Of course, I do not own Blue Exorcist. I own this fanfiction.

WARNING: If you haven't read the manga up to 39, one of the names that Mephisto uses kinda spoils his identity (no, not the name of Faust, which in combination with the name Mephistopheles in a reference to something completely different)... best not pay too much attention. Still, it doesn't really spoil his role in the story or anything, so it's not that important.

Amaimon sat there on the soft leather seat, completely silent save for the crunch-crunch sound that he could hear in his head from chewing on that delicious, extra-sugary lolly stick which he had gone to all the effort of clawing from the highest of his aniue's drawers. A little piece of the candy fell onto the ground, and its bright pink camouflaged itself with the carpet in a way quite similar to what a fragment of clear glass would on a white floor. If he were to stumble by it, he'd eat it, of course; but Mephisto could quite as easily just poof up another one out of nowhere.

Reminded of his brother once again, Amaimon quickly popped his head up and leaped over to the comfy bag-like chair which he had come to admire over the past couple of weeks he had stayed in Assiah. A humongous television clung to the wall right above his head, framed in pink and close enough to force him to look up quite a bit in order to see all the details on the screen. He'd consider asking Mephisto to at least change around the colour scheme a little, enough so that he would stop misplacing objects just because the walls, the floors, everything was that one shade of pink bright enough to blind human eyes. Not that he would normally muster up the courage to- having lived for so many centuries, and Mephisto undoubtedly much longer- they didn't have a sibling-like relationship as much as one built by his respect and fear for the elder demon. Mephisto didn't seem to be in much of a threatening mood right now though, and so Amaimon spoke up with that perpetual tone of simultaneous curiosity and boredom like he always did.

"Aniue- who are you fighting against now?"

Mephisto didn't even look up as he responded. "Hmmm~ yes, I wonder who indeed?"

Mephistopheles was currently the name of his brother's avatar. Sometimes he would switch to Faust, Samael, AIDS, and whatever the hell he seemed to be in the mood to call himself. Quite a skilled player with a 100% PvP win rate after already over fifty-something battles, yet never appearing on the rankings because Mephisto would frequently revert his character back to level one through some unknown method.

"There we go," the oldest brother announced himself as he struck his final blow against CycloneDemon284 and collected the winnings. "Yes... ahh! A speed enhancement scroll! Just what I was looking for~!"

Amaimon greedily stuffed another lolly into his mouth. He was getting rather sick of watching his brother play, and he'd rather liked to have a turn for himself. It didn't look as interesting as the green apple sucker that he was planning on eating next, but if Mephisto liked it, then it had to be rather interesting, hadn't it? Right. Mephisto always had fun things with him.

As he picked up a second controller, Mephisto chuckled ominously.

"Oh, and now you're interested too?" He laughed again. "Right~ you know, I think I have the perfect opponent for you!"

Congratulations!

Your character, Rin Okumura, has successfully passed the Campus [Training Grounds]! As a reward, you have earned the following Titles and Items!

- Page

- [lvl. 2] Traveller's Cloak (Navy)

- [lvl. 4] [Flame] Traveller's Sword

- [lvl. 2] Traveller's Long Pants (Black)

- [lvl. 1] Traveller's Wristlets (Blue)

- (x3) HP Restoration Potion

- (x3) MP Restoration Potion

- Enhancement Rune

"Aha!" Rin raised his arms and leaned back in a cry of joy. "I finally got it!"

Almost an hour later, Rin was still online. Grinding was such tedious work for him, and not being able to leave the training grounds to interact with his fellow players was much, much worse. He quickly replaced his older items with his well-deserved newer ones, and invested whatever skill points he had earned through his first dungeon into the Knight skill branch.

Damn it! Only two more to unlock an elemental attack! I knew I should have killed that goblin on the fifth floor!

All in all, he had thought that he did a pretty good job for a beginner. The game, new as it was, had a fairly high level cap of 112 levels. Having only played for 45 minutes or so, reaching level 5 meant that he was well on his way (or at least this was what Rin thought- he hadn't at all taken into consideration that he'd need much more EXP for the later levels). He directed his character forward again, and silently remarked to himself how real everything seemed to look on the screen; the graphics were indeed as top-notch as the advertisements had likened them to be, and the third-person camera view directed from behind his character's back helped enhance that sense of open-worldness to the player. The sun shone as brightly as any would in real life, and he found himself momentarily blinded while he attempted to scale a large hill. A clashing sound reached his ears, and he directed his eyes back to the screen in order to read a PvP request message that somebody had just sent him.

Renzo Shima has requested a battle!

Accept or Deny?

A/N: Edited some stuff from CHP1 because some of my edits in the file didn't really carry over well (underlines and italics, mostly)

Urgh how to write for Rin... .

Another short-ish chapter. It'll take a bit longer to upload the next few, but they'll be much lengthier. :)