Chapter 28

Sona winced. Technically, she only had to defeat Raiser, as when a [King] fell, the Rating Game was lost, but as he had a full Peerage compared to Rias' [Queen], [Knight], [Rook] and unstable [Bishop] in addition to herself, that was unlikely. There was no mistaking it; Rias was being strong-armed into marry Raiser Phenex and even this Rating Game was an illusion designed to give her the semblance of hope before stripping it from her.

Likely it had been her brother, Sirzechs, who had forced the Rating Game portion of the contract in in an attempt to help his sister, but she needed help. Ordinarily, Sona wouldn't consider loaning any other devil members of her Peerage, but Rias had been her friend since they had been in their nappies and she was in serious trouble.

The only things that stopped her were Rias' own pride and subtle threats given to her from Raiser. The Crimson-Haired Ruin Princess was determined to succeed or fail by her own efforts alone, which was making Sona's headache worse. Raiser, as he had known about how close she and Rias were, had blatantly told her that if she interfered, several of her Family's businesses would suffer, in both the Underworld and the Human World.

Ordinarily, she'd just let her older sister turn the arrogant fop into an ice sculpture, but that would probably kick off another civil war, which was not what the devils needed at the moment. Even with thousands of years of taking in humans and converting them using the Evil Piece System, their population was too low to sustain another all-out conflict.

"…do you want me to give you the update you asked for now or wait until later?" she asked, not-so-subtly changing the subject.

"Better hit me with it now." Rias sighed. She had asked Sona to check the students to see if they had any Sacred Gears or supernatural origins or…anything that might be of some use.

Needless to say, she was not holding any hopes.

"Katase and Murayama of the Girls Kendo Club have shown some degree of spiritual power, which I traced back to them being from Shinto Exorcist families." Sona started, "It would explain why the Perverted Trio haven't had much luck peeping on them. The new member of the Student Council -sorry Rias- has a Sacred Gear, but we aren't certain what kind other than a Dragon-type, which could be anything from a [Twice Critical] up. Other than that, only Hyōdō Issei has shown any kind of Sacred Gear reaction."

She had wrinkled her nose in distaste when she brought up the three biggest perverts in the school. Their constant peeking and perversity gave her more work than she wanted.

"Oh come on, Sona!" Rias actually smiled when she grumbled about them, "I find them refreshingly honest. They may be perverted, but at least they aren't as…arrogant about it as Raiser is with his damned harem. So what made Hyōdō-kun come up on your radar?"

Sona relayed the incident at the Hyōdō Residence to her friend, who scowled at the report.

"Threatening them in their own home…how low can you go?"

"I agree. The main issue is that the perpetrator was murdered, brutally, in police custody." Sona shuddered, "He had his eyes, teeth, hands and feet removed…while he was still alive and left to bleed to death. It wasn't Hyōdō Issei; he was seen with his parents at the hospital getting the knife cut on his face treated at the estimated time of the torture/murder, so someone else tracked the assailant down and killed him, removing all easy ways to identify him as they did so."

"My word." Rias wasn't unfamiliar with death; one of the duties of both her Peerage and Sona's was to hunt down and eliminate Stray Devils, reincarnated humans who had killed their master in the pursuit of power, within the Kuō city limits. In her time here, she had slain over a dozen with her Power of Destruction, yet those had been clean, painless (for a given value of painless) kills. What Sona had just described was…horrific. It was the sort of thing that the Old Maō Faction would have done casually.

"I've investigated his family, but Hyōdō has no spiritualist ancestors." Sona continued, "He is of lineal descent of a very minor samurai family on his mother's side and utterly boring and unimpressive merchants on his father's side. This is going back 400 years, mind you."

"Hmm…" Rias tapped the table with one hand before moving a bishop to counter Sona's last move, "Any indications of what kind of Sacred Gear he has?"

"Yes and no." Sona admitted in frustration. In part from the results of her investigation and in part due to Rias' move threatening her Queen. "Initially, he was tentatively earmarked as having a Dragon-type Sacred Gear, which would make sense given the fact that Saji-kun is here. Dragons attract other dragons after all. But then, the day after the assault in his home, the readings went…awry."

"Awry?" Rias raised one delicate eyebrow at that. Sona was a perfectionist with most things, but especially with investigating things like this. For her to be stymied like this was very odd.

"Awry." The Sitri Heiress confirmed with a moue of frustration, "His readings are now even more Dragon, indicating he awoke his Sacred Gear as a result of the attack, but now there are all these odd signals all over the place. I can't pin down what they could be!"

Scowling at her inability to analyse Hyōdō Issei, Sona pouted. The Gremory Heiress smirked fondly at her friend. It was good for her to not instantly be able to accomplish something, even better if she came across a hurdle that stopped her cold like this had.

"The teachers didn't believe that he was attacked, despite the knife cut on his face." Sona said as she shook her head, dispelling her irritation, "They've called for a parent/teacher meeting with his parents."

This made Rias scowl. "Idiots. That kind of pig-headedness is ridiculous."

"I expect they think he got it from peeping on a girl or something." Sona shrugged. It wasn't a bad deduction, considering Hyōdō Issei's actions towards the opposite sex, but to dismiss something like that out of hand, without confirming it, was unprofessional and disgusting.

"I'll let Onii-sama know about the need to possibly replace the teachers in question." Rias said decisively, "If they do this to one person, they might do it to more."

"Agreed. I'll leave that to you." Sona nodded. It was the Maō who owned Kuō Academy through proxies and were the board of directors. None of them would be amused by the teachers' actions.

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