The Mandate of Khaos: The Best Kind of Lawyering (ch. 16)

Maki was not a battle maniac. Really, she wasn't. She enjoyed a good scuffle once in a while, but it wasn't like she went out looking for them.

However, if a perfect excuse for a fight just dropped into her lap like this… well, she'd stopped giving a shit about the big G upstairs a long time ago, but if his supposed Plan saw fit to deliver such a perfect reason for a good scrap, then who was she to refuse?

Of course, as usual, Maki couldn't quite get what she truly wanted and was limited to defense and redirection, but even that could be fun. The only one in their group she could regularly spar with was Koneko-chan, but there was something about the Rook that made her feel a bit bad, unable to fully unleash herself and enjoy the fight.

A panty-obsessed pervert, though? There were no such reservations.

The tissue hit the floor, and Shinji Asutaroto moved. Planting his feet firmly, his eyes swirled a vicious crimson. He opened his arms wide—and clapped.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" The curse was ripped from her lungs, but she almost couldn't hear herself over the deafening BOOM that followed. Looking to her surroundings, none of her family appeared affected, and it was only then she noticed the shimmering barrier Sona Sitri had raised around the impromptu ring.

Setting aside her worries for her friends, she returned her attention to the purple-haired boy—who was now pointing a gun at her. Suddenly, she felt it. A wave of pure, suffocating despair whispering in her ear, an overwhelming Aura radiating from him. To most, Maki felt, it would instill sheer terror.

Maki was not most. Certain areas of her body went stiff with anticipation, and others grew slightly damp with excitement.

Ah, I really should not have accepted that limitation. As a woman, she didn't have balls, but if she did, she was certain they'd be blue with frustration by now.

Her opponent's face twisted in frustration, which only brought an amused, predatory smile to Maki's lips. He charged, swinging his sword… amateurishly. That was the kindest way to describe it. It wasn't terrible, he seemed to have a preternatural grasp of her movements, anticipating her dodges, but his form was all wrong.

After evading the seventh wild swing—a high, telegraphed arc where he wielded the rapier more like a club—she was about to try and rile him up, to see if he'd reveal something new, when suddenly—

BANG

She'd already clocked the rapier as a gun-blade hybrid, of course. What she hadn't expected was that his ability to amplify sounds extended so thoroughly to objects he was holding. His initial stance had made her believe he needed to be rooted to the ground to use it, but clearly, that had been a misdirection.

It was fortunate, then, that despite all that, Maki had the foresight to run a continuous, low-level sound-dampening spell on her ears. Magic wasn't her specialty, far from it, which was precisely why she'd insisted on learning the most efficient ways to counter it.

Clearly, the boy possessed some form of immunity to his own power, as he seemed completely unfazed by the concussive blasts loud enough to rupture a normal human's eardrums.

Maki felt her heart accelerate, a thrill coursing through her. "Come on," she taunted, a slight, persistent ringing still in her ears, though her balance was fully restored in half a second. "You can't tell me that's all you've got?"

Shinji didn't rise to the bait. He merely retreated half a step before resuming his attempts to strike her with the rapier. He fired three more shots in quick succession—trying to overwhelm her magical defense?—then two more. He clicked the trigger a sixth time, this time aiming directly at her center mass for the first time.

She threw herself to the side, but the expected deafening report never came, only the hollow click of an empty chamber. Instead, she noticed a shimmering, rune-etched projectile flying toward the spot she'd just dodged towards. Forced to act, she brought her naginata around in a swift arc, slicing the projectile in two. It dissipated harmlessly.

"Finally had to defend instead of just dodging, hm?"

Maki's lips twitched, it was true after all. She had indeed been trying to finish this entire thing using only evasion.

The boy charged again, but after a seventh, equally ineffective shot, he did something unexpected. He threw his rapier toward her—and launched himself directly at her naginata.

Wha—?!

Was he trying to disarm her? Foolish. It didn't matter that he was a man and she a woman, what mattered was that she was a devil and he was human. The disparity in raw physical power between the genders was not comparable to the one that existed between the races.

No. Maki realized a split second later. He's not trying to disarm me. He's trying to lock me in place.

He was exploiting the rule that she couldn't attack back, and leveraging the length of her weapon against her. He latched onto the naginata's shaft with his body, using his weight to immobilize it, while his free hand kept firing those runed projectiles at her. When she saw a bandage-like cloth snake its way from his arm, attempting to capture hers and tie it to the weapon, Maki made the logical, instantaneous decision: she abandoned her naginata.

She summersaulted backward, nimbly dodging the incoming projectiles all the while. As long as his rate of fire didn't improve by a lot, she couldn't envision herself being hit by those things anytime soon.

She'd lost her weapon, but it wasn't like—

It wasn't like—

…

He knew how to use a Naginata!?

No, wait. She recognized those moves. That stance, those precise, fluid attacks. That—

Those were her moves!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Shinji Asutaroto was smart.

Of course, Sona already knew that. She shared classes with him. He was a certified genius in chemistry—though he appeared strangely embarrassed about it—and in all other subjects, he was either far above their peers or at least comfortably keeping pace.

Rarely did book smarts translate into battle smarts, however, so it was a genuine surprise to witness the cunning stratagems employed by the boy she was… scouting.

"He's going to lose."

Such was Tsubaki's opinion, the opinion of—semi-exiled or not—a battle-trained member of the Five Principal Clans. Fifty seconds had passed, and if nothing significant changed, then yes, Shinji Asutaroto was going to lose.

For some reason, though, Sona didn't believe that was the inevitable outcome. She couldn't see how he would turn this around, but if he truly believed he had absolutely no chance, he would have already—

"Ah, whatever."

…given up.

Shrugging his shoulders and leaving a shocked Maki behind, he simply walked. He walked, and walked, and Sona couldn't help the sharp pang of disappointment that lanced through her as she watched him cross the boundary of the arena.

Maki appeared more confused than anything else. Confused and deeply wary. Still, Sona dissolved the shoddy barrier and began walking towards Shinji. Knowing when to concede was a valuable trait, yet in a situation like this, he would have lost nothing by continuing to give it his all until the very end.

Sona wouldn't claim to know Shinji that well, but she believed he wasn't the type of man who held so little trust in—

No… wait… what was it that Rias had said when she laid down the terms?

"It was a good match," Shinji said, accepting a cold water bottle from Sakura. "Sorry about stealing your weapon. I know how some of you martial types are about them. Here, catch—" Shinji said, tossing the naginata back with a deliberate, almost lazy underhand throw that sent it arcing weakly through the air.

"Hey!" Maki yelled out. Her devil wings snapped open, and she threw herself forward, snatching her favored weapon out of the air before it could hit the ground. It had been a birthday present from Rias, after all. "What the hell's wrong with you?! Be more careful with it! What's so funny, huh?!" Maki demanded of Sakura Asutaroto, who was chuckling softly into her hand.

"Well," Sakura said, her voice laced with amusement, "you just lost, didn't you?"

Sona replayed Rias' words in her mind: "Should Shinji Asutaroto be able to deliver a solid hit to Maki Guremori, or should she be forced to leave the delineated ring, he shall be entitled to her used panties. Should such not occur after one hundred seconds, wherein Maki is not allowed to do anything besides defend and redirect attacks, and is not allowed to fly upwards, Shinji shall be forced to give back all the panties he has acquired until now."

Had the rules ever explicitly stated that Shinji himself was not allowed to leave the arena?

There was an uncomfortable, traitorous dampness growing near Sona's nether regions. The sheer, audacious brilliance of it.

"Don't congratulate me over this type of rules-lawyering victory," Shinji said, holding Sakura's clapping hands still, though a faint smirk played on his own lips.

Maki appeared ready to explode with indignant disagreement, but Sakura was faster.

"Still, nii-san," she pressed, shooting the girl behind him a look, "why didn't you use Holy Light? Or try to shoot Maki with the Silver Bullets?"

Holy… Light?

Sona watched as Shinji's usual scowl contorted into a sort of embarrassed, almost pained expression.

"I mean," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck, "it's Holy Light. And you're all Devils. What if I ended up actually hurting her?"

As if to demonstrate the validity of his concern, Shinji raised his hand toward the sky—and a searing, pure white lance of energy fired from his palm, shooting upwards until she could no longer distinguish it from the clouds.

Sona could feel the power from here. Light power. Holy power. A potent, dangerous energy he could have used to try to win, but had consciously withheld out of fear of harming her friend's Knight.

"Jeez, nii-san," Sakura said, pouting. "You really are…"

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled, waving her words aside.

Nearby, Rias was howling with laughter at Maki's utterly flabbergasted expression, before being promptly tackled to the ground by her furious Knight and forced to yell out apology after apology for wording the wager so carelessly.

"Ah, hm… Vice-Prez…"

Hm? Tsubaki never called her that. Had something happened? When Sona looked at her Queen, the taller girl was shooting intensely embarrassed looks towards Sona's chest.

It was rather hot today, so she had forgone a bra, not that it'd be that noticeable, considering the modest size of her breasts—or so she had rationalized that morning.

Of course, the matter became quite, quite different if her nipples were visibly stiffened and pressing against the thin fabric of her blouse.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Feat: Win the match against Maki

Reward: One Bronze Ability Ticket

[Adhesion]

|Common Ability|

You can turn your skin incredibly sticky, sticky enough that you could stick to walls or prevent ordinary people from pulling away from you. You do not feel the difference and can control which parts are sticky.