If this were any other day, Chiho would be berating Maou for letting his useless roommate siphon off of his hard-earned funds to buy something that illegal. As it is though, the reason that she's still on Earth and not with the creepy kidnapper at his place on Ente Isle is because of those illegal trackers broadcasting her location to Maou. So, the only thing Chiho does to show her annoyance is let out an irritated huff every time Maou dares to glance at her.

The near silent treatment doesn't last that long, especially once Chiho spots the last few blocks leading to Kaori's apartment.

"Mr. Maou, do you think Yoshiya and Kaori are okay?" Chiho's voice is quiet as the last of the irritation drains away and the anxiety of before crawls back.

Instead of throwing her another apologetic and skittish glance, Maou stares down the street. "I don't know. I had Urushihara hack into the school records and they stated that someone called them both in sick. So maybe they really are ill."

Chiho clutches the strap of her school bag.

"But you don't think so, do you?"

"No." His voice is strong in its certainty. "It doesn't happen too often but, Sariel," At the sound of the name of the one who hurt her friends last night, Chiho grimaces. "sometimes works with another angel, Raguel."

The clouds above them rumble with the yet unleashed rain.

"Supposedly, Raguel is some kind of Observer who's supposed to report and make a judgement on the situations that the other archangels are handling. He's not built to fight that well, so he keeps himself hidden most of the time. But if he is here, he would have seen Sariel's defeat. I'm betting that watching the one who possesses the Wicked Eye of the Fallen lose has him freaking out. Those Eyes are kind of how the one who calls themself God keeps a lot of the angels in line, so if Raguel thinks that we still have him, he's going to be pretty desperate to retrieve him."

"Otherwise he's going to get into a lot of trouble with his boss back home, right?" Chiho guesses. If Raguel is supposed to just observe things, then he really is just a glorified secretary who's taking notes for battles instead of business meetings. Compared to Sariel who's shown that he can completely diminish someone's ability to use holy magic, he really isn't that important at all. Or that irreplaceable.

"Oh, you bet." A grim light glints in Maou's eyes. "Let's just say that losing to me would be the best option open to the guy."

"Did he kidnap my friends for leverage?" Chiho asks. If Raguel doesn't know what happened to Sariel, maybe he's trying to initiate a trade...But that doesn't make sense at all. Sariel didn't believe that humans like Chiho were valued by a demon like Maou, so Raguel probably doesn't believe that Yoshiya and Kaori would be worth a trade either.

And it can't be that he wants them for the same reason that Sariel wanted her. Besides being a perverted creep, Sariel admitted to wanting to study the effects of demon magic on her human body and emotions. Neither Kaori nor Yoshiya have been exposed to any demonic magic, so if an angel wished to study the humans of earth, they could just grab the closest person off the street.

The only thing that makes Kaori and Yoshiya different than the average Japanese person is that they're Chiho's friends.

"He's trying to get to me," Chiho's voice wobbles as a cold wind slips past them. "to draw me to him because he knows that I'd check on my friends if they didn't come to school." Her knuckles are white over the strap of her bag. "And since he doesn't think that a demon would care about humans, he believes that it'd only be me who would check on them, so he would avoid a fight with you."

Maou glances at her with eyes that glow unnaturally bright in the dim gloom, but Chiho doesn't notice as she gazes at the sidewalk.

"Yeah, he's probably trying to get information from you since you were there and saw everything that happened." Chiho's eyes widen at Maou's words. When she looks to him, the true blood orange of his eyes slithers through the false human brown. "Another way of putting it, he's too weak to handle a fight with the Devil King, so he's going after the human witness who would know what happened to a missing archangel."

When Maou smiles confidently at her, Chiho's breath catches in her throat.

"Which means that your friends are going to be fine. Raguel's not expecting me to show up and kick his ass right now, so surprising him and getting them out of there is going to be easy."

As warmth once again radiates through Chiho's chest, the rain above them starts to fall.