Hataraku Maou-sama! - Volume 9 - Chapter 1

THE DEVIL DEVISES A FULL MILITARY EXPEDITION 
The other side picked up on the fourth ring. 
“Oh, hey, Kawacchi! You okay to talk for a sec? Great. So, um, sorry to spring this on you, but what do you think about swapping shifts three days from now? Yeah. Um, it doesn’t have to be the whole thing. Like, even half would help me out a ton. Day, evening, whatever… Oh, you will? Cool, thanks! I’ll make it up to you later, okay? …Huh? Aw, man, no way—you’re gonna have to ask her yourself, dude. I couldn’t really, like… Yeah. Sure, okay. Thanks again! I really mean it… Okay, sure, see you…” 
He ended the call, then wrote “OK” on a particular square of the shift schedule that was laid out on the low kotatsu table. 
“Cool. Now who’s left…? I already got Kato doing two days for me, so that leaves Kota and Aki and Ken… Ooh, but he said he was busy studying, so maybe not…” 
A sheet of paper titled “Employee List” lay next to the schedule on the table, each name with a symbol or piece of scribbled text next to it that only the original writer could comprehend. 
“After that… Eesh, and of course I had to pick up a Sunday-night shift at a time like this… Shige told me he’s a no-go for weekends, and Yoko usually works shifts alongside Mitsu, so…” 
The hemming and hawing continued as his eyes darted between the schedule grid and the staff list. 
“…Man, looking at it like this, it’s a goddamn miracle we can keep the café open, huh? I don’t even wanna know how we’re gonna launch the delivery side.” 
He shook off the thought before it threatened to drive his concentration off track any further. 
“Well, that’s why I gotta get this wrapped up in a week! Uh, I don’t think Ryuta can do nights…” 
Suddenly, the voice of a very non-hurried woman entered his ear. 
“Ooh, real tough!” 
He was the only one in the room. It was unclear where the voice came from. 
“Well, yes, it kind of is, okay? I have to cover for the manager most of the time if she’s not there, so if I’m gone too, that means no management at all in the store!” 
“Management? Why do you need management?” 
“Ugh…” 
Sadao Maou, the young, dark-haired man currently agonizing over his work schedule, groaned at the unseen voice that seemed to poke fun at his very psyche. 
“…Look, they’re called ‘management’ because they’re supposed to be around at all times, okay? So can you shut up for a second already? I’m kinda busy here!” 
“Meeeeeanie…” 
“Daaahhh!” 
He knew it was pointless, but Maou still rubbed the side of his head, attempting to quell the unwelcome voice inside. It had little effect. The voice cackled in laughter. 
“Maou, you scare the neighbors!” 
“…I just need to fill in two-and-a-half more days. Then I’m home free.” 
“Oh, who cares? Maou, we look for big sis, okay…?” 
“…I’m gonna take a break, and then it’s back to the phones! Please, someone…anyone…you gotta trade shifts with me!” 
“I thought you more…commanding, Devil King. Now, very weak-sauce!” 
Maou decided to ignore the slander running through his mind, whether it was intended to be so grammatically poor or not. She was only doing it, he knew, because he was engaging her. He stood up, stretched his cramped legs, and opened the door to the kitchen’s refrigerator. 
“Huh? Where’s the Fla-Vor-Nice I had in here? I know I bought the mashed-potato flavor…” 
“Oh, sorry, I eat it.” 
“Daaaaaammit! You can’t even find those right now! They can’t keep up with demand! You brat!” 
Five seconds later, he was engaging her again. The pilfered frozen dessert apparently had the power to make the Lord of All Demons fly into a non-affected rage. 
“Maou? Maou, are you okay? What’s going on?!” 
A panicked voice issued forth through the door as the furious Maou was about to bang his head against the wall. It saved him at the last minute. 
“Oh, is that…you, Chi?” 
“Y-yeah, um, I heard shouting from your room, so…are you all right?!” 
From outside he could hear the voice of Chiho Sasaki—his coworker behind the counter, his confidant who knew about his true self and the nature of his world, and Japan’s sole representative witness for the cataclysmic events happening across the universe at the moment. 
“It, it’s nothing. Well, no, I mean, it—it’s not nothing, but it’s nothing important, so… Here, lemme open up for—” 
“Someone with Chiho. I feel it.” 
“Dahh, shut up!” 
Just as Maou was about to unlock the door, he noticed the serious tone behind the voice that set off this whole inquiry in the first place. The events of the past few minutes caused him to overreact in grandiose fashion. 
“Uh, um, if now isn’t a good time for you, I could always come back later…” 
“Huh? No, uh, sorry, Chi, it’s nothing. It’s not your fault or anything. Just, um, come on in!” 
He opened up the door to find a fairly reluctant-looking Chiho there, his tone clearly giving her pause. 
“Are…you really sure?” Chiho said, peering into the apartment. 
“Uh… Hello…” 
And next to her, expression equally dubious, was Rika Suzuki, looking right at Maou. 
“Oh. Hey. You, um, feeling all right?” 
“Yeah, more or less,” Rika replied, sizing up both Chiho and Maou with her eyes. It made Chiho blush a little. “Chiho here’s done a lot for me, I have to admit…” 
This came as something of a surprise to Maou. The events that took place here three days ago, when Rika last paid a visit, were nothing short of disastrous. Rika wasn’t as inoculated against such supernatural and violent events as Chiho was—why would she be—and having the full brunt of Ente Isla’s existence thrust upon her had to be a shock. He had heard that Rika had barely left her place for the past three days. Chiho had stepped up to support her, communicating via voice and text, paying her the occasional visit to calm her frayed nerves. 
“So what was all that about ‘they can’t keep up with demand’ and stuff? Did someone eat your Fla-Vor-Nice or something?” 
“Uh…” 
Maou found it hard to respond. Any hope that the girls hadn’t heard him was gone. 
“Fla-Vor-Nice? What about that?” 
“Oh, you didn’t hear, Chiho? So, like, Fla-Vor-Nice is putting out these special-edition ice pops that don’t taste like normal ice cream and they had, umm…potato something? And it was this huge success, and they’re having trouble keeping it stocked in the grocery stores.” 
“Oh! Is that what it was?” 
Chiho looked up in astonishment, apparently not as up on current pop-culture trends as Rika. Maou—between his sadness at the lost ice cream, his embarrassment at having his ranting heard through the door, and the ensuing Fla-Vor-Nice stealth-marketing campaign unfolding before him—silently wished he could teleport himself anywhere else but here. 
“Yeah, that’s great, guys, but you’re here to see me, right? C’mon in. Don’t have much to offer, but…” 
Chiho obliged, stepping into Devil’s Castle as she kept a watchful eye on Rika behind her. There was a plastic shopping bag in her hand. 
“Thanks. Oh, and I got something for you here…” She seemed to be taking pains to keep her voice cheerful as she offered the bag. “I bought this on the way, so…” 
“Oh, thanks… Whoa! Fla-Vor-Nice?!” 
The presence of the now-legendary frozen treat in the bag made Maou shout to the heavens. 
“And it’s the mashed-potato flavor, too!” 
“Huh? Really?” Even Rika looked surprised. 
“I didn’t realize it was rare or anything when I bought it,” Chiho said as she pointed at the logo on the bag. “It just happened to be in the freezer at this liquor store near my place, so I figured ‘why not?’” 
“For real? They’re apparently so popular that I haven’t been able to find these anywhere lately! Thank you so much, Chi!” 
“You haven’t?” Chiho smiled as he watched Maou rip open one of the packets. “Well, I’m glad I made you happy!” 
“Um,” Rika said, still incredulous at how much this seemed to mean to Maou. 
“Oh? Oh, sorry… Come in, come in,” he responded, beckoning at her after realizing she was still outside. Rika stayed where she stood, returning Maou’s glance. 
“So…Emi and Ashiya really aren’t there, huh?” 
“…No. They’re not,” Maou said, taking care to balance the ice pop in his right hand as he solemnly shook his head. Indeed, if the mastermind of the local kitchen was still around, he would never let something as serious as a purloined dessert escape his watchful eye. Shirou Ashiya—the Great Demon General Alciel—was no longer by his superior’s side, for the very first time since Maou set off to unify the disparate tribes of the demon realms. He had been taken—taken by the archangel Gabriel, a foe that Maou and Emi shared. 
Losing this presence that had faithfully stayed by his side, even when he failed in his conquest and wound up marooned in Japan, felt like someone had amputated his right hand. And judging by how Gabriel put it, he, along with Emi Yusa—the Hero Emilia Justina, the eternal thorn in his side, the woman who dismantled his empire and chased him all the way to Japan to finish the job—was being held somewhere on Ente Isla. 
“We didn’t hear anything from Ashiya or Emi’s father, and it’s just been too crazy to worry about all that since, so…I asked Chiho if I could come here with her today. So I could hear the truth from you.” 
“The truth?” 
“Well…about Suzuno, about Urushihara, about Ashiya, about you…and, really, about Emi, most of all. Chiho said you were going off to someplace-or-other the day after tomorrow to search for her.” 
“Oh… Why d’you ask about those other two, though?” 
Maou flashed Chiho a glance. He had no way to gauge how much she’d told Rika. But Chiho just shook her head in response. 
“I saw both of them disappear into that rain, jumping from roof to roof like they had superpowers or something…and then I saw you flying away from here, Maou. And then Ashiya told me that…that Emi wasn’t born on Earth. Then this weird group of people seized him and…went off somewhere.” 
It was clear from this that neither Maou nor Crestia Bell—aka Suzuno Kamazuki, the Church cleric from Ente Isla who lived next door in Room 202 of Villa Rose Sasazuka—had rewired Rika’s brain to forget any of these memories. That was the whole reason she was here now. 
“So if you know something…I’d really like you to tell me. About Emi, and about my friends.” 
She was after the truth. The truth about Emi Yusa, her trusted friend. Maou looked at the wall separating him from Room 202 and let out a small sigh. 
“All right, well…chill out a bit, all right? If you wanna know, I’d be happy to tell you. But you need to give me some time, okay? ’Cause I think it’d go a lot more smoothly if Suzuno and Amane…uh, if that girl who saved you were here, too. Once they get back, I mean.” 
Rika gave a resolute nod. “…Okay. I’ll wait.” Then she entered the room, settling down next to the low table in the middle. 
“Man, nothing flaps you, huh?” Maou offered with a smile. 
“Uh, hello?” Rika fired back, half-chuckling. “It was kind of traumatic. I had a fever for forty-eight hours straight once I was back home.” 
Maou could tell her smile was half-forced, but he figured pointing that out would be cruel. 
“Is Suzuno out right now?” Chiho asked, notably less serene than Rika at the moment. 
“Hmm? Yeah, she went out somewhere with Amane this morning.” 
“Um, to the hospital, or…?” 
“Hmm? Nah.” Maou shook his head, realizing what Chiho was worrying about. “That girl was practically back to normal this morning. I guess that gash wasn’t anything too serious after all.” 
“Huhh?!” Chiho shouted in disbelief. Her shock was understandable: The next-door neighbor was an active part of the events of three days ago—and at the height of it, she had been clawed from shoulder to chest by an enormous demon as she’d attempted to protect Chiho from harm. Even if Suzuno were a high-level Church cleric with untold holy magic at her fingertips, Chiho couldn’t imagine such a grave wound healing up within three days. 
“Yeah, well, Amane was going on about how crazy that was, too, actually. But you know how she never fills us in on stuff, so…” 
“…True.” Chiho nodded. 
Amane Ohguro ran a beachfront snack bar in Choshi, a fair distance northeast of Villa Rosa, that Maou and his acquaintances had temped at briefly. She was also the niece of Miki Shiba, the shadowy, corpulent lady who owned Villa Rosa and served as the landlord of Devil’s Castle. Both she and Amane seemed like they were native to Japan, but both acted as though they knew who Maou really was from the start—and Amane, for her part, had wielded powers in front of Maou that were beyond even his own imagination. 
“Do you think Amane will come back here, though?” Chiho asked. 
“Yeah. Her stuff’s still in Suzuno’s room.” 
Amane had spent the past three days staying in Suzuno’s apartment. That did little to quell Chiho’s concern. What if Amane decided to disappear without a trace again after busting out her powers, like she did in Choshi? She had yet to divulge her reasons for visiting Sasazuka in the first place, and her exact nature was still a mystery to them. Neither Maou nor Chiho felt safe in fully trusting her. 
“They said they’d be back late in the afternoon, so let’s just try waitin’ them out for now, huh?” 
“All right… Oh! I was so surprised about Suzuno that I forgot all about this. Maou?” 
“Yeah?” 
“Where’d that girl go?” 
There was more than a trace of sternness to the question. Maou doubted he was imagining it. 
“…You mean Acieth? She’s here. Right here.” 
He pointed at his own forehead, wincing as he did. Housed inside was a voice currently pleading at him for a bite of the mashed-potato Fla-Vor-Nice he was slowly working his way through. 
“There… Really, Maou?!” 
“Wh-what do you want me to say? That’s how the system works or whatever! She’s annoying me enough in my head, but if I take her out, it’s gonna be even worse. She’s a hellion.” 
Now Chiho looked even sterner than before. It sounded too much like an excuse to her. “Well,” she began, “if we’re going to talk to Suzuki about this, we’re going to need to talk to Acieth, too!” Her hands were on the lapel of Maou’s shirt. She was placing far too much emphasis on every syllable. “Take. Her. Out. Now!” 
“Aggh! Stop shaking me, Chi! I’m gonna drop this ice pop! Look, okay, okay, I’ll do it! I need to concentrate, so stop shaking me! I’m not used to this yet!” 
The lack of forward progress was starting to seriously agitate Chiho. Peeling her away from him, Maou turned to an empty corner of the room, supported his dazed head with one hand, and pointed forward with the other. 
“Mmm…come forth, Acieth!” 
As he spoke, a dull purple light shone out from Maou’s body. Rika, seeing this up close, tensed up—but Chiho couldn’t provide her support right now. 
“Maou, I want bite, toooo!” 
The light from Maou’s body slowly began to gather and form a body—not in front of Maou, but behind him. She was maybe a little younger than Chiho, her silvery hair—complete with a purple whorl on one side—indicating she was plainly not from Japan. 
She was now here, with them, and that wasn’t really the issue right now. The issue was that she had her arms and legs entangled over Maou from behind him, in a close embrace. And that wasn’t all—her mouth was wide open and making a beeline for the ice-cream pop near Maou’s own face. For someone like Chiho, and all the feelings she had for him, that was far too much to let slide. 
“Ah, ah, ah, Acieth, what’re you doing to Maou?!” 
“Ooh, um, getting some skinship with him? As a partner?” 
“Agh!” Maou, despite the fact that he was the one who summoned her, acted just as shocked. “Get off me, Acieth!” She had yet to materialize in any position Maou intended—but that didn’t mean it had to work like this, either. 
“Oh, Maou! So bashful!” 
“That’s not the problem, man! You’re not gettin’ a single bite of this! You already ate my snacks without permission!” 
“It is okay! I am the growing girl!” 
“Could you at least pretend to listen to me? You’re not gettin’ a bite, and that’s it!” 
The grappling match continued between the King of All Demons and the mystery girl over some ice cream for several seconds. Then it was abruptly stopped. 
“Stop! It! Right! There!” 
“Whoa!” 
“Aghh!” 
Chiho, forcing her way between the two, pulled Acieth away from Maou’s body. 
“Chihoooo! Why are you doing?” 
“I have another pop for you, Acieth! Just stop trying to take Maou’s from him!” 
“But just see people eat something, it looks…so tasty…” 
“I don’t care!!” 
“Ooooh… All right,” Acieth said as she stepped back, sufficiently cowed by Chiho’s tirade—but not so much as to keep her hands away from the shopping bag with her ice-cream prize. 
“Wow, Chi,” an astonished Maou whispered behind Chiho, “Acieth actually listened to you.” 
“…Maou.” 
“Y-yes?!” 
He didn’t think Chiho would find anything wrong with the appraisal. But when he turned around, he detected something murderous to her face. He stiffened up, posture straight. 
“If you keep spoiling Acieth too much, you know how jealous Alas Ramus will be once she returns. She’ll hate you for it.” 
“Sh-she will?” 
“And you, you…you just can’t let that happen to you, all right? I know this is kind of a weird situation, but Acieth is a girl, all right? A girl!” 
“N-no, I… Okay, maybe I could’ve put it nicer, but I swear, Acieth never listens to me—” 
“I’m not talking about that!” 
“Whuh?!” 
Try as he did to plead his case, Maou began to acutely feel that he and the glaring, reddened Chiho were on nowhere near the same wavelength. 

 

“All that…that ‘getting to know’ each other…in broad daylight… That just isn’t right, Maou!” 
“Ch-Chi? Chi, I think you got the wrong idea, I…I’m not doing anything like…” 
“Oh, well, oh, well. That is life! Me and Maou, we same body and heart now!” 
“Nnnnhhh!!” 
“Ch-Chi! Chill out! You know what she means, right?! And Acieth, I don’t care how bad you are at this language—I swear you’re picking your words on purpose, aren’t you?!” 
Acieth seemed to be all but taunting Chiho by this point. But it was true. They both really did occupy the same body. Acieth had a single shock of purple in her silvery hair—the telltale sign of one born from a Sephirah, one of the jewels that formed the world of Ente Isla. There was another person in Maou’s and Chiho’s lives with the same characteristics—Alas Ramus, the near-baby who fused with Emilia’s Better Half and treated her and the Devil King as her own parents. And while it was hard to believe, given their external ages, apparently Acieth was Alas Ramus’s younger sister. 
Given that they were sisters, it was safe to assume Acieth had similar abilities as her sibling. Just like with Alas Ramus and Emi, Acieth was now fused with Maou, helping him and his friends escape death three days ago. Which was great, but apparently this was permanent—and like with the Hero and her “daughter,” even if Maou materialized Acieth, she was no longer able to go beyond a certain physical distance from him. 
Acieth had always been a, shall we say, sociable girl. But her behavior had undergone enormous changes before and after the fusion. To wit, she was now physically all over him all the time—enough so that Chiho, who never acted so blatantly jealous if another girl had Maou’s attention, just couldn’t keep her cool around her. 
But on the other hand: 
“You are…Rika? Do you want ice cream, too?” 
Now her interest was fully shifted from the pained Maou and the half-trembling Chiho. She offered a packet to Rika, who currently had nothing to do but stare at the three of them bickering with each other. 
“Oh, uh, I’m fine. Thanks.” 
The refusal seemed to put Acieth off a little. It was unusual to see. 
“Maou!” Chiho snapped. 
“Y-yes?” the startled Maou said, exposed to the full brunt of Chiho’s stare. 
“It sure would be nice if Yusa and Ashiya came back, huh?” she droned. 
“Y-yeah, I think?” Maou chirped right back. 
“…You guys make no sense to me,” a befuddled Rika observed. Then Maou’s phone, more than a little bit behind the times, went off. 
“Oh, I got a text from Suzuno. Must be close to home.” 
Thirty minutes, as the text specified. 
“Ooh, how good! This morning, I ask Amane, buy ice cream for me!” 
“How much’re you planning to eat, anyway? Don’t come runnin’ to me if you get a stomachache.” 
Maou didn’t expect a response. He couldn’t help but admonish her anyway. 
“So when they get back, guys,” he continued, grabbing the papers he had out on the table, “I guess we’ll start talking about rescuing Emi, Alas Ramus, Ashiya, Emi’s dad…the whole gang. I’ll worry about shifts again later.” 
“Uh, hey…” 
“Agh!” 
Rika half-rose to her feet at the weak-sounding yelp that suddenly came from parts unknown. Everyone, except for Acieth, focused their eyes on the closet—just in time for it to open up an inch or so. Behind it was the Great Demon General Lucifer, better known around here as Hanzou Urushihara, the dead weight of Devil’s Castle and a man who styled himself as the greatest slacker in the world. 
“Dude,” he moaned to the group, “I don’t care if you forget about me or whatever…but try to keep it down, okay? I’m not all fixed up like Bell yet. All that shouting makes my wounds hurt still, all right?” 
 
Emi and Ashiya were marooned in Ente Isla. 
Though perhaps that was not the right word: Emi, after all, had originally chased the Devil King from Ente Isla to Earth—and Ashiya had been one of the demon leaders commanding the world’s conquest. If anything, Ente Isla was exactly where the two of them belonged. But, even in their native land, they were well and truly stuck. 
It all started when Emi, curious about what her parents were doing on Ente Isla and what kind of past they had, decided to return home to find answers. She was the undisputed strongest human being in the universe. At the time, not even Maou, her natural enemy, could imagine her running into any kind of danger. 
But Emi never came back—not even after the day she promised to return—and Alas Ramus, fused into the young woman’s Better Half sword, was undoubtedly still with her. The child’s fate worried Maou enough to make him fail the written exam for his motor scooter license, something he was trying to earn so he could help out with MgRonald’s new delivery program. 
So he marched back to the exam center in Fuchu for a retest, only to run into a strange man and his daughter: Hiroshi and Tsubasa Sato, two people who boarded Maou’s bus at the space observatory in Mitaka. Despite their names, they were clearly new to Japan. Thanks to their chance encounter, Maou found himself entangled in their affairs all through his retest—but then he found out who they really were. The man was none other than Nord Justina, Emilia’s father and someone thought to have died in battle against the Devil King’s Army; while Tsubasa Sato was Acieth Alla, Alas Ramus’s younger sister and fellow Yesod Sephirah embodiment. 
Just as Maou was trying to digest all of this, a top general from the Malebranche, a nobility-level demon tribe that had been getting in Maou’s hair quite a bit as of late, appeared at Chiho’s high school, forcing her to come face-to-face with him. Suzuno and Urushihara rushed to Sasahata North High School to assist, but Emi’s friend Rika Suzuki accidentally saw them fly off into the air, leading her to demand an explanation from Ashiya. He’d decided he had no other choice—but just as he had begun his tale, Maou had literally flown into the room from the test center, taken there by Acieth’s powers. He’d stayed only long enough to drop off Nord and fly right back out the window. 
So there they had been. Three people—Rika, Ashiya, and Nord—a fairly baffling combination to see in Devil’s Castle. But before they could get to the bottom of everything, Efzahan’s Knights of the Inlain Azure Scarves, led by Gabriel himself, attacked Villa Rosa Sasazuka. Rika had survived unscathed—thanks to the appearance of Amane Ohguro, proprietor of Ohguro-ya in Choshi—but Gabriel had spirited away Nord and Ashiya. And over at the school, the combined powers of the Malebranche officer Libicocco and the archangel Camael had dealt both Suzuno and Urushihara grave injuries. 
This was the scene that greeted Maou when he’d arrived at the school—and that was where he fused with Acieth, much as Emi fused with Alas Ramus, and then tapped into untold new powers. That provided all the edge he needed to repulse Camael and Libicocco. 
But it could hardly be called a victory. Chiho, Suzuno, and Urushihara were all hurt. Ashiya and Nord had been kidnapped. And Emi and Alas Ramus were quite likely being held captive in Ente Isla. For Maou, it was nothing less than a rout. 
As far as Maou was concerned, he truly was the Devil King. Room 201 in the Villa Rosa Sasazuka building was actually Devil’s Castle, and the neighborhood of Sasazuka was the castle town that served it. Shirou Ashiya, Hanzou Urushihara, Chiho Sasaki, Suzuno Kamazuki, and his nemesis Emi Yusa really were his Great Demon Generals, so christened by none other than the Devil King Satan himself. 
They were his team of officers, his companions, the men and women Maou needed in order to launch a new bid at world domination. Protecting his team was a responsibility Maou took dead seriously. 
He had to punish the charlatans who had dared defy the true Devil King’s Army. He knew he had the right team for it. And now Satan, the Devil King, was ready. It was time to sally forth from Japan, work with his companions, and prepare the New Devil King’s Army for a full invasion of Ente Isla, the Land of the Holy Cross. 
 
“Oh, no way…” 
Maou’s eyes stared into space. 
“How can this even happen?!” 
“Maou…” 
Chiho reflexively laid a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. The anguish in his voice was clear to her. 
“But this is the reality of it,” Suzuno intoned at the stupefied man before him. “One almost too cruel for you to accept, I imagine, but reality nonetheless. Such is what little power you have to work with now.” 
“Suzuno! You’re being too hard on him!” 
“Attempting to soften the blow for the Devil King will do nothing to change the facts, Chiho.” 
“God…dammit…” 
The pain was too much for Maou. He slammed a fist against the tatami-mat floor beneath him. The thudding sound echoed throughout the apartment. 
“Why…? Why…?!” 
He gritted his teeth, his tragic-looking eyes ruefully turned to Suzuno as he shouted at the top of his lungs. 
“Why did you score your motor-scooter license first?!!!!” 
“Shut up, Maou,” the honestly pained-sounding Urushihara was heard whispering from the closet. Maou was in no position to respond. He was too busy staring down Suzuno, who looked like she hadn’t a care in the world. The brilliant, radiant card in her hand was a laminated license, one with Suzuno’s name and photograph on it. 
“I earned it because I thought that we needed it. Judging by your behavior as of late, I doubted you were capable of passing the retest before we departed.” 
“Yeah, but…but why did you…?!” 
Maou stood up, throwing his body toward the window on the wall. He pointed a finger down at the backyard. 
“Why,” he cried, “did you pass that test and immediately come back home on a scooter?! You’re just picking on me! You’re messing with my mind, aren’t you?!” 
There, emitting a soft sheen in the sunlight next to Maou’s Dullahan II fixie bike, was a scooter. A Honta Gyro-Roof, no less, a model that saw frequent use among delivery businesses. It came standard-equipped with a roof and three wheels for extra stability—perfect for pizza parlors and other outfits that transported small loads around in unpredictable weather conditions. 
“Hey, Chiho, what’s up with Maou?” 
Rika couldn’t help but ask. She had hoped Chiho’s ice-cream bribe would be enough to restore his motivation, but ever since Suzuno returned from her errands, Maou had been acting unusually freaked out. Childish, even. 
Chiho let out a distressed smile as she stood up to whisper into her ear. “Maou’s failed the scooter driving test twice,” she whispered. “He messed up the written exam the first time, and during the second time, he had to ditch the test center to help me out.” 
“…Oooh.” 
“I can’t believe you’re being so mean to me! That’s the exact kinda bike I’d be using for MgRonald deliveries! What the hell is this if it’s not a dis against me?!” 
“How can I help it?” Suzuno countered, Maou’s flailing panic not bothering her at all. “I could hardly return home on a scooter unless I had my license—thus, I had a need for a license.” Her stern eyes settled upon him, seated next to Chiho. “Or…what, were you expecting to travel around Ente Isla without any sort of long-distance transport?” 
“I… No, but…” 
“Someone with your or my powers—our presence would be detected the moment we started flying through the air. We are fighting against at least two archangels and a high-ranking Malebranche, I remind you.” 
“Y-yeah, but I’ve got their positions nailed down…pretty much…” 
“Perhaps, but be that as it may, we need a way to quickly hide ourselves if our Gate opening is detected. Otherwise, this mission will be over before it begins.” 
“Well, sure, okay, but a scooter in Ente Isla? Like, they don’t even have engines in Ente Isla. If we wanna stay undercover, shouldn’t we buy some horses or something once we show up?” 
“Can you even ride a horse?” 
Suzuno was clearly growing impatient at Maou’s aimless whining. Her parting shot was enough to shut him up. 
“We have no idea how long we may be forced to wander Ente Isla! We will need to bring ample supplies with us! I have no idea how accurate our Gate control will be yet, and speed is going to be everything with this effort! That is precisely why we must put our ducks in a row in Japan, ahead of time, as much as humanly possible! Or, what—were you intending to pedal a bicycle across the Eastern Island?! Could you even earn the money for a team of coach horses?!” 
“…” 
Maou sat down next to the window, sulking in silence. “Okay,” he groaned. “No, I’ve never handled horses before. If we’re talkin’ wyverns, though, I’m the best damn expert in the land.” 
Even in a land as exotic and mysterious as Ente Isla, no human had ever attempted to tame a wyvern before. The sight of a man mounted on one would be even more conspicuous than any motorbike. 
Suzuno sighed. 
“…Listen, Devil King.” 
“What?” 

“Look at that scooter. It seats one person.” 
“Yeah?” 
“The laws of Japan will not apply to us over there, but I am not interested in you riding piggyback with me.” 
“Uh…no?” 
“Th-that’s a twenty-thousand-yen fine!” Chiho exclaimed, oddly sensitive to the mere suggestion. 
“That’s for a bicycle, Chiho,” Rika butted in. “There are different fines and points and stuff once it’s a driver license you’re dealing with.” 
“Indeed. So…” 
“So?” Maou asked. 
Suzuno paused for a moment, then continued, her well-formed lips forming a sentence nobody expected to come out: 
“I have purchased another scooter for you to ride. You will need no license for navigating Ente Isla.” 
“……Another?” 
“Yes.” 
“A scooter?” 
“Yes.” 
“…You bought it?” 
“Who else would?” Suzuno fired back. 
The room froze for a moment. 
“No waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!” 
“Dude…Maou, seriously—quiet down,” came the protest from the closet. 
“L-look, I was always kinda wondering about that, but… Geez, how much of a one-percenter are you, anyway?!” 
“Yeah!” Even Chiho was shocked at this. “I don’t really know or anything, but I don’t think scooters are that inexpensive!” 
“They are not, no. Used models, however, are reasonable enough. And Amane should be here soon with the second one. Together, the two of them cost, oh, I’d say around five hundred thousand yen. They come from a reputable dealer, and thankfully, they had some inventory ready at hand.” 
The six-figure sum tumbled all too easily from Suzuno’s lips. 
“Five… Five hun…hun…dred thousand…” 
Maou’s brain attempted to picture the amount of zeroes involved. It short-circuited. He promptly fainted, crumpling to the floor as though he had practiced the act several times before. Chiho and Rika immediately ran to him. 
“M-Maou! Maou?! Maou, speak to me!” 
“Is—is he all right? He looks pretty pale…” 
Chiho peered into his face, white as a sheet and emitting an oily sort of sweat. Her view was then blocked by the back of Acieth’s head. 
“Okay! Mouth-to-mouth, mouth-to-mouth, okay!” 
“He’s breathing!! He doesn’t need it!!” Chiho attempted to pry Acieth away from him, face locked in horror. “Just go back to your ice cream, Acieth!” 
Rika, watching their struggle, cooled Maou’s face with a nearby fan. 
“…This sure ain’t what I thought was gonna happen…” 
Then, from afar, the sound of a small engine puttering along came into earshot. They could all hear it stopping in front of the apartment building, followed by the sound of someone climbing the stairs. The door to Devil’s Castle opened, revealing Amane Ohguro, tanned skin and jet-black ponytail shining brightly from underneath her helmet. 
“Hey, sorry, guys! I had another stop to make and I kinda got lost. Found some supercheap gas, though!” 
Then she spotted the unconscious Maou and the half-wrestling Chiho and Acieth. Her eyes opened wide. 
“…Uh, what’s going on in here?” 
Inside Devil’s Castle—which, between Chiho and Suzuno and Rika and Amane and Acieth, was seeing far more of a female presence than usual—Maou was lying on the floor. He was awake, but still notably paler than before. 
“Five hundred thousand for two, huh?” he murmured. “Like, I’m glad we’re well-prepared…almost too prepared, even…but aren’t you spending too much money for this? Do we really need to prep that much in advance?” 
Suzuno rolled her eyes before turning to Acieth, who was currently gauging the scene from a corner as she licked at her ice pop. 
“You do, indeed, possess overwhelming power right now,” she said. “Considering what happened to Emilia after her, ah, merger with Alas Ramus, you might be able to defeat Gabriel and Camael in a simple battle of muscle, Devil King. But do not forget that Alciel, Emilia, and Alas Ramus are being held as de facto hostages at the moment. We may not be able to avoid a fight at the end of it all, but until that fateful instant strikes, we must take every pain to work quickly, work undercover, and engage the enemy as little as possible.” 
“They made my sis hostage… They suck! Give them electric chair!” 
“Whoa, you’re gonna drop your ice cream!” 
Amane’s warning fell on deaf ears. Acieth’s second dessert of the day slipped through her hands and made a not-so-clean landing on the tatami mats. 
“Aaah! My ice cream… The angels, they will be paying!” 
“Oh, I’ll wipe that up,” Chiho said as she went to the sink and came back with a wet washcloth. 
“Chiho! No throwing it away! It is the waste!” 
“Oh, um…okay?” 
She returned the ice pop to Acieth as she began wiping up what was left on the floor. Acieth promptly brought it right back into her mouth, not a care in the world. 
“Hey, um…” Rika raised a hand in the air. “Can I ask a question?” 
“Ah, yes,” Suzuno replied. “My apologies for Sada…ah, for the Devil King’s petulance. We had promised to explain matters to you.” 
Rika turned face-to-face with Suzuno. 
All in all, the scene inside Devil’s Castle didn’t look too much out of the ordinary. The only real difference was the cast of characters—a tad different from the norm—and the fact that Suzuno was calling Maou “Devil King” in front of Rika. 
“Okay, so… Um, I’m sorry to butt in on this when you’re all busy with…other stuff, but… So what’re y’all, anyway?” 
Chiho felt an unexpected well of emotion inside her. It was the exact same question she had asked, not all that long ago. 
Then Amane pointed at her. “Hey, we’ve got Chiho here and everything. Why don’t we have her talk about it?” 
“Huh?” Chiho blinked, washcloth still in hand. 
“If we leave it to just Maou and Suzuno, I think Rika probably wouldn’t know what to believe once they were all done. Chiho, on the other hand—she’s involved with this the exact same way Rika is, so that kinda impartial viewpoint would be a lot more believable, no?” 
“Indeed,” Suzuno said with a nod. “That might be a good idea.” And even within his current befuddlement, Maou’s thoughtful gaze at Chiho seemed to indicate that he agreed with it. 
“W-well, if you think that’d be all right, then sure. Assuming you’re okay with it, Suzuki?” 
“Uhmm… If I could ask something before that, I guess you’re pretty used to whatever wacky stuff’s going on with Maou and Suzuno, right, Chiho? You aren’t, like, some kinda comic-book superhero who flies around and fights bad guys and stuff, are you?” 
“Pfft!” 
Rika’s reply was, in many ways, not quite what Chiho had expected. 
“Well, um… I’m not sure, actually.” 
But she couldn’t deny it out of hand. Even if it was only a single piece of holy magic from Ente Isla, she had a gift that no other human on Earth enjoyed. 
“Chi’s not like that, no,” Maou answered in her place. “She wasn’t involved with us at all at first—she was just a new hire I was training at MgRonald. Just another teen.” 
His wording hurt Chiho a bit, despite herself. She let it slide, knowing that Maou didn’t quite mean it that way. 
“But then she got involved with me and Emi’s stuff, and she kind of found out. Just like you did. And she’s had to deal with a lot more horrors than you have—or I’d say she has, anyway—but Chi told me that she didn’t want to forget any of it. That’s why she’s still with us. With me and Emi and so on.” 
“Really?” Rika asked, turning to Chiho. She found it hard to gauge how serious she really was about this. Chiho pondered a bit before reacting. 
“If you put it that way…more or less, yeah.” 
Not like Rika has it easy, she thought. It wasn’t every day a squadron of armed attackers storms the building you’re in. 
“For me,” Chiho said, “I guess the first time I saw how much power Maou and everyone had was when that highway overpass was about to collapse and crush all of us, so it was—” 
“Uh?” 
Rika’s face tightened. Chiho made it sound as though she were talking about last night’s dinner menu. It was a tad hard to swallow, but then Chiho kept on going—telling her about how she was taken to the roof of Tokyo’s city hall; about how she was surrounded by the armed Heavenly Regiment; about how she witnessed all-out war between demon factions at close range; about how she was admitted to the hospital after being exposed to too much demonic force; about how she flew around Tokyo Tower and fought against her aggressors; and about how she had deliberately faced down gigantic demons on two separate occasions and never blinked. 
“Looking back at it all,” she concluded, “I guess it’s pretty amazing that I’m alive and well, isn’t it?” 
Silence. 
“…” 
Chiho knew it wasn’t her imagination—the blood had drained from Rika’s face a bit. “Oh, but,” Chiho hurriedly added, “but Maou and Yusa and Suzuno protected me every time, so I’ve never been really hurt or anything!” 
“Y-yeah, but you keep getting into all this dangerous stuff, right? And you did get sent to the hospital…” 
“Well, that, uh… That was kind of unavoidable. Or, really, more my fault than anything else. There wasn’t any problem with me in the end, though, so they discharged me after two days, um…” 
Chiho, realizing she had mostly succeeded in stoking Rika’s fears, fell silent. Maou felt obliged to throw her a lifeline. 
“The thing is, though, she’s had the right to have her memories of all of us erased any time she wanted. You’re free not to believe us if you think this is too loony to accept. But no matter what you decide, we’ll fully respect it. And whether you decide to forget about us or not, I promise you we’ll do everything we can to keep anything from happening to you.” 
“Ooh…” 
“If you don’t want to see any of us again, that’s perfectly fine—but we’ll never stop protecting you, if we need to. And if this is too much for you to deal with today, you’re free to come back some other day, too. ’Course, I’m gonna be out for a little while, so you’ll have to wait ’til I’m back, but…” 
“Y-yeah, but if I leave here after all that, I’m just gonna get more curious… More scared. But…but if you go off to wherever you’re going, that…that’s gonna be pretty dangerous for you, isn’t it?” 
“Yeah,” Maou admitted. “Could be.” 
“I doubt it would be as safe as your typical holiday in Japan,” Suzuno added. 
Rika sized both of them up. “So,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “if Emi’s really from this different world…something that isn’t Japan…then, like, she’s been gone from there a pretty long time, hasn’t she? Is… Is she all right? It can’t be all that safe for her there either, right?” 
“““““…Ah.””””” 
Something about the question made Maou, Chiho, Suzuno, even Urushihara in the closet realize something all at once. 
“Wh-what?” 
“…Okay, so this might sound kinda cold, laying it out for you like this…but if you’re asking whether Emi’s hurt or her life’s in danger or whatever, then, um, I don’t think we need to worry about that, no.” 
“Huh?” 
Maou found himself struggling to articulate his intentions. 
“…So Emi… She’s strong—like, really, really strong. I mean, beyond any scale built around the human race.” 
“Yeah,” a crestfallen Chiho added. “She said she broke her leg when she saved me once, but looking back, it sure healed up pretty fast…” 
“I suppose,” Suzuno said, “we are all struggling to explain this, Rika, in a way you could swallow.” 
“Dude, it’s easy,” the voice in the closet countered. “If she’s back in Ente Isla, you couldn’t hurt Yusa with a knife, or a gun, or even if you shot her with a tank round at point-blank range.” 
“That’s totally a comic-book superhero!” Rika exclaimed. She had to. But Maou coolly accepted it. 
“Yeah, that’s a pretty normal reaction. But look at it the opposite way: All that strength, and Emi still hasn’t come back. That’s a problem. If it’s not something physical keeping her over there, then it could be something emotional, and that’s what I’m more worried about.” 
“Huh?” 
“Oh?” 
“Mm?” 
“Uh?” 
Something about Maou’s reply caught Chiho, Suzuno, and Urushihara off guard. Maou grunted in reply, surprised at this. 
“Wh-what, guys? Did I say something weird?” 
“…You haven’t realized?” 
“…Guess not, dude.” 
“Maou… You really are such a kind person, aren’t you? I’m glad to see that.” 
“Wh-what? Come on, guys!” 
“Um, hello…?” 
Maou was honestly clueless. Rika, even more so. 
““Oh, nothing,”” Urushihara and Suzuno said in unison. 
“Eh-heh-heh,” Chiho added as she gave Maou a doting look. 
The halfhearted reaction unnerved Maou more than a little, but he kept his eyes on Rika. 
“Uh, anyway, what I’m trying to say is that, sure, Emi can take a tank round and brush it off like it’s nothing, but she’s still human. If you can’t overpower someone, you can take advantage of their feelings, or their connections, instead, right? If something’s keeping Emi down, I think that might be it. And maybe you know this already, but due to assorted reasons, Alas Ramus is together with her right now. We gotta think about her safety, too. It might look to you like we’re being pretty chill about all this, but we really need to take the time here to assess the situation and make the preparations we need.” 
“Oh.” Rika brought a hand to her forehead. “Y’know, it’s getting kinda hard for me to grasp the scale of all this…” 
“So what’s it gonna be? I guess we’ve already revealed a lot, but are you gonna cut yourself off from us, or…?” 
“Like I said, I gotta hear the whole thing before I decide on that.” 
That reply, at least, came loud and clear. 
“…You do?” 
“That’s what you did, didn’t you, Chiho? Then I gotta do that much too, I think. I want to think about it once I’ve come to grips with all this…stuff about Emi.” 
“Aww, ain’t that all sweet and innocent?” 
“What’s ‘innocent,’ Amane?” 
“Oh, it’s when she’s so cute, you just wanna hug her. See? Like this—squeeeze!” 
“Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze!” 
Chiho, ignoring Amane and Acieth in the outfield, turned back to Rika. 
“This might be unfair of me, telling you this before we talk about it…” 
“Chiho?” 
“I…I was thinking that I’d like Yusa to have another real friend. Someone besides me.” 
“…” 
Rika fell silent for a moment. This caught her off guard. She took a look around, sizing up Maou, then Suzuno, then the face of Urushihara, who had popped out through the door. She sighed, then turned to Chiho. 
“It’s not like I couldn’t lie about this…but I guess I’m not the only one with stuff I can’t talk about too easily here.” 
“Suzuki?” 
“I promise I won’t let my emotions overwhelm me, Chiho.” Rika was back to her normal self—her iron will clear in her eyes as she looked at Chiho. “I won’t let my emotions get to me, and I promise that I’m willing to accept it all. So tell me. Tell me about Emi, tell me about Maou and everyone, and don’t hold anything back.” 
Chiho let out a soft smile. 
“Okay. I guess I’ll start by talking about how I met all these people…” 
Slowly, she began to talk about the truth behind Maou, behind Emi, and behind the world of Ente Isla. 
“Whewwwww…” 
Once Chiho was done with everything, Rika let out a long sigh. 
“Well, no wonder Emi had it in for Maou.” 
She gave Maou a look. 
“You’re willing to believe me?” 
“Well, I’ve already seen Ashiya disappear, Suzuno and Urushihara leap over tall buildings in a single bound, and Maou and Acieth fly. It ain’t that much of a mental leap.” 
That wasn’t all. During the lecture, Suzuno had transformed her hairpin into her war hammer for Rika’s edification, Maou obliging with a few in-and-out Acieth fusions of his own. Rika had little choice but to accept it. 
Rika nodded tiredly at Chiho’s question. A beat. Then: 
“Aahhhhh, I can’t stand this! This is so embarrassing!” 
She grabbed her own head, reared back, and fell flat on the floor. 
“S-Suzuki?!” 
“Oh God, this is so embarrassing. I just want to crawl into a hole!” 
“Wh-what’s wrong?” Maou asked, surprised at this reaction. Rika sat back up, tears in her eyes, turned straight toward Suzuno, and reached out for her hand. 
“R-Rika?” 
“Suzuno, I am so, so sorry! Please, just forget all about that day for me! I know I was the only one who didn’t know anything, but everything I did… Oh, I’m sooo sorry! I could just die right now!” 
“Um, which day was this?” Suzuno asked, eyes turned wide at this unexpected confession. 
“The day I first met you, Suzunoooo! Oh, God, I went on that crazy tangent and started going on about all sorts of crap. I had no idea I was… Oh, auuuugh!” 
“Oh. That was it?” 
This was enough to jog Suzuno’s memory. The first time Rika had met Suzuno, she had fallen under the mistaken assumption that Suzuno was vying with Emi for Maou’s love. That conviction caused her to meddle with the Devil’s Castle neighbor in all manner of uninvited ways. 
“Keep in mind, I all but guided you toward making that misunderstanding. And we resolved it right there and then, did we not? I hardly see any reason to dwell on it. You barely knew us anyway.” 
“That’s not the thing, though! The thing is that maybe I didn’t know, but I did all that in front of Ashiya, and… Daaaahhhh!” 
“Um?” 
This sounded odd to Suzuno, but she nonetheless rose up and gave the tearful Rika a reassuring hug, patting her on the back. 
“Ahhhh, I feel like such an idiot!” Rika wailed, face flushed as Suzuno tried to soothe her. 
“Um, are you all right, Suzuki?” 
“I’d have to guess,” Maou replied, “that she wasn’t actually ready to accept all of this.” 
It was cause for concern, but given that she was more shocked about some social faux pas than about the truth behind Maou and Emi, Rika seemed to bear no ill will toward any of them, at least. 
“Amazing how flexible young people are with their imaginations these days, hmmm?” Amane observed. This seemed to surprise even her a little. 
“Well, great. So if Rika Suzuki’s okay with all this…” 
“I’m not okay with all this! How could I even look Emi and Ashiya in the eye when they get back…?” 
“…Then we’d better start discussing our plans once we’re in Ente Isla.” 
Whatever it was—Maou had no way of knowing—it seemed there was a landmine he had managed to step on between Rika, Suzuno, Emi, Ashiya, and himself. One with a pretty killer payload, by the looks of things. He couldn’t afford the time needed to assuage her bruised ego, though, so he opted to ignore Rika and place a few sheets of paper on the table. 
“This is a detailed map of the Eastern Island that Ashiya left for us. I guess he figured early on that if Emi ran into trouble, it was probably gonna be in Efzahan, on the Eastern Island.” 
“Wh-why is that?” Suzuno asked, arms still wrapped around Rika. 
“I dunno, but I’d guess a lot of it’s due to Olba convincing the Malebranche to build their base of operations there. Olba’s like Chiho, in a way—just a regular guy who knows all about Emi’s powers and history. And you see how Efzahan’s been waging war on pretty much every front possible, right? It’s, like, totally suspicious. And hey, uh, Urushihara?” 
“…Yeah?” 
An arm emerged from the closet. It held a wrinkled-up business card. 
“What’s that?” Chiho asked as she grabbed it. It had a cell-phone number written on it. 
“For calling Gabriel.” 
“What?! Why do we have something like that?” 
“Wh-why would an angel have a cell phone? The Devil King and the angels are calling each other now? Like some kind of nuclear hotline to Moscow?!” 
Chiho’s and Rika’s reactions very succinctly summarized the differences in each of their recent life experiences. 
“Yeah, so, that idiot left that here when he visited Urushihara earlier, and thanks to that, we know for sure that all of ’em—Ashiya, Emi, Alas Ramus, Emi’s dad—they’re all in Efzahan right now.” 
“You know for sure?” Chiho raised an eyebrow at Maou’s conviction. “Why?” 
“’Cause I called him up and he told me.” 
“…And you’re sure we can believe him?” 
Chiho, well familiar with Gabriel’s penchant for being an unreliable narrator, couldn’t be blamed for doubting that information. He was weaselly that way, someone who could be relied upon only for being unreliable. Sometimes he openly attacked them; sometimes his actions came to benefit Maou. It was hard to see where his heart truly lay. 
“I know what you mean,” Maou said with a chuckle. “But with this, at least, there’s no reason for Gabriel to lie right to our faces. Remember him and Emi? If he had kept quiet back then, we’d have no idea where to go.” 
“Dude, but what if he knows we’re assuming that?” Urushihara sheepishly replied. “He could do the ol’ bait and switch on us real easy.” 
Maou sagely nodded. “Yeah, that’s why I’m tellin’ you to stay in Japan, just in case.” 
“Sure thing, but at least save it for after I’m healed…” 
When it came to discussion about work, Urushihara’s voice usually settled into a low groan of anguish. But this groan sounded even lower than usual. 
“He’s not coming along with you, Maou?” a curious Chiho asked. Suzuno was always a given for this voyage—as long as she had a worthy amplifier, she was the only one who could open a Gate for Maou. Chiho’s Idea Link skills made her totally unique among the human race, but not even she was immature enough to want to join Maou on a planet far more dangerous than her own. Having someone like her, far weaker than Suzuno, on the battlefield would be an unthinkable drag on Maou and his friends—something made all too clear in the battle against the Imperial Regiment at her high school three days ago. 
But Urushihara, despite everything, was still a fully qualified Great Demon General. The power he wielded while saving Chiho from danger was real, and massive. On Ente Isla, he could provide just the firepower this little search party needed. 
“Or, shall we say, we cannot take him along.” 
It was Suzuno, freeing herself from Rika’s arms, who finally gave the answer. 
“I conceived of several approaches, but considering we must make a return trip as well, myself and the Devil King are about the best I can manage. Besides…” She glanced at Acieth, standing by the window. “She is far heavier than I thought.” 
“Hey! I am not fat like that! So mean!” 
“That,” Suzuno said instead of engaging her, “and remember: Ideally, we are bringing Alciel and Emilia’s father back with us. I imagine Emilia’s force would be enough for me to formulate a suitable Gate for us all, but the more people I must bring through, the more difficult it becomes to keep it under control. It is best to avoid taxing our resources to the maximum.” 
“No telling what they might do here in our absence, either,” Maou added. “I’d hate to have Chi and Rika become targets while I can’t do anything about it. That’s why I want him here. Just in case.” 
“Yeah. It’d sure be easier on me here, assumin’ nothing happens… Dude, owww…” 
Chiho had no doubts about Maou’s or Urushihara’s skills, but here in Japan, with Urushihara unable (if not unwilling) to unleash his full powers, it was hard to say how much of a defensive line he could put up. 
Maou, sensing Chiho’s concern, gave her a nod. “I wouldn’t worry, though. If push comes to shove, there’s always Amane.” 
“Oh, here we go. Saw that one comin’ a mile away.” Amane tossed her now-bare ice-cream stick into the trash bin and nodded, a little dejected. “That’s not exactly what I intended when I came here, y’know.” 
“Would you mind telling us what you did come here for then, maybe?” 
It was a valid question from Chiho. Amane had yet to reveal why she was currently in Sasazuka to anyone, but that didn’t stop her from tossing her stuff into Suzuno’s room. By what the Church cleric said, Amane’s luggage was all perfectly normal—a suitcase full of clothes, her purse, some cosmetics, a phone charger—so she surmised it was nothing related to her supernatural occupation. Amane herself had been pleading the same story over the past three days: “I told you! You guys nearly ruined my family business. My dad came home, and he was so pissed off, he kicked me out of the place. Y’know, saying he wasn’t gonna let me mooch off the family any longer? That’s all there is to it!” 
If Ashiya had been around to hear that, it would have provided all the inspiration he needed to boot Urushihara from the room. 
“Look,” Amane protested, cheeks puffed out a bit in childlike fashion, “I appreciate Suzuno letting me stay here and everything, but I had assumed one of the other apartments would’ve been unlocked when I showed up. My aunt Mikitty gave me the okay and everything, too. But…” She sighed. “All right. I owe you for the room and board, I guess, so…if something happens, I’ll try to keep Chiho and Rika safe. That’s kind of my duty here anyways.” 
The promise was a relief to Maou’s ears, even if he didn’t know what kind of “duty” she was talking about. Rika had mentioned earlier that Amane rescued her three days ago while simultaneously ignoring Ashiya and Nord’s plight. That, he imagined, was because neither of those two were in immediate mortal danger. Rika, on the other hand, was. 
“So,” Suzuno bluntly stated, “what will it be, Rika Suzuki? Are we erasing your memory or not? Because, if I may be frank, that would absolutely be the safer option for you.” 
“I don’t care about my memory, but I just wish I had that day to do over again…ugghh…” Rika shook her head a little, ignoring the easy out Suzuno had given her. Then she sighed and looked up. “Just listening to you right now,” she clearly said, “honestly, I’m still pretty scared, and there’s a ton I still don’t understand about you all. But if I’m gonna have you do that, I want to see the real Emi again first and talk things over with her.” 
“Suzuki!” a happy-sounding Chiho exclaimed. 
“That so?” Maou acknowledged with a light smile as he nodded. Suzuno and Amane having no further complaints about this, the group once again turned their eyes to the papers on the table. 
“Right. So getting back on topic, the only thing Ashiya could tell us here was that he’s somewhere in Efzahan. The question, though, is where—and I think I’ve got a pretty good idea.” 
“And what is your basis for this?” Suzuno prodded. 
Maou pointed a finger at a map depicting Efzahan’s major population centers. “So we know that the heavens and Olba and the Malebranche guys were all after Emi’s sword, right? And judging by how Gabriel and Raguel have had Emi’s mom and dad in their sights for a while now, I can understand why Nord was kidnapped. But why Ashiya? Why did they have to make off with Alciel, too?” 
“Hmm?” 
“Even Barbariccia knows by now that we ain’t exactly down with the Malebranche tribe. And Olba must’ve known that Alciel could’ve regained his demon form the moment his body found itself in Ente Isla. He knew he’d put up a hell of a fight. I mean, Alciel was the only participant in the Tokyo Tower rumble who actually blocked one of Gabriel’s attacks. But Gabriel kidnapped him anyway—even though he’d do nothing but get in the way over there. Which means that our little gang of conspirators in Efzahan sees some advantage to Alciel that outclasses all the many disadvantages.” 
“Yes, and what would that be, exactly?” 
“Gabriel told me himself: ‘Emilia’s gonna be paying me a visit, too.’ She’s paying a visit—right to wherever Gabriel and Alciel are.” 
Maou glowered at a certain point on the map. 
“And if they’re gonna make the Hero Emilia and the Demon General Alciel do something in the same physical location—no matter what kind of stupid thing it is—I can think of just one place.” 
He pointed at the map. 
“It’d be the first place me and Alciel ran into the Hero. The only place where the Hero failed to defeat my general in battle.” 
Suzuno, Urushihara, and Chiho—especially Chiho, given how this was news to her—stared at the point. 
“Heavensky Keep. The capital of Efzahan and the Azure Emperor’s seat of power.”