Chapter 9:
"Ohayo gozaimasu! Anata no otōto wa totemo kawaīdesu." A housewife sweeping her front porch called out to us as we walked by.
"Arigatō. Gakkō wa dokodesu ka?" I said back to her. She pointed me down the correct path to take.
"Um… Akane. I think we have a problem." Alice pointed out as I followed the woman's directions towards Kuoh. "Neither Robin nor I speak Japanese." She said with a dejected look on her face. Robin wasn't looking any better off. They had no problem communicating to Rias and her peerage because they were Devils.
"Hey I've been learning, it's just spanish and chinese were a bigger priority to learn first. Japanese was like 10th on the list of languages I have to learn in the future." Robin added.
"I could teach you both right now, if you want." Emma stated. We had collected her on the way to the school. She had snapped out of her depression after talking to me earlier.
"Teach us how?" Robin asked.
"I can directly upload the knowledge of Japanese to both your brains. It might leave you two with a headache though." Emma explained. She told us that she learned dozens of languages from all the minds she'd read throughout her life.
"Ok, go for it." Alice said with no hesitation. "It's annoying not knowing what people are saying. Even if I get a vision, it'll be useless if I can't understand what anyone is saying." She explained. Robin looked like he had some trepidation at allowing someone to mess with his brain.
After a minute he sighed and relented. "Fine, but only this one time…. And I'll never mention that I allowed this to Batman." He mumbled that last part. Emma had us all pause in the street for a moment as she focused on Alice and Robin.
"Itai!" "Uwa…" Robin was clutching his head in pain while Alice didn't look that bothered. Her vampire brain was built differently, I guess. It clearly worked though as a moment later they were speaking Japanese.
"That sucked, I'm not doing that again!" Robin said while still clutching his head in pain. "I'll learn languages the old fashioned way from now on!"
"What if we travel to a world in the future that doesn't speak a language similar to our own?" I teasingly pointed out.
"Uggh…"
…
A few minutes later, we arrived at the school gates and there was a beautiful bespectacled girl waiting for us. She had short hair in a bob cut and a lithe yet mesmerizing figure. Just like Rias and Akeno, her face was free of any imperfections. Konoko might have been as well, but I wasn't interested enough in the cat girl enough to check her out. Maybe once she grew up in a few years…
"Ehem… You must be the 'exorcists' that Rias mentioned. You certainly are a diverse bunch…" Sona Sitri said to us. She was mostly looking at the 12 year old robin when she said that. He wasn't in costume and therefore probably looked like some random child to her. Which he was technically… just one that moonlighted as a vigilante superhero in another universe.
"Yep, that's us," I said as I held out my hand for her to shake. She reached forward and shook it. Her hand was incredibly soft…
"I'm not as entirely convinced as Rias is about your claims of an evil youkai possessing one of the devils here being credible. Still though, better safe than sorry I suppose. I'll let you meet my peerage, but keep in mind that I'll be watching you." Sona said as she gave us cute glares.
"You got it, we'll be completely professional. Won't we, everyone?" I said. We shouldn't be long anyway as Emma would just be reading minds. Alice and Robin were pretty much here for moral support as the former couldn't use her gift on devils and the latter was currently unarmed. I was here to punch people if a fight broke out…
"You bet!" Alice cheered.
"Sure…" Emma said nonchalantly.
"If I can't be completely Professional then I promise to at least be fessional!" Robin said and then he started laughing for some reason... "Get it!?" He turned and looked at all of us expectantly. Unfortunately, everyone else just gave him a deadpan stare. "...you all clearly didn't get it."
"Oh, we got it. It just wasn't funny." I said.
"I didn't get it…" Alice said dejectedly.
Emma scoffed, "There's nothing to get. That was bad…"
"Oh…" Alice then gave the boy wonder a look of pity at his lack of comedic talents.
He looked offended. "Hey, l was just trying to make a good first impression!" Robin shouted.
I could tell sona was losing confidence in us already, as she was beginning to look aggravated at our antics. She was rubbing her forward, and I was hoping we didn't just give her a migraine.
"Alright everyone, before the gorgeous student council president here blows a gasket let's do what we came here to do." I said as I gave Sona a wink.
"G-gorgeous!?" Sona sputtered out. She stopped rubbing her forehead and gave me an incredulous look.
I turned towards Sona and ran my eyes up and down her form. "Of course you're absolutely gorgeous! Your face is perfectly heart shaped with those adorable glasses that give you a sexy smart girl appearance. Your eyes are so bright! Their shade of pink is so unique that I can't help gazing into them. And your body is sinfully thin, with long legs that i also can't help but imagine wrapped—" She cut me off before I could get to the good part.
"Stop! STOP! I get it!" Sona squeaked out. Her face was completely red at this point. She gave me one last glance, before she turned and fled back to the school. "I'll see you all in the student council room!" She shouted out as she didn't turn around and kept running towards the school building.
I think I went a bit too far there… It was worth it though to see a beautiful stoic girl lose it like that. Now I know why Serafall kept doing that in the story.
"Akane is flirting again…" I heard Alice whisper to Emma. The latter just sighed loudly.
"Holy crap! That was amazing! You think that will work for me if I try it on Zatanna?" Robin asked. "How come that worked though? I've watched Wally say all those things to girls too, but it never works out for him…"
"It's because Akane is hot." Emma said plainly. Her face then turned a bit teasing. "Also, who. is. Za~tan~na." Emma teased. Robin's face went red like any other kid who just admitted their crush out loud.
"She's no one! Forget I said anything!" Robin said embarrassed. "Let's just move on." He started marching off after Sona. We still had to investigate his peerage.
We entered the school and thankfully Emma had Sona's psychic signature memorized from our quick meeting at the gate. We were able to follow it to the third floor student council room.
…
"It's none of them either…" Emma said out loud. There were looks of relief from Sona's group and looks of irritation from mine.
The lone male of Sona's peerage scoffed at us. "Of course none of us are possessed or whatever! You don't think we'd obviously notice if one of us had a random change in personality?"
"Don't be so harsh on them, Saji," a tall blue haired girl said. "They were just being thorough."
"Yeah, thank you guys so much for coming over. I don't want to be possessed!" Another member of Sona's peerage added.
"Well this isn't good…" Robin said.
"Have we not checked everyone? Is this your entire peerage Sona?" I asked her. She was sitting behind her desk and I noticed she had trouble looking me in the eye. She was still embarrassed from earlier.
"Yes, this is everyone, Akane. My entire peerage: Tsubaki, Reya, Tomoe, Yura, Momo and Saji." Sona introduced everyone as she pointed at who was who.
"Well then, I'm at a loss." I said as I put my hands up in irritation. Why couldn't the damn Chat System just tell us who our target was!?
"I'm going to flip your question back to you four." Sona said. "Are YOU all sure that you properly checked everyone? All of Rias's peerage? Even the one who never leaves his room?
"Yeah we checked him... Didn't we?" I turned to the others and asked. They all shrugged.
"I spoke to him through the door. He only told me to go away though…and that I was scary." Alice explained.
Sona just raised a cute eyebrow at us behind her glasses. "While that does sound like him… that's not exactly conclusive proof if you didn't have that girl over there read his mind." Sona called out Emma as she pointed at her. I was surprised Sona was able to detect Emma's mental intrusions. Her sister had probably trained her against mind reading. Rias's family just threw her to the wolves and taught her nothing…
"She read my mind!?" Saji questioned in a panic.
Emma just scoffed. "Oh please, don't get yourself worked up schoolboy…You don't think I haven't seen creepier things in my life from other people's minds? Still though… you need help, kid." Emma gave Saji a look bordering on disgust.
"Creepy?" Tomoe asked.
"There's nothing creepy about keeping a few pictures of a girl you like!" Saji yelled out.
"You have more than a few…you have a collection of over 200 pictures of Sona in various situations. Some of them were taken in her locker room."Emma said and all the girl's in the room gasped. She continued, "He's been bribing girls in Sona's class to sneak photos of her…"
I took a step back as I felt Sona flare her magic power. Her face was once again bright red. I would be incredibly pissed off too if I was her. Sona was looking at her pawn like she was going to murder him. The looks of loathing all of the girls in her peerage were giving him were about the same.
This guy was fucked. Time for my group to bail...
"Why don't we just go now and let them work out their own problems?" I said to the members of the chat group. They all nodded in agreement.
"I feel like, as a hero, I should stay to prevent a potential murder… but also screw this guy." Robin said.
"I wish I could see his future, but at the same time I think it may be more violent than I'd want to see." Alice added.
…
We left the student council room and hurried back to the school building. I'd been having a bad feeling ever since Sona pointed out that we didn't actually check Gasper. He was arguably the most dangerous member of Rias's peerage. If Gasper wasn't such a scaredy-cat, he could have probably beaten Riser's whole peerage by himself. Stopping time is OP.
When we made it inside the building, we were surprised when we reached Gasper's room. The door was busted down and destroyed… from the inside. We had found our guy, and he had escaped!
"Fuck!" I shouted out in irritation. He was literally right there! We spent the night in this building and missed him!
"This was my fault," Emma said. I'm the only one that can tell for sure who our transmigrator is. I should have insisted on Rias opening Gasper's door so I could check.
"I'm sorry," Alice apologized unnecessarily. "I should have talked to him longer at least. Maybe I would have caught onto something."
WOOSH!
"The fuck happened here?" Sasuke appeared behind us in an instant causing us all to startle! Was that the body flicker!? That was insanely fast. Faster than even I could currently move.
I looked over Sasuke, and he seemed to be perfectly intact. There wasn't a mark on him. I guess those early DxD villains were too weak to hurt someone of his level. I could also see that he had successfully rescued Asia.
"Sasuke, mi ha fatto girare la testa…" The blond girl was held in Sasuke's arms in a princess carry. She looked a bit nauseous from traveling at such high speeds.
"I have absolutely no idea what this girl is saying." Sasuke said. "She's speaking some kind of language I've never heard before."
"Hey?" Alice questioned. "Sasuke is speaking Japanese. Has he been speaking that the entire time? How come we understood him?"
"It must have been the chat group that allowed us all to communicate with each other even if we didn't speak the same languages." I explained.
Sasuke set Asia down as Emma walked over to the girl and started speaking to her in perfect Italian. Asia looked relieved that someone finally understood her. She kept sending Sasuke curious glances though… interesting.
Sasuke walked over to me. "Those 'Angels,'" he scoffed, "were weak. All they could do was fly slowly and throw even slower energy spears. I didn't kill them, but I gave them a beating they won't forget anytime soon." He explained with a cocky smirk.
I nodded to that. "As you can see," I pointed at the shattered door, "it was Gasper. He's our evil transmigrator."
"Tssk. The vampire who can stop time? That'll be annoying to fight." Sasuke said.
"Thankfully he can only stop time where he is looking currently. Unless he gets his balance breaker." I explained. Ideally we'd want to stop him before that. As he was now, Sasuke or I could still sneak up behind him and knock him out quickly. If Gasper upgraded to an AOE time-stop we would be in trouble.
I heard a sound of rapid footsteps turn the corner nearby before a disheveled Rias Gremory wrapped around the corner. She looked at the door's destruction wide eyed. "What the hell happened here!? I rushed here as soon as I felt the seal on Gasper's room break!" She exclaimed.
"The transmigrator is Gasper…" I explained and her expression went between shock and hurt. Then it changed to loathing.
The room around us started vibrating as bits of her magic power started seeping out! "How fucking dare he! To try and steal the body of MY precious family member!? I will destroy him!" Rias seethed out.
"Is it weird that I think she's really hot when she's angry?" I whispered to Sasuke next to me.
"Hn…"
XXX
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