Chapter 11: Pour One Out for Shake'n'bake
Trent looked at the fragments of Excalibur and remarked, "You know, with every encounter we have with the shitscaliburs, I get more and more disappointed with how trash they are." Walking forward and kicking the blade on the ground, he frowned at it, a hand coming up and tapping at his chin. "Like seriously, we went from a Last Phantasm, forged from humanity's desire to be exalted by the fae, either wielded for the sake of protecting and safeguarding humanity's future or by the Once and Future King..." Crouching down and picking up the blade, he turned it over in his hands. "To these things that fucking break like nobody's business."
In response, Mordred spat on one of the shards on the ground, her nose wrinkling.
"Excalibur was a holy sword forged by the Lord, gifted unto King Arthur for his piety and to protect humanity and the Faith," Xenovia interjected, a thunderous expression clouding her face as her knuckles whitened from how tightly her hands were balled. "The sheer disrespect you're showing paints your heretical ways for what they are, and He will judge you appropriately when your time comes."
Johan turned away from the pile of ashes that used to be Freed Selzen (which Oryou was eyeing with an uncomfortable level of interest) and let out a sigh. "Can we save the castigation and catechisms for...oh, I don't know, never? Bickering and admonishing wastes valuable time that we could be using to track down whoever else might be working with Kokabiel."
"I got a net going over Kuoh right now, looking for him," the Canadian Master replied, standing to his full height. "Besides, for God to judge me… he'd need to catch me first."
"Ha! A good outlook, Master!" Nobunaga barked, clapping him on the back as she threw her head back, her hair flaring out behind. "But as it stands, our current predicament cannot be helped with no intel!"
At her side, Xenovia looked about ready to try pulling Durandal again, only restrained by what had occurred minutes ago.
"Perhaps the Lord Lucifer will have an idea when he arrives," Akeno remarked, her smile seemingly growing from the byplay between Trent, Nobu, and Xenovia.
As the redheaded King squawked, Tsubaki nodded as she adjusted her glasses. "Indeed, and I've no doubt that Lady Leviathan will have her own ideas."
"Wait, you've called two of the four Satans? This is a clear breach of our agreement!" the blue-haired Exorcist growled, one of her eyebrows twitching as she prowled forward, her shoulders shaking with rage.
Stepping forward as her smile took on an edge, Akeno chortled. "Our original agreement, maybe. But, that was before it was confirmed that Kokabiel, a veteran from the Great War was involved. The idea that we would leave the safety of ourselves and our territory in the hands of two green Exorcists in the face of such a threat is laughable." Crossing her arms beneath her sizeable chest, she added, "Maybe if the Church had sent the Violence of Heaven, we would have been willing to allow such a thing, but for you two?" Her smile became crueler as she stared down her nose at the pair.
"Not a chance in Hell."
"As my compatriot said, the situation became one where the original terms of our agreement could not be abided. I'm sure you understand," her fellow Queen agreed, nodding in a manner that she was sure was contrite.
Flipping the fragment of Excalibur over in his hand, Trent remarked, "Let's be real, this essentially counts as them throwing you two from the deep end into the middle of the ocean. This is not the sort of scenario where one turns down help, I'll tell you that for free. Do you think we turned down Achilles and Jeanne d'Arc's help when we were taking on the fake Adam that Avicebron and Amakusa put together? No, we'd have to be stupid to do so!"
"Even if every one of those fucking squares on the Round Table were assholes, except for the puppy and Father, I would still take their help if I fucking needed it. Even that shitheel Agravain," Mordred agreed, nodding firmly as she put her hands on her hips.
Johan nodded at that. "We're going up against a being whose name was recorded in the Bible. If that's not enough reason to pull out all the stops, I don't know what is."
"C-come now, Akeno, there was no need to bother my brother or the Lady Leviathan with this matter," Rias interrupted, her mouth pulled into a grimace while a flush worked its way up her neck.
Beside her, Sona was nodding with her eyes screwed shut. "Quite, this is our territory, it's our job to protect it, even from threats like Kokabiel."
"Milady, while I respect your and Lady Rias's dedication to your duties, as your Queen, it is my job to protect you from your own poor decisions," Tsubaki declared, Akeno nodding firmly alongside her.
Both of the Kings sputtered at that, unable to refute the logic being thrown in their faces.
Trent chuckled at their reactions, adding his own two cents. "Look, there's no shame in needing help and admitting it. Johan and I wouldn't have survived if we hadn't leaned on each other and our allies."
Johan nodded sagely. "If not by the Lord Impaler's stakes or by the sword that felled Fafnir, then the false Garden of Eden or Indra's dart would have sure been our end, without all the allies we managed to make."
"I see someone's feeling chuuni," his blond friend remarked, his eyebrows rising in amusement.
The albino snorted, raising a hand in front of his face and slowly closing it into a fist... "That's my secret, Trent. I'm always chunni."
"Well, yeah, I don't doubt that," the Canuck agreed, inclining his head. "Really, you can just call Uncle Vlad, Uncle Vlad. Besides, Hyde gave Karna the deep honk, our lives don't really fit that sort of mold."
Johan dropped his chunni for a moment to shudder. "Fucking hell, don't remind me. He might've been an enemy and working for a massive dumbass, but Karna didn't deserve to die like that."
"So fun as your babbling is, I do believe that this tangent isn't conducive to our current circumstances," Akeno remarked, looking entirely too curious at the mention of the deep honk.
Ryoma cleared his throat, very deliberately ignoring how his dragon wife was Hoovering up the ashes of a dead man. "Indeed. Trent, have your familiars found anything in the time you've been bickering?"
"Nope, only the occasional bit of money on the ground," the blond replied.
Johan snorted. "Ah, the Shigechi strat; maybe we can start using your familiars to Harvest other useful things later."
"Mm, we can only hope, with how fucking useful these assholes are in finding what we're actually looking for," the Canuck groused, his jaw moving from side to side as he looked through the eyes of his flock.
He then blinked, and declared aloud, "Anyone know if there were any tubby old priests in Kuoh? Because I got one running like the bundle in his arms is an altar boy."
"Uh, there, there aren't any active priests in Kuoh," Asia answered, shyly peeking out from behind Issei as she gave Trent a disapproving look. Unfortunately for her, she looked more like a puffed up hamster than anything intimidating.
The blond, realizing that he'd upset the cute girl who was a genuinely nice and caring person, deflated slightly. He wouldn't apologize for his joke, because he knew that it was funny, and he'd remember it.
With her hand slapped over Xenovia's mouth, Irina asked, "Could you describe him? Maybe we would be able to recognize him."
"Uh…" Trent let out a grunt, as his eyes narrowed, focusing on the man. "Well, he's definitely overweight, wearing the vestments of a bishop or so, has on one of them white skull caps with his hair peeking out. He's wearing a pince-nez and has a pencil moustache, which matches his grey hair." Opening his eyes, he added, "Seriously, the man looks like a walking stereotype for priests."
By this time, Irina had produced a small booklet from somewhere on her person (despite the fact that all she was wearing beneath her cloak was a skintight leather suit, but Johan wasn't going to linger on that line of thought) and started flipping through it. Once she reached a particular page, her eyes took on a dead expression, and turned it so that Trent could see it.
"This him?" she asked, deadly serious.
Taking the book in hand and studying the picture, he was about to agree when he got to the crimes section. "Archbishop Genocide? Numerous counts of human experimentation and child murder? What the fuck, that's… okay, it's an entirely different sort of criminality than I expected, and it's still just as heinous."
"Gallilei." Kiba let out a sound akin to a clogged woodchipper as his eyes flashed with malice, the oversized sword once more manifesting in his hand, the flawed creation almost immediately collapsing under its own weight and half of its blade fading into magic particles.
Looking up at the Knight, Trent considered making a joke about them being old friends, or Kiba perhaps having been an altar boy under the criminal. Instead, he remarked, "So, you wanna kill this guy? I don't think any of us would begrudge you that."
Kiba looked up at his fellow blond and gave a feral grin. "Oh, you have no idea." He glanced at the hilt of the broken weapon he'd formed and allowed it to fade away, before properly reforming the false Dragonslayer and leaning it on his shoulder.
"Where...where is he?" he asked, his voice still hoarse.
The Canadian chuckled as he directed his flock, small sparks of electricity crackling from their feathers as they coordinated like a synchronized swimming team and divebombed the corpulent criminal. Carefully guiding the scurrying into their general area, he smiled serenely.
"Oh, he's on his way here."
Looking up from the ground where Freed had once been to regard Kiba's blade, Oryou let out a hum and then remarked dreamily, "Oryou likes sashimi, even if it isn't frog."
Unsurprised by the dragon's casual reference to eating people, Trent looked to Ryoma and inquired, "So, have you tried a Kermit kigurumi in the bedroom? I'm sure it would rile her up." After a moment, he added, "If you need someone to do his voice, I can record a few lines for you."
Ryoma gave Trent a look that contained all the world's exasperation, and replied, "I'd rather you Kermit seppuku."
Quirking his eyebrows up, the blond adopted a surprisingly good approximation of the muppet's voice. "Mm, tough sell, eh? Well, I understand, it's not easy being green. Especially with a strong lady with a hankering for frog legs."
At this, Oryou raised her head to make eye contact with Trent. Without breaking eye contact, she retrieved a frog from her tupperware container and took a massive, gory bite out of the frog's crotch area, slurping its intestines down like spaghetti.
"Oryou doesn't approve of netorare," she declared ominously, frog guts dangling from her lips.
Immediately, Trent tried to explain that wasn't the thrust of his joke. Besides, he was comparing Oryou to Miss Piggy! That was a huge compliment in his books.
Watching this, Mordred snorted, "Feh, the bastard ain't the sort to imitate that asshole Lancelot,
too weird about his vampire biddy."