Chapter Twenty-Four: Aftermath

As Ushi Gozen's wrath given form as lightning filled the space between heaven and earth, Ryoma felt the stirrings of panic trying to take hold of him. "Oryou!" he barked, the seeds of a plan—no, a desperate gambit at best—passing between them with that single shouted word.

In the next instant, the great serpent sealed by Izanagi's spear was gone, and the yamato nadeshiko that Oryou had chosen as her human form was diving towards the ground, dodging between bolts of lightning. With Ryoma under one arm, Oryou's hair warped and spun like a drill, and the couple disappeared beneath the earth as the divine storm passed.

"You! You! How dare you!" Raikou howled, a chorus from five mouths spoken in unison, tears flowing ceaselessly down each and every cheek, highlighted by the violet lightning crashing across them. "Your tainted existence damns this world and corrupts the land! You need to die, you need to die!"

Hundreds of needle-thin strands of lustrous black hair erupted from the ground here and there, seeking the Berserker and her copies' hearts and throats. More lightning poured from Raikou's weapon, incinerating the hair before it could so much as scratch her.

Exactly as Ryoma had predicted, it turned out. Oryou burst from the ground directly beneath her foe, driving her fist into the woman's chin with a textbook rising uppercut even as Ryoma rose behind her, bringing his sword down in a monk's robe cut diagonally across her back.

It was a testament to Raikou's skill that she was able to turn the impact of being struck by Oryou's draconically powered fist into a spinning slash, meeting Ryoma's blade with an explosion of lightning and noise. The Rider was forced back a step by her monstrous strength, and thereby was unable to prevent her from following through with the motion of her blade as she continued her spin to lash out at Oryou once more – only to find that the dragon woman was nowhere to be found, having already dived back underground.

"This is great!" Hercules roared as he threw himself towards the earth, nubs poking from his skin as he attempted to use his Sacred Gear to destroy the ground. Before he hit it, his ankle was caught by the axe-wielding Raikou, who threw him out of the fray.

"Insolent child! Insolent! Listen to adults! Listen!" she repeated, barely having turned to look at him while the other clones continued to engage the married couple. "This is no place for you! Leave it to those who have expertise! Leave it to Mother!"

Blinking at the entire affair as she dived into the melee, Shuten-douji barely even blinked as she drove her feet into Hercules' stomach, slamming him into the ground hard enough to create a small crater. She let out a tired sigh as she moseyed forwards, adjusting her kimono to make sure it was still on properly as she studied the lavender-clad Berserker. "You know, I thought you were familiar, but looking at you now, I can't help but wonder exactly who fucked you so hard to make you this nuts. I mean, the Yorimitsu I knew was a bit out there, but you? You're more than just one dango short of a skewer, you're short an entire platter. Daddy beat your mom too hard when she was pregnant with you or something? I remember the Minamoto house being that sort of fucked up."

"You! You disgusting bug! You always hung around my beloved child, and now I'll incinerate you as filth like you deserves!" It was clear that any rationality Raikou had held was long gone as her clones abandoned their assault on Oryou and Ryoma, her ability to vocalise quickly degenerating to wordless howling. Violet lightning streamed across the ground and between the clones as they shot towards Shuten.

"Isn't this guy important to you?" Shuten asked as she reached behind her to pull Hercules out in front of her, in between her and the clone. She shook him, and added, "Honestly, I'll admit my taste has deteriorated over the years, but even I wouldn't go for a kid this ugly. Like, are these nubs sticking out of him a fashion of some sort? Because I'm still trying to figure out if gyaru culture's dead."

The silver-haired young man tried to speak, only to be cut off by a catty voice. Still up in the tree overlooking the battlefield, Tamamo no Mae hollered, "Gyaru won't die as long as there's a Japanese Culture to be counter to!"

Raikou didn't answer with words, only a pitched howl as her clones broke into a pincer manoeuvre, aiming to flank Shuten from every angle. The oni tilted her head to the side and hummed, "Hey, you're not completely brainless!" She threw Hercules aside as her mouth pulled into a savage grin and she shrugged her kimono off her shoulders. Except for a sarashi girding her breasts, she was nude from the waist up, revealing a body toned by centuries of training and scarred by decades of battle. "Let's have some fun, Yorimitsu!"

As two eternal foes whose enmity crossed space, time, and even the multiversal gap itself faced one another, a faintly smouldering Oryou emerged from the ground beside Ryoma. She glared at the Berserker, then gave a hiss of pain before regarding her husband, who looked more than a little bit ragged.

"Master hasn't been responding to my telepathy," Ryoma grunted quietly. "He's not dead, because I'm still receiving mana, but we should return regardless. Berserker is distracted; this may be our best chance."

Oryou frowned, then gave a mulish grunt and hoisted Ryoma onto her back. "He better have plenty of frogs for Oryou to pay her back for this battle." she grumbled, before kicking off the ground and blurring away.

Even as the battle roared between Shuten and Raikou, the former coated in a translucent sort of energy and the other clad in a cloak or purple electricity, the world fell silent.

In that moment, sound died.

It started as a speck in reality, before exploding outward. The path to Kur opened, and annihilation in the form of a man walked forth unbowed.

The ground beneath his feet eroded to nothing, consumed by the void. The air, down to molecules, was devoured by nothingness. The death of eternity whispered into the world, and the world could do naught but buckle.

Oblivion personified raised a hole in reality in the vague shape of a limb. No sound escaped the being's form, but somehow the words resounded within the minds of every living thing on the battlefield.

-Ruin The Extinct-

And then, Destruction poured from the sky like a swarm of inverted shooting stars.

Even as a pair of Raikou's clones were swallowed by a trio of them, a fog wall rolled into existence on the field and in the building. Connla disappeared into it, pulled into it by the fog itself. Jeanne and Gilles, who had been shielding themselves with multitudes of aberrations summoned by Prelati's Text, followed soon after. Hercules and Raikou were also pulled away, earning an annoyed grunt from Shuten as she tried to reach through the mist. A good number of the so-called Hero Faction's other soldiers were pulled away as well, but it was impossible to tell whether they were alive or dead.

Most of the fog, however, was unmade by the Lucifer's wrath, as were the remaining forces that had not been fortunate enough to be stolen away by the ominous mist.

A murder of false crows winged into the sky, and Trent sighed as he took in the sight of the now-overwhelmed forces which had been attacking them. Hopefully, Nobu wouldn't try to execute the prisoners.

Nobunaga wasn't, in fact, permitted to commit more war crimes in this instance, though judging from the expressions on the faces of various faction leaders, this was less due to mercy and more due to them wanting concrete information on this so-called "Hero Faction".

On a related note, Vali and Kuroka were even now receiving dozens of side-eyed glances, ranging from suspicion to confusion to outright terror. Notably, Koneko was hiding behind Rias and shaking like a leaf, much to her elder sister's visible sadness.

Trent looked around the room, taking in the newcomers with some suspicion and confusion, and took a moment to smile at the sight of Milicas practically sandwiched between his parents. Next to the Gremory Peerage, Johan was conscious again thanks to the efforts of Asia, and had Ryoma and Oryou standing behind him. Well, Ryoma was standing; Oryou was, as ever, floating.

The smile disappeared from Trent's face almost as soon as it came as he felt an elbow dig into his side, and glancing from the corner of his eye, he found a grinning Nobunaga there, back in her Archer form. He was about to shake his head, to tell her not to do whatever she was planning when she jerked her head forward, towards the group at large. Realising just what she was suggesting, Trent sighed before clearing his throat, drawing most of the room's attention to him.

"So…that happened. Anyone want to start?"

"Why don't you start, Vali?" Azazel immediately suggested, turning to look at his adopted child. "I'm sure you have a lot to share, given what all just happened."

Vali gave a short, serious nod, then began to speak. "As far as the intricacies of that group of fanatics goes," he said with a disdainful expression, "my knowledge is relatively shallow. Their leader, Cao Cao, has—" he paused, glanced at Sirzechs, then amended, "—had the True Longinus. Other individuals of note include Georg, who possesses Dimension Lost, Leonardo, a child who bears Annihilation Maker, a clone of Siegfried, who bears the Demonic Sword Gram, and the sibling descendants of the Pendragon line—"

"THROUGH FUCKING WHO?!" Mordred bellowed, already on her feet, her expression pulled into a rictus of fury. "Father had no children but me, so there being a living line – that witch."

Looking at the Knight of Betrayal, Trent blinked at the realisation that both Astolfo and Charlie were missing. He'd need to figure out where they went at some point.

Vali blinked at the interruption, but shook his head before continuing. "Their little cult certainly had other members, but none particularly worth remembering – oh, wait. There was that blond girl who summoned that bug-eyed psychopath…her name was John, I think?"

Trent choked aloud, his eyes going wide at the sheer disrespect, but decided that he could respect the guy's hustle.

Vali shook his head. "Regardless, their 'creed' is to 'free humanity from the supernatural', though their actions show them to be just as great a danger to the mundane world as any of the various factions might be." He crossed his arms. "The head may have been severed, but Georg is a dangerous and competent second-in-command in his own right."

"They're sure going about it stupidly," Nobunaga declared, dropping her chin onto one of her palms. "It's fine to want humanity to stand on its own, with the supernatural doing their own thing, but to actively antagonize the other side is stupid and invites conflict."

"You have no foot to stand on here, Nobu," Trent grunted, frowning down at the small tyrant. "You burnt down a mountain full of monks."

"They shouldn't have gotten in my way then, huh?" the Archer shot back quietly.

Rather than let the byplay between the two play out, Serafall interrupted. "So, that's cool and all, but…" Drawing the word out, the magical girl devil king tilted her head from side to side. "How come you were rolling with them, huh? And did you mention Ophis too? That's wack."

Vali blinked slowly at the prospect of the Leviathan using the word "wack" then closed his eyes and nodded. "I wouldn't say that I was, er, 'rolling with them', per se. More that…I was the leader of one of many groups that Ophis Oroboros decided to…I suppose the best word would be 'sponsor'." He opened his eyes again, eyes sharpening. "I originally joined her 'Khaos Brigade' so that I might have the opportunity to fight Great Red—"

"You what?" Azazel cut in, rounding on the silver-haired young man with wide eyes, his expression one of paternal concern.

Vali cut his eyes over at his adopted father figure. "Don't act as though you're surprised, old man. You know I've been seeking a greater challenge ever since Tobio got whipped and his girl decided fighting me was bad for him."

"Just say you won't unleash Juggernaut Drive and she'll probably be fine with it!" the head of the Grigori shot back immediately.

"You'd think that, but Toujou is entirely too stubborn and fearless for an Onmyouji not even able to unleash her chief shikigami." Vali rolled his eyes.

Off to the side, now reclining and sipping at a gourd, Shuten-douji asked, "Why not fight her too?"

Vali snorted. "Then Tobio wouldn't ever fight me again. Girl's got guts, but as she is now, I wouldn't even need to bring out my Gear."

"Why not both of them at the same time?" Shuten asked, her eyebrows raised.

The White Dragon Emperor visibly paused at that, a considering look in his eyes. "...I might just have to try that. Toujou is the type to romanticise fighting beside her beloved..." He inclined his head at Shuten in thanks.

"As entrancing as this conversation is," Yasaka remarked, sitting primly in seiza as she took deep, calming breaths, "might we return to the main thrust of our conversation? Ophis the Infinite Dragon God being involved in this debacle?"

Vali blinked, then nodded. "Right, of course. Now, I can't pretend I know how a being like Ophis' mind works, but the understanding I got is that the Dragon of Dragons has camped out in the Dimensional Gap and Ophis wants him gone 'so the quiet will come back'." Vali shrugged. "In pursuit of that, she recruited the Hero Faction, the Old Satan Faction, and myself along with Kuroka and Bikou, who isn't here right now. He's a descendant of Sun Wukong."

"And are we just not going to address the fact that you have one of the most wanted Stray Devils in your group?" Rias interjected, eyes narrowed and trained on Kuroka. While her tone was diplomatic, her expression was thunderous and one of her arms had snaked around behind her to hold Koneko's hand.

Vali missed none of this, of course, and pushed off of the wall he was leaning against to position himself between the redheaded King and his companion. "Perhaps when a legitimate investigation into the crimes of Glaucmatosis Naberius is conducted, then we can discuss why Kuroka felt the need to slay her King."

"Perhaps," Sirzechs interrupted, not having moved from his position, but the pressure of his stern gaze causing the two to back down, "we should shelve such matters for the moment and reschedule our meeting. As it stands, it's clear that there's a great amount to discuss, alongside the fact that we also need to check on various things." As he spoke, his eyes darted down to his son, who was supposed to be at the Gremory Estate.

A general chorus of agreement was roused from the group as a whole, though there was a general undercurrent of tension and uncertainty, particularly from the Gremory group. As they settled in for what would no doubt be a long and gruelling discussion, there was a sound, like paper rustling, and a small origami bat flapped into the room and settled in front of Rias before opening it's paper maw and beginning to speak.

"Sumimascuse me, minnabody!" Osakabehime's voice chittered from the bat. "But there's been a majerious situation back in Kuoh, and you need to get back prontaiyaku! Ma-chan's girlbitofriend showed up with a yabaizy Lancer who gave the enemies more holes than a communal daki!"

Rias inhaled deeply, her eyes now boring into the ground in distant cringe. Yasaka looked much the same, her mouth having pulled into a hollow rictus.

But both of their reactions were eclipsed by Tamamo's as she fell over, howling with laughter. "This, this can't be real! If this bitch is real, I love her, she's the best!"

Trent's mouth pulled into a grin that mirrored Nobu's, and the blond murmured to her quietly, "Which is ironic, given how hard the Tamamo we're familiar with bullied Okki."

"Ha!" the Archer chortled, her eyes alight with amusement. "What a wonderful world, to have found so many kindred spirits!"