Highschool DXD : Gacha Life

The abandoned church of Kuoh.

Broken stained glass windows leaked fractured moonlight across the nave, creating patterns that writhed and shifted like living things.

Raynare paced around, twitching with barely contained fury. Every few steps, she would pause and glance toward the church's main entrance, her eyes burning with impatience.

"Where the hell are they?" she snarled, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. "Dohnaseek should have returned hours ago with that human."

Freed Sellzen lounged against a broken pillar, his white hair catching the moonlight as he cleaned his blessed blade with practiced indifference. The stray exorcist's smile was a twisted thing, equal parts madness and malice. Around them, nearly twenty other rogue exorcists went about their preparations, their movements sharp and efficient despite the casual cruelty in their eyes.

"Maybe they're having trouble with one little human" Freed suggested, his voice carrying that sing-song quality that made even killers uncomfortable "Though I can't imagine why. Three fallen angels against a mortal? Should have been over in minutes."

Raynare whirled on him, her eyes flashing with dangerous light. "They were ordered to bring him back alive, not as a corpse. That's more complicated than your usual butchery."

"Alive, dead, what's the difference?" Freed giggled, testing the edge of his blade against his thumb. A bead of blood welled up, which he licked away with obvious pleasure. "The dead tell no tales, but the living... oh, the living can be so wonderfully chatty when properly motivated."

"I need him breathing," Raynare snapped, her wings spreading wider in a display of dominance. "His Sacred Gear is useless if he's dead. And with that bitch Asia vanishing into thin air, we can't afford to lose another potential asset."

The mention of Asia made her pace even more aggressively. The saint's disappearance had been a devastating blow to their plans. Twilight Healing was supposed to be their ace in the hole, their ticket to redemption in the eyes of their superiors. Without it, they were just another group of exiled failures.

"Maybe someone else got to her first," suggested one of the other exorcists, a scarred man with dead eyes. "Could be devils, could be angels. Hell, could be the Church itself."

"Impossible," Raynare snarled. "We had her under constant surveillance. She was in that apartment, and then she was gone. No traces, no witnesses, no—"

The temperature in the church plummeted.

It happened so suddenly that breath began to mist in the air, and frost started forming on the broken windows. The shadows deepened, becoming almost solid, and an oppressive weight settled over the assembled killers like a burial shroud.

Freed stopped laughing.

"What the hell?" one of the exorcists muttered, his hand moving instinctively to his weapon.

The darkness in the far corner of the church began to ripple, like water disturbed by some unseen presence. The shadows there were too deep, too substantial, as if they were hiding something that existed just beyond the edge of perception.

And then, without warning, Freed's head separated from his shoulders.

The stray exorcist's body remained upright for a moment, his mouth still twisted in that eternal smirk, before toppling backward in a spray of crimson. His head hit the stone floor with a wet thud, rolling until it came to rest at Raynare's feet, his eyes wide with shock and the last vestiges of his madness.

A spear materialized in the air where Freed had been standing, its crystalline blade dripping with fresh blood. But this wasn't a spear of light like the fallen angels wielded—this was something else entirely, something that hummed with power and purpose.

"What—" Raynare began, but the words died in her throat as the shadows began to shift and coalesce.

The darkness peeled away like layers of an onion, revealing something that made hardened killers take involuntary steps backward. An armored figure stood where empty air had been moments before, his form wreathed in residual shadows. The armor was unlike anything they'd ever seen—organic in appearance, with plates that seemed to breathe and shift like living tissue. Spikes jutted from the shoulders and knees, and the helmet was fashioned to resemble a dragon's skull, with glowing red eyes that burned with inner fire.

"Incursio," I whispered, feeling the armor's satisfaction at the successful stealth kill. The invisibility function was even more perfect than I'd hoped—complete optical camouflage that made me one with the shadows themselves.

The remaining exorcists recovered from their shock with professional speed, weapons appearing in their hands as they spread out to surround me. But their movements were tainted with fear, their usual confidence shaken by the sudden, brutal death of their most skilled member.

"What are you?" Raynare demanded, her voice sharp with authority despite the uncertainty in her eyes. Light began to gather around her hands, forming the beginnings of a spear.

"I'm the one who's been dismantling your operation piece by piece," I said, my voice distorted by the helmet's speakers into something inhuman. "The one who spirited away your precious saint. The one who killed your subordinates."

Her eyes widened with recognition and rage. "You! You're the one who—"

"Took Asia?" I finished, tilting my head with predatory amusement. "Yes. She's somewhere safe now, somewhere you'll never find her. Your plans for Twilight Healing died the moment she walked out of that apartment with me."

The truth hit her like a physical blow. Her carefully constructed operation, months of planning and preparation, all undone by a single individual. The rage that filled her eyes was beautiful in its purity.

"Kill him!" she screamed, her voice cracking with fury. "Kill him now!"

The exorcists moved as one, their blessed weapons gleaming in the fractured moonlight. They were experienced killers, men and women who had spent years perfecting the art of supernatural murder. Under normal circumstances, they would have been formidable opponents.

But these weren't normal circumstances.

I moved.

The first exorcist—a burly man with a blessed mace—never saw me coming. Incursio's enhanced speed turned me into a blur of motion, and my spear punched through his chest armor like it was made of paper. He looked down at the crystalline blade protruding from his sternum with confusion, as if he couldn't quite process what had happened.

I withdrew the spear and spun, the weapon's shaft catching another exorcist across the throat. The blessed silver of his collar provided no protection against Incursio's power, and his head snapped back with a sound like breaking timber.

"Impossible!" one of them shouted, backing away. "No devil should be able to move like that!"

Three more rushed me from different angles, their coordination speaking of years of practice. I let them come, waiting until they were committed to their attacks before activating another of Incursio's abilities.

Time seemed to slow as my perception accelerated. I could see the trajectory of every blade, the positioning of every foot, the fear in every eye. The Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist flowed through me, enhanced by the armor's power until it became something transcendent.

My fist caught the first attacker in the solar plexus, the impact lifting him off his feet and sending him crashing into a pillar. The second got my elbow across his jaw, the blessed steel of his weapon flying from nerveless fingers. The third managed to score a glancing blow across my armored shoulder, but the plates absorbed the impact without even scratching.

My return strike caved in his ribcage.

"How?" Raynare breathed, her earlier fury replaced by something approaching awe. "Holy weapons should be able to hurt you!"

"Should," I agreed, stepping over the bodies of her followers. "But theory and practice are often very different things."

The remaining exorcists were beginning to panic now, their formation breaking down as fear overwhelmed training. Some tried to flee toward the exits, only to find their way blocked by walls of pressurized water. Others bunched together, seeking safety in numbers that no longer existed.

I moved through them like death itself, Incursio's power amplifying every technique I'd mastered. The Leopard Devil Fruit's speed, the flowing motions of the Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist, the tactical precision of water manipulation—all of it enhanced beyond human limits by the armor's symbiotic systems.

Bodies fell around me like wheat before the scythe.

An exorcist with twin blessed daggers tried to get behind me, but Incursio's enhanced awareness meant I knew exactly where he was. I spun, my spear bisecting him at the waist. Another attempted to use a blessed net, but water pressure tore it apart before it could even reach me.

"Stop!" Raynare screamed, her light spear fully formed now. "Stop this madness!"

I turned to face her, my helmet's red eyes boring into hers. Around us, the church floor was painted with the blood of her followers. Of the nearly twenty exorcists who had been preparing for whatever unholy mission she'd planned, only three remained alive, and they were huddled together in obvious terror.

"Madness?" I asked, my voice carrying amusement despite the helmet's distortion. "This isn't madness. This is justice."

She hurled her light spear with all the fury of a scorned goddess. It was perfectly aimed, a strike that would have killed any ordinary opponent. But I wasn't ordinary anymore.

I caught the spear in my gauntleted hand.

The light writhed and struggled against my grip, but Incursio's power was absolute. I could feel the armor adapting, evolving, learning from this new form of attack. The spear's radiance dimmed, then died completely.

"How?" she whispered, her face pale with shock.

"Evolution," I said simply, crushing the spear into fragments of fading light. "The armor learns from every battle, adapts to every threat. Your light spears worked on me once. They won't work again."

The remaining exorcists broke and ran, their nerve finally shattered. I let them go—they were small fish, unworthy of my attention. My focus was entirely on Raynare now, on the fallen angel who had orchestrated Asia's captivity and planned to steal her Sacred Gear.

"You took everything from me," she said, her voice shaking with emotion. "My mission, my redemption, my chance to return to grace."

"You took a innocent girl and planned to torture her for her power," I replied, stepping closer. "You forfeited any claim to redemption the moment you decided to prey on the defenseless."

She laughed, but it was a broken sound, empty of her earlier confidence. "Defenseless? Do you know what it's like to Fall? To have everything you believed in stripped away, to be cast out from the only home you've ever known? We were just trying to survive!"

"By victimizing others."

"By any means necessary!"

She launched herself at me with desperate fury, conjuring multiple light spears and hurling them in rapid succession. I moved between them with liquid grace, Incursio's power making me untouchable. When she tried to close for melee combat, I was waiting.

My spear punched through her chest, just below the heart. She gasped, black blood spilling from her lips as she looked down at the weapon protruding from her body.

"This... this isn't how it was supposed to end," she whispered.

"No," I agreed, withdrawing the spear. "It was supposed to end with Asia's death and the theft of her Sacred Gear. But you picked the wrong victim."

She collapsed to her knees, her wings folding around her like a shroud. "At least... at least tell me why. Why did you interfere? What was she to you?"

I considered the question as her life ebbed away. What was Asia to me? In truth, she was a reminder that innocence could exist even in the darkest places, that some things were worth protecting simply because they were good.

"She was someone who didn't deserve what you had planned for her" I said finally "That was enough for me to get involved into this mess"

Raynare's eyes dimmed, and she slumped forward, her rebellion finally ended.

I stood alone in the desecrated church, surrounded by the bodies of those who had traded their souls for power. The silence was absolute, broken only by the whisper of wind through broken windows.

It was finished. The fallen angels' operation in Kuoh ended, their plans for Asia's Sacred Gear buried with them. The town was safe, at least from this particular threat.

But I knew this was only the beginning. The supernatural world was vast and full of predators, and I had just announced my presence to all of them. There would be consequences, retaliation, escalation.

I looked forward to it.