DxD: Analog Destruction

Tutorial Stage #9. - First Contact.

The screaming had stopped.

The quiet felt odd.

The pale boy standing just outside of the alley lowered his arm and allowed his concentration to falter.

He peered into the space between houses and walked closer to the mass of concrete containing the girl who had been following him. Kyu felt it was good that she went down so quickly, he was running out of energy casting consecutive spells like that.

He briefly wondered if his form of magic could even be called spell-casting when he used it more like a superpower, but the thought faded from his mind when he realized that he hadn't checked if the girl was alive.

Kyu hopped over the hole made when he formed the last wall and made the slabs of concrete holding the girl retreat into the ground.

He stared at Toujou Koneko's blank face before she fell. It was at that moment that he realized just how short she was.

"Oh, God. I just killed a little girl."
Kyu walked over to Toujou and imitated what he saw people do in movies to check for a pulse; he put his index and middle fingers on her neck.

"OH NO, I REALLY DID KILL A LITTLE GI-- Oop. No. Wait. We're good." The boy talked to himself to distract himself from the tension he felt from his entire body.
It was like the molten ball of stress inside his chest lessened when he felt her pulse. He let out a relieved sigh before the stress ball came back twofold.

What was he going to do with an unconscious girl in an alleyway?
Where was he going to put her? What if she woke up in the middle of moving her?
Perhaps he could go back to the school and keep her there. Her friends probably wouldn't think to look there...

"On second thought, that's a horrible idea." He muttered.
If he held her captive at the school, not only would it make everything worse if he was caught, but if one of her fellow devils found him they would get reinforcements in seconds.

Kyu's thoughts were put on hold when a window of one of the four houses opened.
"What's going on out there?" A middle-aged woman peered out of the window and gasped when she saw Toujou on the ground.

"Oh! This-- My-- My friend has narcolepsy! Sometimes she just falls asleep like--" Kyu snapped his fingers for emphasis.

"My! that's terrible! Do you need any help?" The woman offered.

Truthfully, Kyu wanted to accept her help, he had no idea what she could do to help him, but he sure would like it.

"No, thank you. I'll bring her home. Have a good day!" He waved at the woman who closed the window after a short pause.

With that over, Kyu picked up Toujou with surprising ease considering his frail state.
Resuming his thoughts about where to stash the girl. He even thought about just leaving her at the Occult Research Club as a gesture of good faith.
That idea was discarded immediately. For several reasons.

Then, he realized. Getting rid of Toujou would be a mistake right now. While he wasn't a huge fan of taking hostages, she was a card that had too much potential not to play.
First, he needed to recover the magic he lost in the fight, so he took a deep breath, inhaling as much air as he could in a gesture similar to what he was doing to take in more ambient energy.

It felt odd, but the process he had thought of was to send feelers of magical energy out to collect more and then retract them back into himself, absorbing the collected mana. When he thought of this method he likened it to a filter-feeding fish like a whale shark.
It wasn't very efficient and also quite slow, but it was faster than just waiting normally. So at last he checked a screen he had opened up to see that his MP bar was full.