had taken to using the Ram seal or a half-Ram as a mnemonic device to use her chakra better. It didn’t actually do anything by itself, but it helped get her into a mindset to focus her chakra more efficiently, increasing her control, channeling intensity, and sensory range.

“Nn. Hard to see through the building,” She muttered. “There’s four, I think? Four human sorcerers for sure, and a bunch of others that are too weak to do anything, but not normals. Can’t get a feel for accurate numbers. Metal, Earth and… Wood?” Koneko nodded to herself a moment later, opening her eyes.

“One Shinra, one Nakiri, and two Kushihashi sorcerers; the rest are fodder mobs. They’re from the Five Principal clans.”

“Skipping the clocktower was one thing, but this is the second time we’ve come across them in town…” I brought a hand up to rub my chin in thought. “On the one hand, it’s entirely possible the Fallen baited us here to spark a confrontation between our two groups. On the other hand…” It could also just be a matter of bad timing for the Fallen, caught between two hostile groups while retreating from the warehouse.

I decided.

“You should text Sona about the clocktower now,” I told Koneko. “In the meantime, let’s go take a look at what’s going on, directly. If they’re friendly, it wouldn’t be a good first meeting to have me sneaking around. If they’re not, then nothing’s stopping us from giving their asses a beating, or retreating and letting Red handle the diplomacy.”

“Mm.”

She pulled out her phone and began typing up her text as we jumped over the wall and started casually strolling across the open lot.

“They noticed us.” Koneko-chan commented when we had crossed about half the distance, still tapping away at her phone in a back and forth with the Student Council president. She’d started using both hands to text at this point, having placed Kuro on top of her head between her own cat ears to have both her arms free. The black cat remained almost entirely limp aside from her flicking tail, front paws draping over Koneko’s forehead like a noodle.

“Huh, I haven’t noticed anything,” I commented idly with my hands behind my head in a relaxed position, grinning at the cute sight. “What gave them away?”

“The sorcerers are moving to the front now. We probably tripped a perimeter barrier that I’m not good enough to notice yet.”

A swirl of flower petals kicked up a dozen meters in front of us out of nowhere, and an older man stepped out of the gust a moment later, wearing blue traditional robes that wouldn’t look out of place in a daimyo's council chamber despite the clearly toned arms barely hidden in his billowing sleeves. With gray hair in a traditional topknot and narrow yellow eyes set in a stern and wrinkled face, he looked like the intimidating kind of old guy who’d usually be in charge of a town’s security, escorting Team 7 to whichever important client hired us for the job whenever we arrived on location.

“You two, unknown youkai!” The man called out gruffly. “You are intruding on the property of the Five Principal Clans! State your business and vacate the premises immediately, or we will remove you with force.”

Almost as if to punctuate his statement, the other three sorcerers appeared around us in a semi-circle. One guy rose up through the ground like it was water, the other guy appeared using the same flower petal Shunshin-thing the elder guy did, and a young woman dropped down from one of the multiple unlit lampposts through the lot, with her being the furthest to our side.

Earth-dude was tall and middle-aged, bulky as hell with a plain face and hair, and his massive hairy forearms were crossed over his chest. The other flower-dude was a young adult probably in his twenties, a smug-looking bastard with hair just as silver as his elder, but slicked back in a comb over. The chick had one side of her head shaved and a scar from her nose to her ear under one of her gray eyes, her straight black hair combed so that it fell down next to the scar. Sticking out horizontally from her back was a sheathed tanto, her hand resting on the handle.

Despite looking the youngest of the bunch, probably still a teenager, she was the most obviously dangerous of the bunch, and probably the actual most dangerous combatant too at that, being the only one not wearing robes of some kind, holding a weapon, and just the look in her eyes in general compared to the others.

I didn’t doubt that they could all fight, but when it came down to it, she seemed like the one of the bunch whose only role was as a fighter.

I saw Koneko reach the same conclusion out of my peripheral vision, turning her head just a tiny bit to glance at the woman, though her head was still down in her phone.

“Oh, I’m not a youkai, I’m human. These are just birthmarks I got for reasons involving a nine-tails.” I corrected with an easy smile, planting my cane on the ground to lean on casually. Top-knot guy didn’t immediately attack despite me taking my time with answering, which was a good sign, but his scowl didn’t let up at all, so not a very good one. “I’m Uzumaki Naruto, a student of Kuoh Academy, and my friend here is Toujou Koneko, the [Rook] of Rias Gremory.”

They all tensed at that last part, even though she was the size of a middle-schooler and had a cat on top of her head.

They weren’t wrong to consider her more of a threat, but it was still kinda funny, especially since we’re just standing here casually.

I continued with a shrug. “We were tracking a Fallen Angel in the area and were led here, before they escaped with a teleport spell. Koneko-chan here sensed them leaving from that warehouse over there, so we thought it was their hideout and came over to check it out.” I straightened up with an apologetic grin, lightly twirling my sword up to rest on my shoulder. “I suppose we were wrong about that though, huh? You mind me asking what’s the deal with them being here?”

Top-knot guy’s frown deepened the tiniest bit and the heavily muscled earth-dude shifted, but any reluctance was pushed through and the older man answered professionally, much to the frustration of Smug-Comb-Over guy judging by the dude’s sour expression. “This is a supply depot partially owned by the True Elements Construction company in association with the Five Principals. Twenty minutes ago, their security was tripped and warehouse five was broken into, so the four of us were called in to support operations in case the intruder came back while the workers catalogue the damages. As of yet, we’ve found no sign of the intruder’s true motive.”

“Nothing at all?” I rolled that around in my head. “That doesn’t really give us much to work with, ya’know? If you let us take a closer look, we could help each other out.”

“Impossible,” Comb-over bastard suddenly spoke up with an amused shake of his head. “You’ve been given more than enough of our courtesy already, heretic.”

Top-knot guy’s face twitched at the interruption, but didn’t tell off his younger clansmen or say he disagreed. 

“Haahh?” I squinted at the younger guy, already understanding he was gonna be a jackass about things. “What’s the issue? We both want to get to the bottom of this, and the sooner we can track down and stop the Fallen, the sooner we can go back to ignoring each other.”

He scoffed. “As if the Five Principals need assistance from a filthy Devil and a feeble heretic.”

“Don’t insult my friend,” I said, starting to get seriously irritated with the asshole. “We’re literally just talking, there’s no need to be a prick about it.”

“You-!”

“That’s enough!” Top-knot guy’s gravelly voice cut through the outburst, pinning the younger man with a stare. He turned to me. “While I will not excuse my nephew’s rudeness, his intent is correct. We do not need nor want help from outsiders in the matter.”

“That’s just stupid,” I told him bluntly. “You guys are the outsiders here in Kuoh.” I planted my cane back on the ground with both hands, before shrugging. “But fine, we were just in the area to capture a Fallen. If you want to be idiots about this and turn down free help because of your dumb pride, go for it. It’s not our problem.”

The elder’s eyes narrowed, but the younger man audibly grit his teeth.

“You brat!” I saw the elder close his eyes and shake his head as the nephew got loud. “The Gremory name can only shield so much insolence! Be gone!"

“It seems your time is up,” Earth-dude rumbled his first words of the confrontation with a chuckle, uncrossing his arms and taking steps forward while cracking his knuckles. “Guess we’ll be using force after all.”

I sighed.

Scarred-chick lowered her stance, laser focused on my hands.

Comb-over’s hands slipped into his robe sleeves.

There was a loud crack.

“Make a move, and I’ll smash you all back into the dirt he came out of.” Koneko’s monotone voice rang out, her head turned enough to glance at the massive man from the corner of her eye, phone still in hand. 

Despite outmassing her three or four times over and the adorable sight of a housecat on top of her head, he stopped dead at the look, actually taking a half-step back in shock. The talismans that appeared in comb-over’s hands stopped glowing, his face pale, and even the silent scarred chick– who’d been ready to throw down and unsheathed her tanto a moment ago– seemed to hesitate, glancing at her allies' reactions to judge her next move.

The only one who maintained their composure was Top-knot guy, who probably silently understood from the moment I mentioned the Gremory name, just what type of fight they would be getting into if it came to it. Even then, his expression was grimly tense in the light.

It probably had something to do with the violent blaze of blue-white chakra burning around Koneko-chan, and the fact that the concrete she was standing on had cracks radiating outwards from her feet without having tensed a single muscle.

She cut the aura off a moment later, slowly nodding once and putting her phone away when it was obvious they weren’t going to push the attack.

“You own the property, but it’s in our territory.” Koneko reminded them plainly, with no room for argument. “We’ll leave now since our target’s the Fallen, but cause us any issues and I’ll get angry.” She turned to me and tilted her head back the way we came, careful not to shake Kuro around too much.

“Lead the way,” I gestured with a grin while twirling my cane around like a baton, before we both turned our backs on the exorcists and walked away. I hadn’t ended up using it this time, but it had been a close thing.

They four stayed silent, watching us as we walked away. They probably didn’t want Koneko-chan to overhear Top-knot scolding them, but at the same time refused to turn their backs on us before we’d left the property, so they were just left standing there in the middle of the dark lot awkwardly.

I turned and gave a cheeky wave back after we’d jumped on top of the border wall, just in case they were still looking, before dropping back down to the sidewalk next to my favorite two troublesome cats.

“Well that was a waste.” I commented, idly reaching over to snag Kuro for myself, cradling her in my free arm.

“Not really.” Koneko shrugged as we walked. “None of the Fallen from the Church Incident had red colored Light. The Light in the warehouse was white. At least two or more Fallen we didn’t know about are making moves.”

I nodded, hooking my sword on my elbow to free my other hand and pet Kuro’s silky fur. “Fair enough,” I said. “But what do we do now?”

The thing about trying to track people who use teleport magic, as it was explained to me, is that unless you’re an expert that can see and decipher a teleport circle on the spot, most teleportation magic doesn’t leave any sort of trail to trace. So if someone teleports back to their base and you don’t know where that is, or don’t have the luck or resources in place to actively detect the matching surge of magic across the town, they’re effectively gone until they come out of hiding.

She shrugged again, glancing up at me. “Go to my apartment and watch anime?”

“It’s past midnight already,” I deadpanned.

“No school tomorrow,” she countered.

I thought about it.

“Just one or two episodes,” Koneko promised. “...maybe three.”

 “Fine, fine,” I rolled my eyes with a tiny grin, “we can watch anime at your place for a little while. Today’s been a long day, some time to wind down will be nice.”

“Mm.” Koneko-chan smiled, slowing her walk to fall behind by two steps. “Hold on tight, Kuro-chan.”

My expression shifted into a deadpan again when Koneko swept me off my feet.

Damn princess carry.