Servants and Demi-Servants did not require sleep. They could enjoy it, yes, but they could go on for weeks without resting and still feel exactly as they did the weeks before. Indeed, Nobunaga Oda was very much the same case. She didn't need to sleep at night at all, preferring to stay awake the majority of the time to watch over the body of her host instead, and the world around them.
The modern age was so exciting for her. In just a few hundred years after she had passed on, technology had advanced so much compared to the medieval stasis the world had been before the past few millenia. In just a short time beginning in the 1800s according to the Grail records, humanity has gone far and beyond what was thought to be their limits. Computers, motorized vehicles, how everything was made to be so commercialized and streamlined, the girl just wanted to know more and more. What few glimpses she saw was not enough for her, her curiousity burning was a feeling she hadn't felt since her youth. She wanted to see the Japan of today, to see what her actions had helped create.
Watching Issei's memories was how she spent her time, learning more about modern culture, life and so on. She had also read the various stories that Issei browsed through earlier, some issues of which were embedded fairly deeply into the younger's long term memory. The array of culture was so extreme, Nobunaga simply wanted to experience all of it. She wouldn't forget that someone had drawn the circle her host had stumbled into on purpose, and though this may not have necessarily been a part of their plan, she would make the most out of the situation herself.
Nobunaga had been browsing through Issei's memories when she heard something sneaking into her host's home. She cursed, having let her guard down this early in the morning, a mistake she vowed to never repeat. She heard the door downstairs slip open, the muffled sound of something crawl up the stairs, and finally the creak of a door as the intruder entered the bedroom.
She resisted an attempt to take control of Issei's body to protect her, at least for now, but she needed to wait for an opening. An odd liquid dropped onto the sleeping body's cheeks, and heard the subtle sound of a mouth widening, that of bones cracking and flesh stretching. She immediately took direct control, dragging Issei into the waking world with her motions.
To Nobunaga's surprise, it wasn't a person that attempted to ambush her, but a uh... Something. It used to be human at least, she could see the eyes, a mangled up face, a rotting um... Yeah, she's not going to dignify that sausage's existence with a response. She didn't let her surprise show, however, moving to snap one of the abomination's many limbs. Issei wanted to scream, but the girl moving her had just about every inch of her body under her control, the only sign of emotion being the tears struggling to come out of her eyes.
She wanted to tell her how sorry she was for taking over her entire body after so little time had passed, but there were matters to be dealt with and an ugly sonnuva to be mutilated. Silently saying an apology to the child she had sidelined, explaining that she didn't have it in her just yet to protect herself, she prepared to counter whatever else the intruder had to offer. The devil was on to her, attempting to chomp a little of her flesh off.
Materializing a rifle, she slammed it up the monster's throat. Even though she never possessed the ability in life, her movements were clean and perfect. She was ready to pull the trigger and end it all now, but a short moment of reflection made her sigh in resignation. A gunshot from her gun would make more problems than solve them, whether it be from the authorities or her host's own parents. It would awaken the entire neighborhood and bring the feds running to them, and she was not quite ready to experience whatever sort of legal system the modern age had. Or perhaps this world's mages, who may or may not be as unscrupulous as the ones in the world she had lived in before.
While Nobunaga's stats should have been reduced due to the lack of proper training from her host, they remained relatively stable. Issei was shockingly very good at producing mana, but he could only produce so much for her at any single time, so she gathered that whatever upkeep was left was taken care of by the ambient mana just floating around her. She could operate at her full parameters without worrying too much about Issei's well-being, a good thing since she couldn't simply shift into her astral state to reserve her energy and gain some. Her strength was good enough to snap a healthy grown man's arm like a dry twig, and a malnourished monster like this was so far below her weight level that it was almost pitiful.
Thinking about it for a moment, Nobunaga thought that in a world full of magic, there would be magical creatures. Maybe not as grotesque as this one, but something along those lines at least. Whatever the case may be, she'll have it figured out in the next few years. She reached down for her sword, finding nothing as she may have left in the comfortable hands of her host's parents. Sighing deeply, she blocked another attack and snapped a limb from this spider thing.
She reaches down to the other side, hoping that she at least put it somewhere close, and suddenly remembered that they left it downstairs, and it wasn't like she could just materialize that either. Releasing another tired sigh, mostly in relation to her host, she materializes another gun and whipped it on its side. She could feel the traces of a smirk appearing on her face, though that would always happen whenever she fought in battle so it wasn't like much had changed.
"What the hell are you?" she asked the creature with disgust, looking at the blood and pus pouring lightly at its joints. Any glimmer of intelligence in its eyes had disappeared, so maddened was the monster. Nobunaga eyed the creature, pondering its purpose, its meaning in life, though lightly laughing off the last statement as if it were a slip of the tongue. What she witnessed before her was once-human, or at the very least was a human-resembling revenant that felt demonic in nature, and also a mindless predator, just for clarity. Unfortunately for the would-be threat, Nobunaga was simply the bigger fish in the pond here.
Ignoring Issei's shrieks on the inside, she broke another one of the flesch-spoider-abomination-thing's many limbs. Issei was a little young to be witnessing something as grotesque as this, she admitted. There wasn't much she could do in that regard, but the child was still a child. She noted her rapidly accelerating heartbeat, the sense of irrational terror overcoming her body that she would expressionlessly ignore, and the incessant twitching that her left eyelid was currently going through. Issei had far more control than she had thought of at first, though that would only be natural.
Crushing those feelings, Nobunaga caught another limb, leaping off the bed as the monster crashed into it. The beast was so thin and starved, barely a sound was made upon hitting the mattress. Only a slight creak on the cushions were heard, its attempts to retch the weapon still up its throat far more audible, though not by much.
As Nobunaga approached to end it, the creature shied away, attempting to scare away the bigger monster of the two. She raised an eyebrow at its attempts to play dead, and its futile attempts at peace. Looking at the ruler to the side of the room, she crouches and moves slowly towards it, poking with it on the almost-corpse, not unlike on a run over rabbit or mouse.
"It's fine now, Issei. I beat it up for you," she told her host, who was still scared shitless at the thought of an actual demon invading her home and almost eating her and her entire family. "It's not so scary anymore, Issei, see?" Nobunaga gestured to the paling body, still jabbing it. Issei didn't dignify that with a response, the fear numbed by her tenant's retarding boot of immaturity.
Pressing her ear to a wall, she checked to see if the parents were awoken by the commotion. They somehow hadn't despite the inhuman shrieks of the monster earlier, so she wondered what to do with the shivering creature on her bed. Looking at the window, she had an idea.
Hefting it open, Nobunaga let the humid air in, and stepped closer to grip the creature's neck and tossed it out nonchalantly. Quickly grabbing her cap off the dresser, she followed it out the window. One last despairing glance was given to the room with the monster's venom sprayed all over the room, wondering what the hell she should do to clean it up before Issei's parents would come and inspect it. A demi-servant was totally immune, but they wouldn't be so lucky.
Nobunaga landed next to it, ramming a spare rifle straight down on one of its hands like a railway spike. Red blood began spilling out of the appendage, confirming to her that it is, or at least was a normal something before, most likely a human being. The beast was an enigma to her, its appearance and body structure so alien to her. What the hell was it, and what did it have to gain from attacking her? Since the thing refused or otherwise lacked the ability to speak, she supposed she had to do things the old fashioned way. Cutting into a monster like this would have been so much easier if she had her blade with her, but it would have to do.
Nobunaga was no physician when it came to the human body, so she couldn't really conclude if the whatever had any relation to human beings beyond the obvious resemblance. She dematerialized the rifle keeping the abomination pinned to the ground, and began carrying it with her. Using her supernatural agility, she ran towards the park where everything had began in a place no one would really notice her and the problem. Dropping it to the ground rather carelessly, she kneeled down and began poking holes on the poor thing like a very depraved surgeon.
From what she could tell, whatever had attacked her was pretty much a person, or at least was. It had all the organs she figured human beings should have, although the skin was pretty leathery. Issei didn't have much to say about the scene unfolding before her, eyes still locked onto the impromptu live autopsy with more than a little morbid curiosity, and if it weren't for Nobunaga's iron grip hold on her body, she would've barfed the previous day's breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Nobunaga didn't think it was a normal demon, thinking it perhaps more of a half-demon if anything. It had the aura, pitiful it may be, but none of the overwhelming power normally associated with them. The creature's regeneration had been very useful to her when she accidentally shattered a delicate organ. A rifle supported by brute force and power alone wasn't the most efficient surgical equipment.
By the time the sun began to shine, the creature had already died, its regeneration incapable of keeping up with Nobunaga's macabre fascination with its anatomy. By dying, it not only escaped its eternal suffering and hunger, and its fear of Nobunaga, but its cadaver would also become a lure for all sorts of magical creatures and individuals. The public at large were well unaware of the existence of magic, which meant either a masquerade of sorts for the greater world of the supernatural, or that magic was a limited resource like her home dimension, forcing the occult to ration out their resources to avoid such a problem. Because of how much mana filled the air, to the point of overflowing every section of the world in fact, she doubted the latter as a viable option.
Whoever the local cleanup crew were supposed to be, they would be forced to deal with the rotting carcass and she'd have to wait for them to get there before she could safely return home. If it meant avoiding the possibility of a passerby to stumble on it by accident, there wasn't much else for her to do. Sitting on a tree trunk, she twiddles with her fingers, waiting patiently for them to arrive.
Thinking on it, she could always just go out for a short while. Waiting was boring, and her host didn't have any relevant clothing yet. Looking at the surrounding area, the cadaver was in a remote enough location that only people who cared anough about the supernatural would go here directly. Walking towards the "head" of her victim; she kicks it for a bit, then walks away. "Clothes shopping it is..." She thinks back to the dirty and dangerous room. "At least after I'm done cleaning the mess up."
Nobunaga ran back as quickly as she could, making sure to avoid any person who was doing their early morning rounds. Once arriving, she jumped up the open window, landing smoothly. Closing her eyes instinctively to block the glaring light of the sun shining through, she backs away slightly, glad that the problem was over with, at least for now. Remarking something along the lines of having to clean everything up before her parents woke up, she was interrupted by a feminine "Clean what?" echoing from the other side of the room. Nobunaga froze for a moment, now feeling two familiar mana signatures just behind her, realizing that leaving the home for a good 30 or so minutes to play around with a bag of flesh was probably not a good idea when both parents were still inside their home, probably tired and maybe well aware of what had happened a while back. Even if they hadn't witnessed everything. Slowly moving her body to face back, she opened her eyes.
She opened her eyes to meet mother and father standing just beyond the door, the former pointing at the girl who seemingly leaped back into the bedroom out of nowhere and was currently looking back and forth at the evaporating acid that was slowly eroding the walls, and the latter who began poking at the poisonous material with her blade and palming his face, muttering something about "Of course my kid had to become a god forsaken magical girl..." Inevitably a few bits and pieces would've been left over from Nobunaga's ass whooping, if the bits of flesh left over on her bed were any indication. Calming down, the matriarch walks towards the bed and pokes a bit of flesh with rosary on hand, the cursed flesh immediately turning into dust, confirming her thoughts of a supernatural attack. Looking at the person who had just arrived, sweaty and with restrained tears, courtesy of Issei's shifting moods, she gives her child a questioning look, motioning her to answer.
SS #3Side Story: The Mysterious Girl
Rumours abounded of a beautiful redheaded girl, seemingly the elder sister of the High School senior Rias Gremory who would sometimes appear in the Occult Research club. She was tall, and almost unapproachable by the local school populace, with an unmatched elegance that could only be made by such a mature woman. Although many had questioned why exactly a college aged student would be lounging about in a high school campus, there was little to no doubt that whoever the girl was, she was not someone to be trifled with. Her clothing was a bit queerer, apparently being a a skintight dominatrix outfit, or something similar to one, but confirmation was not available.
This, of course, came to the attention of ones called Motohama and Matsuda, a duo of voyeurs and delinquents infamously known as the perverted duo. Being the dedicated bunch of losers and nerds that they were, they wanted to know more about the mysterious waif, whether it would be her history with the club, her measurements, or even her personality. Any of their attempts to gather information went straight down the drain however, as either asking the people who knew of the members of the club didn't know enough, or the members themselves who simply refused to answer. When they tried asking a certain someone, the only member of the club they could reasonably call a "friend" or "acquiantance", however...
Issei Hyoudou 's eyes widened in acknowledgment, his cheeks flushing, and suddenly turned back from them, breath hitching for a moment. Coughing into his fist, he responded, "T-That's um... I have no idea what you're t-talking about, I'm sorry but I have to go!"
With that said, Issei run away from them, almost tripping on a twig on the floor as the duo watched, their curiosity piqued and wanting to know why exactly Issei felt the need to be so defensive. But with so little to work with, and no one wanting to answer for them, they didn't have much to work with. Sitting down, they look up to the sun, feeling hopeless.
Luckily for them, an excuse came to them very quickly in the form of an Aika Kiryuu, coming back to the duo after watching their conversation with the Prince, having previously talked to them about this very same subject. She reasoned that she had to deliver something to Asia that she couldn't send directly, and having never entered the clubroom herself, she needed another excuse to have a pair of surrogates do the dirty work for her. The plan would go that they'd go to their clubhouse first, deliver the parcel to Asia, and... something. They would work it out, but apparently Motohama would only need to take a singular photo of the woman to make out her measurements.
When they questioned Aika about her direct involvement in this "project" of theirs, the girl looked at them with a menacing gleam of her glasses. Adjusting them slightly, she responded, "I want fewer threats to my (social life) as possible." The other two didn't know what she actually said, to be exact, but somehow it sounded like it was threatening their lives.
Arriving at the door to the clubroom, they knocked on the door. No response. They tried again, with no luck on the draw once more. Sighing, Aika took a few steps back, prepared herself, then ran into the door, slamming it wide open. When the dust settled, they gasped, taking in what they were seeing.
Standing before them was Issei Hyoudou, prince of the school... dressing up in a Kuoh Academy girl's uniform. Just beside him was a certain Irina Shidou, helping him put the rest of the outfit on. Tinges of red highlighted bits and pieces of Issei's long hair, his face suddenly looking quite a bit feminine, most likely make-up, and a hair clip accentuating the rest of his features. Suddenly, everything made sense now, in their opinion and skewed perspective of the situation that is.
The reality was that Issei Hyoudou was very much not a man (well, not 100% of the time) but a girl. Issei didn't really go out of her way to make herself look suspicious in the eyes of her classmates, but needs were urgent at the time and didn't have much to properly explain to them. It came with the risk of revealing her physical gender, minute as it was thanks to the Kippousai spell, but it was still a risk to be avoided. Ideally she should've expected them to try and figure it out the hard way, considering her experience with the subject.
Why exactly was she being dressed up, you may ask? Well, that's fairly simple, actually. When Irina Shidou found out the whole truth, and the entire truth behind Issei's current form, she was ecstatic learning that all of the things she loved about the boy she met so long ago was not wasted. Weird as it may be, Shidou somehow convinced Issei to play dress up for her in her various female and male forms. If there was anything Issei wanted to do, it was make the most out of every interaction she had with her.
With that in mind, Issei could only stand with a growing blush, thinking perhaps they should have taken the time to keep the doors locked a bit better. Dread formed in her stomach, thinking perhaps that this was it, rumors would spread, everyone would know she was a girl the entire time despite the magic tricks doing their best to avoid such a problem. Was this how it was going to end? A secret spreading because of a bunch of overzealous classmates? Sure they could hypnotize them, make them ignore everything they've learned today, but doing that sort of thing just felt wrong.
"You..." Aika began. "You're a... a..." Aika then took a quick look at Gasper sitting in a chair behind the two, who chuckled nervously. She put two and two together and thought of the only appropriate comparison. "A crossdresser!?" She said
"Eh?" Issei replied, confused. This wasn't a line of dialogue they were expecting. A girl? Sure, that was expected. Even as Oda Kippousai, she looked sufficiently girly enough to be considered a pretty boy, but outright crossdressing? Wow. That. That didn't even come across her mind.
"Yeah! And you're standing around in that girl's uniform like you own it, Hyoudou!" Aika replied. She took a mental note to drag the perverted duo back with her, their current postures possibly telling her that they are currently Blue Screening. "Are you the hot chick that everyone keeps calling a sister of Rias-senpai?"
"I..." Issei began, but was cut off immediately.
"Don't answer that, actually. You're tall enough normally, your hair's reddening and you look girly enough right now to qualify." Facing back with a huff, she moves her arms to pull the two brain dead perverts with her, them sliding across the floor.
The doors close, Issei and Shidou now alone for the most part. Issei asked, "What just happened...?" She took a little bit of her time to adjust the skirt on her waist that fell to the ground when she wasn't focused enough. Hearing Shidou cough for a bit, she faced to look at her.
"I think you made everyone think that you were a drag queen, Issei." She shifted her head to face Issei as well, a bead of sweat rolling down her face. "Hey, at least they don't know you really are a girl," Shidou said, worriedly.
"I hope so..." For the most part, they didn't. But when the next copy of the school paper came the next week, the mystery of the College Aged Dominatrix from the Occult Research club was solved. Written down, they identified Issei as the person behind the mask, a fact that made the fangirls scream even harder.