I'm not sure if this makes sense.
Slader was nice enough to keep Ichigo company after that. Probably because he had an idea that Gowther was possibly up to some mischief.
And he knew that without proper intervention, Merlin was going to skin them all alive. Literally.
So at present the two were sitting in the corner of the pub playing cards and making small talk just to pass the time. Meliodas wouldn't swear to anything, but it looked like they were playing poker. And from how many dismayed noises Slader was making, Ichigo was obviously beating the pants off of him.
So naturally, Ban decided to gravitate over that way to see if he could play a few hands with them.
Meliodas was pleased to say that neither Slader nor Ichigo seemed to care all that much about Ban joining their game. In fact they ended their current hand and shuffled the cards so that they could go ahead and deal him in. And barely ten minutes later, both Ban and Slader were making sounds of dismay.
So Ichigo was apparently beating the pants off of them both now. Which was sort of funny since he could see that Ban was cheating.
He sighed as he thought, Ban's going to whine about losing to her later. And then his fellow sin would bum some money off of him, and then probably lose it in a card game with her- and the vicious cycle would continue until she either finally wised up and flat out refused to keep playing him. Or he simply refused to hand his coins over.
And that was only if either man was lucky. Either way, Meliodas was likely to lose a fortune in coins to the girl at one point or another. Not that he would complain any.
If he did, Merlin just might hurt him.
"So how'd you become a king anyways? I thought kings were always men." He heard Ban ask the girl. Perking up a little bit behind the bar, he continued to work as he eavesdropped.
"The word king, has nothing to do with a person's gender. It's a title." Ichigo said as she shuffled her cards around a little bit before finally saying, "I was born to two noble houses. The Kurosaki, and the Shiba. Both of my parents were...heirs to the houses, I guess."
"You guess. Don't you know?"
"To be perfectly honest, the politics were always a bit beyond tedious. So I don't really pay much attention to them." Ichigo said as she placed several cards down on the table and drew a few more and then shuffled them around a little. "It was always the same thing with my mom's side of the family. Show my worth, keep the bloodline pure- marry and have children until my husband finally tires of me and decides to kill me- bah, idiots."
She said in a slightly scathing tone before then muttering, "What would those daft people know about a person's worth anyways? All of their children and spouses are dead." Both Ban and Slader blinked at her for a moment as she went on to say in an irked tone, "They all died just to escape their insane clutches. Bunch of dumbasses."
Across the room, Meliodas blinked. Not sure what to think of her comments about her family.
But from the way that she spoke of them, they weren't very nice people. So naturally he wound up scowling down at the bar and hoping that he never met any of them. He wasn't all that sure how he'd react to them if he ever did.
But something told him that he wouldn't react well. His protective instinct towards his fellow sins had always been a little bit of a bitch to control. But he could imagine that Ban, King, Diane and even Gowther would probably react to her family in a similar manner once all learned a little bit more about them.
"Must have been rough growing up in a family like that." Ban said after a moment or so. Ichigo didn't say anything for a moment or so, she just shrugged.
"It was a little bit rough. My mother's side of the family were completely obsessed with power and how to get more. They tended to...covet everything that they could if they felt it gave them more. More power, more wealth, more prestige… I was nothing but a pawn to them because of my mother's blood. My dad's side of the family were drastically different, thank god. If I had grown up with my mothers side of the family I'd likely have been enslaved to someone by now."
"Oh? I'm almost afraid to ask." Ban said careful to keep his tone neutral despite the fact that he was beginning to feel the strangely familiar burn of rage within him. Enslavement? Really?
Did nobles have nothing better to do with their time that irreparably damage others for fun?
"Hn. They weren't bad. In fact, they were far more kind than the other side of the family. They tended to encourage violence and chaos- within reason of course."
Ban and Slader both lowered their hands a little bit to look at her as she grinned. "In fact the first time that I ever met any of them, I was eleven and I got into a knock down drag out fist fight with my dad's younger brother. Threw him through a couple walls, cracked and broken a few of his bones. Bloodied his face up. I would have won that damned fight if my aunt hadn't slapped the holy hell out of both of us and scared the bejesus out of us."
Ban let out a startled sounding bark of laughter while Slader merely shook his head.
"It sounds like you and your uncle didn't get along very well."
"That's not true." Ichigo said, looking only slightly offended. "We may have had a little bit of a rocky start. But everything got better after I blew up their home." Both men started at her totally flummoxed.
Finally Ban seemed to recover enough to ask, "You blew up their home? Why?"
"Well, remember how I said that they encouraged violence and chaos within reason?" Both men nodded their heads. "My blowing up their home was a display of my abilities. They needed to know exactly how powerful I was at that age so that they could see where my strengths and weaknesses lay. So that they could help to train me..."
"Ah, that sort of makes sense." Ban said as he settled his cheek in his palm. "To know what sort of training you would need, they had to be able to see how powerful you were right?"
"Something like that." She said cryptically.
"I'm sensing that there's more to the story then."
"There is. But I don't really want to talk about it any."
Ban blinked at her and pouted for a second before sighing. "I guess I can respect that." He said before then deciding to try prying a different sort of information out of her. "So...you and Merlin. How did that happen?"
"We met as kids."
"Yeah you said that before, but I'm still curious. So...indulge me, my lady."
She huffed quietly and took a moment to worry her bottom lip. "Can't I just tell you her real name or something instead?"
"Merlin's not her real name?" Slader asked in interest however before he could ask what her real name was, Ban reached over and lightly tapped his arm to silence him.
"Come on, my lady. What's so bad about telling us how you two met?"
"A lot. There was a lot going on at that time that was directly tied to our meeting. Stuff that neither of us care much to think about even now."
"Oh? Like?"
"Shut up if you want the information." She snapped at him warningly. Ban closed his mouth and waited patiently as she said, "We met when my baby sisters were both attacked by a monster." The man's expression darkened a little bit and the blond across the room snapped his head up to stare at her. Across the room, King, Diane, and Gowther all frowned as they listened as well.
"Rukia was tracking it, but lost it because something was interfering with her senses."
"Rukia-"
"Shut up." Ban hissed.
"I'd already run into the monster earlier that day, but managed to escape it. So I didn't really think anything of it. I was getting ready for bed when all of a sudden this dark haired little midget appeared in my room and started talking to herself. So I kicked her in the butt and knocked her down."
"She got up and grabbed me and called me defective, we argued and bickered a little bit- then she hog tied me and scribbled a mustache on my face-" Ban and several others tried hard, but couldn't hide their sniggering from her. After all, doodling mustaches on little girl's wasn't something that they associated with Merlin. She was always so serious and stand offish. However their amusement quickly died as she went on to say. "Next thing I knew I could hear both of my baby sisters screaming outside. The monster was there. It somehow managed to track me down and attacked them because it could sense me nearby."
"One of my sisters managed to get away and came to find me, she collapsed crying and begging me to save Karin-" She paused for a moment to clarify, "Karin was my other sister."
Ban's expression shifted a little bit as understanding dawned on him. "Anyways the monster had her in it's hand and was going to eat her. I tried to attack it, but at that point in time- I couldn't do much damage. I was simply too weak."
No one but King, Gowther and Meliodas noticed Merlin's return as she slipped through the door of the pub and started walking over to the threesomes table as she said, "You weren't weak, Ichigo."
Ban and Slader both turned to look at the woman as she moved to sit in the other girl's lap. Ichigo scoffed at her. "I was. I was weak. Pitifully so."
"No. You had the power to fight that Hollow all along, you simply didn't know how to draw it out. That's all." Merlin said as she leaned in and kissed the girl's cheek as she asked softly.
"How was the visit?"
"It was nice," Merlin said before then producing some flowers from somewhere and holding them out to the girl king. "The little one and I had a long, long talk and caught up. Misaki feels badly for causing us such grief." She said as she started to weave the flowers into a crown that would ultimately wind up on Ichigo's head as she slowly said. "But he/she would feel even worse if you decided to never try for children again."
Meliodas and Ban both blinked at the mention of 'children'. Which was understandable since the girl obviously didn't look old enough to have any.
Ichigo snorted softly before saying, "It sounds like the two of you had a very grown up conversation. Tell me, did you tell my baby where babies came from?"
"Good god, no. I know better. Besides, I know that you'd drag me out into the woods and beat me black and blue if I had that sort of talk with Misaki."
Ichigo smiled at her and ruffled her hair. "Good girl." Merlin made a small sound in the back of her throat before then saying.
"But we really do need to talk later about your lack of an heir." Causing Ichigo to heave a tired sigh and roll her eyes at her.
"Yeah, fine. But we can do that later. I want to play a few more hands first." Merlin merely nodded her head and then lay it on the girl's shoulder. Completely ruining all of Ban's efforts to learn stuff about the girl king while raising a whole bunch of other questions that would go unanswered for a while.
The damned minx. Meliodas thought with a scowl.
