A New Motivation: Chapter 1

This is a fic that I have been commissioned to write. Unlike my other commissions, this is a longform fic with at least three chapters currently in the works. Like always, because is a commission, it will be posted for free members as well as normal members and is only put here just in case any of you were not informed of the upload.

Newest chapter of Stolen Hearts should be out in the next few days for Members.

That is all, please enjoy!

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Never in my life, had my head hurt as bad as it does right now. It felt like somebody was taking a power drill to my skull, digging through the bone to prod at the active nerves within, causing me nothing but agonizing pain.

“Ugh…” I groaned as I slowly came back to myself, wincing at the ache in my head and the fogginess in my brain. I scrunched my face at the feeling of concrete against my features, the cool surface bringing a small amount of relief to my feverish skull.

Still, I didn’t know where I was and lying on the floor was a distinctly bad idea in most places. Not to mention, I would need to get up to figure out where I was. I let out another groan, before placing my hands on the ground as I rose up.

“What happened last night?” I muttered as I slowly sat up, clutching my aching head with my left hand, “How much did I have to drink?”

I wasn’t what one would call a heavy drinker, though I did enjoy one or two on occasion. Never in my life had I drunk enough to make me feel like this. Every beat of my heart sent a new wave of pain throughout my brain, my lips were extremely dry and sweat covered my forehead. If this was a hangover, it was worse than anything I had ever experienced in my life.

I looked to the side, noting a dumpster nearby, and I reached my right arm out to help myself up, only to freeze at the sound my hand made when making contact with the metal container, a ringing bang that metal usually makes when impacting a hard surface, which didn’t make any sense. My fingers dug into the metal, eliciting a loud screech that was in every way wrong as the metal warped under my grip.

I slowly turned my eyes towards my limb, my heart thudding oddly in my chest as my eyes slowly alighted on my arm, afraid of what I might see. My breath hitched as I finally caught sight of my right hand, shakily bringing it in front of my face as I took in its transformed appearance with wide eyes.

Dark, reptile-like flesh, broken by bright blue streaks of light that extended up until the end of the limb itself at my elbow. The fingers were more akin to claws than normal digits, meant for ripping things apart as opposed to gently grasping them, which they displayed as they dug into the dumpster with terrifying ease. I carefully unhooked them, bringing my hand in front of my face as I stared at it in disbelief. Despite the limb being so alien, I knew exactly what it was, or at least what it resembled.

Nero’s Devil Bringer, the physical manifestation of his demonic power. The most important weapon of the protagonist of Devil May Cry 4, a video game. Only it was real and it was sitting in place of my own right arm.

As I took in my demonic limb, I took notice of another massive change that had occurred to me, somehow only realizing just now what had happened. My memories from the past few days may have been more than a little shoddy, but one thing I knew for certain was that I had been male. That had apparently changed.

I stared in disbelief at my chest, the swell of breasts that hadn’t been there before catching my eyes as they strained against the white fabric of my outfit. In shock, I brought my non-transformed hand up to gently squeeze one of the mounds, only to widen my eyes at the shared sensation between my hand and my new breasts. They were real too.

“What is happening?” I said, semi-hysterical at the changes that had occurred in my body, “Why am I a woman now!?”

This wasn't normal! People just didn't go to bed and wake up a completely different gender with a demon arm where their old one used to be! It just didn't happen!

A laugh nearly forced its way from my chest at the absurdity of my situation before I managed to restrain myself. I closed my eyes tightly, clenching my teeth and taking deep breaths as I counted in my head, doing my best to calm down so I could look at this situation with a more rational mind.

Okay, putting aside the new body and the arm straight out from a video game, I was in a random alley that I didn’t recognize after being unconscious for who-knows how long and there was a huge gap in my memory that I couldn’t rationalize as just a hangover. The clothes I was wearing weren’t mine and neither was the body I was currently inhabiting. Those were the facts of the matter and I would need to figure out what to do now.

That… didn’t help as much as I hoped it would have but at least I wasn’t panicking anymore. That was a plus I suppose.

Hoping that a change of scenery would help me figure out exactly what was going on, I began making my way out of the alley. Along the way, I grabbed the scarf around my neck (that I had absolutely no memory of) and wrapped it around my right arm, shielding it from the sight of whoever I happened upon.

As I cleared the lip of the alley, the numerous people walking along the street gave me odd glances, before continuing on their way, paying me no mind. Not knowing of anything better to do, I began walking, following the flow of traffic to an unknown destination.

As I walked, I couldn’t help but notice how comfortable I felt in my own skin. You would think that suddenly finding yourself in a new body would create some sense of disconnect, but there was nothing of the sort and in fact, I felt more comfortable than I had in a long time.

My gaze wandered around to my surroundings, trying to identify exactly where I had found myself. The first thing I noticed was the fact that everything around me, from the people talking to each other softly, to the writing on the storefronts, to the signs on the crosswalks, were all japanese. And most concerningly, I could read and understand it all.

I had a very loose grasp of the Japanese language, mostly simple things like ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’, nothing like what I was hearing now. Full conversations were being had by the various people I passed and I could understand every single word. There was a small part of my mind that recognized the fact that I shouldn’t be able to understand anything, but it was overrode by the much larger part that did.

It was disconcerting and a little disorienting. I brought a hand to my face, massaging the bridge of my nose as I tried my best to drown out the annoying buzzing that was making itself known in my ears. Around me, people gave me even more odd looks, averting their eyes when I glanced at them. A woman walks out of a random alley, hand held in a scarf and rubbing her eyes, they probably thought I was some sort of wacko.

I chuckled to myself, probably not helping their perceptions of me as I continued looking around at my surroundings.

And then I caught sight of my reflection in a nearby store window and I just froze, stopping dead in the middle of the street and causing the person behind me to let out an annoyed grumble as they were forced to walk past me so suddenly. I didn’t care about that however, more concerned with staring at the person who I saw in my reflection.

The sight I saw, combined with my slowly clearing memories, caused a sensation akin to a bell ringing in the back of my head. I staggered backwards away from the window, just barely managing to plant myself on a small bench before I fell to the ground in my shock.

My chest heaved and my hidden fist clenched in the bundle of fabric as I stared at the reflective window, taking in my features with mounting disbelief, taking in the features of the body I had found myself in so suddenly.

As I shifted on the bench, my foot slid across the ground, aided by a piece of paper that had slipped underneath my heel. I glanced down, curious as to what I had stepped on, only to freeze at what I saw.

There, on the crumpled piece of what appeared to be a newspaper, was a picture of a storefront, inside of which appeared to be various anime paraphernalia. That wouldn’t be concerning, this was apparently Japan after all. No, what was concerning were the words along the bottom of the photo.

‘Small shop in Kuoh breaks local record in largest sale of figurines, selling nearly fifty in one go!’ There was a small article below the picture, detailing how a redhead had apparently entered the shop and bought a ton of anime figures at full price. It was dated for February 5th, which was on the opposite side of the calendar from what I could remember.

That wasn’t what had gotten me concerned, that would be the name of the town I had found myself in, Kuoh. A place that didn’t actually exist in the real world or at least not outside of one specific instance in an anime I had watched multiple times.

Kuoh was the town in which High School DxD primarily took place. A town where the natural and supernatural went hand in hand, owed mostly to the presence of two of the most prominent members of the Devil Faction, Rias Gremory and Sona Sitri, younger sisters to Lucifer and Leviathan respectively.

All at once, things began making sense to me. My new appearance, my new arm and the place I had found myself in, and as I brought my eyes back up to my reflection, it all clicked.

Before I had ended up here, I had been linked to a form by one of my friends, one that was basically, ‘if you were Isekaied, where would you go, who would you be, and what would you bring’. I had thought it was just a fun time waster and, having nothing better to do, had filled it out.

Souji Okita was the person I had picked. She was a Saber servant from Fate Grand/Order based on a real-life person in Japan who lived from the late Edo period into the beginning of the Meiji period. It was her face who stared back at me in my reflection as I brought my gaze back, bright amber eyes wide as I took myself in.

My hand came up to shakily take a strand of blonde hair between my fingers, rubbing the silken tresses between my fingers as I verified the realness of my situation and once I had, I could feel panic once again begin to stir inside of me, though I managed to once again quell it with some difficulty.

I had always been more pragmatic than my peers, able to take a step back from most situations and analyze them for what they were. That was what I was currently doing as I closed my eyes to better focus on what had happened to me, on the situation I had found myself in so abruptly.

Somehow, that quiz I had taken had been real. Somehow I had been transported to a world that should have only existed in fiction, in a body that wasn’t my own and the arm of a quarter-demon where mine used to be. There was no telling if I would ever be able to return home or if home even still existed. I was stuck.

And yet… I was somewhat okay with that. If this was real and I wasn’t just in a coma somewhere dreaming it all up, this was an incredible opportunity.

It was a fresh start, free of the monotony and grayness of my previous life. The world of Highschool DxD was an incredible place, a place where things like gods and magic existed. A place where one’s potential was only limited to your imagination and what you were willing to sacrifice to achieve it.

My old world had little for me. A dead-end job and a few friends were all that were keeping me there in the first place. Why shouldn’t I take the opportunity that had presented itself, to become something so much greater than anything I could have been back there?

Whatever the reason I had been sent to this world, whether by the decision of a god or just some twist of fate, I would make the best of it. I would thrive in this new place, change it for the better. Whatever it took.

‘First order of business,’ I thought to myself as I reopened my eyes, filled with a new determination as I looked down at my covered arm, ‘Shelter and a stable source of food. I’m a complete stranger in this place so there’s no way I can simply rent a place to stay and while I don’t know what Japan’s policies on the homeless are, I’m not holding out much hope.’

After that was taken care of, I would need to somehow contact Rias. Everything in the anime seemed to revolve around that girl and her peerage so if I wanted to have any ability to change the way things went, I would need to somehow join her little family.

Easier said than done. It wasn’t like I could simply walk up to the gates of the school and ask to see her. Not only would that be extremely suspicious from the devil’s point of view, but I had no idea if they would be able to sense my new arm, nor how they would react if they could.

And that was just another thing I needed to take care of. Even in the world of DMC, Nero’s arm stuck out like a sore thumb. In a world like High School DxD, where the supernatural was more or less hidden, it would stick out even more. I would need to find a way to hide it that didn’t amount to just covering it with a scarf twenty-four seven.

All in all, my next few days would no doubt be extremely busy.

“Excuse me, miss?” A voice shook me out of my thoughts, and I blinked as I took in the girl who had somehow begun standing in front of me without my noticing. Dark brown hair styled into two wing-like structures on either side of her head. She was wearing a crimson red and black dress that showed off a sinful amount of thigh and cleavage as brown eyes looked at me with something akin to pity.

I recognized her despite her admittedly limited screen time in the show. It was the human form of Rias’ familiar, the one who had given Issei his own flier in the anime. Did that mean…?

“You look like you’re down on your luck,” The disguised familiar said softly. She held out her hand, extending a beige sheet of paper for me to take. I did so with slightly numb fingers, watching as her dour features lifted slightly, “If you really need help, then use that and I’m sure something great will happen!” She said happily.

I nodded slowly, not taking my eyes off of her as she stepped back, “You have a good day miss! I hope we meet again!”

And then she skipped away.

‘Well then.’ I thought dimly as I stared down at the flier in my hand, upon which was a very familiar symbol inscribed in black ink, ‘That was certainly convenient.’