This time it was Aya that slammed the door, stomping past the entryway without even taking off her high heels. Gin winced: these were nice wood floors. She went right past him and Naoya, who had gotten back earlier looking like everything had gone well, and into the bathroom.
Naoya glanced up from the computer that was hooked up to the emergency committee meeting the Diet was holding to discuss Fushimi's latest report, the equipment he was using to create custom comps still scattered around him. He was done making and handing out ones free of the Shomonkai's control programming for tamers now that comps had become so widespread, but he needed more 'haywire comps' with friend/foe recognition preset to use to summon demons in case he needed an army somewhere. All of them needed an identity code that he could use to put them into groups for mass activation as well as to activate them remotely. He looked worried. This wasn't like her, it was like him when he had been much, much younger and hadn't gotten used to frustration, in dealing with an enemy whose ability to predict the future came from its nature instead of either hard-won experience or computer programs that were only possible now.
She came back out of the bathroom carrying her towel, loofah, the good bubble bath and a bunch of other stuff they'd mostly gotten in gift baskets and just kept around in case they ran out of the regular stuff or needed something they could pack to take on the road and stomped back down the stairs, heading for the hot tub Naoya had rigged up.
Once the apartment door closed behind her, Gin said "It's her city. The sky's getting like this, demons everywhere, people are afraid and turning on each other, and then there's the contamination zone." Damn, he knew that it would get to her eventually. At least she was only taking a bath instead of attracting a lot of attention eradicating demons like that Midori girl who had almost gotten herself killed. He knew Aya, she wouldn't go the way Keisuke had gone, much less Kaido, who had decided to shed his brother's legacy of being a good guy and go after naked power for power's sake. The Shibuya Daemons, the neighborhood's protectors, were well on their way to becoming yet more demons.
Naoya sighed. "I remember my brother, and his city." How would he have felt even if he'd survived the angels' attack, with it lying smashed around him, with his people panicking in the streets, unable to understand each other? "I'll try to find some good news for her, when she returns."
Oh? Gin had been about to tell him to leave her alone for now, and try to find a way to cheer her up. Seeing his expression, Naoya told him, "That's what I would prefer," and dragged himself up out of bed to his computer setup. "At least she knows enough about how it works that she won't summon demons by accident no matter how angry she is..."
When Naoya suddenly stopped talking and ran down the stairs, Gin followed, throwing open the door to the temporary bathroom after it banged shut behind Naoya to find Aya with a towel wrapped around her staring at a woman with a snake wrapped around her.
"Aunt Lilith?"
"You know her?" Aya asked. She'd only recognized the name of the demon who spoke to her because of the rock music festival named after her.
"Yes, she's our aunt." Naoya was just surprised she would offer a contract to someone of the same breed of her replacement. Not that she'd ever envied Eve, just pitied her a bit for not having a choice about loving Adam. Yet Aya had chosen Gin, someone other than Naoya, just like Lilith. That was the correspondence between them that let Aya summon her.
Lilith here, one of the Bels had made a name for himself as Beelzebub, his and Abel's other halves… Who would appear next to complicate matters, Lucifer?
Well, what had he expected, when the war of Bel was a war, the opening campaign of a war against God himself? He should stop being surprised and start making contingency plans. This was a stroke of luck, but what if the four archangels showed up next?
"So… Take-Mikazuchi, Lilith, and…" Gin looked at Naoya. Who would he get, and was there a reason he was only using demons from the comps?
Oh, Naoya realized. "I know who I'm likely to call, and I have no intention of turning this into a world of chaos." Unless his brother wished it or it was the only alternative to humanity's destruction. Then, then he might summon Lucifer into this world.
After all, if his other half called Lilith, wouldn't he get the Serpent?
Speaking of Take-Mikazuchi… Naoya fingered the keycard Gin had returned. Odds were that Azuma hadn't even taken his access out of the system, not when they wanted to get their hands on him and that building would be a wonderful place for an ambush. But Gin's demon was a kishin, and they had Jikoku's sword in there. He'd planned to see if they were up to anything new tomorrow, but perhaps he should pay them a visit tonight, before anyone realized that sword was more than just a trophy of war.
"So you have come, Cain."
Naoya knew without turning around that this was not the girl. "Remiel. There's no need to float around on my account, I know who you are." Damn. The Shomonkai might not have known about the protective power that still rested in this sword, but the angel would have. "Here to try and stop me?"
"This sword belonged to a protector of Japan," that ethereal voice said with angelic calm so unlike Sariel's hate-filled words. "Wherefore would I stop you from taking it from those who have no right to its power and returning it to another guardian of this land?"
"You're getting your dialects mixed up."
"I speak the primal common tongue, Cain. It is your mind that turns it into words you can understand now."
"After you stole it from us," he reminded Remiel. "And apparently I conceive of you as someone who tries to pretend to be ancient and wise but really doesn't understand a thing about the language you use, let alone what the words you say really mean."
The angel sighed, gentle and regretful, and he wanted to hurt it. "Amane has retreated into slumber. I no longer have the power to protect her against Jezebel while she is awake."
"So your vessel will die and unleash Jezebel so my brother can kill her without having to stain his hands with the blood of another human, even if she's no innocent in this war." Cain laughed, eyes gleaming with malice. "Do you really expect me to believe that an angel would ever come bearing good news?"
"I love God, and you seek his death."
"Well, I love my brother, and first God manipulated me into attacking and killing him, and then sent his angels to murder him all over again, after you tried and failed to convince me to 'undo my sin' by murdering him again so that he would no longer be a demon because of his anger at God and instead would be born as a human. A powerless human, unable to protect himself, who doesn't remember me. When if God's mercy actually existed, he would have brought him back to life in the first place and spared us all of this. So really," Cain said, grinning or at least showing his teeth, "your love for God just makes me want to kill him even more. Maybe then you angels will understand what human existence is like."
"It was not God who ordered us to attack your brother, or who dictated the terms of this ordeal. It was Metatron, once known as Enoch. I have begun to doubt that he truly speaks for our Lord."
"Oh?" Cain knew angels could only speak truth. "So you want me to blame the lesser tetragrammaton, the angel that once was human instead of your Creator, the one you are programmed to love? Turning him into a scapegoat, just like me? Someone to blame for God's sins?"
"No one has seen the Creator save Metatron since he directed Noah to build the arc, to purify humanity of those with the blood of demons and fallen angels."
"The first ethnic cleansing carried out by God himself, and not the last." Cain's hatred and rage was almost a physical pressure to Remiel: the power of a soul so closely related to God's own was not one angels who were mindful of their Lord's commands to obey Adam, the Lord's child and his children found easy to resist. "Oh, he will kill Metatron, but it will not stop there," Cain said, looming over Remiel's vessel. "And the honeyed trap you laid out for me will not stop me. She is myself, and you thought she would be a weakness?" Cain asked, ignoring the fact that he had been certain at first that she would be.
As for his brother's, would there be a Queen of Bel now, to stand at his right hand?
Remiel sighed, and said, "You have been preparing a device to allow your brother to fight Jezebel inside Amane's mind, have you not? For her sake, when that device is complete and your brother is strong enough to fight Jezebel, I will place this child in your hands."
"…I will be the one to decide when we are ready. I will ask you if there is anything you have planned for him, if I sense any hint of Sariel's presence, or any sign of a trap laid by someone else, I'll make sure Jezebel devours you as well as the girl before my brother defeats her."
"That is acceptable. It pains me to see how little trust there is in you, Cain. It pains me more to realize how much reason you have to doubt my intentions, and those of the servants of God. I can only hope that the companions you now possess will heal this bitterness within you. In all the ages we have labored to redeem you, the efforts of the angels have only made your heart grow colder and colder. It is said that the difference between false prophets and those who truly speak for the Lord will be shown by the fruit their effort bears, whether good or evil comes of their actions. The other angels blame the fruitlessness of their works on man's innate corruption, but if our actions were truly guided by God, would they truly have done nothing but harm?"
"Yes," was Cain's immediate answer, because that was a very stupid question to ask him and Remiel should know that. "Quit while you're ahead: I've already agreed to take Jezebel from inside the girl. We'll see what comes of listening to you."
Remiel bowed her head, and Cain had never seen an angel show respect to a human, even though he did not understand the significance of that failure. "Then that is all I may ask," he said, and left. Cain had once had a child's pure faith in God's goodness, in his grandfather's love of them, had he not? And trust, once broken? Faith, shattered again and again?
Humanity had sinned against God, and needed to earn his forgiveness, but had the angels not harmed humanity, when to hurt another being was a sin regardless of the reason or purpose? Was it not right that they labor as well, to earn the forgiveness of the children of God?
"This is where you've been sleeping?" Izuna asked them.
"Well, yes," Keisuke told her, then lowered his head, ashamed to meet her eyes. "Well, the night I was with them."
"The ground under the grass is soft, it's summer so it's not cold, and it's easy to keep watch," Atsuro explained. "A lot of people are sleeping over at Shiba Park for the same reasons, except there they've got the Shomonkai protecting them and safety in numbers. But if we were over there, then we couldn't use our demons if other demons started attacking people."
"I see," Izuna said, looking around. It wasn't a bad location: two entrances and exits, so it would be harder to attack them from all sides, but they still had at least two options for retreat, more if they had flying demons or the ones that could pass through walls. "I suppose your camping equipment is up one of those trees?"
"Camping equipment?" Yuzu asked her. "Who brings camping equipment to Tokyo?" Yuzu wished.
"I offered to try to grab some stuff from my apartment," Haru told her, "but they didn't think it was worth the risk, since there are demons and demon worshippers after me, and they might have it staked out. And we didn't want to carry it around all day."
"Up a tree…" Atsuro should have thought of that when he'd used his demon to get the child down from that tree.
They heard a dramatic sigh from behind him. "It's been how many days, and you still haven't begun to use the tools at your disposal? I'm disappointed in you, Atsuro."
"Naoya!" Atsuro said, surprised and a little happy to see his teacher approach them out of the shadows.
"This is the reason I took you on as my student in the first place," Naoya told him, hands folded inside the sleeves of his haori, ignoring the gun Captain Izuna already had pointed at him. "So you would be able to advise my brother and see to his comfort when I was busy with another part of the war. You're a programmer and an engineer, Atsuro. Still sleeping on the ground after all this time? What will you do if it rains?"
Atsuro cringed further and further back, because Naoya was right: he should be ashamed of himself. Yuzu was still so uncomfortable sleeping on the grass, it should have occurred to him to think of some way to help with that instead of just focusing on the fun stuff, the programming challenge and the mystery.
"Do you have any idea how easy it is to die of exposure?" Naoya continued.
"That man," Keisuke said. "He's the one who gave me my comp."
"He's my cousin," Abel told him, still seated casually on the grass unlike Atsuro, who had stood up immediately when he heard his teacher.
"I see." Keisuke stared, trying to see some resemblance between Abel's kindness even to a fallen friend and this Naoya's cold disdain. "That's quite a surprise," he said, with a nervous laugh because of what an understatement it was.
"You were handing out comps to children?" Izuna demanded.
"We'll finish this later, Atsuro," Naoya said, and turned slightly to face her. "Yes. I did. Not children, who would have parents and wouldn't be responsible enough, but teenagers, students. Those who grew up in this culture of convenience and didn't have enough knowledge of life or survival to survive on their own. The more comps, the more people would be in range of their harmonizer function, protected by it. I'm sure the SDF has seen what happens when humans try to fight demons without a comp nearby to let them survive a single blow or make their bullets connect. It didn't take the Yakuza long to get their hands on comps, did it? Do not misunderstand, Captain Izuna: I know what weapons are for and what they do. In demonic invasions, in any war where their defenders are unable to protect them," and the lockdown was proof the SDF admitted it couldn't protect Tokyo against demons: they both knew it, "innocents die. You penned them in here like lambs for the slaughter: I gave them swords and shields to protect themselves with. People being what they are, it was inevitable that some of them would misuse the weapons I gave them or shoot themselves in the foot, but tell me, government dog, which of us has saved more of the people of Tokyo?"
When she could do nothing but growl under her breath in frustration like the dog he named her, he continued, "I didn't start this war: I wasn't the first to summon demons to this world. It's the angels who threatened humanity with an ordeal that would annihilate us: it was the angels who set off the War of Bel in the first place, by murdering humanity's protector and scattering his soul and power into the demon realm! Was it the angels that led you to believe this was all the Shomonkai's fault? Ask them whether the founder was right to fear an ordeal that would kill billions. Ask them whether demon armies would have come to earth regardless, seeking the power of Bel and power over humanity. They can't lie, so all the ways they find to evade the question or try to blacken my name will just be proof. Although some among them hold humans in enough contempt to tell you straight out that in their eyes, we are only worthy of annihilation!"
"Naoya," Abel said calmly, and the programmer who had almost been snarling at Izuna regained control of himself.
"I've wasted enough time here," he said. "Cousin, you're aware of Jezebel, correct?"
He nodded.
"And you've prepared yourselves to defend against fire, since tomorrow you're fighting the evil flame? Good. Come with me." He turned to leave, then turned back. "You too, Atsuro, Yuzu. This was Remiel's request, and knowing the angels, it's probably a trap."
"Remiel asked you to do something about Jezebel?" Abel asked, getting up and following after Naoya. "And you need me to keep the piece of soul she has from going to Belberith?"
"No," Naoya told him as they walked, "I need you to fight her. In order to kill Jezebel and keep Amane alive, we'll need to go inside her mind. I have wards and I've called an ally to guard our bodies while that happens, but I can't risk taking on Jezebel alone while I'm also managing the connection that will let our souls exist in her mind without severing them from our bodies and killing us."
"An angel came to you for help?" It was Keisuke who asked that in a shocked voice, not Izuna.
"Not just any angel: Remiel is my stalker. He might stand by and let tens of thousands of innocents be killed by his brethren, but I do know that unlike most of them, it's actually possible that he's genuinely concerned about the girl's fate. This is the first bit of real compassion for humanity I've seen from an angel in thousands of years. Think of it as a test: we need to know if angels and humans are capable of existing in peace, or if they'll always seek to dominate us and reduce us to animals or destroy us unless we do it to them first."
"Thousands of years? Naoya…" Atsuro was the one to jump on the slip, on the proof that there had always been so much Naoya hadn't told any of them.
"You'll figure it out eventually, Atsuro, but I don't like to talk about it and it's not what's important here," he said without slowing his pace, sandals clacking on the concrete. "What you should be thinking about is survival, yours, my brother's and humanity's. Not all the people no one managed or bothered to save, because if you think defeat is inevitable then your death is certain. I've failed before, so you need to rely on your own power: that's all you need to know."
"Hey, slow down, Naoya," Atsuro was the one to finally give in and dare to complain about the pace.
"See how reliant you are on modern conveniences?" Naoya asked, otherwise ignoring the request. "What do you think will happen when no one is able to make those devices anymore, or power them, or use them? Are any of you capable of growing your own food, surviving without anyone's help?"
"So if the Shomonkai were right, and the ordeal was going to take away all communication," Atsuro said between breaths, "We'd all… I can't believe our daily lives were so fragile."
"This nation's prosperity is only possible because of millions of people working together, all doing tasks that by themselves don't ensure their survival, but together…" Those were the terms this culture taught them to think in, Naoya knew. "Now, render that cooperation impossible because no one can decipher what anyone else needs them to do."
From the gasps and silence behind him, he knew all of them could see it, better than they could have before the Lockdown, before they saw humans reduced to beasts because beasts knew how to survive. "When the primal common tongue was taken, we could at least point, gesture, try to learn what that 'mala' sound someone else kept making meant, because we were aware that sounds and symbols could have meaning. This time, they'll take even that from us. There already are humans incapable of learning how to communicate with others: Autism at its most severe. Someone like that would have to rediscover every aspect of life from the ground up, and in a world that is made of other humans and their cooperation, they would never be able to learn to survive on their own. Even if humans continued to have children after the ordeal," it took two, after all, and when consent couldn't be given and even understanding was impossible… "When their mothers are unable to realize that their cries mean something?"
"Stop!" Yuzu cried, arms wrapped around herself, imagining that horror. "Stop it!"
"That's what I've been trying to do, and the Shomonkai's founder as well. Humans can rise up and defeat demons: even if Belberith became the King of Bel, he'd be brought down eventually because demons don't understand humanity's willingness to help the weak, to value others for what they can do instead of mere strength. They also admire strength even if it's a human that possesses it. It would be a dark age, but eventually humanity would be free again. Like this lockdown, Captain Izuna, it's a cruel, brutal choice, but better than the alternative. But, if a human becomes King of Bel…"
"But why him? Why did you get all of us involved in this?" Yuzu asked desperately.
He laughed. "You think I got him involved in this?"
"No," Yuzu admitted. "Even if you just admitted that you were using Atsuro this whole time. Why me?"
"Because you can sense demons. The way your skin has been crawling since this started? The voice inside your head that's screaming for you to get out of here? If it weren't for the Lockdown, if it weren't for the Shomonkai and all the warning we had, demons would have attacked my brother unprepared, and he's too noble to run when others are in danger. If Beldr showed up at your school? I needed you to get him out of there."
"Yuzu…" Atsuro breathed, forgetting the agony of his legs the way Yuzu had forgotten her own fatigue in her anger.
"So hate me, for getting you involved in this. I've been using you for his sake, after all. But don't you think keeping him alive is a good reason?" He knew she did, because she was in love with his brother.
"So what's with Aya and Gin, then?" Haru asked him. "If you're just using them…"
Naoya interrupted her. "Did you know that Aya's your half-sister? A product of one of your father's many affairs. You know why Aya is involved in this… Well, you know one reason. That one definitely isn't my fault, and if you want the other reason, ask Remiel, it's his doing. As for Gin, he's just too stubborn to abandon her, or the city she loves." Abel and Haru could hear that this was why Naoya liked him, why the brother who hadn't let anyone but Abel even a little close had shared a bed with him. "And of course I'm using them. I'm using everyone, including myself. Ask Abel about my death clock if you don't believe me."
"Two. But you're 'the one who revives,' aren't you?" Abel asked him.
"Damn Remiel… Yes. So my life isn't worth as much as yours. If you die, I will die, since that's the only reliable way to find your next incarnation and try to make sure you survive this time. Because if Belberith wins, even if I keep him from eating your soul, they'll be looking for you, and they'll sense you as soon as you're born. If the angels win, well, I know how to survive without anyone's help."
"Naoya…" Atsuro breathed now, because he hadn't known, both the girl he liked and his teacher had been suffering all this time and he hadn't been doing enough, just playing around!
"You're kidding, right?" Was Yuzu's demand.
"Don't act so shocked. It's a purely practical decision. And if you three don't stop asking questions and focus on surviving this, I'm going to make sure none of you sleep past dawn for the rest of your lives." Naoya tsked. "What happened to you, cousin, I made sure you were in shape when I was living with you."
"Hey, I'm still the best in my class at…"
"What is this place?" Midori asked.
And that was when they noticed that they'd covered a lot of ground while Naoya was keeping them too shocked and panicked to notice how much their legs ached.
"Is this the contamination zone you were talking about, Izuna?" Atsuro asked, looking around at the black rock and pools of… was that seriously lava?
"No, that was code for where demons appear." She kept her hand on her gun.
"Come along: it's safer here than you think. Demons can be kept out by wards, and humans usually have the sense to avoid places that are this close to the demon world. And this close to the demon world, angels are at even more of a disadvantage than they are in the human world. Pity that humans can't survive in the demon world. It was constructed with a certain set of laws of physics, let's put it that way. As a place without the presence of the divine, the human mind and soul can't exist there."
No one but Izuna was really registering much of that but the sound of his voice, between the threat of their surroundings and the way it felt like their legs had been replaced with lead bars.
"Ow!" Keisuke exclaimed.
"What? Oh! It's like a force field. How cool!" Midori exclaimed, after reaching forward to feel what Keisuke had bumped into.
"I raised the ward strength since this is an angel we're dealing with. I could make you push through them," Naoya said, getting out his comp and beginning to hit buttons. "You are human, after all."
"Huh?" Abel said, waving his hand back and forth.
"You don't feel it?" Midori asked him.
"I guess not," he said, stepping across and touching Midori's hand from the other side.
"Is it because you're his cousin?" Midori wondered.
"No, although blood certainly has something to do with it," Naoya said, slipping his comp back into one of his sleeves. "Haru will have as little trouble as he did, Midori would have the next easiest time pushing through it, while Captain Izuna and Keisuke would need quite a lot of willpower to pass."
Atsuro's eyes lit up because ooh, logic problem! Then he remembered the rules Naoya had already stated about wards. "What… Naoya," that wasn't something to tease about.
His teacher smiled approvingly, which took the sting from realizing that the reason the ward didn't let them through so easily was that most of them, including Atsuro, were part-demon. "There's no shame in it, Atsuro. Not a single purely human soul has come into existence for tens of thousands of years. Humanity is weaker with the divine blood watered down. Do you know how rare it is to find someone like you, who somehow managed to be born almost as smart and creative as I am? And I'm not only pure-blooded, I'm only second-generation human."
And that was another hint he'd just dropped, Atsuro knew. It was like Naoya wanted them to figure this out, or at least him and Abel.
"Are you saying we're all part demon?" Yuzu realized. She didn't know much about computers, but she could understand people.
"Demon, and angel. There's something I could show you, if we needed to kill much more time," Naoya said, amusing himself by looking at Keisuke's eyes and watching him freeze, instinct making him unable to run even as human instinct told him to get the hell away from that smirk. "Angels are programmed to adore the divine, you see. They couldn't resist pure-blooded humans, not until they were prohibited from continuing to breed with them. I hear that one of my brothers had quite the harem." He reached into his sleeve for something as the door finally opened.
"I got your text," Gin said, scuffing out the line of chalk with his boot.
"Finally. I almost got bored enough to make the little nephilim puppy fall for me," Naoya said as he took out a blindfold. "Captain Izuna?"
"I know." This building was a warren: to find him they'd have to conduct a room-by-room search even after getting past the ward: plenty of time for him to get his equipment out of here, unless she could lead Commander Fushimi's team right to him.
"Hey, we've talked about this: no taking after your aunt," Gin told Naoya as Izuna tied the blindfold on herself and stood still while Naoya checked the knot and the tightness. That was better than letting him tie it himself. "Have you been okay, Haru?"
"Yeah, I'm good. How's Aya?"
Gin sighed. "Annoyed. She was going to be here so I could watch my bar, but she left to talk to the three devas. If this doesn't get resolved pretty soon, there'll be enough death to collapse the barrier and Tokyo's going to get pulled into the demon world. Izuna, right?"
"Yes." Wait, the final option would… Or was this a trick?
"I'm Gin: I own the bar called Eiji, which is my real name. Eiji Kamiya."
Naoya sighed, but it wasn't as though Gin wouldn't have been a target after this anyway, just for his connection to Aya and Naoya. "Do government dogs know how to shake?" he asked idly, because standing stiffly like she was in enemy territory was rude, even if this technically was enemy territory right now.
"Captain Izuna," she said, rolling orange eyes behind the blindfold and reaching out her hand toward Gin's voice. "You can call me Misaki."
"He's not normally this bad," Gin told her as he gave her hand a tug down the hall. "It's because Aya told him to lay off Remiel."
"I'm irritated because there is an angel here, and not only is it going to have a chance to kill my brother, it could tell its cohorts where my fallback position is," Naoya said, getting out a piece of chalk to close the circle now that everyone was across it.
"I thought you trusted Remiel," Abel asked him. Or, well, the Naoya version anyway.
"It's an angel."
The angel in Amane's body was sitting in a way that could only be described as primly on the edge of a couch. They were in some kind of waiting or reception area with several couches. "Thank you for coming here for Amane's sake, Son of Adam," he said, addressing Abel.
"Do not talk to or even look at my brother," Naoya ordered him with a pleasant expression (for him) that was all the more threatening. "Now lie down." He looked at his brother's motley group. "I need two volunteers. Not you, Atsuro: I want you here to keep an eye on the comps… And Yuzu would have the best chance of noticing if something's gone wrong. That leaves the songstress, the faerie, the dog and the puppy. You two," he told Izuna and Keisuke. "I want you where I can see you."
"So much for volunteering," Yuzu muttered.
Naoya grabbed Izuna's shoulder when she started to head towards Jezebel with Abel and Keisuke. "Not you: you have barely any ability to defend yourself against magic, and even if you had the sense to go around the lava," unlike Abel, who was just walking on it like water – good, he'd prepared well to fight Belial - "Jezebel would annihilate you."
"So I'm stuck back here guarding you, then?"she asked him, glaring.
"Don't be ridiculous. After Amane's shocked awake, I want you to protect her."
"Shouldn't I get close to her, then?"
"No, it looks as though Keisuke has already assigned himself the task of keeping her healed. Once she wakes up, Amane will want to get as far away from Jezebel as possible and this is her mind, after all. So the two of us are staying back here, since Jezebel won't let her go so easily."
"So you know tactics too, Cain."
"I ought to, after tens of thousands of years. So, you've figured it out. Must be the kitsune side at work," he said, folding his arms again and watching the battle closely. "I suppose bringing a demon vulnerable to ice against Belial seemed safe enough," he said, casting recarm on one of Keisuke's.
"And you want me to believe that you're noble, that you're doing all this to protect the brother you killed?"
"Do you know who the first being was to commit the murder of a sentient being?" he asked her. "And no, I'm not making a distinction between murder and manslaughter." Intent to kill and unintended death caused by assault, in this case. "Our parents could speak to the animals, and Abel murdered two of their children to prove a point: it did. Those innocent deaths in his name were pleasing to God. So who was the evil one? The one who enjoyed pain and death, the one cold-blooded enough to sacrifice two lives to make me realize the truth about our creator before any more of the animals Abel was responsible for died and their minds ceased to exist because they had no souls, or the one who couldn't bear to face the reality of either those deaths or the one that came after?" he wondered.
"He wasn't satisfied with the angels' utter devotion because they didn't have a choice about whether or not to give it to him, but that didn't mean that just because he gave us free will he didn't want our mindless worship as well. It would just be something he'd have to work for. The first challenge he'd ever had to enjoy. Ask the angels: God knew I was going to kill Abel. He knew just where he was when he asked me those questions. When Abel returned to life, he forgave me," Naoya said, reflections of the lava flickering in eyes that otherwise might have been dark, "and defended our world against Him." Then his eyes narrowed, hardened, and he finally turned to look at her. "So I can't afford to go soft, can I?" he said, and she knew that he would stop at nothing to win this.
"There's a difference between going soft and being a war criminal."
He snorted and turned back to the battle, silver hair badly in need of a trim swaying. "Please. As though your government's handling of this Lockdown isn't violating plenty of those laws." Anyway, "You'll need to return the Shomonkai's maiden to them after this. Belberith has a few complaints to make to me about how the server I provided him with isn't giving him everything he wants on a silver platter, and I'd like to avoid hearing them. Clients."
"Why would I do that?" When she had valuable information? "And do you want the others to walk across a demon and thug-infested city in the dark, without an adult?"
"Exactly: I don't, which is why they'll be spending the night here. You can meet up with them in the morning. Somewhere else. But I'm not having someone who would willingly channel an angel here while my brother is asleep. Angels tend to have deliberately bad aim: they're jealous of the attention their master gives humans, and a city or a nation tends to seem like a good amount of collateral damage. So you can go with the priestess, or she can walk across the city, alone, in the dark, with the scents of angel and Bel demon upon her."
"You'd be sending her to her death."
"Do you have any idea," he said slowly and calmly, "how many dead children I have seen? I was born before old age and disease were invented and inflicted on us. I have seen curse after curse laid upon humanity. You're asking me to care about a single human life. How sweet. When the god that rules humanity is one who even bothers to notice a perished hero, let alone a sparrow's fall, then I'll try to remember how to let myself. But right now, I have a war to win and a brother to look after, so really, besides providing the girl with a bodyguard and saving her from the demon devouring her soul, what else do you want me to do?"