Author's note: Thank you all for reading. Neko: Thank you for supporting me all this time. I actually built up a lot of good ideas and will probably select some of them to spin into full stories; the last chapter was one of them, so we'll see. Lyric: Thanks a bunch; the mass reviews made me really happy, especially the one for chapter 14. I'm glad you liked the subtext :D. This chapter is another tentative idea for a long story, so it's probably confusing. Enjoy guys.
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Twenty first moment: Dog
Father Furuichi has a Dog.
He would have said that he had a Loyal Dog, too, but everyone agreed that his was a Rabid Dog, so eventually the guy had to acquiesce, though not without a sneer on his part. Well, the truth remains that the Rabid Dog belongs to Father Furuichi and Father Furuichi alone.
The first time Himekawa, the organisation's number three, suggested that Mad Dog Oga belonged to the Church, he had had his nose broken by said Mad Dog. And then Toujou, the organisation's number one, had tried to lead Oga into a fight, and they ended up losing themselves to bloodlust until Father Furuichi jumped into the fray to pry them apart. Granted, the priest did lose a fair number of teeth, but eventually they stopped the fight when realisation hit Oga just who it was that he was trying to hurt.
See, the point is, they're a rag-tag bunch trying to fight monster with monster, and Mad Dog Oga is the only among them who has crossed the line to the other side. Of course, he is a necessity, because without a true monster among their lot they would have lost ages ago to Prince En's army of devils. Regardless, every single bastard in the organisation is a monster in his own right, because they shed blood and delight in it. And yet, none of the monsters could stop Oga, and it was pretty clear to all that Toujou would have died a dog's death. What did Lamia say? Oga Tatsumi is a Rabid Dog.
It was only Father Furuichi – the puny human Furuichi, and only Father Furuichi ever to call Mad Dog Oga back to sanity. It's never easy, of course, but the human would stand his ground and get up every single time he would fall, and they would fight until in the end Oga would cradle Father Furuichi's bloody head to his chest as the guy smiled up at his Dog, all black eyes and split lips but more beautiful than anything in the world.
Lamia thought she would never understand how such a frail human could survive within their organisation, packed to the seams with beasts. She's not so sure now, because she's starting to see how none of them would have survived had the Owner not been there to hold the leash on his Rabid Dog.