DxD : Actually Satan..?

Leo was having way too much fun.

He hadn't meant to stay in-character that long—really, he hadn't.

But even after switching off the emulated personality function in his mind, the attitude stuck because Leo liked it.

The chaotic confidence, the teasing tone, the complete disregard for mortal tension—it had bled over into his real self so seamlessly that even he had forgotten to tone it down.

That's how the whole "I'm Satan" thing happened.

He didn't even mean to say it with a straight face.

But it was undeniably fun. Too fun.

The stunned expressions.

The spit-take.

The little twitch in Artoria's eye.

He liked that.

But now, things were getting slightly out of hand.

Artoria's mana was flaring—a quiet storm of magical pressure building in her body, masked by her composed exterior but clear to Leo's senses.

The Saber-class Servant was having a crash out.

Which, to be fair… wasn't the wrong reaction to the given information.

Leo sighed, tilting his head, and gently raised his fingers from beneath the table.

In that moment, he did something subtle.

He reached out with his mana and placed it into her body.

It was a mimicry of a Command Seal.

While also mimicing Shirou Emiya's mana signature.

Shaped and executed exactly like the Mage's Association system used for Servant control.

It slid into her core like a silk-thread leash.

Artoria froze mid-glare, her pupils tightening just a fraction.

Her mana flared, then suddenly dropped—as if her circuits had been wrapped in ice.

A light, barely perceptible shiver went through her as her action of initiating a mana burst was stopped midway.

"Woah. I know you're feeling a lot of intense emotions right now—existential panic, knightly duty, possible holy rage—but let's not destroy this café."

He gestured around.

"This place has excellent coffee."

A beat passed.

"Real beans, too," he added, like that was sacred information. "Not that freeze-dried trash. I checked."

Leo, continued speaking without caring for their thoughts and expressions.

"Look, I'm not here to plunge the world into darkness or kickstart Armageddon—yet." He gave Artoria a teasing look.

"I know, shocker."

Artoria gave him the deepest frown.

Leo sipped his drink again, unbothered. "But jokes aside," he said more seriously, tone dipping just slightly toward sober, "there is a genuine threat to humanity in this Grail War."

Leo swirled what was left of his coffee, watching the crema spiral at the top. He didn't look up right away.

"How do we know you aren't lying?" Shirou asked.

Leo didn't answer.

Instead, he turned his head toward Bazett with a slow look.

She exhaled aa she understood that he wanted her to answer.

"According to him, lying is beneath the stature of someone like him....He doesn't do it."

Artoria narrowed her eyes at that.

"In hindsight, it makes a disturbing amount of sense," Bazett added, more to herself than anyone. "Everything he says is technically true."

Artoria frowned deeper still suspicious.

Artoria's next words came with a steel core.

"Why would we trust you when you were the one who summoned him?"

Leo finally looked up, smile gone, eyes calm. The warmth from earlier was still there, but now it was dimmed.

That accusation wasn't directed at Leo.

It was aimed at Bazett.

But before she could answer, lep answered for her.

"She didn't summon me."

"No human has the potential or affinity to summon me."

There was a quiet pause.

"I came by choice."

Then amused, he added with a nod toward Bazett, "She actually used a proper catalyst for Cu Chulainn, too. Well-grounded stuff."

He gestured with a small smirk.

"Nice effort by the way. Five stars."

Bazett looked vaguely like she wanted to disappear into her coat.

Artoria looked stunned.

"You're saying… you hijacked the summoning ritual?"

Leo nodded.

"Hijacked? That's one way to put it." He gave a cheeky shrug. "I prefer redirected with divine authority. Has a nicer ring to it."

Shirou finally found his voice. "But why?"

Leo looked at him.

"I don't know myself but I just wanted to take a walk"

"A walk..?" Asked bazett.

"A very enthusiastic walk you might say."Lep said proud of himself.

Leo stared at their faces—three different brands of disbelief, all aimed at him like judgmental spotlights.

Shirou looked baffled, Bazett was squinting , and Artoria… Artoria was still visibly trying to process whether this was a joke or the beginning of a very specific kind of apocalypse.

He sighed, long and theatrical.

"Wow. No one appreciates the classics here....."

He stood up, stretching slightly as the chair creaked under the shift of pressure. "You know what? Let's go. We'll talk on the way."

"Where are we going?"asked Shirou.

He was very new to all this emphasis on the very.

Leo looked him in the eye and said with a sweet smile, " That's a surprise."

The trip started following his stride like sucklings without much fuss because of the amount of dominance he has already asserted, at least leo thought so.

He paused midway to the payment counter he turned around dramatically and then he gave them a finger-wagging warning .

"And please, for the love of Dad, do not attack me...Even if you throw everything you've got at me, fight to your last breath, go full-blown anime protagonist mode—I will still win."

He paused.

"Not because I'm some grand, unbeatable force.... But because your AP bar is just not built for this."

Hopefully leo thought

Bazett blinked. "AP bar?"

Artoria frowned. "...built for this?"

Shirou whispered, "...What?"

Leo exhaled again, louder this time, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Ugh. Lack of culture hurts."

Then he walked toward the counter and paid with bazett's credit card.

Seeing her card in his hand she accusatorily pointed at him, "Why do you have that ."

"Oh please save me the Drama, You're the one who accepted those command seals, that basically means I owe you three small favours.....Plus, Considering who I am at least pay for my expenses." Leo said that in a monotone voice that shattered all protestes from the mage.

He's the devil alright, thought the trio collectively.

---

The group walked down a street—Leo leading the way with an easy gait, hands in pockets, while the others followed.

Bazett was the only one who walked beside him now, while Artoria and Shirou trailed behind, exchanging looks that screamed what even is today.

"So," Leo began, breaking the silence like cracking ice, "since we're all being honest… let's talk about the sewer fire that is the Holy Grail."

He glanced at Artoria.

"You must be aware of what happened the last time, right?"

Artoria's eyes darkened, and after a long pause, she nodded reluctantly. "Yes. The Grail causes the tragedy."

"Mm-hm," Leo said, satisfied. "Exactly and that happens partially because of the tofu priest's wish and partially due to the corruption in the grail."

"The corruption has a name: Angra Mainyu."

Leo continued his explaining , he raised a finger like a teacher ready to drop some forbidden knowledge.

"Angra Mainyu is a Heroic Spirit—technically. But not in the way you're thinking. He wasn't a great warrior, or a brilliant mage. He was a scapegoat."

Bazett blinked. "A scapegoat?"

Leo nodded. "Yeah. A perfectly normal man, condemned by his village to bear the label of all the world's evils. Literally. They just… balmed every sin, every misfortune, every ounce of cruelty they had onto one person. And then executed him."

"That's horrible," Shirou muttered.

"Oh, it gets worse," Leo said cheerfully. "Because the human consciousness took it literally. When he died, he was branded by the Throne of Heroes as Angra Mainyu: All the World's Evils. So now? He's a spiritual landmine wedged into the core of the Grail system."

Artoria clenched her fists. "That explains… why it felt so wrong when I reached for it."

"Exactly," Leo said, spinning on his heel to face them as they paused by a fountain. "So here's the reality of you think the Grail grants wishes, even if partial one's ?... No, It doesn't. ...Not anymore. What it does now is run any wish through a filter of universal spite."

Shirou's expression shifted slowly from concern to dawning horror. "Wait… so any wish—?"

"—Gets corrupted," Leo finished with a nod. "Twisted. Mutated. Translated by a being that is essentially the manifestation of everything humans hate and fear about themselves."

He clapped once, sarcastically.

"Bravo, Einzbern family. Truly an achievement in awful ideas."

There was a pause, then Shirou asked the obvious:

"…Wait. That sounds like something you would be."

Leo gave him a look. "You saying that because of the personality or the swagger?"

Shirou hesitated. "Both?"

Bazett looked ready to facepalm.

Leo just laughed.

"Look, I'm the progenitor of a lot of things. Sure. Sins, lies, rebellion, the first 'hell no' to authority. But all the world's evil? That's not me."

He spread his arms lazily.

"I don't even have all the sins concentrated in me. Never claimed to."

"Then… what are you?" Artoria asked cautiously.

Leo looked at her and smiled.

"I'm just someone who doesn't agree with the way the universe is designed."

Another second passed. Then he added dryly:

"I get branded by fanatics all the time...in many different ways "

"People love to blame me for their garbage decisions. All their worst urges, all their failures. 'The devil made me do it.'"

He snorted, eyes narrowing slightly.

"Bitch, the devil doesn't even have time to reassemble the scattered shards of himself across dimensions.... Why the fuck would he care enough to make you cheat on your boyfriend?"

Bazett made a small choking sound laughing with a hand on her mouth, but Leo continued without missing a beat.

"It's not me. It's never me. It's you."

He turned his head, walking backward now, facing them with his arms spread wide like some prophet.

"Humans love to delegate. Chores. Trauma. Guilt. But blame?" He pointed a finger like a loaded gun. "Blame is the number one most delegated thing in human history."

There was a pause as those words settled.

Oddly, no one argued.

Shirou looked away, chewing on his bottom lip in thought.

Bazett simply nodded faintly, her gaze distant.

Artoria had gone very quiet, and for once, her expression wasn't guarded—it was reflective.

Then Shirou's brow furrowed. He looked around—and realized where they were.

"Wait," he said slowly. "This is… the Matou estate."

He looked visibly uncomfortable now. "That's Sakura's home. What are we doing here?"

Leo stopped, standing at the edge of the sidewalk, his hands in his coat pockets as he stared at the old building ahead.

There was a barrier up. A thick, oily one. Designed to keep the prey inside.

Set up by the terrorist bird ronan.

He smiled faintly.

"I'm going to teach you the Age old art of jumping," Leo said, matter-of-fact.

"…Jumping?" Shirou blinked.

Leo didn't answer.

Then, with the theatrical air of a professor beginning a lecture, he extended one arm and pointed dramatically at the front door.

"The first step in the Art of Jumping," he declared, "is Presentation."

He looked back at them with a grin.

"Never walk through a front door like a pleb. If you're going in, you go in like the laws of narrative demand your presence."

Artoria opened her mouth to protest—some chivalric protest about property and subtlety, maybe—but paused when she felt it.

Leo was building power.

But then something shifted.

His hand, once burning with a lazy, molten flame, stilled.

His fingers twitched slightly as his expression went thoughtful.

A different energy prickled against the air one not of fire, but of light.

It was responding unconsciously to leo.

Leo's brow arched slightly in curiosity as he felt it course through his circuits—respond to him.

Huh, he muttered. Well, ain't that new.

The light gathered at his fingertips like it had been waiting for a chance to be called.

Then, in one smooth motion, he released it.

A single point of blinding, compressed radiance shot forward and struck the Matou estate like divine retribution.

The building didn't so much explode as it ceased to be.

It was gone in a split-second flash, a burst of concussive light that tore everything inward before letting it snap back outward with a shockwave that cracked pavement and shattered nearby windows.

A fireball rose like a pillar, leaving a perfect crater where the cursed building had once stood.

It was safe to say another gas leak occured in the ever gas leaking fuyuki city.

Only the underground sections remained—untouched, intentionally.

Leo lowered his hand and exhaled, watching the golden wisps of mana fade from his skin.

"…Yeah. That'll do."

He stepped into the barrier, boots crunching softly over hot debris.

But then, after a few quiet seconds, he noticed the distinct lack of footsteps behind him.

He turned, looked back toward the stunned trio still outside the perimeter, and blinked.

"What are you waiting for?"

His voice wasn't mocking now—it was calm, and faintly disappointed.

"Will you really stand there while someone suffers underground? Someone you know?" leo said while staring Shirou in the eyes.

Shirou flinched.

"I'm not asking you to trust me," he said. "I'm just asking you to help me save her."

The dust in the air seemed to still at that.

Bazett stepped forward first.

Then Shirou.

Artoria hesitated a bit longer… and followed.

Because even if they didn't fully understand Leo—

They did understand the sincerity in his voice.

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Power Stones and Reviews please