I had left after a moment the student council’s room. I'm not sure that it could be said that the friendship I shared with Sona was completely mended but it was way better than its previous state.

That was one crisis solved for the moment. Now, I needed to deal with the Boob obsessed dragon, AKA, Issei.

I was just walking aimlessly a part of me noticed. There were things I knew I needed to do. I had to reassure my peerage, make them feel and actually be safe.

In Canon, most of the things that happened could have been said to be tame. Sure, Kokabiel, the Khaos brigade, Rizevim, the alliance of Greek evil gods and the artificial super devils created by Hades through the corpse of Lilith were important problems, issues that had to be dealt with by the protagonist but that always felt as if they could be handled.

Such a thing never fucking happened in canon. The beginning of a new fucking great war between beings that could easily destroy the planet, beings that could destroy the little tranquillity I thought I had gained.

I tried to not think about it but it was clear that I wasn't transmigrated only in Dxd. I had memories talking of the endless, talking of the Prince of Heaven as Michael Demiurgos instead of simply Michael.

Sona had mentioned Destruction and it had been the nail confirming everything I ever feared.

The world of DxD alone was one full of hidden and obvious dangers, madmen ready to create suffering just for the fun of it but at the end, it was a world where at the end, it could be said that good, peace prevailed.

The same thing could not be said about The Sandman, the world created by Neil Gaiman. A world where the facets of reality had taken humanoid forms and we're the most dysfunctional family even before the relationship between the Presence and his sons.

This was a world where to those cosmic entities, we could have been considered lesser from their point of view than a speck of dust.

Cosmic beings that goaded suns to destroy planets just to spread misery, that decided your Fate since the creation of your soul, that loved to toy with humans just for the fun or to use us as proxies to hurt others.

Cosmic beings that could condemn you to an eternity in hell because you refused to be theirs forever. Cosmic beings that were static and that only had as relatively decent members of their family the literal concepts of Destruction, Death and Delirium.

I could feel beating in my heart that old panic I thought I was able to get rid of. Fear, I tasted it in the air. 

A chuckle escaped me. Sona and the others were not the only ones to fear. I just was used to hiding it.

I wondered if the essence I had been inserted with would be able to change anything. Would it allow me to stand on the same lines as the strongest beings of this universe?

If I needed to, would I be able to survive against one of the demiurgic Archangel? My steps finally led out of the Kuoh Academy building. 

I could see my peerage near the portal of the academy. I continued to walk towards them. This family that I had been able to have, will I be able to protect it?

I could see Anger written on the face of my pawn. Asia at his side had her right hand intertwined with his left hand. 

Opposite them, Yuto was leaning on the portal, arms crossed, a finger ticking as if he was waiting for something. 

Akron, Koneko and Gasper were not far away from my knight. Koneko and Gasper were eating sweets.  Well, it would be more accurate to say that Koneko was both eating and feeding him at the same time.

Koneko was more territorial with her food than a mother bear was with her cubs. This was kinda shocking and at the time surprising in a good way that she would act toward Gasper this way.

My pawn head snapped in my direction as I almost reached them. The anger that had been there began to strengthen as if I was the cause of his ire.

It was something it seemed I could not try to deal with later. I knew that it was possible for a juggernaut drive to be activated due to heightened emotions. I didn't need a red angry destructive dragon destroying Japan.

I ignored all the other members of my peerage and spoke to Issei “You are angry,” I acknowledged. “Angry at me. I want to know why,” I told him.

In canon and from my memories, this was the same boy ready to do anything for me because I was in his eyes an attractive woman. It was the boy who saw how much I hated Riser and fought through pain and flames for my freedom. It is the same boy who would have in canon sacrificed one of his arms for me. 

I needed to know what had changed, what I wasn't able to see. “ President, since I had been reincarnated, it had always been crisis after crisis. I saw what fallen angels could do. I saw what rogue exorcists could do to normal people.”

“When it happened only to me I was fine with this. I wanted to live. I will always be grateful that you reincarnated me. The thing is that my parents, they're humans, the other inhabitants of Kuoh, they're human. They don't know anything and haven't done anything so why should they suffer? My father is just a simple salary man and my mother is a stay-at-home wife but when the President of the student council said that those horrible things would happen, you didn't deny her words. You didn't say that it was false,” he spoke.

“Because it, unfortunately, wasn’t Issei,” I told the brown-haired boy “but you're a member of my peerage, my family. Your parents, they'll be coming with us. Nothing will happen to them Issei,” I tried to reassure the boy.

His next words felt as if I had been stabbed in the heart “It's all your fault, President,” he spoke softly looking at me in the eyes.

“Issei,” Akeno spoke her voice full of warning and thinly veiled promises of violence. “She is still your king”.

The air was now thick with tension. I feel as if I could literally cut it with a knife. Asia’s gaze was travelling between Issei and me as if undecided on what she should be doing.

The eyes of Yuto were now sharp sapphires directed toward Issei, looking at him as if the boy was a threat. 

Koneko had put herself stealthy before Gasper as if to protect him in case something happened.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. What did I miss? A part of me ached at his words because my pawn had unknowingly been so painfully right in his anger.

None of this would have happened, should happened. Even with the presence of the endless, I would have liked to think that this world would have mostly followed the road of canon.

The only thing really different was my presence. I was now Rias Gremory and it seemed that this change was enough for the world story to change. 

It was the butterfly effect at its finest. A butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the world and on the other world, a hurricane is produced.

“Maybe, it is my fault,” I told the brown-haired boy. “Maybe this war that I didn't directly cause is my fault. Maybe it is my fault that you're now a devil, that your ignorance over the reality of this universe is mostly gone. I could give most of it back to you,” I spoke.

It wasn't false. I was a devil and I also had the essence of adaptation. I didn't completely remember it but I knew that it was possible for me to guide my own evolution. It means that If I wished to, I could in fact turn Issei back into a human. 

“Even then, I'll still take care of you and your family. I'll do everything in my power so that nothing will happen to you.” 

My gaze swept over the ex-nun “But it would also mean that you would lose what you gained all this time as a devil. Your power, your friends, those that you love.”

My intentions could not be more clear. If Issei wanted to go back to his previous human state where he thought everything was better, it would mean that he would have to cut every link that he had with the supernatural or it would have served to nothing. It meant for Issei losing Asia.

“I know what you're thinking but it would not be possible for Asia. Unlike you, she is known by the supernatural world Issei. She was almost declared a saint before being excommunicated publically as a witch and unfortunately, she was associated with the fallen before being a member of my peerage,” I told the boy.

The same option didn't exist for Asia. Telling him to tell made me feel dirty, like a manipulator. I knew Issei or I think I knew him mostly.

The boy would never give up on Asia at least voluntarily. The conflicted face that he was spotting was proof that I was right.

“It's just a question of time before someone from the underworld comes to evacuate us,” I spoke.

“I received a message from the queen of Satan Lucifer that she will be there to make sure we reach the underworld safely at Dusk” my queen confirmed at my side.

“Take this time to think Issei. Take this time to think about what you really want. Don't immediately answer. Allow your head to cool,” I advised the boy.

“Fine,” he spat before beginning to leave only Lucifer knew where. Asia followed at his side.

Gasper came to my side and hugged me. With his height of 1m50 and mine of 1m72, his embrace reaches more my stomach than anything but this hug felt freeing, liberating as if it removing a weight. I hugged him back the best I could and allowed myself to breathe.

“Are you alright president?” he asked me.

“I am better now and it is because of you,” I answered him honestly. Gasper was the only thing that could be said that I had done right since I was reincarnated.

It wasn't in the usual behaviour of my bishop to act like this my memories showed me but maybe all this time, that was how he truly was under everything and because it had been easier to seal him and unseal him only when I needed him in Canon, maybe it was the reason why he had acted in canon at first so recluse, so anxious and shy.

“Yuto, Koneko” I spoke the name of my other pieces.

“Yes president,” they answered in unison.

“We won't see the night envelope Kuoh before leaving. I want you to pack everything you would like to bring with you into the underworld and help Gasper to do so,” I told them.

I saw them nod in understanding. “Come, Gasper,” Koneko said softly to the dhampir hugging me.

Reluctantly, the boy moved away from me. He took the hand that Koneko had held out for him and with the other members of my peerage began to leave toward the occult research club building leaving Akeno and me alone at the gates.

Kuoh Academy was silent, devoid of all life. Sona had decided to suspend temporarily its functioning. This academy, my academy looked like a ghost town. The dream, the experience that the original me had wanted to create, to be a part of was nowhere.

Everything is in a cycle I remembered. Everything had a beginning. Everything had an end. It was the same thing for dreams. They were fickled, temporary even when reached. That was what made them dream after all.

“I am exhausted,” I spoke knowing that I had now the full attention of my queen. “There is always a new problem and I am not sure that I will be able to do the right things the way they need to be done.”

“Is it because of Issei?” she asked. Lightning crackled around and was accompanied by a smell of ozone “I could discipline him for you,” she offered.

“It would serve nothing. Things could go back to almost what they were but there would always be something different, broken. How could I consider him family and treat him the way a disobedient dog is? There is also the fact that the Axe may forget but the tree doesn't,” I told her.

“It's just that I thought things were better, were going to get better,” I told her. “ I don't what I did or didn't do. How am I supposed to fix something when I don't know why it was broken?”

“It is not because of you, Rias that he's angry. He's angry because he feels helpless. He saw first-hand the atrocities that could be committed by supernatural beings with the fallen angels. He saw how strong and destructive supernatural beings could be due to the rating game against Riser,” she spoke.

“All this time, even before being reincarnated, it could be said that he acted as a devil should. He was ready to do anything to obtain the Harem he wished he would have. Issei had never acted more human, more scared because this is the reality of humanity, why it had been able to survive all those years, it was because of fear,” she finished softly. The way she was talking, it was as if she was speaking of something familiar.

I turned toward her “Is it what you really think of humankind? That what defines them, define their existence is fear?” I asked her.

“Heroes chose to slay monsters because they were fearful of what those monsters could do to them. Humans hate what’s different because they fear what they don’t understand. Humans kill each other because they fear themselves. They discriminate, treat their brethren as lesser, as not even existing because for them, looking and acknowledging others in difficulty is realizing that the other is just a reflection of them, of what they could have been and there is nothing they fear more than this,” she answered.

I had never thought that Akeno would be thinking this way. Nothing from my memories or even the light novel indicated such a thing. Akeno was known to hate other fallen angels but it was clear that her hatred wasn't only reserved for fallen angels. If she didn't hate human beings, it was clear that toward them, she felt pity at best and complete indifference at worst.

“You never spoke of this before,” I told her.

“It is true but things changed Rias. They changed for the better and the worse. For once, I want to live authentically, free, without regret,” she said.

“Did I stop from doing so in the past,” I asked her.

Our gazes were now locked. Even with the powers inherent to my nature as a demon, I could not really distinguish, or read in her eyes what she was feeling. It was both a boon and a curse. 

“No Rias,” she spoke so softly and sweetly that I felt myself shiver. “You’re the one that gave me the will, the courage to do so. You talked of living fully unrestricted. I saw this and realized I wanted to do the same.”

“This world is changing, everything I thought was unbreakable has been broken.  Now I see that what I feared, what I wished for is possible. I don't know if I will survive this war so I want to live as if this day was my last,” she told me.

“I would not let you die,” I told her. “I would fight against God himself if I needed to for all of the members of our family, for you Akeno,” my voice turned into a whisper at the end.

She was so close that I could almost touch her. I could smell her. She smelled bewitching not how a living being should. She smelled like an unholy combination of Ozone, sunflowers, Roses and sulfur.

Those different smells should have not together made such an aroma but here I was feeling lightheaded as if I had ingested a drug.

One of her palms softly touched the right side of my face. ‘Did her hand always feel this soft?’ I wondered in a haze.

Was all of this truly happening? Should I let this happen? Change meant chaos and unpredictability.  Stagnation, a lack of change meant Stability.

I had already just by existing ruined everything without really wanting to. “I am a low-class devil Rias in status. More than that, I was before being reincarnated the Nephilim daughter of the Watcher Baraqiel. It is not a question of if Rias. I will be whether I wish for it or not on the battlefield. You are on the other hand a pure-blood heiress, the little adored sister of Satan Lucifer, a powerful and beautiful devil. They won't allow you to go on the battlefield unless you are the last bastion of defence of the underworld.”

“I don't care Akeno. I won't let anything happen to any of you. The only thing that matters in devil society is strength. I'll crush anyone on my path so that nothing will happen to you,” I said to her. 

It didn't matter what I should or shouldn't do. This new family that I had just gained, I will do anything to not lose it. I already lost my family once. I didn't want to be alone again.

Over us, a distinct part of me noted that the oppressive feeling brought by the sun on me due to nature as a creature of darkness was vanishing due to the night coming. 

It was dusk. It would be just a question of minutes before Grayfia came. “Rias,” Akeno spoke softly looking at my lips. “May I?”

I knew what she was asking. It was something I knew could not come back from. I looked at her, at her dark hair framing her head like a dark halo, at her eyes I felt I could lose myself into, at her perfect features. 

“I never had a chance, did I?” I asked her even if knew the answer.

“You didn't,” she confirmed without shame, a small beautiful smile blooming on her face.

“Yes, you can,” I whispered softly. I closed my eyes waiting for her to kiss me but nothing came.

I opened my eyes back. Akeno wasn't looking at me anymore. She was looking at the sky in alarm.

I understood why when I did the same. A new sun had appeared in the sky, a sun that felt divine, alive and that was falling toward us.