The Pact of Strays (Naruto X Highschool DxD)

Chapter 2: A Hand Reforged, A Pact Etched in Shadows

—In which a limb is returned, a girl finds ground in foreign lands, and the old puppeteer weaves another thread into his silent war.

Did I make the right choice by coming here alone?

A thought—simple, pitiful even. But in Rias Gremory's mind, it echoed like a bell tolling at her funeral. The answer came not with words but with pain. White-hot, soul-rending, dignity-shattering pain. Her limbs were gone. Torn away in the crash between worlds. Blood still oozed, thick and sluggish, as she pressed the last of her magic into her body, slowing the death but not undoing it. She didn't know the spell for regrowth. Only survival.

And even that was in doubt.

The forest stood still—eerily so, like a moment carved from the edge of time. Moonlight painted her blood in silver. Shadows swam. Her breath hitched, her chest rising in panic as masked shapes emerged around her like ghosts from old nightmares.

The ANBU.

Men who bled shadow. Blades drawn. No names, only code. Their chakra was a storm beneath stillness, and every one of them watched the boy beside her like a candle next to gunpowder.

That boy—Naruto Uzumaki. Sixteen, taller than her, wild-haired and barefoot on cracked stone. And in his hand, a blade. Not raised. Not lowered. Held like a question still unanswered.

"She is mine," he said.

Three words. Not screamed. Not begged. Declared.

The masks paused. Flickers of chakra calmed—but not entirely. They didn't like the tone. Didn't like what it suggested. Possession? Protection? Or something darker—something that whispered of the fox inside him. Of Kyuubi. Of the demon caged behind that boy's grinning face.

The masked commander tilted his head. A faint nod. Wordless decision.

"We will take you along," came the voice from one of them—calm, professional, but with that edge. The kind of edge meant for monsters.

Naruto had no say. One moment, his feet on the moss. The next, his collar gripped like a dog dragged by the leash of authority. Gone. In a breath, the forest blurred, folded, vanished.

Rias felt hands on her, too—gentle, by comparison. But cold. Unfeeling. The touch of men trained to deliver death faster than thought. Still, she welcomed it more than the creeping numbness that told her life was leaking from her faster than her magic could hold it in.

She clutched the pill he had given her. A crude concoction. Harsh. Alchemical. But potent. It tasted like metal and pain, but it stopped the bleeding. For now.

The Hokage Tower loomed like a fortress from a forgotten age. Built of ambition and fear, it sat at Konoha's heart like a crowned immortal. Walls thicker than egos. Seals older than history. Wards humming with power. Rias barely had strength to admire the fortress before her vision blurred again.

She was laid upon a clean tatami mat like a broken doll. Beside her stood the boy—Naruto—not shackled, not chained, but watched. Dozens of eyes behind masks, calculating if today was the day he'd prove them right.

The office was lined with ancient scrolls, battle trophies, and enough firepower to reduce cities to rubble.

Behind the desk sat the Third Hokage. An old man cloaked in wisdom and weariness, whose eyes had seen children die and called it necessity.

 -----------------------------

The boy was fireborn. Not of embers and warmth, but of the ruinous kind—wild, unsought, and unwelcome.

Behind the ornate doors of the Hokage's sanctum, where scrolls whispered secrets and incense masked the rot of old regrets, sat a man once hailed as The Professor. Hiruzen Sarutobi—Hokage, warlord, grandfather to a ghost—watched Konoha from his tower like a crow upon a spire.

He looked thirty. Felt three hundred.

Time had not been kind. Nor had it been cruel. It had simply...forgotten him. Like it did all who stayed too long on the throne.

His frame was compact and sharp as a kunai—lean, seasoned by a thousand deaths witnessed, a thousand sins swallowed in silence. His hair, still brown, a lie gifted by chakra-enhanced longevity. His eyes, black as ash, told a truth no dye or jutsu could mask.

A immortal still breathing in a land ruled by men.

And today, that immortal was dying one drag at a time.

He exhaled a curl of smoke that danced like ghosts over the rim of his pipe, the scent of aged tobacco doing little to shroud the stench of betrayal. His gaze fell to the crystal orb—silent, scrying—where the boy ran through the school yard with the gait of a stray.

Uzumaki Naruto.

Son of the Fourth Hokage.

Son of damnation.

They had all agreed to bury the truth beneath stone and silence. That Naruto was born from the golden flame of Minato and the crimson steel of Kushina Uzumaki—two pillars now shattered. But secrets rot, and rot spreads. Someone—some wretch—had loosed the truth. Or enough of it.

Not that it mattered.

The village didn't see the boy. They saw the beast. They heard his name and tasted ash.

The children jeered. The mothers whispered. The clans recoiled.

And Naruto, that bright bastard, had learned to listen through laughter. Learned to watch.

He knew.

Hiruzen could see it in his eyes. Not hatred. Not sorrow.

Calculation.

The elite class had taken the highborn and the high-blooded. Offspring of clans whose names wielded more weight than a katana: Hyuuga. Uchiha. Nara. The old blood. Taught by greybeards who had danced with war immortals in their youth and survived.

And then there was Naruto.

Shoved among the forgotten.

Taught by tired Chunin who taught like they had nothing left to protect.

Fair? No.

Useful? Maybe.

The boy was building something. Hiruzen saw it even if the others didn't. A team. A circle. Not of friends—he'd long stopped hoping for those—but of cinders. Strays and embers, the ones no clan wanted to claim. The kind who understood what it meant to be watching your back in the dark.

He was creating something. Not love. Not family.

Loyalty born in exile.

And that frightened Hiruzen more than the fox sealed within him.

Danzo would be laughing if he still had the wind to cackle. The cripple moved in shadows deeper than night, feigning senility while breeding assassins like mushrooms in rot.

Even now, the man could walk into this office and Hiruzen wouldn't know whether to embrace or gut him. Such was the price of old comradeship. Such was the nature of kingship—you always owed someone.

And the village...

They owed Naruto nothing. Worse—they feared owing him.

The boy was a time bomb. A sealed immortalling. A walking calamity. And no matter how much Hiruzen loved him like a lost grandchild, the truth was cruel.

He could never let the boy leave the Land of Fire. Never let him be taken. Not by other villages. Not by nobles. Not even by compassion.

Because there was one other option—one that haunted the old man.

The Fire Daimyo's palace stood surrounded by the blessed pillars of Uzushio—wards etched in blood and bone, tall enough to mock the sky. In that haven, Naruto would be safe. Sheltered. Educated. Honored.

But not free.

The Daimyo did not adopt. He collected.

To send Naruto there would be to trade one cage for another. He would be groomed. Used. Molded into a pawn beneath a crown of silk.

And so Hiruzen chose silence over salvation.

Chose watchmen over brothers.

Chose containment over care.

He sighed.

A sound ancient and weary, swallowed by the ticking of the clock no one else heard.

The pipe's ember glowed again, a dying sun in a world of growing shadows.

"Leave," he commanded.

The ANBU vanished. Shadows within shadows. Ghosts who watched over a boy they would never understand.

And Hiruzen, old fool, looked to the portrait on the wall.

Minato Namikaze—The Yellow Flash. The golden boy. His golden mistake.

"You shouldn't have died that day," the Hokage muttered, the nicotine a poor balm to bitterness. "You little shit."

His voice cracked like dry parchment. "Making an old man go through this pain… your soul is going to suffer."

He chuckled, bitter and low. It echoed against wood and stone, sounded too much like a sob.

 ----------------------------

Naruto stood in the middle of the Hokage's office, a jagged blade of intent wrapped in boy's skin. Dust still clung to him from the training field. His boots were caked with mud, his hands with someone else's blood. Behind his grin was a predator's patience and beneath his casual stance, a storm held at bay.

The girl—the demon, the mystery—was what he wanted. And when Naruto Uzumaki wanted something, he didn't ask twice.

"Old man," he said, voice low but clear, cracking through the quiet like a thrown stone through glass. "I want her."

Hiruzen Sarutobi—The Professor, Third of his Name, relic of a dying generation—looked up from behind his desk, past the scrolls and secrets, past the smoke of his pipe and the weight of command. His eyes met the boy's, and for a moment, he remembered the infant he'd held after Minato fell, the child he'd cloaked in lies and left in shadows.

And then he saw what the boy had become.

"You want her," Hiruzen repeated, not as a question. He let the words taste the air. "Why?"

"She fell from the sky with blood in her mouth and broken wings. Passed through our barrier like it was a damn puddle." Naruto's voice was calm, but his fingers twitched, aching for answers or violence—whichever came first. "You think I'm going to let something like that go without knowing what it means?"

A breath. A puff of smoke. A measure of silence.

Hiruzen didn't answer with words at first. He simply observed. Naruto, not even thirteen, stood before him with the bearing of a warlord. A child wrapped around a core of something darker, something wild. The villagers saw the fox. Hiruzen saw the knife.

Useful, if kept sharp. Deadly, if ignored.

"You've never met a demon before," Hiruzen said finally. "You've read of them. Heard whispers. You know of the hunters from the Land of Demons."

Naruto shrugged. "And she isn't one of them."

"No," the Hokage confirmed, folding his hands. "She is something different."

"Exactly." Naruto took a step closer. "I don't trust things I don't understand. And I need to understand this one. She's mine."

"You've grown," Hiruzen murmured, not without the faint edge of sorrow. "But some things still require process. Procedure."

Naruto's gaze didn't waver. "Then let's get it over with."

The room smelled of ink, steel, and tobacco. Shadows clung to corners like old regrets.

"She's under evaluation," Hiruzen said at last. "If she survives, if she proves no threat, you may speak to her. Guide her, if she allows it. But if she becomes a danger—"

"I'll handle it," Naruto cut in, voice like frost on steel. "If she's a threat, I'll cut her down myself."

Sarutobi nodded, not because he believed the boy, but because he knew he would. Naruto wasn't loyal to Konoha, not like he should've been. But he was loyal to his curiosity. Loyal to his ambitions. And that made him far more dangerous than the fox inside him.

"Then sit, Naruto," Hiruzen said, gesturing to the chair opposite his. "Let's begin the first of many lies we'll call diplomacy."

Naruto smirked and dropped into the chair like a prince claiming a throne. The smoke curled between them, masking the silent war that had just begun.

 --------------------------

Naruto had always found it easy to walk among blades. Konoha was a nest of snakes, of masked men and whispering shadows. But it was his nest, for now. A throne he could not claim, but a den he could use.

He stood beside the Hokage like a wolf in borrowed wool. His arms were crossed, his eyes bored, but inside? A storm.

She passed the barrier, he thought. She slipped through the village's seal-work like it was mist. That makes her special. And Naruto collected special like a crow collects shiny things—obsessively, without shame.

Across from him stood Inoichi Yamanaka, the mind-razor of Konoha, and the head of the Information Division. The man looked like nobility carved into flesh—composed, powerful, deadly. But Naruto didn't care about polish. He cared about what lay beneath.

And beneath Inoichi's skin was a weapon that could peel sanity like bark from a tree.

Naruto gave the man a nod. Respect was currency, and he was careful how he spent it.

Beside the Yamanaka stood the director of Konoha's hospital, a woman with iron in her spine and blood on her gloves. Her presence was less felt than known—like the scent of antiseptic in a death room.

Naruto took his seat. He was still young, still bound by the expectations of the man beside him—the old monkey on the throne, Hiruzen Sarutobi. A relic of older wars. A keeper of too many secrets.

But the old man had been kind. And that, for Naruto, was reason enough to listen. For now.

Rias shifted in her chair, regal despite the bruises, her hair like blood-lit wine under the lamplight.

She'd watched the quiet exchange between Naruto and the others, and she saw no mercy in their eyes. Curiosity, yes. Duty, maybe. But no kindness.

"Excuse me," she asked, her voice trembling with careful control, "what are you going to do with me?"

She hated that it sounded small. She hated that it was.

Hiruzen turned toward her, his eyes ancient, weathered by fire and funerals. "Calm yourself, child," he said, "we're going to fix your condition and examine your memories. We must know if you're a threat."

"A threat?" Rias flinched. "Wait—you can't just read my mind. There's a seal, a mental lock. Only the family head can give access. Violating it would—"

"Thank you for the warning," Inoichi interrupted softly. His tone was gentle, but his presence was a blade held at the throat. "But I must see for myself. Now, if you'll permit me."

His hand reached for her, not for contact, but tradition. A habit of civility before intrusion.

And then he entered—or tried to.

The clash was silent, but it echoed in his mind like thunder in a glass chamber. He found himself before a wall of black fire, intricate with sigils older than this land. The seal screamed noble blood. High-class demonic construct. Protective. Powerful.

He retreated before it could react—before it could bite back.

Turning toward the Hokage, Inoichi bowed his head. "Hokage-sama, she's from a high-ranking demonic family. Her mental barrier is precise. I could breach it, but at the cost of her mind. I advise against it."

Naruto's eyes sharpened. There it was again—confirmation. A high-class demon girl. An heir, most likely. Worth the risk. Worth claiming.

Across the room, Rias was quiet. But her heart thundered in her chest like a war drum.

She was surprised. Not that they were strong—but how they were strong. Controlled. Polished. Old monsters with younger faces.

Her father had placed that seal himself. And for someone to threaten it? Breakable or not, that meant something.

'He's not close to Father's level,' she thought. 'But he's close enough to be dangerous.'

 ----------------------------

The chamber stank of antiseptic, old scrolls, and the slow decay of duty—like all things that sat too long in the heart of power. The air didn't move. Not really. It waited. Like the old man behind the desk.

Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage, sat as a man who had stared down wars and watched too many boys die wearing a leaf on their brow. But this wasn't war. Not yet. This was something... stranger.

The girl—if such a fragile title still suited her—sat across from him, bone-weary and iron-hearted. Her crimson hair lay like blood spilled too neatly. Her eyes were twin rubies, dulled by pain, sharpened by pride.

"I can get out of this using my family name. I really wish it would have never come to this," Rias thought, bitterness coating the words like venom on a blade. "But I have no choice now."

Then aloud, with measured grace, "Excuse me. I will cooperate."

The doctor, a ghost of a man, helped her to her feet and guided her to the seat like she were both prisoner and princess.

Hiruzen didn't speak immediately. That was a power in itself. When he did, the words cut deep. "Inoichi, confirm her words for me."

A nod. Silent. The Yamanaka already sifting her thoughts, fingers dancing over the mental stream like a poet sampling sorrow.

"Where are you from?" the Hokage asked, his voice a weight.

Rias didn't flinch. "I am from the Demon World."

The silence that followed that declaration was heavy—less like surprise and more like the silence before the fall of a blade.

"Why are you here?" His voice, still calm, was now a knife drawn.

"I am here to look for a husband," she said, each syllable a humiliation dressed in velvet. But Inoichi was there, peeling lies from truths. The only way to survive this world was to speak nothing but.

"Why not find one in your world? Why here?" The Hokage's gaze sharpened. Steel behind the smoke.

Rias swallowed the weight of her own pride. "I'm engaged to an heir of another high-ranking family. An arranged bond—a contract signed in status, not in desire. I seek someone powerful enough to challenge him, to break the chain. I wish to marry by choice, not by order."

A flicker behind the old man's eyes. Not sympathy. Understanding. The world had a way of putting chains on people. Some broke free. Most bled for it.

"And why are you here alone? How did you get here?"

Rias steadied herself, shoulders squared. "Because this is my burden, not my friends'. I came through a portal tied to this world... somehow. I didn't think I'd endanger others."

"Inoichi?"

"She's not lying," the Yamanaka confirmed. And the room turned colder.

Hiruzen stared at her for a long moment. Long enough for the weight of her words to rot into something more. "So," he finally said, "they've been slipping through all along... and we never noticed."

The admission wasn't for her. It was for the room. For the walls. For the ghosts.

"And do you have any knowledge of spatial manipulation?" the Hokage asked.

"No."

He clicked his tongue. "Then how do you intend to survive here, with that frail body of yours?"

That struck her. As it was meant to. It was a cold truth, sharp and unforgiving. And yet, she didn't wilt.

"I had hoped," she said slowly, "that this world would ignore mine. That I would land far from civilization... explore, learn, find someone who could help me. I did not expect to land here. I did not expect this."

Hiruzen sighed—not in resignation, but in judgment. "Take care, child. You walk blindfolded through a land of knives. This world has teeth, and you are meat to many. You are lucky you appeared here—anywhere else, and you'd be bones in a ditch."

Rias didn't argue. She heard the truth in every syllable. Still, her eyes glinted—not with rebellion, but resolve.

"We do not concern ourselves with your world," Hiruzen continued. "But we do concern ourselves with threats. Demons slipping through borders, even unknowingly, endanger everyone. There are whole nations that exist to eradicate your kind."

That shook her. Her world, fractured but at peace, had long buried the axe. But this world—the one she'd stepped into like a girl daring fate—it hadn't sheathed the blade at all. Here, they sharpened it daily.

"You're lucky," Hiruzen said. "Luckier still that Naruto found you, and not someone less... merciful."

Rias looked down, the weight of her gamble pressing on her like gravity. "I destroyed the journal that held the portal's location," she said softly. "No one else can follow me. I made sure of it."

Hiruzen studied her again. For a girl raised with power, she wore desperation like a second skin. But there was steel underneath. Good. She'd need it.

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

The pain was gone.

Not dulled. Not numbed.

Gone.

Rias blinked in disbelief, her breath caught in the cage of her throat. She hadn't even felt the procedure. One moment she'd been watching the Hokage with narrowed eyes, and the next—wholeness.

She looked down. A real limb—her own, yet not. Seamless flesh stitched by chakra threads finer than spider-silk. Life pulsed through it already, hot and humming. Magic flowed in trickles, learning its new path, knitting itself to this alien-yet-familiar extension.

She flexed her fingers, and they obeyed with a fidelity that startled her.

"You're whole again."

The voice was calm, too calm for someone who had just rewritten biology. Nono Yakushi stood nearby, hands calmly folded in front of her pristine white coat. She looked like a woman who should be baking bread or tending to roses in a quiet garden—soft lines on her face, gentle eyes like warm sake.

But beneath that honeyed surface, Rias sensed a blade.

Nono had been an ANBU, a ghost in the leaves. A killer who swapped kunai for scalpels. She smiled now, faintly. "It was nothing, child. Just don't lose any more limbs."

Rias swallowed. "I'll try."

Nono turned, vanishing into the corridors like a whisper, and the room fell quiet again.

That was when the Hokage—old, wise, and as kindly as a wolf in sheep's robes—spoke.

"I've examined your body. No hidden seals, no curses, no traps. You are clean."

Rias waited for the 'but'.

"You are free to leave Konoha. Or," the old man smiled behind his pipe, "you may become Naruto's servant."

There it was. The poison in the honey.

Rias blinked. Had she misheard?

She looked to Naruto, half-expecting the boy to laugh and call it a joke. But he didn't. He stepped forward, eyes unreadable, voice low.

"Don't make it sound bad, old man."

Then he turned to her.

"What's your name?"

"Rias," she said automatically, her thoughts still caught on servant.

"Thanks for not panicking." Naruto's voice was quiet but sincere.

She met his eyes—and blinked. No hunger. No lust. No ego. Just… stillness. Like a pool too deep to see the bottom.

"I don't like being alone," he said, his voice strangely calm. "But I don't want liars around me either. So here's what I offer: become my servant. In name. That means you'll be connected to someone and not get thrown out for being a stray. In return, I'll teach you about this world. You'll teach me about yours. I won't touch you. Won't control you. You can leave whenever you want."

Simple. But dangerous.

Rias hesitated.

Her magic was weak. Her strength had yet to return. The world outside this village was filled with monsters in masks and immortals in shadows.

At least this boy didn't lie. She could respect that.

"I accept," she said at last. "But push me too far, and I will leave."

"Fair." Naruto smiled and extended his hand.

She took it. The pact was sealed with skin and trust.

Hiruzen, behind them, smiled too. But his hands were busy. Quiet. Swift.

The seal was carved into her flesh in less than a blink. A failsafe. A noose.

She didn't feel it. Neither did Naruto.

"Good," the old man said, his tone cheerful. "Now go. Be careful out there."

Naruto nodded, offering a final respectful glance. "Thanks for the favor. I'll remember it."

Outside, the village was waiting—sunlit roofs, murmuring streets, shadows too deep for the time of day.

Naruto walked beside her, pointing out alleys, corners, and places to avoid.

He talked. She listened.

And somewhere, buried beneath stone and seal, the game board turned.

Pieces moved.

 -----------------------------

Rias sat upon the wind-carved bones of a tree, licking a melting thread of blood-orange ice from her fingers. The wood groaned beneath her like an old man whispering secrets. Beside her, Naruto grinned, the sunlight bending across his whiskered cheeks, eyes holding more mischief than warmth. A boy born in a crucible of hate and spit—his kindness, if it existed, was a sharp-edged thing.

"Want to come along on my personal project?" he asked, voice as casual as a slit throat.

They weren't close. But Naruto had already claimed her. The way one lays claim to a sword or a shadow. She was a puzzle piece in the grand image stitched across his madness—a world where he was free, untouchable, immortal-touched.

Rias didn't answer immediately. She was still swallowing the sharp taste of being hated, still nursing the bruise of every glance that sliced her skin. The people of this village—they didn't hide their loathing behind masks or courtesies. They breathed it. And Naruto… Naruto swam in it like a fish made of razors and fire.

"What is it?" she finally asked, looking sideways at the boy who wasn't quite a boy. He looked her age. Acted older. Felt ancient.

She knew now. He was younger by four years. Four bloody years. It made something sour twist inside her stomach. The kind of sour that comes when a pampered heir stumbles into a world where children carry knives before they grow teeth.

"I intend to make a team," he said, as if announcing war. "So I'm going to invite some people to join."

He crushed the last of his ice pop between his fingers and flung himself from the branch. Like a wild thing born to the air. His laughter trailed behind him like smoke. That smile… It wasn't joy. It was challenge. A dare hurled at the world like a kunai through the throat.

Rias could've stayed on the tree. Let him run, vanish, be what he was—untouchable. But she didn't.

Because she'd felt it. That bitterness. That weakness. The slap of her own uselessness when the blades came out and the world bit.

She'd seen the children here—feral, trained, disciplined. Their bones had learned violence before they learned love.

Rias, for all her blood and titles, was just a girl with pretty magic and a heart too soft.

Not anymore.

"I'm coming," she said.

The vow tasted like iron.

Naruto didn't look back. He just nodded at the wind, and took off again, dancing across rooftops like a ghost too stubborn to rest.

"Then follow me," he called.

Rias spread her wings. They weren't fast. Not yet. But she flew, and she burned, and she chased after him like a fallen angel learning how to sin.