Chapter 21 : War is dumb.
"Fight me!" Vali Lucifer, having apparently decided that he is fed up with what's happening at this moment, suddenly demands as he steps forward while I'm still handling my handful of cosplaying Mahou Shoujo.
I don't really have to ask who he is talking to, though, I can guess.
His words prompts me to give him a look, before pointedly making a show of looking at the vicinity.
"Not right now, no." I answer a tad flatly, Serafall peering curiously at the both of us.
"You think I ain't worth your time, huh?" He growls, brows furrowed.
Next to him, Azazel sighs, eyes closed, his subordinates darting all around in the background as they gather Kokabiel's followers - dead or unconscious both.
"Vali-kun, this is not really-" He starts, patiently, only to get cut off rather rudely as the teen whirls on him.
"You too?! I thought you were supposed to be on my-" The white haired boy snarls.
"I never said I wouldn't." I pointedly interject, talking over him, "Merely that I will not fight you right now."
"... Why?" He asks, blessedly after taking a couple seconds to at least unclench his fists.
"... Because today has already been a long day, and it's not even midday." I answer, my smile very plastic on my face, "Azazel's peons-"
"Now, that's uncalled for. They are valuable subordinates." The Governor General of the Gregori smoothly inserts with all the grace of a used car salesman.
"-are currently busy clearing up the place and tallying the dead, I'm probably going to be carted for an interview due to my presence on the scene and my proximity with no less than two Devil heiresses-"
"Yeah, sorry in advance, Marie-tan." The Leviathan admits with a little wince.
"-and I'm honestly not in the mood for a spar after having to put up with this whole shitshow." I end my diatribe with a frown, before slowly shaking my head, "Two of my friends nearly got killed by a light spear barrage earlier, one of my acquaintance got killed and I'd like to check on her as soon as possible,-" I jerk my head in Asia's direction, who's still out of it and attended by Rias' Queen, "-And I need to see if my impromptu-cum-battlefield soul surgery on an unstable Balance Breaker worked.
"Today has been a lot. So we won't be fighting today, we won't be fighting tomorrow either because I think I'm going to need an entire day to at least put all of this behind me, but you can swing by on Sunday and we will beat each other's faces to our heart's content. Fine by you?" I end with an arched eyebrow.
The teen scowls, arms crossed over his chest, before slowly nodding once as his sacred gear shines brightly white, Albion probably telling him something in private.
"Fine!" He spits, before about-facing, crouching slightly.
"Thank you for swinging by, though. I appreciate the help." I add mildly, beaming a smile in his direction.
My words make him pause, and he looks over his shoulder.
"... I barely did anything." He points out, his resting bitch face smoothing out a notch.
"Eh, it's the sentiment that counts." I answer with a shrug, jostling both Serafall and Ddraig, who's already waving his paw at his rival tauntingly, "I didn't need you this time, maybe I will the next, who knows?"
The white haired teen grunts noncommittally, before jumping and flying off without even asking Azazel if it's fine with him.
"SEE YOU NEXT TIME, ALBION!" The Red Plushie Emperor calls loudly, before chuckling to himself, "Can't believe my rival was stuck mute like that, eh!"
"I think he has trouble computing the situation." I muse aloud, "Probably also a tad too busy seething about still being trapped while you're out and about."
"... Thank you for handling that the way you did." Azazel says while stepping closer, scratching the back of his head in exhaustion, "I nearly thought that he'd start attacking you then and there."
"That would have ended badly for him." I comment matter-of-factly, before shaking my head once more and spearing the Governor General of the Grigori with a look, "How many?"
He quirks an eyebrow up.
"I'm afraid you'll have to be a bit more specific." He answers mildly.
"Don't play dumb Azi, she wants to know how many students died." Serafall beats me to the punch while glaring at her counterpart.
"... The last account is thirty injured, including eight in critical condition, and seven dead." He admits with a wooden air.
I close my eyes.
I inhale.
I let that sink in for a bit.
I slowly exhale.
"Let me guess," I start, my tone positively dripping with annoyance and anger, "I can't wrang what's left of Kokopuffs' neck myself because we need someone to publicly crucify for this?"
"I'm afraid you cannot."/"Yup."/"Bah, who cares about the consequences! He wronged you, his life is yours!"
Three guesses as to who decided to give his own grain of salt on the topic while the two leaders commiserate with me, and the first two don't count.
"... No, they're right, Ddraig." I admit with an explosive and fed up sigh, "If the Fallens don't have someone to pin the blame onto, it'll make the future peace talks all the more difficult. Worse case scenario, it could push them back for years. You know very well why that's a bad idea."
I catch in the corner of my eyes the Toon Dragon of Domination purses his muzzle in a very put upon grimace, before slumping a little.
"Doesn't mean I have to like it!" He squeak-growls, clicking his claws together in anger.
"Me neither, Ddraig, me neither." I answer with a last sigh.
A pause.
"Ne, ne, you're surprisingly more insightful than you look." Serafall says while poking me in the cheek, looking at me very intently.
"I'm wise beyond my years." I drawl, "Still not planning on getting off any time soon?"
"Nope~." She sing-songs, before hiking herself up in my grasp and squashing our chests together in passing to better look at me in the eyes, her face very close to mine, "Before I was intrigued, but now I'm interested. So! You're stuck with Levi-tan for the time being~!"
"Run for the hills, you fool. Run while it's still time." Azazel deadpans, his hands clasped behind his back and with a thousand year stare plastered on his face.
"I fail to see why you'd need to do your best impression of a koala for that, though." I point out while ignoring the peanut gallery, "It's not like I'm going anywhere."
"You're comfy." The grown-ass woman admits unabashedly with a megawatt grin, "And really tall. It's funnier that way!"
I lock eyes, before slowly making a show of rolling mine.
Her grin doesn't abate one lick.
Serafall and I, the Maou sitting behind Sona's desk in the StuCo room of Kuoh, exchange a last, long look.
Finally, Hell's diplomat sighs while unstapling her hands from in front of her.
I raise an eyebrow at her.
"So, we're good?" I ask mildly, shifting a little on my chair, Senketsu still in his battle-form because I'm not about to take a stupid risk while the Red Plushie Emperor takes a nap on my shoulders and Joyeuse has been unsummoned for the time being.
"... I'm going to go with a tentative 'yes'." The purple eyed woman answers while rubbing one of her temples, "How confident are you in that seer of yours, exactly?"
"Enough to upend my entire life to spend it in Japan of all places." I answer with a sigh, having given the Maou a roughly similar talk that I did to Azazel during my 'interrogation'.
At least the cosplaying Mahou Shoujo had been willing to conduct it herself without needing for me to pass by the case Underwold, which I would have been quite cross about since I did fight for the lives of both the Gremory and Sitri heiresses.
I can understand that a human with my level of power can make a couple of old codgers uncomfortable, but it doesn't mean I have to put up with it. Thankfully, the Maou of Foreign Affairs is smart enough to recognize that trying to force someone who has some modicum of sway over the Toon Dragon of Domination to do something they don't want to would be fundamentally stupid, so she used the silken glove approach.
"... This is going to complicate so many things!" Serafall grumble-whines, dipping her head while rubbing the back of her neck, "Are you really sure?!"
"For what it's worth, I believe her, bat." Ddraig sleepily squeaks, half-lidded green gem-like eyes looking loosely in her direction.
The Maou's head snaps upward, looking like she just sucked a particularly sour lemon, before theatrically deflating as she slumps in her chair.
"I swear that the entire bloodline is nothing but problems!" She huffs, her arms crossed under her impressive chest, making it bounce.
I nod distractedly, my eyes following the motion of her sizable assets because dayum.
"You're not entirely wrong. Rizevim is old, powerful and bored, that's a deadly combination if I've ever heard of one." I end saying after locking eyes back with her, "Though I do suspect that he has - or will have - the help of a powerful seer who's just as equally bored as him and would find it equally tempting."
I don't quite remember everything about the stupid boob-verse, most of my knowledge having been obtained through osmosis for the most part, but I seem to recall that Indra had a hand in the major troubles happening later on because the guy was becoming just as stir-crazy as the batshit insane spawn of Lucifer and wanted something, anything to happen.
"Great, just great." The Leviathan bemoans, eyes looking skyward.
"Sorry, I hadn't really planned on being the bringer of bad news." I tell her with a shrug, making Ddraig grumble at being jostled while he's basically dozing off.
"No, it's-" The purple eyed woman snaps her attention back on me, waving her hands in front of herself, "It's not your fault, Marie-tan! And you protected my little sister, so as far as I'm concerned, we're totes square! It's just that this is a really bad juncture for the Old Satans' faction to gear up for war!"
"To be fair, the mere perspective of an alliance with Heaven and the Grigori would have them up in arms." I point out.
"Yes, but they usually just saber-rattle, nothing more." The Maou explains, "It's been a long time since they got the balls to make themselves known, what with both the New Satans and King factions regularly banding together to stop them from being relevant. You can say anything you want about the old Bael, but he does have a vested interest in not having Lucifer in charge."
I hum in the back of my throat in acknowledgement while motioning for her to continue.
"The Old Satans are… Like those Fallens you fought against earlier, yes?" She gestures behind her in the courtyard's direction, "They still want their pound of flesh despite how the Great War concluded, that's why Sirzechs, Ajuka, Falbium and I banded together to shake things down with Zekram's backing. Except not even one percent of the Devil's race want to fight against our 'ancestral enemies'! Even the few ancestors that remain to this day have turned their backs on it!"
"It probably helps that Big G bit it during the last war." I add thoughtfully.
"Exactly." The Maou sighs, "So even them don't really see the point once they rub their brain cells together. Technically? We, the Devils, have won the conflict since we can replenish our numbers long-term and have the Peerage system to bolster our numbers in the meantime. Sure, it may take a couple millenia for us to get back to a proper size, but it doesn't change that fact. Nor the fact that the Fallens are naturally self-destructive and Heavens can't spawn new Angels out of thin air like they used to. Tack onto the fact that every other supernatural faction doesn't really like us for… Legitimate reasons, I'll admit, and wanting to reignite a three-way internal war between the constituents of the Biblical faction isn't merely shortsighted, it's also dumb as fuck."
I snort a laugh, before shaking my head.
"Yeah, I kind of figured that out on my own." I tell her amusingly, "Though, to be fair, every war is dumb."
Serafall gives me a look, before slowly nodding.
"I'm not going to disagree with you on that, Marie-tan. The civil war…" She shivers, badly, before ruefully shaking her head, "Needless to say, there's a reason us four are trying our hardest to never see a repeat happen while we still have the Devils under our sway."
Huh, kind of obvious in insight that the New Satans have a personal stake in all of this shitshow, even if PTSD wouldn't have been my first choice.
I let silence fall on the room for a beat, letting all of that sink in.
"So, we're good?" I reiterate my earlier question, one of my eyebrows arched interrogatively.
The purple eyed woman takes a moment to ponder that, one hand rubbing at her chin, before nodding decisively at herself and jumping out of her seat.
"Yes, yes we are. I'll find an adequate way to spin all of this so that none of us comes to annoy you!" She pointedly looks at Ddraig's sleeping form as I stand up, "Even though I have the feeling the ones who will try anyway are in for a rude surprise."
"Oh?" I hum while side-eyeing the one meter and sixty something woman - I positively towers over her, "You're not going to tell anyone about 'Ddraig-chu'?"
"Oh, I'm going to tell Sirzechs, Ajuka and Falbium about it, obviously." She happily answers while quite literally bouncing along the way as we walk out of the StuCo room, "But if some of our more problematic members just happened to disappear by way of 'angy dragon'…"
The way she trails off with a manic grin and an unholy glint in her eyes makes me shiver a little, I have to admit.
Nonetheless, I still frown sternly back at her.
"Telling me, to my face, that I'm going to get myself used like an elaborate Darwinistic selection?" I remark, one eyebrow arched, "Bold of you to assume that I will let it happen."
"I'll make it worth your while?" She answers tit-for-tat, a cheeky smirk on her face, "Maybe some yuri-yuri time~?"
I bark a laugh, before suddenly whirling on her, one arm landing against the nearby wall with a very audible 'thump' as I step into her personal space, looming over her with startling ease.
The century old being blinks, her eyes darting to my extended arm trapping her, blinks some more and starts blushing.
"... You know, you should be very careful writing checks you don't feel comfortable paying." I tell her conversationally, my free hand taking a delicate hold of her chin, "Or some may very well get the wrong idea."
The Leviathan flaps her mouth a couple times, cheeks steadily turning crimson.
"Understood?" I demand.
She shivers, before nodding wordlessly.
"Good girl." I purr, patting her cheek 'kindly'.
And I step away without elaborating, internally snickering as the Maou reboots.
It admittedly takes her a couple seconds before she scampers after me, grumbling about 'meanie' and 'tease' all the while.
[AN: Nothing much to say this time around. :3
Hope you enjoy, xoxo!]