Chapter 6: Wakeup & Ambition
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Takauji's eyes begrudgingly opened as rays of sunlight pierced through the blinds covering his window. A groan left his mouth as he came to.
Hold on. Why does my arm feel so, heavy?
Wondering why the right side of his body had been plagued with a sense of numbness, he turned his head.
"What the hell?" He muttered aloud. Shocked by the sight of his contractor's Queen sleeping in the same bed as him, and completely naked to boot.
Her arms were coiled tightly around his waist like a snake, and her legs interlocked with his. Akeno's bear-like grip made it seem as if she was using him as a body-pillow.
"Oi, wake up." Takauji withdrew his arm from the confines of her cleavage and gently shoved her head. Eager to retrieve the sense of feeling in his arm.
"Mmmfff… five more minutes." She moaned while still half-asleep. Pushing herself even closer towards him as her hold grew strong enough to make him wince.
"In five more minutes you're going to push all the oxygen out of my lungs. Come on now, wakey wakey." He tried to free himself for her clutches, but her subconscious strength proved to be too much for him to handle.
Fine, if that's how you want to play it.
He moved his head closer to her neck, with a plan in mind to get himself out of bed.
(Chomp!)
"KYA~!" She jolted out of her slumber as she felt his teeth playfully chomp down on her exposed clavicle. "Mou… what was that for?" She pouted as she rubbed her now sore spot.
"You're the one who decided to sneak into my bed, blame yourself." He huffed as he sat upright. "Speaking of which, why exactly are you in my bed?"
"Just felt like it," she smiled as she rested her chin against her palm.
"Uh-huh," he didn't seem convinced. "And why aren't you wearing any clothes?"
"Just felt like it," part of him was tempted to just slug her off his mattress. "Besides, you don't seem to hate it."
"You using my bed doesn't bother me that much, but trying to constrict me to death does," he rubbed his almost bruised abdomen.
"Ara? Is that an okay to use your bed whenever I like?" She basically ignored the latter half of his comment.
"Do as you please," he shrugged.
Akeno on the other hand seemed elated, grabbing her phone and snuggling up to him as she took a picture of them.
"What was that for?"
"I need a new wallpaper, is that a problem?" Now she had a good tool just in case she planned to tell anyone he was hands off.
"No, I suppose not. Now put on some clothes before you catch a cold." He got out of bed, having to crawl over Akeno who was reluctant to leave in order to reach his glasses.
"Devil's don't catch colds."
"The same goes for idiots," she pouted.
"That's no way to talk to a lady," she folded her arms together as they pushed her exposed chest upwards. "Now come here and give your classmate a good morning kiss," Akeno held her hands out towards him.
"No thanks, you haven't even bought me dinner yet." He rejected the advance, letting out a hearty yawn as he went to the bathroom to freshen himself up.
Are all Devil women this strange? Actually it's probably just her now that I think of it.
"You're no fun," she relented. Stretching her arms as she finally decided to get out of bed. "Oh, I just remembered we don't have school today," she looked at her sprawled out uniform on the floor. "Hey, can I use your clothes?"
"As long as you don't touch my Dragon Ball pajamas, sure."
She raised a brow as she went up to his wardrobe, opening it only to find a set of pajamas with Goku plastered on them.
"Why do you even have this?"
"It's Goku. Why wouldn't I have it?" Any man who claimed to be a man and didn't like Goku, was in fact no man at all.
"It looks like something Issei-kun would wear," she remembered him screaming "Kamehameha!" when he first activated his Sacred Gear.
"If that's the case then he's a respectable man," if only he knew. "What's with that look on your face?" She seemed about ready to break into a nervous chuckle.
"It's… nothing," she replied awkwardly.
"If you say so," he shrugged. Washing his face with a towel and walking towards the kitchen. "You hungry?"
"Now that's how a lady ought to be treated," she smiled. Wearing one of his shirts that struggled to contain her chest. "What are you making?"
"Pancakes."
She walked up behind him, grabbing him by the waist as she leaned forward with her head on his shoulders. Almost like a married couple.
"Smells good," she complimented. Making a relaxed face as to her surprise, he made no attempt to push her off. Even though the true reason behind it was that Takauji knew he was incapable of suppressing her gorilla strength.
For now at least.
"And tastes good as well," having lived alone ever since he entered High School. Takauji had quite a bit of practice when it came to cooking.
"Thanks," he finished his plate in a matter of seconds as a result of having only eaten snacks lately. "Anyhow, I'm going to get back to work. You should probably get going as well."
"Ara, you want me to leave?" She pretended to act hurt.
"Like I said, do as you like, you're the one who created a summon point in my house without my knowing after all." He returned to his room as she hummed to herself.
"Uh-oh," upon turning her phone off silent mode, she was met with an onslaught of missed calls from her King. All because she had told Rias that she would "see her later". "Maybe I really should get going," she summoned a teleportation circle and returned to the clubroom.
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An uncounted amount of time had passed, and Takauji was still glued to the seat of his room as he spun his marker in between his fingers. Studying up on his Illusion Magic.
"That's quite troublesome. Even if I manage to successfully make someone believe another person is someone else, as long as they verbally remind the person of their identity before anything happens. The illusion will most likely end."
That alone added a number of variables to whether he'd be able to successfully make use of the art or not.
First, he would have to make sure he does it quickly enough. Second, he'd have to make sure the situation was such that the wait time between the cast and his expected result wouldn't be overly delayed. And lastly, he would still have to take into account the level of his opponent.
The more magically-able a person was, the more resistance they'd have to Illusion Magic, sometimes even making them invulnerable to it if the difference between Takauji and his opponent was large enough.
"In other words, if my decision making when using the spell isn't done within a split-second. I will fail." If he could make an enemy think their ally was him during a fight, he could quite literally win battles without even having to move a muscle.
The only actual thing he could do to progress the art before he needed to deploy it, was to reduce his casting time as much as possible. Magic was a game of subtraction after all.
He set the book of spells aside, bringing in another one that had been newly added to his collection.
They gave me this on a whim, but who would've figured that it held the answer to a majority of my problems?
It was an encyclopedia of all the known encounters logged in the "Familiar Forest", which is where Devil's went to make a pact with their familiars/servants.
These creatures each held a variety of abilities, whether it was catered to offensive, defense, mobility, recon. You name it, there was a familiar for it.
But there was one problem standing in his way in particular.
Only Devil's were allowed to enter the forest, also it wasn't known whether he could even form a pact with a familiar from that forest as a human if he did somehow manage to gain access.
He flipped through the pages until he arrived at his bookmark.
[Cursed Eyes - Parasitic Type Familiar.]
[This Familiar is known for the potent miasma made from Demonic Power of the Darkness variety. It takes the form of a shadow blob that moves around the southern side of the forest at a slow pace, they each have a set of two amethyst colored eyes that move around freely in their goo-like body.]
[In order to make a pact with this creature, one must allow it to enter their brain stem through either of their orifices. Upon doing so, it will begin to fuse itself with the host. Granting them significantly heightened processing speed, heightened regeneration, enhanced eyesight, improved reflexes, and bolstered physical prowess.]
[It has not been tested yet whether there are additional benefits given to those who have the same affinity as the creature.]
[Making a pact with this Familiar bears a huge risk. Allowing it to inhabit and mesh with one's brain could result in a failed merging because of a host's lackluster strength, which would lead to the host either losing all rationality until their brain implodes, or allow the familiar to take over the host's body entirely.]
[Editorial Note: Parasitic familiars should be used for light testing at most, the risk is not worth the reward when it comes to making a pact with them. No matter how enticing they may sound on paper, trust me.]
[Should the host be successful, the creature will lose all sentience, effectively dying and living on only as a part of the host's genetic code. The host will then have a set of smaller eyes appear beneath their actual one's, which can be controlled at will to improve their sharpness of vision, and field of view.]
"To think it would have a Darkness affinity," he smiled as he placed his hand on the picture of the creature. "I am destined to have this, I can feel it."
Even if he wasn't able to absorb the creature, he felt the need to try nonetheless, even if it resulted in his demise.
"Maybe I should ask her to reincarnate me? No, on second thought it's too early to go that far. There's still time before the forest opens according to this. I should first try to find some favor with her in order to persuade her to let me go. I'm sure her family's influence could pull a few strings for me."
He leaned back into his seat, looking at the ceiling in deep thought.
"Should I strongarm her with the contract renewal? But even if that succeeds, it'll sour the relationship from that point onwards. Am I willing to make such a compromise?"
The answer was no, he was not yet strong enough to become self-reliant.
"Wait a minute, didn't she say that there were some troublemakers in Kuoh? If I can find a way to get rid of them, surely that should give me the leverage I need."
That course of action seemed a lot more feasible.
"The problem is, I don't know who or where these troublemakers are. I'd rather not elicit suspicion by asking her out of the blue either." He continued to rock back and forth in his chair, deliberating on how he should proceed.
"Wait, rather than using the contract as a strongarm. Maybe I could use it as the solution itself?" He thought of a stipulation he could add, one that was actually written in her favor rather than his. "Yeah, that should work."
He had decided on his course of action.
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Sukuna x Aizen. What could possibly go wrong?
Word Count: 2011
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