Fortunately for Yamato, even though Hiro hadn't let Ronaldo come with him to fight Yamato and get to have the satisfaction of breaking that nose, by the time Hiro found him and brought him back Abel had brought Airi's dad to the island.

"I missed one? I was certain I'd had them all killed." Damn. Not only had he lied to Hiro without being aware of it, now Yamato felt both boastful and incompetent. This would be remedied. If he went back to JPs. Or JPs was still top secret, for that matter.

Yamato was also rather lucky Ronaldo was too shocked to hear what Yamato said when he saw them. Airi was still yelling at her father and his mentor, only refraining from hitting him because that would have required letting go of him with even a single arm. Ronaldo had already run out of ways to say, "What the hell? Why didn't you trust me to know that you were alive? Do you know what I did because of you?" in Japanese and both Spanish and Portuguese words were slipping into his combination interrogation and diatribe.

Since the best man planned the bachelor party he also had to attend the bachelor party, and no one had succeeded in convincing Abel or Atsuro to transport strippers to the island. Still, no one saw a problem with letting the teenagers have a little sake, after all they've been through. Sure, Kaido would start egging them on, and Joe might help until he and Abel started singing (Abel didn't wear his headphones all the time just for looks), but Naoya would be there, and Hiro was glumly certain that not only would he not drink, because then he might do something showy, violate his parole and get kicked off the planet before the wedding, but that he would never, ever let Hiro forget anything stupid he did while drunk.

Daichi was so excited to be drinking for the first time that he joined Joe, Gin and Abel in singing old American rock without even a karaoke machine. Hiro didn't have enough money to put down a deposit on one that would be on sand and might get wrecked, even if the JSDF naval vessels that arrived with Izuna had offered to supply whatever they needed both for diplomatic reasons and because this was the second time his family saved the world and they liked to encourage that sort of thing. Since the world was still calming down from the panic caused by the shared mass hallucination, though, the JSDF had too much food to transport after all the panic-buying and other urgent tasks for Hiro to feel alright about asking them to rush him a karaoke machine. He knew better than to ask for his brothers' help: Abel's opinion of the karaoke versions of most songs consisted of words he wouldn't say in front of his baby brother lest he face the disappointment of their mother, and Naoya thought the entire concept was ridiculous. How hard was it to remember a song?

Still, they had the barbecue pit on the beach, and torches. The sound of the sea after a week in a bubble. The taste of a fresh fish roasted on a stick jammed into the sand next to that fire, and later they could dig roasted potatoes out of the coals.

"Your cousin and Saiduq are bonding over when beer was something you could eat with chopsticks like tofu," Yamato told him, sitting back down by the fireside after fetching a bottle of water.

Hiro laughed. "I asked him once if he was really so old he was around when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and he said yes, and so was everyone else: we just call them birds," he told Yamato while the quartet finished singing about a lady climbing a stairway and started excitedly simultaneously saying what they should totally sing next.

Keisuke was just sitting back and watching the show, although he knew that it wouldn't take long for them to drag him in the way Midori did.

"The takoyaki was good, but that is terrible," Yamato said, indicating the sake bottle Gin had picked out for them to try, saying nothing was too good for Abel's kid brother.

"Abel says it's like coffee: eventually you get used to it, and not everything's supposed to taste good, just like life shouldn't be all fun and games. Yuzu said she likes chocolate because it's sweet, but no matter how much milk there is in it, there's still a bit of bitterness that reminds her of how good the sweetness really is. But," Hiro said, leaning back on his hands and looking up at the sky, wishing he knew more about how to find the Big Dipper than that it had sort of a P shape, "I don't like it either."

"Hmm." Perhaps that had some truth to it, but, "Aren't they foolish enough without taking something to make them even more foolish?" If only there was a drink that made people smarter. If he ever found a way to overwrite Saiduq's world, Yamato made a mental note to include something like that.

"Back before they knew about germs, it was less foolish than drinking the water," Hiro reminded him.

That Yamato also had to agree with. Water purification in case of a more subtle terrorist attack than the Shomonkai assault was one of the things that crossed his desk. "I did eventually learn to tolerate broccoli." Although part of the solution was applying the right cooking method and the other was confirming the nutritional benefits of broccoli himself, since his minders were idiots. He still drank from the water bottle instead of his sake cup, but according to the instructions Gin gave them beforehand, consuming alcohol caused dehydration, so administering it along with plenty of water was the way to avoid unpleasant side effects like hangovers. He wondered if his personnel had simply never bothered to listen to the advice of an expert or they were too stupid to follow their advice. Likely both.

"The burn as it went down my throat: I didn't like it before, but now it made me think of the burn from curry-You have had curry, right?"

"Yes." He hated blandness and prided himself on his ability to eat things that would send his minders desperately reaching for their water glasses even though, or especially because, that wouldn't help them. "Your brother's bartender friend also said it was used for contests, wasn't it? Tests of fortitude. Don't worry, I have no intention of poisoning myself, but it might be useful to know how much of this I could consume and still act intelligently." Preferably while everyone around him was too drunk to do anything but agree to whatever he proposed.

"You're on," Hiro told him with a grin.

"To the bride!" Midori declared, the pink-clad sentai heroine jumping to her feet.

"The bride!"

It was thanks to Midori's insistence that Abel help her bring all her cosplay outfits and deft hand with a needle that they had dresses for the bride and her bridesmaids. It was her idea to make the bachelorette party a costume party.

Joe's friends were all such odd people, more than a little overwhelming after spending so long in a hospital bed, but so kind. The priestess Kuzuryu hadn't just offered to perform the ceremony herself, but she'd helped write the wedding vows, after a death glare at that man who said to ignore her, the first thing they should write was a prenuptial agreement. From the way he laughed, he clearly wasn't suggesting that for either her or Joe's benefit.

"Just ignore him," Yuzu told her later, rolling her eyes at the behavior of her husband's boss and her friend's older brother. "We're still not sure if Naoya's just trying to get under Amane's skin or her clothes, too." The flash of a conspiratorial grin took the edge off how rude it was to say something like that: they were all family here, and this was just teasing. But if Naoya really was attracted to Amane, Yuzu would… agree with Amane that she shouldn't even consider it, because what he really liked was driving her insane.

Dr. Otome giggled, so she did too, even if hers was a little more nervous. Dr. Otome's adopted daughter had already become the ringleader of Yuzu's much younger children, once she was sure that her new mother wasn't just trying to avoid her again.

Half the people here were treating this as a family reunion: the other half were still reeling from the shock of either watching the world vanish around them, and themselves with it, or watching it fall apart around them as hungry people with the power to summon demons became desperate.

"To little Hiro-chan!" the motherly nurse Mari toasted next, the wooden stakes tied to the belt she wore around the white leather coat that made her look like some kind of cyberpunk vampire hunter clattering as she moved.

"I'll drink two to that," declared the JSDF officer who showed up to the party in her old uniform, the one she'd worn while fighting alongside Hiro's brother during the lockdown. Smiling nostalgically, she said, "He takes after his brother."

"Which one?" Fumi asked, smiling to herself. Personally, now that she'd met Naoya, she understood where the kid got it from.

Next to her, Jane joined in the laughter. The only member of the family Fumi stayed with as an exchange student who could make it, she seemed more relaxed the more personal and possibly insulting the conversation grew. Well, that was what she was familiar with: it was only efficient for a country home to people whose cultures had so many different codes of conduct to give up trying to standardize what signals were and were not meant to cause offense and focus on honest display of emotion.

Most people wouldn't have thought Fumi was the type to like being grabbed and hugged in public. She wouldn't have thought that of herself either, but she'd let Jane put an arm over her shoulder and was willing to lean on her, even though her face showed her same aloof and somewhat predatory smile.

"Did you ladies call for some entertainment?" they heard someone say before a man in a sharply-cut purple suit appeared next to the fire, taking a bow that was clearly meant to show himself off even though he aimed it towards the bride so it suggested that this was in her honor.

Yuzu and Haru doubled over laughing, leaning against each other instead of falling back onto the sand, while Amane gave him a regally unamused look that was only more effective coming from an Egyptian queen. "Naoya put you up to this, didn't he?"

"You wound me!" He put his hand over his heart.

Amane's silence said clear as day that she hadn't yet, but if he was offering…

"Lovely priestess, I have never needed anyone's help to find a party. Especially not one with a fire in my honor."

"Let him stay, he's one of Gin's best customers!" Haru reached across Yuzu and the bride to poke Amane. "And if Naoya was involved, this way it'll backfire."

"Yes!" Midori punched the air. "Let's get you changed!" she said, and dragged Loki into a changing room. The small shacks for people to change into swimsuits were crowded with too people, but neither of them were the type to mind that.

As long as it's not into a horse, Loki thought. He sacrifices his dignity and well-being to help Odin, and not only does Odin repay his sworn, eternal friendship by having snake venom drip on him eternally after one joke of a sort that was apparently just fine if it was Odin's idea, but it had become a joke. Loki was more than able to handle anyone who dared to mock him, he just worried about poor little Slepnir.

"Hinako!" Airi demanded. "Dance for us!" Before Midori finished with the stripper, otherwise they might not appreciate her performance as much!

Although the contrast between Hinako's usual clothing and what she was doing just made the refined elegance of her dance stand out even more, it was still amazing to see her dance in quasi-traditional clothing, Airi thought.

Even the demon, happily chatting with Midori about her business and the art of being sexy enough to seduce anyone or anything, stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her.

Well, thought Loki, that's what happens when I decide to put down roots somewhere in order to watch Naoya's ongoing efforts to pretend to be a normal child, then teen, then genius programmer working to overcome God's ordeal. He'd have to find out which of his many adoring customers was both determined enough to have a permanent piece of him to consider having his child, and creepy enough to do it without telling him. Because being so adored meant there were quite a few in that category. On the one hand, it was somewhat disturbing, but on the other he did adore his children.

One of these days, he was going to make Naoya crack. The trouble was that the original humans had been created without lust, since they weren't intended to reproduce by sex at all, but by more divine creation once they were made immortal and ascended as God's equals. Adam and Eve had just done it (once they knew it existed) because it was fun and a way for their shared spirit to be connected again. Even after God cursed them to bear children like the beasts, the first time Naoya was given the talk was after helplessly watching his mother's torturous second childbirth, a screaming ordeal neither she nor Abel would have survived if it weren't for Gabriel. No amount of fun was worth doing that to someone, and Naoya had also been crafted a soulmate: he'd been too outraged at the idea that he should breed with Abel's and Abel with his to then decide to join with random strangers. By this point it was a matter of both principle and millennia-old habit, and very few could out-stubborn Naoya.

It wasn't until Seth that God had done his best to override the free will humans possessed and make it imperative that they reproduce, inflicting the sin of lust upon them.

Since sexuality wasn't a concept either when Naoya was born (it wasn't as though homosexuality wasn't common among the animals, since separate types hadn't even occurred to God until he decided to make something to babysit Adam: it was evolution that made them become more likely to be attracted to the mates that would produce children) that was no barrier. Naoya did have a soulmate, but since God had decided to give it to Abel and then to Seth, after Abel died and couldn't sire children, it didn't reincarnate with him and the millennia had done a good job stamping out Naoya's faith in any sort of happy reunion.

Loki did have to admire the wording Remiel used to make Amane think, and tell the real Abel (who knew better) that there were plenty of other candidates (so he'd better not think he was anything special). There were multiple Abels, technically. It wasn't a lie. Two of them: Abel himself and the one made from his rib.

Still, if Naoya was geared to be attracted to anything, it was those similar to himself. Since they had so much in common, like issues with God, Lucifer would have had the best shot at relieving the eldest son of the Creator's human son of his virginity if Naoya didn't still hold a grudge for how Lucifer tricked his mother into thinking God wanted her and Adam to eat from the tree. Lucifer would have to talk fast, faster than Naoya could blast him with holy magic.

Loki could have sworn that Naoya was flirting with Amane on a few occasions, and they did have stubborn dedication in common, but it was their differences that made them so volatile and if Adam had been wired to be attracted to difference, he would have slept with all those adoring animals first instead of his other half.

Perhaps the flirting was just Loki's trickster nature (and ability to annoy just about anyone into making just the mistakes Loki wanted them to) rubbing off on Naoya.

Little did Loki know that Naoya was far from innocent. He couldn't farm, couldn't hunt and refused to join any sort of priesthood except as a consultant, like the terms he'd worked for the Shomonkai under. What he could do was master any skilled craft under the sun, but once things got more 'civilized' families often established monopolies that eventually grew into guilds. In the days before things like codes of law, and even after, they rarely had a problem with things like smashing the hands of someone who didn't heed their warnings so they couldn't pursue any trade. The other half of the Mark placed upon him was protection: anyone who harmed his grandson would be struck down by God, but that was after the fact.

Not to mention that while some cultures, like the Greeks and sometimes China, encouraged their geniuses no matter who they'd been born to, others, including China often enough, didn't think very highly of those who were too smart and didn't show the proper respect for tradition and the people who used it to stay in power. Since taxation before money often involved labor on public works (like irrigation ditches…) or everyone had to help during planting season, Naoya had a choice between angering the community by shirking his work or having everything he touched die and angering the community by clearly being accursed, a curse that was destroying their food. The multiplicity of languages didn't help either: yes, he learned how to learn them, but they mutated so fast once the common tongue was lost that he could no longer somewhat easily move to the tribe or city over the next hill and learn how to act like one of them anywhere near quickly enough.

When Naoya ended up in a situation where he just couldn't win, he learned soon enough to shrug and move on to the next life, but Abel would always reincarnate close to him the next time Abel's own incarnation died. Life and death being what they were back then, it was all too easy for Abel to become an orphan beggar, or be sold into slavery by his own parents thanks to poverty or being too attractive for his own good (the two of them were always handsome: the divine aura clinging to them made sure of that no matter how scarred Naoya became, for example), or be crippled, or a host of other unpleasant things, blessing or no blessing. Terrible things happened often enough before technology that being protected from ninety percent of them (neither Abel nor Naoya had ever died of childhood diseases, for example, unlike so many of their peers in each life) just made Abel likely to live long enough to fall prey to human evil.

Early on, Naoya had tried to look after Abel just because Abel was his brother, then in hopes of getting Grandfather's forgiveness even though he knew how delusional that thought was and then because he was the only familiar thing in a hellish world. He often envied the others around him, who didn't know how much of a horror human existence truly was because they didn't know how it was supposed to be.

In many lives Naoya had only one anchor, only one thing to prove that his memories weren't born of madness. Or to keep him from retreating into madness. Breaking the curse and revenge on Grandfather gave him a reason to go on: Abel gave him a rock to stand on.

Perhaps there was more than a little vengeance in keeping him alive, too. Naoya killed Abel once. Grandfather's cruelty to humanity, the curses he laid on them had killed his supposedly-beloved grandson hundreds of times.

Well, who had Abel chosen to protect, in the end?

Before and after Abel began to be reborn with his memories, Naoya had done things to protect him that Naoya never would have done for his own sake.

Naoya had nothing else, nothing he could keep.

Yuzu was the first to figure that out, after Abel finally told her that he'd been trying, since long ago when Naoya warned him his friend had a crush, and she was one of his best friends and he did love her, but he couldn't love her the way she wanted. She wasn't the other half of his soul, she was her own person, and he couldn't reduce her to just an extension of himself. Not when he wanted her to have someone who loved her for her.

Of course, she couldn't let him give up like that, after everything they'd been through, so she'd told him that sometimes people just didn't fall in love, that was fine and not his fault, and he shouldn't feel obligated to try to fall in love with her, it wasn't like it was going to be the end of her world. Especially since she had already noticed he was more interested in Haru, and she'd thought that was why he had a 'trying to let you down gently' look in his eyes, for crying out loud.

If anything, she was disappointed that he hadn't called her over to the Tokyo U dorms to tell her that he and Haru had started dating.

It was a lot easier not to feel intimidated by the fact she knew a couple mythological figures with hundreds of years of knowledge and smarts when they were both such boys.

"Honestly, Joe's kind of a goof," Airi was telling the bride as Yuzu remembered the past and what led up to her own bachelorette party. "I mean, really a goof."

"I know. He didn't visit me for months because he felt bad about letting it go so long. I can walk around now, though. If that happens again, I'll just track him down and tie him up!" the bride declared happily,

"I'll drink to that!" Airi said, fitting actions to words. Only she meant her dad, not a boyfriend. Although she might need to do that to a boyfriend someday. Like, take Keita. Not that she wanted to.

"To bondage!" Midori happily agreed.

"To bondage!" A throaty voice agreed from behind them as a woman dressed as a belly dancer sashayed up to them. No, it wasn't quite a belly dance costume, Hinako knew, although she couldn't recall the name of the dance that involved a snake.

…that wasn't a prop.

"Aunt Lily!" Yuzu put her glass down and leaped up, overjoyed. "You made it!" They weren't sure she'd be able to: the news that the human world had fallen, and to someone else, obviously made the demons restive. Since the King of Bel was up here with his family, his Aunt Lilith had offered to …handle anyone who made trouble while he was gone.

In the process of feeding them to her dear serpent.

"So I take it the odds of a demon rebellion and invasion are back to normal?" Izuna asked her, orange eyes sharp. Red hair happened, but orange eyes were a little too close to red. She'd worn contacts up until she joined the military, where they became an advantage.

A shrug that caused certain movements and a throaty chuckle were the only responses, so Izuna decided not to press her luck. Lilith was created to control a young godling and keep him from, for example, jumping out of trees due to forgetting that he couldn't fly again. Mind control was first nature to her, even if it originally manifested as adoration instead of lust, according to one of Naoya's occasional tidbits of tactical information. Since all modern humans were part-demon (and hadn't that upset everyone cleared to know it), they didn't have the amount of resistance Adam and the first generation did. Except for Seth, for some reason: she could tell Naoya hadn't meant to mention that.

Well, this was going to be an interesting party, in the curse word sense of interesting. Lilith was temptation incarnate, and Izuna's previous experience with and research on Loki indicated that he was a man-whore even when he wasn't a man.

And she'd still rather be here, with incredibly powerful non-human entities, than dealing with her superiors. It was more than a little scary how well she fit in here, how her hair and eyes didn't seem odd at all either among Abel's allies or Seth's.

Almost as terrifying, even for someone with both a machine gun and demons to call on, someone who had gone inside the Lockdown even knowing it was a death sentence, someone who had stood her ground and died defending a fifth of what was left of her country's soil, of her world's, as the idea that Naoya, of all people, was human and everyone else wasn't. Not quite. When it was so easy to go through any city, even in insular Japan, and find people clearly marked by the inhuman. Because the 'normal' people weren't normal either, traces in their genes that just hadn't risen to the surface. Yet.

She let out a sigh blended between contentment, resignation and just plain tired.

"Warrior dances are dedicated to Odin, but since the lady is a friend of our king, I'll make an exception," Loki told them as Hinako finally stepped aside, and he took her place across the fire from the half-circle of watchers, the moonlit ocean at his back.

Amane said nothing, but frowned at herself to find that she was a little disappointed Loki wasn't stripping. She could have used that to send them away, since Airi and the other minors hadn't fallen asleep yet.

Long after they had fallen asleep, carried to bed by Otome & other parents, and Amane, among others, had left early so they could get up early and prepare for tomorrow, happy voices echoed off the dunes until -

"-Someone cast Amrita!"

Yuzu knelt by the bride's other side, casting the spell that had cost her children so many sick days. They'd almost cheered when after reading an article she decided that she should let them get sick: they wouldn't be living with her forever and their immune systems needed the workout. "Diarahan isn't working either," she said as Dr. Otome and Nurse Mari joined her.

"She's passed out?" Mari still possessed that serene tone that could make people think she was either stoned or utterly disaffected with the world even when she was hunting down the vampire that killed her fiancé.

"How many has she had, anyway?" Yuzu belatedly realized. "Was anyone keeping track?"

"I'm not sure she was," Dr. Otome told her, short blonde hair falling forward as she shook her head, leaning over the patient. "She's been in that hospital for a long time, and before that…"

"Should I call a speedboat to get her over to one of our shipboard infirmaries?" Izuna offered, hand on her radio.

Yuzu hesitated. After so long in the hospital, to wake up there?

"Surprisingly, I don't have any spells to deal with drunkenness," Loki said: glancing at Lilith, he saw she didn't either. "The Norse saw it as a state to achieve, not end early. Naoya might: he has an affinity for holy magic and more knowledge of the human body than we do." The 'biochemistry' of it all.

"I'll get him," Yuzu said, since she didn't have any formal medical training, Naoya was more likely to listen to her than anyone else here and she wanted to see if the bachelor party had gotten its hands on any strippers. It wasn't that she worried about Atsuro – he could program himself better 3d pornography if he ever wanted it – but they had children over there. And Kaido had contacts who specialized in smuggling things in past blockades.

Running down the path, she certainly wasn't going to stop but she smelled the flowers anyway. The night wind carried a jasmine-sweet fragrance and dozens of others she didn't know. What a place for a wedding. Or a honeymoon.

Joe was the first to catch sight of her: he and Ronaldo were by the bonfire trying to maneuver Hiro, who had hair-trigger reflexes after what he'd just been through, and Yamato, who had actual anti-assassination training, into a compromising position without waking them, Joe for the amusement and Ronaldo because guilty of a certain specific murder or not, Yamato was still a little bastard. "Hi, uh-"

"Yuzu," Gin told him, sitting by the baskets of drinks and the other old man with the white-and-pink hair, which was strange even by their standards. "What happened?"

"Someone passed out," she said, trying to pretend that she was just annoyed instead of worried, and that it was a nebulous 'someone' instead of the woman Hiro's friend Joe loved. "Loki thought Naoya might know a spell for that."

"He's over there," Gin said, looking concerned as he pointed off into the shadows.

Blinking her eyes to adjust after looking in the area lit by the flames, Yuzu saw Naoya, Atsuro and the boy in the absolutely terrible red-and-black striped… thing with the white ruffles inside the collar. Honestly, the first time she saw him, between his skinny pallor and what he was wearing she knew he could only be one of two things. A, not human, or B, a fashion model. "Thanks," she said, and loped over to them over the soft sands.

"Look, if we're talking a database that contains all information, we start to run into the one-to-one scale map problem, right?" she heard Atsuro say, sketching. "Forget the Incompleteness Theorem in all its forms."

"That's one problem I encountered. As an Akashic being, my personal memory was part of the archive itself, so I couldn't possess any data that conflicted. And as for the imponderables! Humans consider the Akashic Records the total knowledge of their own species, but even though the human brain itself is what you call a computer-" Saiduq said, and if Yuzu hadn't known he wasn't originally a demon she would have been a little worried. Could demons learn to write their own summoning programs? Saiduq had, after all.

"There are the perception problems," Naoya agreed. "Even my Grandfather has a massive blind spot, it's not possible to take in data or perceive anything without one." He was smiling, eyes bright with interest, in a way that wouldn't have seemed wicked if this was anyone but Naoya, who looked that way even when he wasn't plotting anything but heirloom tomatoes. "Since humans are by definition incapable of perfect understanding of themselves or other humans, their connection to the Akashic Records made you and Polaris unable to understand them."

"Oh hey, Yuzu," Atsuro said before Saiduq replied. "Worried about me?"

"Of course not. You'd forget your hat if it wasn't glued to your head, but you wouldn't leave your comp behind," Yuzu said, then got down to business. "Naoya? Do you know anything about alcohol poisoning?"

He gave her that look which asked her who she thought she was talking to. Forget alchemy, the real birthplace of chemistry was drink-making and distillery. "A lot. What happened?"

"I think I assumed someone knew her limit when she'd actually never drunk before." So had everyone else, but if Yuzu had thought to ask that still would have prevented this.

"I'll be back," he told the other two.

"Right," Atsuro said, and turned back to Saiduq. "So…" Since they should pick up the advanced theory discussions when Naoya got back, what did Atsuro want to ask a truly alien being? Hmm…