Rebel 7: Split Operatives
As the light finally died down, Louise opened her eyes, to be met with a room that was nearly pristine white. Strange lights of many colours flashed from each and every surface she could see.
"Well, that's an interesting read," the voice she recognised as Kokonoe's sounded. "Perhaps it's something to do with having DNA from two separate dimensions?"
"Well, don't ask me," the voice of Tager responded, "you're the professor here."
"Not appreciating the sass, Tager," Kokonoe stated. "Ah, looks like the last ones through." Louise's eyes finally adjusted to the light, and she could finally make out the figure of Kokonoe, and immediately doubted what she saw.
Long pink hair not unlike her own, pale skin, amber eyes, if Louise didn't know any better, she might even call this scientist the physical embodiment of her older self. At least, if it wasn't for the two tails and cat ears that added to her features. Were Louise not well adjusted to strange individuals by now, she might have reacted poorly to this person.
"Are you... Professor Kokonoe, then?"
The cat-professor smirked. "Glad to know someone's been paying attention," she said. "Still, took your sweet time getting here, didn't you? Must be some sort difference in general time."
"Um. What?"
"Don't mind that," Tager interjected, as Kokonoe began mumbling on about space-time relativity. "She gets like this whenever an interesting idea occurs. How about I show you around? There's going to be some time to kill before we plan our next move."
Sector Seven was quite the place, Louise found. Ridiculously long halls adorned with strange windows that showed various words and numbers she barely understood, doors within doors within doors, it was all rather peculiar.
Most curious of all, though, in her opinion, was Tager himself. Louise might not have been very tall in her own right, but by the Founder, this man was a giant. Also bright red, and with fangs. Not to mention those massive hands the size of most mens torsos.
"Say, Tager?" she spoke up, after a moment of debilitating. "Do you mind if I ask you something?"
"It's about why I am the way I am, right?" Louise flinched as Tager guessed right. "It's quite alright, child. Although, I'm afraid I can't say too much about the matter, simply because I don't remember all the facts."
"You... don't remember?"
"I'm afraid not," Tager adjusted his glasses as he spoke. "The only details I know is that it was a mission gone wrong, and that the professor saved me by making me into this. Well, that and a hunch."
"A hunch?"
"Yes. I believe the Mad Dog may have had something to do with it."
Azrael. How many months had it been since she thought about that monster? Not long enough, that was for sure. What was it with that man? Did he just take absolute joy in tearing people apart?
As she stewed on her hatred, she noticed that she and Tager had come to a stop before one of the many identical doors. "This is one of Sector Sevens many break rooms," Tager said, putting emphasis of 'many'. "Think of it as our current hub of operations."
"So, basically, we've gone from one meeting room, to another meeting room," Louise surmised. There definitely seemed to be a lot of those these days; going from one gathering to share information to the next. It probably had to do with the fact that they were constantly bringing more people into the loop.
The door slid open, and much to Louise's surprise, she saw Tsubaki, Hakumen (presumably, judging by the sword) and her mother, all hunched over one of those computer things.
"Well, this makes an interesting sight," Tager spoke, catching the trios attention. "So, what's got you three so interested?"
"Trying to make sense of this family tree of ours," Karin Desiree answered.
Hakumen gave a small nod. "It is, by far, the most confusing thing I've had to deal with, putting our lineage onto paper. And I've lived through most apocalyptic events."
"Well, thankfully, Kokonoe's already prepared that," Tager stated, pulling a whiteboard from... somewhere in the room. First thing he did was scribble the names Ranga, Jin, and Saya around the centre bottom of the board. "First off, we have the siblings." He drew a line from each of them, connected to one point where he wrote Karin's name. "Next, the mother, Murakumo unit Epsilon, or Karin Desiree, if you prefer." Three lines were drawn downward, off to the side of the first trio, which lead to the names Louise, Cattleya, and Eleanore. "Then, the half-siblings that are the Vallière family, if you would."
"Okay, this makes some sense," Tsubaki muttered.
"We're just getting started," Tager said bluntly. "Next is all the other Murakumo units." he drew lines sideways from Karin's name, leading to Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, and Nu. Out of all of those, Louise only recognised Nu, though she did note that Mu had the name Noel Vermillion attached to it. "All the Murakumo units are effectively copied from the same source, the original Prime Field Device that first observed the Master Unit Amaterasu." The Murakumo's were then connected to the Prime Field Device listed as 'Origin'. "Each Murakumo holds a shard of the Origin's soul, which is also the soul of Saya." A line was drawn to connect Saya to the Origin. "And this is just the start."
"It gets worse?!" Louise all but shouted. Just from everything she'd learned over the past week, she now knew that she had roughly 12 aunts, all effectively cloned from her half-sister who knows how many centuries ago, and that one of them was also her step-sister. There were triangles and cones in this family tree. She was only ever warned about squares.
"That's only the stuff we know for certain about the biological relatives," Tager continued. "We've yet to get into the adopted side of the family." A second whiteboard was brought out, leading Louise and Tsubaki to both mutter 'oh dear god'. A line was drawn from the Ragna trio to the next board, connecting to the name Celica A. Mercury. "This is their adoptive mother." She was then connected to the name Konoe Mercury/Magister Nine. Huh, so there was a relation to mages on this side of the family, too. "This is Celica's elder sister," she was then connected to the name Jubei -Hakumen seemed to light up a bit at the name-, "and her husband, one of the Six Heroes from 100 years ago." Nine and Jubei were connected, leading into a single line that was... "They are also the parents of Kokonoe." Another line was drawn off from Jubei, this time causing Karin to react somewhat surprised. "On top of all that, a group of scientists used Jubei's genetic coding to create an entirely new species, known as the Kaka clan. Far more cat-like than the regular beastkin. And that should about summarise it, not counting the fact that Jin is Hakumen, and Ragna and Nu merge to become the Black Beast that the Six Heroes fight, or the fact that Ragna was the one to hold the Black Beast at bay for a year so that the Six Heroes could prepare for the final battle."
Louise stared at the two boards, trying to make sense of what she could, as Hakumen muttered something about 'freaking time-travel' under his breath. "Out of all of this," she began, "the main thing I'm taking away from it is that I'm at least the great aunt to an entire species by adoption."
"This is a mess," Karin muttered. "An absolute travesty to the concept of lineage. The lines should not be crossing over each other like this."
"And to think," Tsubaki said, "that I'd most likely be marrying into this."
Recalling some of the things Terumi said a while back, that statement didn't surprise Louise as much as it might have originally. "Miss Tsubaki, please tell me your family tree is at least normal."
Tsubaki Yayoi gave a laugh. It was not a good laugh. "No. It's actually worse."
Before Louise could so much as sigh in exasperation, the door was kicked open. It took all of 2.5 seconds for the confusion to die down when they realised it was Ragna. "Kokonoe, what the absolute fuck!"
"Wrong room, Ragna," Tager stated. "She's further down the hall. Fifteenth door on the left."
Ragna have a small salute of gratitude, before storming off again. "Is it sad that I'm use to that now?" Louise spoke.
"Not really," Hakumen replied.
Hours soon turned into tomorrow, and the next quote-unquote round table meeting had begun. This time featuring Kokonoe, Hibiki Kohaku, Noel Vermillion (who, as many others noticed, sounded awfully similar to Louise), Nu-13, Lambda-11 (with similar sounding voices), the present day Jin Kisaragi (who, as Louise noted, looked like he'd be an asshole to anyone that wasn't Tsubaki), and a girl with a squirrel tail named Makoto Nanaya.
This group just kept getting weirder by the day.
Several things to note about the current set-up, though. The room, a very large auditorium, was organised less as a 'round table' and more like a classroom. The Halkeginia residents had swapped their usual mage attire/school uniforms for something that would fit in more for a world like this. Jean Colbert, for instance, whom was currently standing up front with Kokonoe and Rachel Alucard, traded his robes for a 'lab coat'. It's a look that worked for him, really.
Guiche, literally the only other male Halkeginian in this dimension, wore what was best described as 'Tager's attire in XS', with the red swapped out for yellow. He went from looking like a fop to looking punk. Not particularly good punk, mind, but punk none-the-less.
The girls, on the other hand, had a strange mix between them. Louise's attire was not unlike that of Noel's, being a white undershirt that showed a lot of her back, a pink mantle over her shoulders (which thankfully covered most of her back, a black skirt with red lining, and her most fond of riding boots. Tabitha's clothing, styled somewhat after Rachel's attire, just made more blue and black, made her look far too much like a porcelain doll. Siesta's attire went from maid to office worker -nothing too major, but damn if she made pants look good. Montmorency's clothing didn't change all too much, mostly just that the cloak was discarded in favour of a rather plain jacket. Kirche's was... oh dear god. Could it even be called 'clothing'? It was more a series of small, tight fitting cloth that covered the bare necessities, and nothing more. According to the others, though, this was about as bad as what Makoto wore, so they barely batted an eye.
"Right, are we done ogling each other?" Kokonoe spoke up, drawing everyones attention forward. "If we are, then we can begin this freaking war counsel."
Ah. So we were calling it that. "Regardless of how calm things seem right now," Rachel said, "things in Halkeginia are far from safe. What, with both Terumi and Azrael out there doing lord knows what. Therefore, we need a plan of attack."
"Thankfully, though, we do have the advantage of tracking them," Colbert continued. "The very nature of being from one world causes the other to effectively reject their existence. Without the right amount of raw power, a person could theoretically be erased from existence without someone to observe them."
Huh. So the reason the Halkeginians weren't suffering any here was because they either had the strength, or were being observed? Makes sense, in a convoluted way.
"We have a lock on their locations," Kokonoe followed up, "and the teleporter is no longer buggy, so we won't be dropping Ragna anywhere different anymore." Ragna let out a moan of 'oh thank Christ'. "Terumi is located on the west side of the continent, while Azrael is currently wreaking havoc on that floating island." That meant Romalia and Albion, respectively. At least, that's what Louise believed. Terumi could have been in Gallia, but from the sounds of it, Azrael was already there, and that serpent bastard didn't seem like the type of guy for anyones sloppy seconds. "The downside to this situation is that we can't prioritise one over the other. We leave Azrael alone, and he'll probably sink that island with all the bodies he'll leave behind. We leave Terumi alone, and who knows how strong he'll get. Therefore, we have to do the one thing people in horror movies should never do."
Kagura let out a sigh of discontent. "We have to split up, don't we?"
Rachel shot a glare at the general. "Well, if you think it's such an bad idea, you oaf, why don't you come up with something."
"I'm not saying it's bad," he raised his hands in defence, "just that one way on another, it's really going to suck."
"No one said it wouldn't, Mutsuki," Kokonoe added. "What makes it worse for us, though, is the fact that while he have the advantage in numbers, most of those are a liability."
"What?" Guiche -fittingly enough- was the one to take exception to the statement. "How would we be a liability?"
"So, you think you can take on a guy who basically absorbs any damage he takes?" Kokonoe rebutted. "Or a guy who's very existence is fed by hatred? Hate to break it to ya, kid, but the only Halkenginian here that would actually make a difference is Louise, since she was able to break through Azrael's Enchant Dragunov. The rest of you would just be filling roles that more experienced people here could do."
"It's an unfortunate truth of the matter," Karin spoke up. "The teams could easily be compromised if too many inexperienced people take to the field."
"Which is exactly why we called in help, in the form of the Murakumos, Jin Kisaragi, and his company," Kokonoe added.
"I'd rather you not call those two my 'company'," Jin spoke. There was a particularly frigid edge to his tone. "Noel and Makoto are more just people I have learned to tolerate."
"I'm just here for my Ragna," Nu-13 said in a tone that was equal parts sweet and unnaturally creepy. Perhaps it was just the amount of glares being sent to her by Jin and Hakumen.
"Right. Moving on," Kokonoe pressed on, hardly phased. "As far as teams go, the two parties will have two members that are compulsory. The rest of you can flip a coin to be on whichever team you want, I don't particularly care."
"For taking on Azrael," Colbert continued, "we have decided that Louise and Hakumen are both a necessity. As for Terumi, it was concluded that Ragna and miss Nu would be the key players."
"Yeah, that makes sense," Ragna stated. "And hey, getting to kick Terumi's ass again? Must be Christmas already."
"Well, don't get too careless," Kokonoe put bluntly. "Once you're all set on who's going after who, we'll begin preliminary set-up. Team Louise can head straight for the target, but I want Team Ragna to meet me first. Got it?"
By the end of that day, the teams had been decided. Following Louise and Hakumen would be Noel, Makoto, Tager, Siesta, and Derflinger, while going with Ragna and Nu would be Jin, Tsubaki, Lambda, Valkenhayn, and Kagura . Karin had tried to vote to go with Ragna, only for Kokonoe to veto it on account of wanting to limit it to seven. Louise wasn't sure why, but it may have had something to do with the additional preperations she wanted to make.
Morning came once again, and team Louise had set out through the teleporter, and arrived on the floating continent of Albion. They were apparently two kilometres out from their target, so with time to kill on the walk, Louise decided she might as well get to know the two newer members of her party.
Noel Vermillion was, in some lights, a rather plain looking individual. She stood slightly taller than Louise, as was, in her own opinion, best described as Louise with shorted, blonde hair and green eyes. She was, personality wise, completely different from Louise. While Louise had a knack for being confrontational, Noel was unreasonably kind and polite. Ragna did warn to never let Noel cook, though. If it was enough to cause him to get into a cold sweat, she made sure to keep a note on it.
Makoto Nanaya was... something else altogether. Not only were beastkin something entirely new to Louise, but every moment she could get was spent smothering Louise in her... assets. She did seem quite fond of letting Louise, Siesta, and Noel all snuggle against her very bushy, very soft tail.
Louise was almost kind of glad her mother wasn't here to see this, or she might have had conniptions.
An hour into the walk, and the scent of smoke permeated the area. The faint sound of combat could be heard in the distance.
"Seems we've found our target," Hakumen uttered, drawing the Ookami. "All of you, prepare yourselves."
As one might have expected, Hakumen charged ahead without waiting. Breaking through the tree line, his blade immediately locked with the fists of his target.
"Oh?" Azrael spoke. "Back for seconds, mighty hero? I don't mind taking another bite out of you."
"Stow your arrogance, Mad Dog," Hakumen spat. "Today is the day you finally die."
"Yeah? You and who's army?"
"How about this one, jack-off!" Makoto shouted, delivering a very heavy blow to the back of Azrael's head. Followed shortly by a hail of bullets courtesy of Noel.
As the fight began to unfold, Louise noticed someone off to the side. A woman around her age, somewhat injured, with long blonde hair and pointed ears. Elf, huh? How about that? Quickly, she made her way over to the woman, helping her to her feet. "You alright? Anything broken?"
The woman looked quite surprised by the show of concern. Can't blame her, considering how most Halkeginian humans treat elves."N... no. I'm fine."
"Good, then you can help clear out the area." Louise turned to Tager. "You said there'd probably be a 'splash zone' for this fight, right? How far would that be?"
"Considering the amount of raw manpower on both sides," Tager analysed, "it would be safest to evacuate everyone in a four kilometre radius."
That was positively tame, she must say. Considering how close they were to the edge of the island (which just looked out over clouds), plus they were on the southern shore, that meant there was only one settlement in the area: the port.
Very convenient.
"Alright, then. This might actually be a simple matter," Louise muttered. "Just have to evacuate the town, is all."
"Um, actually," the woman spoke up, "that man's been rampaging over all of Albion for the past few weeks. Every settlement on the island has already been evacuated through the nearby port. I've just been holding him off for the past while as the last ships try to depart."
Very, very convenient.
"That is good work," Louise said plainly. "That is very good work. You've done a good job. What's your name?"
"Oh! I'm... Tiffania Westwood."
"Good work, Tiffania." That was, by far, the weirdest exchange of words Louise had ever taken part in, but at this moment, she barely cared. Things were looking their way. "Hakumen! Everyone!" she shouted towards the battlefield. "The island's completely empty! Lay into that twisted bastard!"
A smirk flared across the team. From Derflinger to Siesta, from Makoto to Noel and Hakumen. A means to defeat a great foe without risk of collateral? "In that case," Hakumen spoke, raising his sword high, "the end... has come!"
The road to Romalia capitol was long, littered with bodies, and above all else freaking boring. The group Ragna was 'technically' leading was also the most awkward for him.
First, his psycho of a wife, Nu, who was currently clinging to his arm like... well, like a clingy wife. Second, his psycho of a younger brother, Jin, currently glaring daggers at the two. Sure, he might have fixed his attitude over the past year or so, but Ragna could still feel the intense desire to kill from him. Third was Tsubaki, Jin's not-psychopathic-but-previously-suffering-from-black-and-white-insanity girlfriend. While there wasn't as much animosity between the two (heck, Ragna might even go so far as to say they could be considered friends), it was clear that in any situation, she would side with Jin over him. Next was Valkenhayn, and while they got along quite swimmingly on a good day (some would even call the two Rachel's good cop bad cop duo), the shape-shifter would not hesitate to kill him if his master ordered it.
Heck, the only two in this party he could say with absolute certainty he liked 24/7 was Kagura and Lambda.
Sighing, Ragna decided to finally break the ice. "So, how much farther until we finally get to kick that son of a bitch's ass?"
"About ten more minutes," Lambda answered in a mono-toned voice.
Ragna let out a sigh, partially wishing he were with Louise's team right now. They're probably fighting Azrael right now, and he's stuck here walking. Absent-mindedly, he took a small item from his pocket. "What was it that Kokonoe said we should do with these things?"
"To only take them when we were prepared to fight Terumi," Jin answered. "Supposively, they will suppress our strong emotions, allowing us to fight him on pure instinct rather than hatred. Do try to pay attention, brother."
"Ah, don't be too hard on him, Jinny," Kagura stated, wrapping an arm around the blondes shoulders. "It's not his fault he can't pay attention for more than ten minutes."
"Piss off, Mutsuki."
The walk was finally over. Romalia's capitol was in sight, and by God, what a messy sight it was.
Houses were burning, people were screaming, green light was emanating from the church at the centre of it all.
"Any bets where Terumi is?" Ragna commented rather sarcastically.
"Aw, the fun's already started," Nu pouted. "Nu wanted to hear people screaming while she cut a bitch."
Ragna gave Nu a flat look. "Nu, what have I said about that?"
"To not cause people to scream in terror, no matter the reason."
Jin could only sigh at the two. "God, you're both idiots."
"And you worked with Terumi, so don't call the kettle black, pot."
"Can we focus?!" Tsubaki shouted. "All of you, take those damn pills. We're going in there, and we're killing Terumi right now. End. Of. Discussion."
"Sheesh, what's up with this team composition?" Kagura muttered, swallowing his pill. "Feels like we're the only normal ones here, ey, Valkenhayn?"
"I do not think our definitions of normal match, Kagura Mutsuki," the butler replied.
Yuuki Terumi was Bored. Yes, so bored that he had to capitalise it. This place was just dull as all shit for him.
On one hand, he was rather handicapped by the fact that those bastards with Hakumen had managed to nab the Susano'o unit from him. On the other, though, the people of this world absolutely sucked. The closest he had to a challenge in the past few days was that pope guy, and even then it was laughable at best.
The world was effectively burning around him, and he just couldn't get it up.
The door at the far end of the room was kicked open, and several familiar faces stepped in. A smirk crept onto his face. "Finally," he muttered, "I was waiting for at least one of you morons to show up."
Ragna the Bloodedge, despite expectations, didn't react as expected to the comment. Rather than being violent or vocal, he was... mellow. Did someone bring about the apocalypse without telling Terumi? "Well, it's not like our bus could drop us any closer."
Okay, what the shit? On literally any other day, Terumi could get enough hatred out of Ragna alone to power Kagatsuchi for years to come, yet now? Not a damn drop. "Aw well," Terumi shrugged, dusting his cloak, "best not waste any more daylight. You came all this way to die, after all."
"You're as annoying as ever," Jin Kisaragi spoke, using an equally mono-toned voice. Something was up.
Well, no time like the present. "Then, if you'd be so kind," Terumi smirked, the green glow of Oroboros encasing his left hand, "as to see yourselves from this world."
And so, the charge began.
Albion Forest
The sky's the limit, and it's worth breaking.
The battle with Azrael, to Louise's surprise, was actually rather even.
Perhaps it was just the strength in numbers, topped off by the fact that Louise was making regular jabs to break through the mans ungodly defences, but no matter how you looked at it, there was a good chance for them to win.
It also helped that Makoto and Noel were absolute blessings for this team. Perhaps it had something to do with those guns -Bolverk, she believed they were called- that Noel had, or the fact that, according to Tager, Makoto once punched the moon from the planets surface (what). Regardless, though, they were pushing Azrael back, leaving him covered in bruises and slashed.
And he was loving every minute of it.
"Um, miss Louise?" Siesta spoke up. "Are we sure this is working? We've thrown basically everything at him, and even with those injuries, he's still not going down."
"I don't know for certain," Louise admitted, "we just have to trust in ourselves."
At that moment, Tager grabbed hold of Azrael, and launched both of them up into the air, going up for... a long while. Was gravity going to catch up at any point?
Makoto looked at the scene, and immediately stated "Oh shit."
Louise cast a glance to the beastkin. "Makoto, please explain why we should be scared."
"Tager's just used the King of Tager move," Makoto explained, "and the splash zone is large."
Okay, she only understood that this wasn't a good place to be for the next few seconds. "How big are we talking?"
"Big enough to level a city," Hakumen stated.
A quick glance back to the sky revealed that gravity did, if fact, catch up to Tager. The downside was the fact that he was returning as a meteor.
Hakumen quickly sprung into action. They wouldn't be able to get clear of the blast zone, no matter how fast they ran (which, for some of them, wasn't all that fast), so the most he could do was a powerful barrier to at least guard the brunt of the attack.
"KING..." The barrier was formed quickly and efficiently, and everyone took cover behind it. "OF..." Concluding that it wasn't enough, Noel and Derflinger stepped forward, adding their own strength to it.
"TAGER!"
The attack landed, and Louise would have sworn the entire island started to fall.
Thankfully, though, the shaking subsided, and as the dust settled...
Azrael stood over Tager's beaten body.
"God damned Dragunov bullshit!" Makoto yelled. It was quite the shared sentiment, to be sure.
"Well, this blows," Derflinger muttered, as the barrier fell. "Hey, Pinky, got any ideas in that head of yours?"
"Just one idea, and it's not the best," she answered. "I've been working on a spell with Rachel for a while, and while it might do something to him, I can't say what the area of effect will be. Plus, I need time to charge it."
"Well, that's not so bad..."
"For three minutes," she interrupted the sword-Susano'o. "And considering he's able to kick our collective ass in two, our hopes aren't exactly high."
"They're high enough," Hakumen said. "You only need three minutes? We shall get you five."
Romalia Cathedral
Through faith, one can achieve ignorance.
Terumi was absolutely fuming right now.
Things were not going at all the way he wanted them to. He was suppose to be getting under their skin, riling them into making mistakes, into hating him so much that he could just exist. Yet these bastards were just so freaking calm, it irritated him to no end.
To say he was on his back foot would not be untrue.
The chain of Oroboros shot forth, attempting to take a bite out of Tsubaki Yayoi, only for Jin to intercept it with relative ease.
As Ragna charged at him, Terumi found himself doing one thing he'd never done before: pray for some gods-damned miracle to happen.
Three minutes had finally elapsed, and Louise's spell was ready.
The path was cleared, and she charged at Azrael.
Her wand at the ready, she finished the long incantation, and shouted "Banish!"
All the powers that made up the element of Void, the power of the Boundary itself, coiled around Azrael and everything in a three metre radius of him. Unfortunately, that included Louise herself.
And from a long way away, the Azure Grimoire reacted.
A/N:
Here we go, coming into the final stretch.
Admittedly, this took far longer than it should have, but I'm slow, what the heck.