Issei was stunned, standing before him was the possibly maou class white dragon empress, his supposed eternal rival. While Issei was indifferent to the idea of the battling to the death due to so called fate, he was very aware of the power this woman radiated, if she wanted to pick a fight with him then he wasn't going to get out of it.

"Valiana Lucifer, the white dragon empress" Issei stated in a neutral tone.

"In the flesh, though do call me Vali, Valiana is so formal" she replied in a cocky tone.

"Why are you here?" Issei asked in an impatient tone, this interruption was very frustrating for him, especially since it had stopped his dream for the past 18 or so months.

"To put it simply, I have been ordered by Ophis to stop you from killing Gabriel" she responded seriously.

Issei clenched his free hand again and grit his teeth in frustration, if the white dragon empress didn't want him to kill Gabriel then he wasn't going to be able to. Going against her meant a fight and if he and Vali fought right now, he'd either die or be seriously injured depending on whether she was feeling merciful.

"Why?" Issei asked, rising anger clear in his tone.

Vali stared at her rival as if sizing him up, she didn't detect any large power coming from him which was dissapointing, however she did see that his eyes were burning with anger and frustration at being interrupted. The girl wondered what the seraph had done to him that caused this boy to want to kill her, but that was irrelevant, her orders were to prevent Gabriel from being killed and that was what she was going to do.

"Because Gabriel is a seraph and important to the plans of the Khaos Brigade" Vali stated factually.

"You're a member of the Khaos Brigade?" Issei asked surprised, from what the devils had told him, the Khaos Brigade were a band of terrorists that wanted to bring back the old maou's descendants to power and rule over everything.

"Yep, got a neat little little badge and everything" she joked.

Issei sweat dropped.

"All jokes aside, I joined so I could fight strong opponents, but occasionally I get stuck doing a task like this and fighting pipsqueak like you who can't even fight properly" Vali clarified in a condescending tone.

"I may not be able to fight properly but you just stopped me from doing something i've planned for nearly 2 years, so if it's a fight you want then there's no way i'm gonna back down or give anything less than my all!" Issei roared as he dropped into a battle stance.

Vali chuckled. She knew that this boy wouldn't be able to last more than a few minutes against her power let alone win, but he still put up a brave front and accepted her unspoken challenge. She admired this boy's courage, however putting up a brave front and actually being brave in the face of life or death in battle were two different things.

Vali charged towards Issei at breakneck speeds that he couldn't even perceive and deliver and super powered blow to his gut. It took Issei a few seconds to catch up with the action, once he had he vomited an excessive amount of blood and collapsed to one knee. Ophis' power was still with him but much less than before after he used it in that massive attack to end the rating game, plus he was still part devil so his holy sword was out of the question.

He was truly defenseless, at the mercy of the battle maniac that was the white dragon empress.

The empress continued her assault with a brutal uppercut that launched Issei into the air and smashed him against the ceiling then followed up with a kick to the back before he even touched the ground that threw him into the wall, cracking it quite a bit.

Issei coughed up a wad of blood before slowly bringing himself to his knees and then finally a limped standing position.

"It's gonna take more than that to put me down" the injured boy spat.

Vali chuckled.

"I admire your determination boy, however I cannot allow you to leave here alive when you're so set upon kill Gabriel, now prepare yourself!

Divide!

"UGH" Issei grunted as he fell to his knees once more.

The fight was one sided before but now it was an absolute slaughter in Vali's favour, Issei's already inferior power had just been halved and he knew it, Ophis' boost had worn off a while ago so now he was back to basics.

Issei paused in place to think, an action that bewildered the white dragon empress but she took her chance and smashed the boy into the wall once more, this time it crumbled and he was sent flying into the next room.

"ISSEI!" Griselda shouted with worry.

"Don't worry about the boy, he's a fighter, isn't he Gabriel?" Vali glanced at Gabriel accusingly before rocketing into the next room to continue her mission.

Griselda wore a puzzled expression during the brief conversation between the two before turning to her king.

"What did she mean by a fighter?" the former exorcist asked Gabriel.

The woman in question remained silent causing Griselda to become enraged at her king's refusal to acknowledge her and Issei properly. With anger burning in her eyes, she roughly grabbed the collar of her king's robe catching Gabriel by surprise.

"WHAT DID SHE MEAN!?" Griselda yelled.

After a moment of silence, Gabriel finally started to speak.

"When Issei was still in Heaven and being trained, I noticed a distinct lack of progress of his development with the boosted gear. Since this was meant to be one of Heaven's primary sources of power I decided to take matters into my own hands and ordered a scientist in the research department to create a serum that would hopefully increase Issei's affinity with the boosted gear" Gabriel stated.

Griselda was stunned that her king would do this all behind her back when she was the one training the boy but remained quiet as Gabriel began to continue speaking.

"I had Issei brought to a lab and secured to a restraining table unconscious, then the same scientist administered the serum. It didn't seem to have the desired effect at first but then his heart rate and blood pressure skyrocketed, he began to thrash around while still unconscious and let out a blast of crimson energy I can only assumed came from the red dragon inside the boosted gear. The blast was enough to knock everyone back, even me and set him free" Gabriel recounted with a frown on her face.

"What then?" Griselda quickly asked, very eager to hear what had happened to the boy.

A tear escaped Gabriel's eye as she gathered the courage to tell her queen something she'd never told anyone about Issei.

"H-He went on a rampage Griselda, the serum must have scrambled his brain because once he got out of the lab he killed everyone he could find with his bare hands, I never imagined that his power would have been increased so much. Hundreds if not thousands of angels were slaughtered by his hands that day and he was only stopped when me and the rest of the seraphs constructed a prison that could hold him down in second Heaven, that's why I could never see him the same, I feared that when angered his power would return to that uncontrollable state" Gabriel confessed, tears now flowing freely down her cheeks as the memories of her actions that hurt Issei so much surfaced once more.

Griselda was shocked at the actions of her king, a seraph had caused mass genocide of her own kind from a gluttonous desire for Issei's power, how she hadn't fallen yet must be a miracle from the deceased God of the bible.

The former exorcist was torn from her thoughts by the loud noise of Issei being thrown back into the room through a separate hole, closely followed by Vali. The boy was even more ragged than when he'd left, there were bruises and cuts all over his body, he was caked in his own blood and one of his eyes was swollen shut.

Meanwhile the white dragon empress was completely unscathed and chose to taunt her rival about it.

"C'mon is this really all my fabled rival's got?" she goaded the boy with a smug grin.

A grunt was the only reply she received as Issei forced himself up to one knee, then both and finally he shakily stood with crimson fire in his eyes that unnerved everyone in the room, even the white dragon empress.

The next words however put the cocky white dragon empress on high alert.

"I, who am about to awaken"

Issei never got another syllable out before Vali rocketed towards him faster than even the seraph Gabriel could see and shattered every one of his ribs with a devastating downward punch sending him to the floor beneath her feet.

"I don't know how you came to know of that power but i'll tell you this for free, it isn't something to be trifled with by a weakling like you boy" Vali spat at the downed boy.

Issei grit his teeth and reached up grabbing her leg to which she gave an ice cold glare and and slit his throat making the boy gag for air.

She looked at a horrified Griselda and nodded her head to the dying boy telling her to heal him.

Griselda accepted the woman's mercy without question, she rushed over and cradled the boy in her arms to soothe him as she gently waved her hand over his wounds closing them all up. The cuts and bruises faded and the gash across his neck closed, with a little spell she was able to clear the blood from his clothes but he remained unconscious.

Tears welled up in the former exorcist's eyes as she turned towards the woman who'd the boy she had loved so much pain. Yes she had been fond of Issei after that misson to America, she and Issei had buried the hatchet shortly afterwards and due to the amount of time she spent training him she'd crushed pretty hard.

Although now as she looked back at the face of the boy in her arms she realised he wasn't the man he used to be. This was a different Issei Hyoudou and only time would tell how much so.

"Alright that's enough mushy crap, i'll let the weakling go this time, but the next time he interferes with my superior's plans I'll crush him like a bug" Valiana Lucifer snarled, emphasising her point with with a balled fist and stomped foot before teleporting away in a haze of blue lights.

Issei still hadn't woken up so Griselda gently lifted him up and placed him down in the infirmary bed beside her king, handcuffing one arm just in case, this action earned a raised eyebrow from Gabriel.

"It's for the best, I doubt he'll be happy when he wakes up and sees you" Griselda coldly stated to her king before walking towards the door to report the events that had just transpired to Michael.

"My queen please wait" Gabriel called out, her use of rank made it clear this wasn't a request.

Griselda sighed heavily and turned toward the Seraph waiting for her to continue.

"I- I really did want to apologise to him..." came the weak statement that the former exorcist scoffed at.

"Sure you did and i'm the original Lucifer" she shot back.

Gabriel furrowed her brow at the disrespect shown by her usually loyal queen.

"My queen, I do not appreciate your tone" she warned, again pulling rank to make clear her meaning.

Unfortunately for her this only pissed Griselda off even more.

"You think I care!? All you've done is hurt Issei over and over again and then you spout this bullshit about feeling bad, you don't feel any remorse for your treatment of that poor boy do you?" she all but screamed at her king forgoing formalities as her wings flickered back and forth between raven and snow colour.

Gabriel was rather taken aback by the emotional outburst of her queen that had always been the one to keep a clear and focused head in the worst of situations. Before she could come up with a response Griselda continued her rant.

"Did you hear what he was chanting!? You know exactly what that power is and how it would tear his mind and body apart yet you said NOTHING!" she bellowed, tears streaming from her eyes with her fists clenched so hard that blood dripped from her palms.

"I had no idea he even knew that power, he wasn't even using the Boosted Gear properly when we trained him" Gabriel defended herself although in her heart she knew that wasn't true, if she really wanted to make it up to Issei she should have tried harder so he'd never be pushed to try and use that power.

The Juggernaut Drive, a forbidden technique exclusive to the sacred gears of the two heavenly dragons, the Boosted Gear and the Divine Dividing. The form offered outrageous power at a terrible price, the past possessors of the respective gears lay dormant inside until an immense surge of negative emotion floods through the host, they then awaken and seduce the user with the promise of power at the cost of their sanity and eventually their very life.

Both Gabriel and Griselda knew the tragedies of past red and white dragon emperors falling into the trap of that power and no matter what the relationship between themselves and Issei may be, the first step to atonement would be to ensure he never falls victim to the Juggernaut Drive.

However only one of the women had the strength of heart to act upon that step, Griselda reigned in her temper knowing a tantrum would do nothing to change the mind of her king.

"I will not let him succumb to that cursed form, it's a fate worse than death" she shot at Gabriel with conviction before leaving the room.

The seraph was abandoned by her trusted queen and left alone with the man that hated her the most in the universe and upon that realisation she wept quietly for the broken bond the three of them could have shared if only things had gone differently.

I'M BAAAAACK and better than ever!

Okay maybe not better but i'm back :)

I'll admit i've been neglecting this fic for a while since I kinda pulled Issei's character in so many directions without choosing one so it was a little unclear as to his motivations and current state as well as me gathering more steam when working on the DCBSL rewrite but i'm addressing that right here right now.

I'll be updating the two alternatively, occasionally if I have a clear plan I may update one twice, we'll have to see how it goes.

Also at the current point of this story Issei is relatively weak compared to Rias and her peerage for example and completely outclassed by Vali who's on the level of the four Maous or maybe just below.

I know some of you way want an OP Issei but I think the best idea is to have him come to terms with the power from Ophis and before that he lost and then slowly have him build himself up to new heights.

So if you guys are interested in seeing that then stick around because I got big plans now i'm working on this again and I don't intend to disappoint ;)

Thank you for everyone who read through this and stuck with me through the hiatus, don't forget to review and pm me with any questions, you all rock!