Chapter 20 : Tempus Fugit : Do you believe in something?
Akeno honestly didn't think Prima-chan had it in her, taking this kind of risk on school grounds, despite all of her general 'in your face' attitude.
There was, after all, a rather steep step between looking like a delinquent of sorts by choice and actually disregarding the rules, especially when the human girl looked so… prim and proper in a lot of other regards.
Yes, she tended to be short and to the point when speaking with the teachers and wasn't really mingling with the rest of her peers, but you could feel that it wasn't by disdain, rather because she was focused on her goals, whatever those were.
In spite of the general distrust the other girls showed her, she remained calm and collected when interacting with them, seemingly not really caring what they could say behind her back.
In short, her King's friend was a study in contrast: focused on her academia, somehow competent with a blade for some reasons, yet she also was the kind of girl that would let herself pushed against a locker and willingly let herself get 'played' with by one of her senpai.
The half-fallen was now thoroughly intrigued, and since she could definitely use the distraction after the berating she had to weather by proxy while standing next to her King as she got roasted on the coals by the Sitri heiress after last night's incident, she was the one to derail the usual smalltalk at the cafeteria table today.
"I'm curious, Hanako-san, but do you believe in something?" The jade-black haired girl asks amid a lull in her King and the human's conversation.
Her question makes the girl with a side-shave slowly blink as she swallows what she was eating.
"...Alright, I'll bite: what exactly prompted that line of inquiry and what do you mean by it, Himejima-san?" She finally answers, her head tilted to the side.
"Well, the ink you wear on your body, of course." Akeno improvises, suddenly remembering Kiba-kun's observation, not seeing how she could weasel her way out of bluntly asking the girl if she was affiliated with the church or not otherwise, supremely ignoring the panicked warning looks of her King next to her in the meantime, "You have to admit that the iconography is a little…"
As she trails off, the lips of the dark-brown haired girl quirk up, before she starts to chuckle.
"Ah! That's a good one…" The dark-blue eyed girl exclaims before trailing off, her tone visibly mirthful.
A reaction which was as much as a proof that the half-fallen really needed in debunking the 'church affiliate' theory, in the end, but she was nonetheless curious to hear why it was causing such hilarity to the human.
"Oh? And why is that?" She politely inquires-
-only earning a dismissive gesture in answer for her efforts.
"You wouldn't get it, but no, those aren't religious, at least to me." Prima answers, Akeno idly noticing the smidgen of tension leaving the shoulders of her King in the corner of her eyes.
"You could say, though, that they represent how I came to be, a part of my life story." The dark-brown haired girl elaborates.
"Oh? What do they mean, then, Prima-chan?" Her King perks up, prompting the human girl to give her an apologetic look, one finger coming to her lips in a shushing motion.
"Maybe I'll tell you someday, those are only the first drafts anyway." The dark-blue eyed answers with a wink, prompting Akeno to titter in good-humor.
Say what you want, but those were indeed a little 'rough' around the edges.
The half-fallen and the human girl seemingly choosing in concert to ignore the former King's pout, the conversation comes back to Akeno's original question.
"And to answer your question, no, I do not believe in something." The human girl answers rather bluntly.
Her answer makes the half-fallen hums consideringly, her head tilted to the side.
"Why is that, if I may ask?" She asks mildly.
"Well, because believing one of the creation mythos instantly invalidates all of the others, for a start," The human girl prefaces, and the logic of her argument instantly makes the half-fallen pause, "Let's say for example that the Shinto religion is the one true pantheon and that everybody else around the globe is false in their belief.
"That would mean that everything is true by Japanese religious lore, that humans came to be according to it, and that they were molded by it.
"But, that cannot be the case, because other civilizations have risen and fallen even before the isles were populated, with their own religious lore.
"So, with that basic observation, we can infer that no pantheon or unique god of sorts can claim the top spot, and that this is in fact a purely human creation with the goal to establish guidelines and rules to follow by arbitrarily appointing one or multiple authorities as the ultimate arbiter of one's life, forcing the individual to behave in society and not be a gigantic ass to his contemporaries by relying on the humans' inherent selfishness, since it'd be their only way to gain access to a 'good' afterlife." The human girl concludes, smiling a little impishly.
That was…
…Making an awful lot of sense, actually, as long as you didn't know for sure that the gods were very much a thing in their world.
It did raise some interesting questions, though.
"Secondly, because I see religious conflicts as groups of people squabbling between each other about who has the best imaginary friend, and I cannot take those seriously." She elaborates further, and the sheer amount of blasphemy in one sentence almost cracks Akeno up, Rias' jaw having dropped at table level at some point, so flabbergasted she is.
"As I pointed out earlier, I believe that religions started with the goal to stop humans from killing each other senselessly, but it has gradually lost its luster as the centuries went and the law of men, made by men, came to be prevalent. Now, the only thing left of note are the philosophies tied to those, and you won't convince me that some never evolved with their time and are now, quite frankly, completely obsolete." She carries on, gesturing around with her chopsticks.
…An understandable position for someone interested in the fairer sex, Akeno muses.
"Humans have simply outgrown their needs for their gods, is all." The human girl ends with a one shoulder shrug, before pausing, "I do believe in something starting it all, though."
"W-What do you mean, Prima-chan?" Rias asks, having apparently gathered back some semblance of her wits.
"Something or someone kick-starting this whole thing that is life, the universe, the big bang." She carelessly explains, making an all-encompassing gesture, "After all, that is something that cannot easily be explained. The rest? Coincidences, moments of luck, the right meteorite landing on the right planet at some point, bacteria forming more complex organisms as they group together, and BAM! You get hairless monkeys thinking 'they are so smart'." She ends with a chuckle full of mirth while gesturing around the cafeteria as a whole.
There was a lot to unpack there, but Akeno was definitely sure of one thing.
No way this girl was the product of the church with views like those, they'd rather have had her killed than let a staunch agnostic of her caliber traipse around in their ranks, potentially corrupting their other members.
…The girl was probably in for a rather rude awakening if she came to someday know about the supernatural world.
…Would it be worth it to shatter her worldview just like that, because her King wanted to keep her first human friend?
The half-fallen wasn't so sure.
"B-But," Her King starts, a bit haltingly, before soldiering through once her friend locks eyes with her, "What if there was some truth in those lore?"
"To which degree? To what extent? Which one is right, which one is false? Whom to really believe? Do the gods really exist or are they only imaginary?" The dark-brown haired girl enumerates, before rolling her eyes, "I don't have any answers to those questions and, quite frankly, I don't care. I won't try to convince other people that my own view on the subject is the real one, all I ask is that they don't preach to me."
"And what about the afterlife?" The crimson headed devil insists, showing minute amounts of distress.
"Again: who's right and who's wrong in all that mess?" The dark-blue eyed girl counters, "Was it the Greek? The Roman? The Norse? The Jewish? The Catholic? The Muslim? The Shinto? The Buddhist? Maybe the Aztec?"
All of the above, actually, Akeno idly comments in her head while outwardly keeping silent.
"No one ever came back to either validate or invalidate their existences, all we have are a few prophets and sages swearing to us that it's all real. His rotten bones, I'd rather live in the present than banking on something whose existence is entirely hypothetical.
"Plus, I figure I'd be shit out of luck to have my access granted to those so-called paradisiac realms, considering I am not one of their faithfuls anyway."
As her King tries to digest her friend's answers, with some difficulties, one part of it keep niggling at Akeno's attention.
"What is that swear you often use, Hanako-san?" The half-fallen asks, "It's rather uncommon."
The human girl locks eyes with her, before chuckling once again.
"Alright, so, I grew up in an orphanage, yeah?" She starts, earning herself two nods of acknowledgement before carrying on, "Well, my views weren't really shared by those who lived with me, and quite a few were catholic."
Instantly, alarm bells start to ring in Akeno's head, her eyes imperceptibly narrowing.
"One day, I got fed up with them, and told them that if their God-" The human girl keeps talking, her eyes miraculously going down right at the moment the two devils winces in pain as she probes to her plate with her chopsticks, "-had really existed at some point, then he was now obviously very dead and buried."
"W-Why would you say that?" Akeno's King asks, still reeling a little from hearing his name.
The dark-brown haired girl looks up at her, an air of 'are you an idiot?' stuck on her face.
"History." She answers curtly, before bending over backward around her seat, visibly looking for something in her school bag-
-before slamming on the cafeteria table their history book, to Akeno's confusion, and flipping the pages-
-until she lands on the chapter highlighting World War Two.
"Because if the big guy really existed," The dark-blue eyed girl starts, slowly rapping her short nail against the wood of the table for emphasis, right above the open textbook, "The very same guy who went apeshit ten times against the Pharaoh when he was enslaving his people, then I'd rather he'd be dead than to know that he deliberately chose to sit on his ass and do nothing when they died by millions in some camps in Europe.
"But you should already know that, I'm sure, what with it being a rather thorny subject from where you come." She tilts her head in consideration, "At least more than here, by any measure."
…Which wasn't actually the case, but since this was the lie they had chosen to go with, they actually had to pretend it was the case-
-and if Rias' expression is anything to go by, she actually had never really thought about it.
"...Maybe He was still mad for His son?" The crimson headed devil eventually slowly articulates.
"Then it's even worse, because that means he is a cold hearted asshole, and an inconsistent one at that, since he went and launched another religion six hundred years and some change after that." The human girl flatly drops, before slamming the book shut while shaking her head, "No, for me, the guy, if he ever existed, is dead, and his angels are too busy weeping in heaven to do their fucking job.
"And so, I swear on his rotten bones."
The conversation comes to a halt, leaving the two devils rather pensive around the table.
Though, Akeno muses to herself, the girl would really, really be in for a rude awakening if she ever comes into contact with the supernatural world.
After all, He was still alive.
[AN: Took a rather heavy turn at some point, but it's an important character trait of Prima that I'm trying to show.
Obviously, you're all lacking her own pov to understand what really builds her outlook, but so are the devils, which is why I wanted to make it either a Rias or Akeno pov rather than hers.
Hope you enjoy, happy samhain, xoxo]