A Tiny Omake

AN: Apparently this has returned. For a bit.

Enjoy!

"Maybe we had too much fun… so god punished us." Ryuunosuke said, sighing amidst the dreary sewer pipes.

His servant, a caster class servant Gilles de Rais, suddenly grasped his shoulders, and with great googly-eyed power and with robes adorned with pinkish purple tentacles, proclaimed: "I'll tell you this, Ryuunosuke, God never punishes humans! He simply toys with them!"

Spittle flew in the air as the crazed man spoke, his gesticulations wild. His impossibly wide eyes opened even more.

Sakura paused the video playing on my laptop.

"Why are we watching this again?" she asked me. "This is just two crazy people talking with each other."

"Exactly." I said, pointing to her and nodding. "This is what happenes at the beginning of a cult. BY analyzing this behavior, you too can embrace the nonsense that is playing by their rules and successfully trick them into sparing you while we conduct our investigations."

"Speaking of which, when will our next move happen?" She asked, gesturing to the messy board tacked to the brim with possible connections.

"Our next move will be their last." I said vindicitavely. "We're bringing voice recorders next time, and we're going straight to the boss. Rias Gremory."

"And we need to watch this because…"

"It's because they started this localized cult themselves, and through the influence of whatever drug existing cults already had, they began to hallucinate all of this magic nonsense."

"But wouldn't one sane person just say the truth and disband all of the nonsense? By saying that Magic isn't real?" Sakura asked.

"It only takes one crack in their psyche for them to truly believe in it." I said, "Which is why we're going to watch the formation of a truly disastrous duo. And even if this may not be the most accurate documentary of the creation of a cult, it will give you insight in how these minds work."

"Since when were you an expert in criminal psychology?" Sakura asked.

"Since I began this investigation." I said, pulling out a box of books from beneath the table. Sakura looked at it and gaped.

"How many psychology books have you been reading?"

"A lot." I said, sighing. "And though you won't be able to understand all of these abstract concepts, I thought that these guys were a good crash course for you to help me bluff when we finally attack the Gremory Mansion."

"Do you really think we can do that?" Sakura asked. "Won't rich people have some security cameras or guards?"

"This is where you're wrong." I said, smirking. "Because they're rich, most people assume that they have hired security. But since they're a bunch of insane cultists, they probably have some sort of ward or supernatural symbol that they believe keeps out intruders."

Sakura opened her mouth, closed it, and then nodded. "That actually makes sense. Maybe those books aren't just psychology graduate students vomiting on paper."

I pressed the play button.

"I have committed greater atrocities and blasphemies than anybody on this earth." Gilles said, gesturing dramatically to the ceiling of the sewer pipes.

"But no matter how much I murdered and defiled, no divine punishment came!" The wizard proclaimed.

"The next think I knew, my quest for evil was ignored for eight whole years. In the end, it was not the wrath of god that destroyed me, but the greed of other humans for my possessions! The church and state convicted and executed me simply for my wealth and land!"

Sakura paused the video again.

"Wait… this is different from the cult we're dealing with! This guy already had previous traumatic experiences, and is merely sharing what he believes is his history. Our people are just a bunch of teenagers and shouldn't have any experience with this insane stuff! Did they just spontaneously come up with their concept and make it into their cult?"

"Of course not." I said, this time gesturing to the manga in the corner. "Pop culture concerning magic and rituals such as the very ones in Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay night could have been the basis for their lunacy."

"So you're saying…" Sakura said, "That cults are caused by pop culture?"

I nodded sagely. "Without the seeds of fantasy introduced by other people's delusions, how can these movements even begin?"

I played the clip again.

"What bought along the end of my evil deeds wasn't Judgement! It was simply theft!" Gilles grabbed his master's shoulders again, back hunched and staring straight into his eyes.

"But… Mister…" Ryuunosuke said, "God does exist, right?"

The sun chose this moment to unveil itself, shining light into the damp space of the subterranean tunnels.

"You are faithless and have never witnessed a miracle. Why do you believe that?"

"Because the world appears to be boring-"

I paused the video. "This is it." I said, pointing to the figures kneeling at each other on the screen. "This is the beginning of the establishment of common ground."

"You're really into this, aren't you?" Sakura said, smirking at me.

"This is no time for jokes!" I said, snapping at her. "Pay attention!"

I pressed the play button again.

"-But you just have to look beneath the surface to find all kinds of crazy stuff!" Ryuunosuke said, standing up and holding his arms up to the light. He looked disturbingly peaceful.

"I've always thought this." Ryuunosuke said, turning around and taking dizzy steps around the sewers.

"A world with so many wonderful things could never have come around by chance! Once you decide to enjoy it for real, you'll find no better entertainment in this world!"

Ryuunosuke began giggling "There's got to be an entertainer out there who's writing a saga about five billion people!"

"If you want to describe somebody like that, then there's no better word for it than 'god'!" He looked back at Gilles, arms outstretched towards the heavens once again.

"Then, Ryuunosuke, do you think god loves humans?" Gilles said, a small hint glittering excitement appearing behind his foggy, grey eyes.

"He's head over heels!" Ryuunosuke said, turning and smiling at Gilles. "He couldn't possibly write the saga of this world continuously and restlessly without love!"

"I'm sure he has a lot of fun writing it, enjoying his own work all the while." Ryuunosuke mimed typing on a keyboard-"

I paused the clip once again.

"And now, we can observe the two bonding over insane ideals! Eventually, Gilles fully embraces his evil self, and the fact that god still exists, and that fact makes them unleash gigantic tentacle monsters across the city."

"What anime is this again?" Sakura said, looking mildly discusted.

"Sakura!" I said in mock offense. "How could you forget Fate/Zero?"

"Yeah, yeah." She said, sighing. "I'm sorry I'm not as much of a shut in as you and actually have a life outside of detective work and anime."

I sighed. "Anyways, ready for the next step?"

"Feed into their insane ideas to make them form the conclusions themselves." Sakura said, summarizing up my points better than I ever could.

"Good." I said, cheerfully. "Now, in what should be the next one to two weeks, we're going to grab the evidence that dad collected over a cult ritual killing, the katana, and a lot of pizza, then barge into their mansion."

"And do we expose them?" Sakura said, scratching her head.

"No," I said, "Dear sister, while I am parlaying with the cultists, you will walk off in the middle of a rant that I myself will script to distract them, and look for evidence that they were behind the attack at the church and the desecration of another religious site."

"What did they do?"

"Wreck half the walls of the church where we rescued that nun."

"They did?" Sakura said, "Didn't they realize that she was already gone?"

"Well, apparently not." I said. "This just proves how delusional they are, to think that a statue with a wig on it is a person."

"What happened to the nun, anyways?" Sakura said. "We just dropped her off in a street corner. What if she gets kidnapped again?"

"She's hopefully smart enough to avoid the cultists." I said, nodding to myself. "Besides, she sounds European. She's probably come with the church to do some missionary work. Maybe she'll head back to their Church headquarters."

"Hopefully…" Sakura said, a faraway look in her eyes.

…

Asia sneezed, sitting in the middle of the devil's lair: the Gremory mansion.

That was about as far away from a church as one could be.

And that's the Omake! I'm going to wrap up this story soon, and I really want to thank the 98 people that stuck with this story and spared the effort to click two buttons and follow it.

See y'all in the finale! (Which will be coming… soon….)

(And by soon, I mean maybe a month or two :P)

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