Gasper was safe.
He was in his room.
He was in his box.
It was dark, except for the light of his handheld console.
It was quiet, except for the electronic music of the game he was playing.
Everything was good in Gasper’s room.
Suddenly the door opened into his room, admitting light, admitting danger, admitting the possibility of social interaction.
The world bathed in monochrome as Forbidden Balor View activated on reflex.
Freezing time and giving him a chance to flee.
Putting down his console and shifting around to put the box on top of himself, he fled to the corner of the room and crouched down with his box covering his slender body entirely, shivering in place he could only wait for time to resume, although after a minute he managed to calm down enough to peer through a slit in the box and see the President entering the room in her PE clothes and carrying… was that seafood?
He didn’t dare move from where he was though, not even as colour bled back into reality to show hair the colour of blood with the resumption of time.
“Gasper, hi,” she looked straight at the box, his hiding place useless in the face of a King’s intuition, her voice gentle and soothing.
It only helped a little as he managed a timid squeak in reply.
Still she accepted it as she came deeper into the room.
“I need you to do me a favour, okay?
It’s a very important job.” She was trusting him with an important job?
Him, the useless dhampir that can’t even go outside or even hold a conversation?
The box shifted a little, cardboard scraping against his head as he nodded.
“I need you to pet-sit my new… pet,” she looked down at the octopus-like thing in her hands, crouching so she could set it on the floor near where he’d abandoned his game device.
“Just, ah… keep it fed and watered, okay?
I’ll be back at lunchtime to check on you.” She was really trusting him with that much responsibility?
But what if he screwed up?
What if it dried out, or starved to death?
Then she’d never forgive him, and he’d be put on the street, forced to live in a cardboard box under a bridge instead of a cardboard box inside a comfortable warm room!
How could he beg for spare change when he can’t even talk to anyone?!
“Oh… okay…” he ventured hesitantly, but that wouldn’t sound reassuring at all to the President who was trusting him with such an awesome responsibility.
“I’lldomybest!” the words blended together the way he squeaked them out, but he did his best to convey his dedication all the same.
He wouldn’t let her down!
“I know you will.
Take care, okay?” she smiled and stepped back out, the door closing and the magical barrier on it being put back into place by her power.
Leaving him alone with his new charge.
He stared at it from under his box.
It sat in place, an unmoving and tightly wound bundle of tentacles.
He stared at it longer.
It remained motionless.
Okay!
He could deal with this!
Lifting the box to emerge from his hiding place, Gasper went to his mini-fridge and got a bottle of water.
“You look like you need to stay moist, so how about this?” gently he poured just a little water on top of the President’s pet, careful not to soak the floor.
It wriggled just a little bit, tentacles seeming to relax a little from absorbing the water.
He was doing a good job, he was taking care of something that relied on him!
“So do you like videogames?” he asked, going to sit in his box next to his new charge and recovering his console.
“Flame Sigil’s really good, I’m trying to get Marianne and Kevin to pair up so I can have a mystic knight with really good abilities, and then if I can pair that kid with Alison and Isidor’s kid that’ll cover all the elemental resistances…” Absorbing this lecture in fantasy eugenics from a shut-in half-vampire devil, the tentacles merely wriggled placidly.
Everything was good in Gasper’s room.
— “Sorry about that, I wasn’t gone long was I?” Rias asks as she comes to join me at the entrance to the old school building.
It had been a couple minutes, but I don’t mind, so I reassure her and the two of us head back to PE where the teacher unquestioningly buys Rias’s excuse about an upset stomach, though I do feel like I’m getting some weird looks from the rest of our class.
Akeno teasing that she didn’t know I was so strong and squeezing my still flabby but nonetheless powerful bicep doesn’t help at all.
Rias looks embarrassed herself, but her thanking me for helping her does at least seem to reduce the intensity of hostility I’m getting from my female classmates.
The male ones there’s perhaps no hope for after a scene like that.
Then again I kind of deserve to be looked at with jealous hatred, I did actually get to see her naked.
And damn.
Wanna sear that right into the memory banks.
Not just naked, but really perverted too with the slime, and the way those tendrils had peeled away from her pussy.
Between that and Toujou’s flushed ‘fuck-me’ look earlier it’s been a banner day for Jiro seeing sexy stuff through circumstances outside of his control.
It’s not even lunchtime yet!
There’s not really much left to do in PE anyway, and pretty soon we’re wrapping up, back to class for a science lesson.
Which is really easy.
It’s not like I had trouble with the subject before, but now?
I just know all this stuff like the back of my hand, it’s all incredibly basic next to the rest of my knowledge that I woke up with today.
Which leaves my mind free to drift and consider the implications of this knowledge.
Never mind that I might get more in the future covering other fields, just this alone is enough to build a life around.
The question is how?
I hadn’t just been kidding when I’d told Kaori this morning the lack of a diploma was a problem, no one was going to want medical treatment from a random unaccredited teenager.
Maybe I could be a back-alley doctor for the yakuza, but how do you even get into that kind of thing?
And that’s just the bottom end.
I knew how to cultivate vaccines, generate clone tissue, maintain and possibly even build advanced cyberware, but I didn’t have the tools to do any of that.
And given how sci-fi all this was, I probably knew how to cure stuff there wasn’t currently a cure for.
My mind drifted towards thoughts of specialised hunter-killer cells that could be programmed to go after specific cancers.
That’s definitely not something anyone can do now, right?
Also those same cells could also be programmed to go after any other kind of targetted tissue, making for some horrific bioweapon potential.
Ultimately it’s a question of resources and credibility.
My power might provide the first, but it’s so random that relying on it would be foolhardy.
The second I can only accrue by myself.
Which could take years, working my way up through the educational system, paying my dues, and getting all this stuff out there for peer review and clinical testing.
It was something for the long term, that I’d have to build my entire life around.
I still hadn’t even decided if I was going to go to college in Kuoh or try elsewhere.
But getting a generic degree and becoming a salaryman is right out.
It’s either fantastic supernatural adventures, or breaking frontiers in medicine.
Probably both.
And what’ll I do if this thing dumps the knowledge of a rocket scientist on me next?
Given her personality, Kaori probably isn’t the best person to discuss life-changing decisions with, but she’s still convenient and it’s only fair to include her given our contract and the fact she’s probably been really bored sitting in my bag all morning.
The two of us end up in the anime club room where I can talk to a fairy without breaking the masquerade.
She’s drinking cranberry juice from the bottlecap along with tiny shredded bits of chicken and bread from my sandwich.
The logistics of eating at that scale always require a bit more thought than you take for granted.
“The whole point was for me to be near when your power activated, and I still missed it,” she complains, because of course I caught her up on Rias’s new living suit first.
“There’s magic to make people pass over you without noticing, I used it once to help a girl who was being bullied-” “Wait, you didn’t curse the bullies instead?” I can’t help but interrupt.
Though maybe I should just be grateful she wasn’t a bully herself?
She really has ‘mean girl’ energy.
She gives me a dirty look, but then ruins it by saying, “I did that later.
Anyway,” she pushes on as if she hadn’t confirmed her questionable moral character, “I’m sure I could strengthen it enough to move around without people noticing.
Spending hours inside that bag of yours is awful.” It’s not that I’m unsympathetic, I know I couldn’t stand it.
“Maybe we can test it in town later?
If it doesn’t work it’s easier to get away than at school,” I suggest with an eye towards practicality.
“Anyway, I was thinking about my new medical knowledge and what I can actually do with it…” I take the chance to outline some of my thoughts about the future from while I was drifting through class earlier.
“Why don’t you borrow someone else’s credibility?” she asks after I’m finished.
As I look at her for elaboration, she obliges.
“If your priority is to get the knowledge out there where it can do the most good, pass on what you know to an actual doctor or scientist who can claim it as their own.
You won’t get the credit or the money, but it’ll free your time to focus on more important matters anyway.” Magic.
She means magic of course.
Because that’s more important to her than medicine.
I mean admittedly, it is a lot more exciting.
And if I end up getting other sci-fi knowledges put in my head, there’s no way I’d have time to develop them all by myself.
Fundamentally though, it’s not a bad idea.
Even if I just posted a bunch of stuff anonymously online, someone would surely check it out, and if it stood up to scrutiny they could just take all my ideas?
Be annoying if I got tracked down in person from it though.
Of course it wouldn’t make me rich and famous, but did that really matter compared to putting the medicine out there in the first place?
Of course it would suck if some big company stole all my ideas and made a fortune off of them, but I’m not sure how patents would even work in this case.
Also having all this knowledge and being able to clearly communicate it are two different things.
I mull it over a bit and ask, “Any idea where to start on doing that?” just to see if she has an angle I hadn’t considered.
And wouldn’t you know, the black magic fanatic has an appropriately spooky solution.
“We found out yesterday there’s a whole economy of devil contracts out there.
So if someone were to summon a devil for knowledge or healing, you have an in with some devils to provide it.” That’s actually a pretty good idea.
It might help with giving direction to what I put out there, since it’s such an intimidatingly big volume of knowledge I struggle with knowing where to start.
But as I consider broaching things with Rias, or maybe even Shitori, Kaori speaks up again with a note of impatience in her voice, though one that transitions into something sultry as she talks.
“So Jiro-kun, are you going to do anything with your lunch break?” I’m not dumb, I know what she’s getting at.
Of course it might result in something problematic just as much as something good.
But it’s not like I can stop myself from getting erections so doing it while we’re alone like this is better than popping off in the middle of class.
“Give me something to work with,” I grin back at her.
In response she pulls aside the cups of her bikini-leotard thing to expose her breasts, fingers sinking into now exposed titmeat below her bare nipples and asks, “Like this?” as she starts to play with herself under my besotted gaze.
Though I can’t help but think of seeing Rias’s tits earlier and how I’d actually be able to properly feel them, but Kaori still has a fantastic set even if her overall size is impractically small for proper physical appreciation.
But as my own personal porno, she works pretty great!
[6-20 High School of the Dead Saeko Busujima A third year high school student, captain of the kendo team, daughter of a samurai lineage, and absolute zombie killing machine.
Due to the roll’s exceptional power, Saeko’s physical abilities are on the border of superhuman, and her skills are sharpened to the absolute peak from living through the apocalypse.
She comes equipped with a sword and a pistol, and is deadly with both.
As an additional bonus, the first wiki roll that gets applied to Saeko will gain a +5 bonus to its power (maximum 20)] Speaking of tits, I suddenly feel a pair pressed against my chest, my view of Kaori blocked out by the figure that just manifested on my lap.
She’s got long dark hair falling down her back and framing an elegantly beautiful face with piercing blue eyes that widen as we stare at each other before I feel myself pushed backwards in my chair, almost toppling as she springs to her feet.
Oh shit she’s got a sword!
Drawing her blade she looks around the anime club room before stopping at the sight of Kaori, who may have hurriedly fixed up her outfit to be at least not completely indecent, but it doesn’t change the fact she’s a fairy wearing something extremely slutty.
“What…?” the girl’s voice is husky as I do my best not to make any sudden moves that might draw that naked steel my way, Kaori similarly raising her hands and doing her best to look innocent.
There’s only a moment of staring before she hurriedly goes to the outer wall of the room, pushing aside the blinds covering the window so she can look out.
There’s not much of a view, it’s a sunken down walkway below ground level, but you can sort of see the baseball field over the top of the path.
From the periodic thock sounds someone’s organised a lunchtime game.
“Why is it so normal… where are we?
How did I get here?!
Why is she small?!” her voice becomes more shrill as she goes through her questions, that sword still gripped tightly but at least not pointed at me.
In fact I can also see, similar to what I picked up last night, she has a gun strapped to her thigh below her black skirt with a slit up one side, black lace stockings covering her legs and a sailor style school uniform top over her upper body.
There’s also bike pads on her elbows and shins, black gloves on her hands.
Kind of a tactical schoolgirl look.
“Okay, there’s gonna be a lot to cover here I think,” I say in my best soothing voice, this being a lot more tense than Kaori’s introduction, but hopefully it won’t go completely tits up like Nanael’s was.
“Lets start with introductions first, okay?
You’re safe here.
My name’s Jiro Onano.” “Kaori Saeki,” the blonde fairy takes her cue and even gives a little bow from where she’s standing on the desk.
The ingrained routine of performing introductions seems to break through her alarm a little bit and she utters, “Saeko Busujima,” while giving a very shallow bow of her own.
“Great, it’s nice to meet you Saeko-san,” I summoned her, I can be on a first name basis, right?
“So, to start with, magic is real, along with magical creatures,” a gesture at Kaori makes that point, and she even flutters her wings to lift off into the air and further demonstrate her magical credentials.
“And I have a magical talent which, unfortunately, works kind of at random and can summon things or people across time and space, maybe even from other worlds.” It’s kind of bad from her perspective, so I stand up and give her a really deferential bow bending my waist at ninety degrees near enough.
“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to summon you specifically, I don’t have any control over it!” I blurt out my shameful apology all at once.
“Magic?
But what about Them?
Are they here?” Again she turns to peer out the window before looking back towards me and Kaori.
“Them?” I repeat uncertainly.
That’s as unhelpfully vague as it gets.
“I mean, there’s devils, and angels, and youkai, and… fairies?” another gesture towards Kaori as I straighten up.
“The…” she hesitates, and then it seems like it physically pains her to elaborate, “They used to be human but they’re not.
They’re dead but they walk and bite and spread more of each other.
I haven’t seen… there shouldn’t be a school still like this!” again she turns and peers out the window, fascinated and disbelieving at the glimpse of normal Kuoh Academy life outside of the anime club.
She’s talking about zombies, right?
My mind once more drifts to the genetic code of a self-replicating virus which could transform people like she describes.
Is she from the same world as that knowledge?
Rias did mention vampires in her big supernatural roundup, but not zombies.
“You mean zombies?” I ask, and she grimaces at the term, “There’s nothing like that in this world.” For now.
Hopefully forever.
“Like I said, I think you’ve been transported to a different world.
It was the same for Kaori.” Kaori takes that as a cue to speak up.
“If it helps you understand, the year is 2011.
It was 2001 for me before I was summoned.” “No, it’s 2006,” Saeko asserts, and I wonder at the five year intervals at play.
Is my mad science knowledge from 2101 or some other round number different from the current year?
I don’t have a current newspaper, though a trip to the library would sort that out, but hopefully she’ll trust I haven’t doctored a fake web page just to mess with her.
Actually a smartphone itself would be pretty convincing, so I grab my device from my bag, noticing the battery is down to 30% so Kaori is likely to run out of entertainment before school lets out.
Still, I leave the creepypasta page Kaori seems to have been reading and open up a news page before presenting the phone to Saeko.
It’ll show today’s date along with current events she can click through to, more than could possibly be faked for a prank.
Helpfully it’s also enough for Saeko to sheathe her sword before she takes the phone, staring at the screen in consternation and then tapping on something to browse further.
It’s intuitive and it’s not like she’s from a world before the internet, five years ago wasn’t that long!
I had a touchscreen handheld, even if needed a stylus.
Actually I still have it, I should bring it along to school for Kaori to play with.
“It can’t just be the future, the world could never return to normal after that…” she mutters softly as between the mundane current news stories and the noises of school life outside she’s at least convinced she’s not where she was.
Then she looks up and fixes me with an intense stare.
“Can you send me back?” Funnily enough Kaori hadn’t even bothered asking that.
She had my arcane aptitude pegged from the start.
“Uh, no.
It only seems to work one way,” I say, half apologetic but half confused because from the sounds of it she’s from the land of the living dead.
“Do you even want to go back?
It sounds like you’re from a world that’s been overrun by zombies.” She grimaces again, features becoming drawn, but still answers.
“There were other survivors.
People who relied on my strength… friends,” she says that last word like she’s not quite sure of the definition.
“I’m sorry,” I say, trying my best to get across that I really am.
Admittedly I did deliberately provoke my power with Kaori’s help just now, but it was gonna happen anyway, better like this than in the middle of class.
Still, it sucks that I took her away from her friends, and possibly put those friends in trouble if they were relying on Saeko to get them through a zombie-filled apocalypse.
“I don’t have much going for me, I’m just a regular guy who doesn’t have much going for him except an uncontrollable power that’s thrown me into the world of the supernatural, but I’m still responsible for bringing you here and I’ll do whatever I can to make the best of it.” “Such a dutiful young man, Jiro-kun,” Kaori teases from behind me.
“Are you trying to make her fall for you?” What?
Fuck off, I’m just trying to be nice!
“No!” I blurt out, turning towards her, “I’m just stepping up, same as I did for you with that contract.” “Hmm, and I wonder if she’ll be willing to return your sense of responsibility the way I am,” she says leadingly, and there’s no way this is doing my look any favours in Saeko’s eyes.
I twitch a little bit before just settling on telling her, “Shut up!” before I turn back to Saeko.
“Sorry about that, but I mean it, you’re in a brand new world and even if there’s no zombies you don’t have anything or know anyone, so… I’ll do whatever I can for you so you’re not facing this all alone.” Please boner, give me a suitcase full of money next time, I can’t actually support two girls by myself even if one of them is tiny.
She gives me a long look before nodding slightly.
“Very well, Jiro-san.
For now I’ll put myself in your hands.
I… may have forgotten how to act in polite society, so I ask that you bear with any of my transgressions.” She says that, but it still proves a struggle to get her to leave her weapons behind, and I get Kaori to remain in the club room with them because even if no one’s likely to come by, the thought of someone finding a live blade or even worse a gun in there doesn’t bear thinking about.
Walking through the school alongside a beautiful girl in a strange uniform of course means I can’t just skulk around invisibly as is my preference.
“Who’s that with Onano?” “Maybe a relative, no way a guy like him…” “I heard he assaulted Gremory this morning.” “He was trying to trick Koneko-chan too, what a creep.” “Do you think he’s blackmailing her?” I cringe and give Saeko an apologetic look.
“My reputation’s a bit…” shit?
Yeah, I leave it unsaid, but it is what it is.
She looks unbothered though, a cold gaze turned towards the girl who speculated I was blackmailing her before she steps closer so we’re almost touching.
She smells… a bit dirty.
Like smoke and blood.
Her clothes seem clean enough, but it’s clear she hasn’t been able to practice the kind of feminine hygiene Kaori was lecturing me about this morning.
“There was a young man at my school who had similar troubles.
He even looks a bit like you.
But in the end he proved to be a fine man.
I hope you are like him, Onano-kun.” Aww, that’s… that’s actually really sweet!
I can just imagine a guy like me, when the world ends he steps up and makes a difference, and gains the appreciation of even a cool beauty like Saeko.
Well, I hope I haven’t fucked him over by summoning her out of the apocalypse, but still I feel really heartened that whatever Saeko’s been through, it’s given her the insight to cut through gossipy high school bullshit.
“I’ll do my best!” I promise, the two of us unbothered by disparaging whispers as we make our way to our destination.
The student council office.
Funny, I’d considered Shitori a tryhard bigging up the importance of her role like she’s in an anime where the student council secretly runs the school, but now I know that’s exactly the case.
The door’s open so we can walk right in, finding most of the student council, and in fact Shitori’s devil peerage, all sitting around either finishing their lunches or doing work whether for classes or their extra-curricular roles.
They’re all girls too actually, huh.
Not that unusual given the school demographics, but still… well, it looks more like an actual student council office compared to Rias’s occult research club slash mansion parlour.
Naturally everyone’s eyes turn towards us as I raise my hand and give a little, “Hey,” before approaching the president’s desk at the back where Shitori regards me with a cool gaze.
“Onano,” she says, tone neither particularly hostile nor friendly.
“I’d wondered if you’d take my invitation, but it looked like Rias got to you first… what brings you here, and does it have something to do with your new friend?” “Yeah, uh… I dunno if you and Rias compared notes much, but I’ve been having stuff appear around me lately?” I nod over towards where Shinra’s sat at a desk to my right, “You remember that weird statue the other day?” I ask her before focusing back on Shitori.
“Well that was just the start.
This is Saeko Busujima, and she’s not from around here, so I kind of need some help getting her situated so she can… take part in society, y’know?” And wouldn’t you know it?
Lots of people from magical communities don’t have much of a presence in the mundane world, and so Kuoh Academy is precisely set up for this kind of no-questions-asked integration, which means Shitori is fully on board with just getting Saeko enrolled as a transfer student, and has the clout to bypass any logistical hurdles.
Sadly there’s no stipend (“Unless either of you are interested in joining my peerage?”) but hey not quibbling over her lack of legal ID is such a big step up I’m willing to take what I can get.
It’s only as Shitori’s finalising the details to make Saeko an official Kuoh Academy student that I’m struck with a brilliant flash of inspiration.
“Hey Saeko-san, do you want to join the anime club?”