I own nothing, not the characters, the space where this story exists, or even the eyes that you are using to read it. This is for entertainment purposes only, no money involved.

Danny stood in front of a mirror in the closet in his hospital room. A few more scars had been added to his already impressive collection of them, but his arm and leg had healed properly and he would be able to use them at one hundred percent soon enough. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said of his eyes.

His left eye had been damaged beyond his natural ability to heal and had been replaced by a fake on, though almost no one would notice unless they looked very closely that the two eyes were not the exact same shade of blue.

Danny didn't regret the lose of his eye. It seemed like a small price to pay for rescuing Izumo from Beelzebub. And besides, you could function with one eye a lot easier than with just one leg, or one arm. Calling out his demon heart like that, when his body was already heavily injured, could have just as easily cost him is life as just losing him one eye. Though the face that he had lost his eye was rather ironic. Pariah also lost his eye to the white flames. Another thing that linked Danny to the King of Spirits, as if there wasn't too much of that already.

But that was not what Danny was looking at. He was too busy looked at what was around his neck. A thin gray metal ring was wrapped around the boy's neck, it wasn't so large that it would draw a lot of notice, but it was still fairly obvious. The ring was covered in a small script, so that the ring formed a magic circle around Danny neck, binding him to follow its instructions or suffer waves of pain as the rin would contract and strangle Danny.

The circle was designed to keep him from leaving the academy grounds unless he was in the company of an Archknight class exorcist, such as Shura or Lightning. Even then, he would have to remain within a few hundred feet of them at all times.

"All the thing needs is a dog tag and a leash." Danny said miserably, as he raised on hand to the ring, only for his hand to be shocked.

"Usually they put the rings around the demon's tail, but I suppose that since a spectral tail like yours is just mist, they had to put it somewhere else." Mephisto said as he appeared in the room behind Danny in a puff of pink smoke. "Hello there!" The demon King said with a huge grin.

"Oh, its you." Danny said, his voice full of venom. "What do you want?"

"Oh come now Danny, I'm your legal guardian. I have to be here to check you out of the hospital." Mephisto said with a grin. "You know, I could fix that eye of yours for you? It would be fairly simple magic for someone like me."

"No thanks, I'm going to save the favor you now owe me for something a bit more important than my twenty twenty vision." Danny said turning and glaring at the Demon King, his one good eye turning a dark green.

"Hm? Since when do I owe you a favor?" Mephisto asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Since I didn't rat you out for sending Amaimon and Beelzebub after us. Beelzebub might have been working for Lucifer, but you are the one that asked him to come here and let him in, all so that you could force Rin to expose himself." Danny said angrily.

"Uh huh, but why does that mean I owe you a favor? After all, you didn't lie to protect me, you lied to protect Rin." Mephisto said with a wicked grin. "You can't expose me without exposing your friend. And as long as Rin's life belongs to me, you will do whatever I want you to."

Danny locked eyes with the King of Time, who had to admit that the two different colored eyes were a good effect. "Your magic words. They have a pattern of breathing to them." Danny said, taking the Demon by surprise. "One the first word you exhale, then you inhale on the second word. When you breath in you take in the entropy in the air around you and store it in your stomach, stopping time. Then you do whatever it is you want before breathing out, thereby letting time resume. That's how you can stop time without the need for a item focal point that would act as a weak point."

Mephisto began to laugh. "Very good! It's been nearly five hundred years since the last person figured out my secret!" Mephisto said, clapping his hands. "But do you honestly think that simply knowing how it works means that you can overcome it? You still lack the Right to overcome my powers."

"Maybe, but I'm sure there are others in the Vatican that would be able to use that information quite well." Danny said grinning back. Mephisto's smile slid of his face. "If you reveal Rin's secrets, I reveal yours."

"So you are black mailing me then? How very demon like of you." Mephisto said, sounding less than pleased. "But if that is how you wish it to be, then fine. I will not pursue exposing Rin any further, but with or without me, the truth will get out. It is only a mater of time."

But then Mephisto snapped his fingers, causing his pink umbrella to appear. "Now, how about we get you checked out of this hospital? After all, you have a class to get back to."

Mephisto said, turning to the door and walking out, leaving Danny to follow him.

Danny stood outside of classroom 2-F taking a short breath before making the plunge. He reached out and slowly opened the door.

Walking into the room he saw that there was hardly anyone in there. The three boys from Kyoto were absent. But everyone else was there and seemed to be surprised to see him.

"Danny! When you get out of the hospital!?" Rin asked in a rather loud and cheerful voice.

"Just a few hours ago. But Mephisto still wants me to teach. Guy's a really demon, I'll tell you." Danny said giving a yawn and scratching his head. "Where are the three stooges?"

"They're still in the hospital, though I heard they will be out tomorrow." Izumo said, looking away and trying to act like she didn't care that Danny was back, but she was smiling a little.

"Lucky ducks." Danny said as he walked over to his sister, Cujo sitting right beside her, tongue hanging loose as he waited for praise from his master. Worrying that someone might try to target Jazz to get at him, Danny had left the dog to guard his sister, just in case. "Hey boy, thanks for keeping an eye on things for me." Danny said, pulling out a milk bone treat and handing it to the dog, who barked and wagged his tail.

"Danny, are you sure you are alright?" Jazz asked, looking up at her little brother.

Danny grinned and did a short stretch, rolling his shoulders out. "Well, I'd say am up for another round if Amaimon decides to comeback." Danny said smugly. But his smile dropped as he realized his sister was staring at his fake eye. Danny put a hand over it, breaking his sister's line of sight. "Don't worry about it. I only really needed one eye anyways."

Danny then walked back to the front of the room. "Alrighty then, since we are missing a few students, am going to talk to you all about demon sociology, for when you have to interact with demon clans that the Order has treaties with. It would be best for everyone if you don't go pissing a bunch of high level demon off because you were too stupid to bring tribute or because you tried to conceal your weapons instead of carrying them in plan sight."

Danny started up a lecture on edict for when dealing with demons. Most of it being summarized as don't be weak, but don't be ungrateful.

Danny was rather glad that the three boys from Kyoto were not there, since he wasn't looking forward to all the stupid questions. The only person in the group of students who was afraid of him, was Shiemi. But fear and worry were coming off of her in waves. Danny could easily sense it with his levels of empathy. Though he would have known even without it, the girl was rigid, bitting her lower lip and had eyes that were held wide in panicked nervousness.

Danny simply ignored all this, that was his style of doing things. When there was a problem with people who hated or feared you, you ignore them.

"Though most people believe that demon hierarchies are based on power alone, this is not strictly true for most demon societies. Instead they have what is commonly known as a Lord, or Guardian, who is the leader of that region's demons. This Lord is the eldest social demon in the region, rather than the most powerful." Danny explained. He was fairly well acquainted with demon societies by this point, having had to deal with several of them on several different occasions.

Demon's could easily be divided into two main groups, those that formed social groups, and those that didn't. The one's that didn't being the ones that most often caused problems.

Since each Lord had control over the demons in its area and was responsible for their wellbeing, they tended to set down rules that would limit the amount of damage the demons would do, in order to stop the senseless deaths of their charges. Demon social groups were actually an extremely tight nit family, and if someone tried to arm the children of the group, the Lord would immediately try to defend them.

Danny finished pretty early and since he didn't exactly have any plans he told everyone to just take the time till their next class to relax before he started off into the hall.

Danny didn't notice Yukio watching him as he walked away, an uncomfortable expression in his face. "So are you going to talk to him or not?" Yukio jumped as he turned around to find Shura standing there behind him with a bored expression on her face.

"Wha... what are you talking about?" Yukio stammered, trying to regain his cool.

"Don't try lying to me, Four Eyed Scaredy Cat. You want to thank Caspar after everything that happened, so just do it." Shura said, rolling her eyes.

"I don't know what you are talking about." Yukio said, straightening his glasses and taking a step towards the classroom, but Shura grabbed his arm.

"Don't run way from something like that. Guilt, regret, fear; all these things can cause you to make a mistake. An exorcist can't afford to be feeling them." Shura said seriously before letting go of the boy and walking off past him. "Besides, I'm teaching the next class, remember?"

Yukio watched the woman walking into the room and sighed, he had never been good at admitting his mistakes or saying he was sorry.

Danny had seemed like the embodiment of everything that Yukio feared and hated. He had convinced himself that Danny was going to be an enemy, and that when Rin was reveal, that it would be all Danny's fault. But then Danny throw himself to the wolves in order to protect Rin, and Yukio... he had been a coward, to scared and weak to do anything.

Yukio had no idea how to say thank you. He stood there in the hall, thinking of each and every breakdown he could think of, but nothing seemed to click as a good idea. So in the end he just turned around and walked away. Whatever he was going to say, it could wait for another day.

Danny sighed with irritation as he sat down in front of the north bridge, he had given Bai some more fish and was sitting in the shadow of a nearby tree, trying to relax. But the collar around his neck was uncomfortable.

He reached a hand up to scratch underneath it, but he was shocked for his efforts. "Damn thing." Danny growled angrily.

'It looks as if you are now a slave as well.' Bai said as she watched her master's struggle.

"Looks that way." Danny said with a shrug. "Can't say it was unexpected though. Sooner or later I was going to be discovered, and then the Vatican was going to try to use me as their personal weapon or kill me, I've known this for a long time."

'You do not seem too concerned.' Bai said, tilting her head questioningly as she stared with her unblinking snake's eyes at the boy.

"I'm still alive, and the people I care about are still safe. That's all that really matters." Danny said leaning back and looking up at the bit of sunlight that was making its way between the leafs as they shifted about in the hot mid summer winds. "I don't mind sacrificing my freedom for something like that."

Bai was silent for a few moments before she spoke. 'That ring. It holds a blessing of sacred iron from Byakko.' The snake said, surprising Danny. 'He was a Buddhist god of metal, and his Rights are what allow that ring to be bond to you.' She then started to slither away from Danny.

Danny smiled. The familiar had just told him everything he needed to now about the band to be able to negate its effects. Maybe Bai was really starting to warm up to him.

One thing was for curtain, this collar was not going to do anyone any good.