Ride 25: Re:Action
8th of June, 2019 AD
In Nemichi Shrine's entrance, Leon, Yuuto, Koneko, Pandora, Irina, and Raynare all land behind Takeshi and his trail of scorched masonry and overcompensation of looking cool as possible during his dynamic entry.
"Well..." The Fallen Angel then looked back at the trail of dead Stray Exorcists laying on the forested stairway leading up to the main shrine. "... At least that saved us the issue of having to deal with fodder."
"Pandora, are you still blind?" Koneko asked, to which the Knight nodded. "... Don't let go of my hand until your eyes are back to working order, okay?"
Leon then looks at Yuuto with a concerned look. "... Quick question, but has my friend been causing any troubles within your Peerage?"
"He's usually the designated lunatic of our found family, yes," Yuuto bluntly answered. "... Everyone, including ourselves, tend to underestimate how... unorthodox Takeshi can be."
"I still can't tell if Takeshi-san is either completely off his gourd or might be a secret genius," Irina commented before Xenovia threw up on the stairs, still nauseous from Takeshi's singing of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" that might as well been an act of war crime.
"... Why such extravagance?" the Catholic Exorcist groaned as she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "... Are we supposed to, in your own words, 'prevent World War Three' from breaking out?"
"Sue me, I like Iron Man 2!" Takeshi replied before cracking his neck side-to-side as we walked further in. "... Alright then, who's kicking which ass-?"
*KABOOM!*
Then breaking through the main building's front door, Kokabiel comes roaring out with a giant broadsword made of his own holy energy in hand, swinging it towards the Evil Dragon User.
"[PROMOTION: ROOK]!"
*CLANG!*
Takeshi successfully parries the surprise attack with his shoulder strike, fending off the inflicted recoil by firing his jet thrusters of his [Savage Predator Incarnation] to offset the inertia, and shattering the constructed blade as the Stray Cadre flies back for another strike.
This time, the Evil Dragon User lunges forth to meet Kokabiel's fist head-on, both sides' knuckles colliding against each other, unleashing a dense pulse of concentrated force that causes the whole shrine complex to quake at its foundations.
"LOOK!" Takeshi cackled in glee as he and the Stray Cadre posed like Domon Kasshu and Master Asia respectively, something that Koneko quickly snapped a photo of on her phone (held by her bat familiar). "THE EAST IS BURNING RED!"
"HOW?! THERE WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SEVERAL SPATIAL BARRIERS ERECTED AROUND THIS ENTIRE COMPLEX THAT WE HAVE USED DURING THE GREAT WAR!" Kokabiel cried out. "HOW DID YOU GET THROUGH ALL OF THEM SO QUICKLY?!"
"Wait, there were barriers?" Koneko asked before she and everyone else (in the know) quickly realized what had happened seconds prior.
Apparently, Takeshi's singing (again, it should be stated that it was a thing BEFORE the Evil Dragons woke up in his soul) was SO bad that it effectively shattered space-time.
"... Omertà?" Xenovia suggested, to which everyone else nodded in silent agreement.
"Yep, senpai's now officially our Peerage's designated mad genius," Koneko deadpanned. "... Wonder if Lord Asmodeus is offering any internship opportunities-"
Kokabiel lets out a fierce howl as he then conjures forth a light spear from his other hand before staking it down, causing it to explode upon contact like a struck missile.
The Evil Dragon User and the Stray Cadre were blown back from each other by the blast, the area where they once stood now a sizable crater.
Grendel rapturously laughs at the main boss' show of power from [Cataclysm Zone]'s verdant gem. "FINALLY!" he gleefully declared. "A WORTHY OPPONENT!"
"We got your back, Takeshi-!" Then, Pandora's senses pick up on another strong presence coming towards them. "CONTACT!"
Then a barrage of light spears rained from the sky, coming from Lailah, now shooting her fusillade towards the group to cut them off from each other.
She successfully chases Koneko, Pandora, and Raynare out of Nemichi Shrine's entrance before remotely reactivating one of the breached barriers, to which Kokabiel added his own holy energy into it to further reinforce it, trapping the remaining group inside.
"KONEKO! PANDORA!" Takeshi cried out.
"Don't worry! We'll be fine!" the Rook reassured as the eyepatched six-winged Fallen Angel descends before them. "You guys worry about dealing with the final boss!"
"Don't underestimate me, children." Lailah flexes her wings as her sole eye glows with a dark-red hue akin to that of a blood moon. "I've been further refining myself for this very moment!"
As the Fallen Angel engaged with the three, everyone else inside the barrier stared each other down, waiting for the other to make their next move to react against.
"... Father Galilei ain't going to take care of himself," Leon pointed out as he stepped forth towards where Takeshi stood, manifesting his [Evalach] and [Fragarach]. "... I suppose you three know what to do?"
The other three look at each other and nod.
"Good luck, Inquisitor," Xenovia then takes Irina and Yuuto with her as they slip further into Nemichi Shrine, leaving Leon and Takeshi to confront Kokabiel by themselves.
"You should've used the numbers to your advantage," the Stray Cadre pointed out with a wicked grin. "As expected of children who know nothing of war!"
Then Kokabiel makes his first move, throwing several light spears towards the pair, each packing enough explosive force to level a building.
However, Takeshi himself was now accustomed to dealing with warhead-grade energy blasts, rolling across the ground on his Balance Breaker's heel-disks like a pair of motorized skates with his [Promotion: Knight], slipping through the barrage as he drew closer towards his opponent.
"[Boost]! [Boost]! [Boost]!" The Inquisitor then applies [Boosted Gear]'s properties into his [Evalach], erecting a holy barrier to block the oncoming barrage stalwartly, nary sliding back an inch from the impact right as Takeshi swings his first kick towards the Fallen Angel, to which the latter parries with his own kick, followed up with both sliding back to then each deliver their own follow-up.
"[PROMOTION: ROOK]!" Takeshi then throws a punch right into Kokabiel's own, the fists colliding unleashing a rain of sparks from the generated friction as the former flares up all of his thrusters to push back against the attack while the latter channels his own holy energy through his own fist to push back even harder.
"[Welsh Dragon]!" [Boosted Gear] announced as the glow of its scales opening up pierced through the fading smoke. "[Balance Breaker]!"
Now Playing: "ELEMENTS" by Rider Chips (from Kamen Rider Blade)
Leon was now clad in his rubicund [Scale Mail], rejoining the fray as he swung his enhanced [Fragarach] to unleash a vacuum slash, to which Kokabiel instantly erects a barrier for, but Takeshi unleashes a burst of bloodlust to temporarily disable Kokabiel's mind from all magic, letting the attack connect and send the Stray Cadre flying.
"Damn, that was a close one!" Takeshi chuckled out as he and Leon stood next to each other as Kokabiel got back up. "Nice save, man."
"Save the thanks for later," Leon pointed out as Kokabiel resumes his offense by throwing more holy energy lances at them, to which Takeshi parries with a flurry of his fiery fists before catching and throwing one back, to which Kokabiel flies past and summons his light sword that Leon counters with the swing of his [Fragarach] before using [Evalach]'s point to punch the Cadre back. "Right now, we have a terrorist to deal with!"
"'Terrorist'?!" the Stray Cadre remarked offendedly as he resumed his attack, swinging his now-separated blades towards the pair, to which the latter dodged and parried with Leon's Holy Sword providing him a forecast of Kokabiel's incoming attacks and Takeshi blocking them with [Savage Predator Incarnation]'s sheer bulk making the enemy's holy energy output negligible. "WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO CALL ME A 'TERRORIST,' YOU DAMN BRATS?!"
"You want the textbook definition, or should I give you a reality check?!" Takeshi then fires out a point-blank flame shot towards Kokabiel's head, but the latter dodges in time as Takeshi then follows up with a blast-boosted low-to-high crescent moon kick, to which he blocks with his twin swords that shatters upon impact. "Last I checked, NOBODY WANTS YOUR DAMN WAR!"
"And even if you did succeed...!" Leon then uses [Boosted Gear]'s [Boost] feature to enhance his [Excalibur Blessing]'s enchantment properties, granting him a generalized enhancement throughout his whole body before engaging Kokabiel into a melee weapon lock, keeping up with the latter's Ultimate-Class performance. "What's the point?! What's the point of fighting a war that you'll know that you'll lose?! ARE YOU THAT EAGER TO DIE LIKE THOSE WHO HAVE FALLEN BEFORE YOU DURING THE GREAT WAR!?"
The Stray Cadre snarls as he pushes back against Leon's enhanced body, to which Takeshi joins in to assist the former, but Kokabiel lets out an eruption of holy energy that sends the pair flying, crashing into the main shrine's offering box and staircase.
"... You've just answered your own question, damned brat." Kokabiel then flies up with his eight blackened wings, casting himself before the night sky as his backdrop. "... However, it is not merely avengeance that I seek. Rather, I seek a proper conclusion."
Takeshi groans as he ripped himself out of the wrecked box. "With what?" he deadpanned. "Directing your own damn sequel to the Great War?"
"The word 'sequel' implies that the Great War was a thing of the past," the Fallen Angel pointed out. "... But in reality, it is only a mere armistice. A ceasefire where there was no decided victor. A state, that the damned Azazel crawled up to those COWARDS AND PENNED THE PEACE TREATY WITHOUT OUR CONSENT!"
In rage, Kokabiel throws down a sphere of holy energy towards the main shrine, to which Leon unfurls his red-feathered wings from his back to carry Takeshi out of the wreckage, leaving the main shrine to be obliterated down to the last splinter, leaving naught but an ugly burn mark on the very foundations that it was built upon.
"I WAS READY TO DIE! I WAS READY TO DIE FOR THOSE WHO CAME BEFORE ME! I WAS READY TO SACRIFICE MYSELF FOR MY PEOPLE! BUT THAT COWARD CALLING HIMSELF OUR 'GOVERNOR' DENIED ME AND THOSE WHO WERE READY TO FOLLOW ME!" he ranted, the ambient output of his holy energy rising with his unleashed rage. "THAT DAMNED AZAZEL DOES NOT HAVE THE STOMACH TO BE OUR LEADER! IF HE CAN'T LEAD US, THEN SO BE IT! I WILL RESUME THE GREAT WAR UNTIL THERE LIES ONLY ONE WINNER! MY LIFE MEANS NOTHING IF IT MEANS I CANNOT LOOK AT THOSE WHO DIED BEFORE ME IN THE EYE! HEAVEN SHALL BURN! HELL SHALL ROT! AND THE EARTH SHALL BE NAUGHT BUT RUIN! THE FLAMES OF WAR SHALL CONSUME THE COWARDS PLAYING POLITICIANS AND TINKERERS! I WILL HAVE MY WAR! AND I WILL SEE IT THAT IT LASTS UNTIL ITS BITTER END!"
Takeshi and Leon were stunned into silence, causing the Stray Cadre to smirk with satisfaction.
"... Finally seeing reason?" he mockingly stated.
"No, you sound more like those salty posts on online forums bitching about the ending of Game of Thrones," Takeshi deadpanned, causing Kokabiel jaw to drop and Leon to gasp at the burn at the Evil Dragon User's show of sheer irrelevance. "... You want the short version, or the long version?"
"You watch Game of Thrones?" Leon commented.
"I pirate," Takeshi answered.
"Is this important right now?" Ddraig pointed out.
"I don't know what the brat is talking about, but I agree with Kokabiel being a complete bitch," Grendel added.
Kokabiel, meanwhile, while now grinding his teeth in seething rage. "CHILDREN LIKE YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THE PAIN I HAVE SUFFERED!"
Then, a backlit halo reminiscent of a twelve-pointed star and a zodiac wheel shone behind him.
"DIE FOR YOUR INSOLENCE! [SCORPIO]!"
The halo then shoots out a flurry of chains tipped with bladed points that each resemble a scorpion's stinger or pincers.
"MY [ASTERISK] TRAIT SHALL SEND YOU OVERPRIVILEGED BRATS TO THE DEPTHS OF HELL!" the Stray Cadre boasted as he continued carpet-bombing the earth below him while Takeshi and Leon dodged the oncoming barrage. "IT'S HOLY VENIN RIVALS THAT OF SAMAEL'S OWN! A MERE SCRATCH WILL SEIZE YOUR HEART'S MOVEMENTS THE MOMENT [SCORPIO] ENTERS YOUR VEINS-!"
Leon then comes roaring out of the sky, now sprouting three pairs of rubicund-quilled wings on his back to uppercut Kokabiel straight into his dick, causing the Stray Cadre to wheeze in agony before ceasing his attack to bend over in pain.
"... The rumored... Miracle Child," the Fallen Angel gasped in agony. "... Was you?!"
Leon grumbles apprehensively. "... I'm not the one who you should worry about right now."
In this opening, Takeshi then rides across the chains with his spinning heel-disks to then deliver a high-kick across the Cadre's chin, shooting him straight into the ground.
Leon then grabs Takeshi out of the air before administering [Excalibur Blessing]'s healing properties to Takeshi's envenomated body.
"Only a lunatic like Grendel would take being poisoned if it meant having a clearer shot towards his enemy," Ddraig deadpanned.
"I don't know who this 'Samael' is, but the eight-headed pervert's venom actually makes me feel something compared to the former's piss-poor excuse of a venom," the Evil Dragon of Wrath commented.
Doesn't matter though! Yamata no Orochi snickered from the peanut gallery. The man's dick is 1000% dead!
"You're right, Takeshi," Leon grunted as he tried to keep himself airborne with the Evil Dragon User in his [Savage Predator Incarnation] form. "... You're way too damn heavy to fly on your own."
Kokabiel gets up screaming as the pair make landfall, fighting through the pain of his bruised testicles in order to keep himself upright.
"... I understand."
Those two words catch Kokabiel's attention.
"I understand that you have a duty for the dead..." Takeshi revealed himself to be the one to speak. "But we have a duty of our own. One that is just as important as yours."
The Fallen Angel growls as trudged toward. "What can be more important...?! THAN AVENGING THOSE WHO I CARE ABOUT?!"
Leon's eyes narrowed behind his [Scale Mail]'s eyes. "... A leader's duty," he answered. "To keep their people safe. To learn from the mistakes made. To never repeat history. No leader seeks to put their own charges in danger, Kokabiel. Not you, not Deus Trinity, not the Four Great Satans, and certainly not Governor Azazel! You're no leader, Kokabiel. You're just a sad old man stuck in the past, damning your own future just to destroy the present that those who have bled and died for! You're not avenging your deceased friends, Kokabiel. YOU'RE JUST THROWING THEM AWAY LIKE YESTERDAY'S TRASH!"
"Silence, boy...!" Kokabiel snarled. "... You know nothing! NOTHING! I WILL NOT BE DETERRED AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR! MY RAGE WILL BE ANSWERED FOR! MY PAIN SHALL NOT BE QUIETED BEHIND CLOSED DOORS!"
"It almost astounds me how similar you and I are, Kokabiel. In that we care too much about others that matter the world to us," Takeshi revealed, much to everyone's surprise. "... But I have to ask. Did you tell Azazel, let alone anyone else, everything you have said to us? Or did you just stew in your own resentment for countless centuries all by yourself?"
Kokabiel's eyes widened as he recalled to the past where he tried to confront Azazel about those who have fallen, of how he wants to avenge his comrades that he lost during the Great War.
"It ain't gonna bring them back."
All Kokabiel heard in response was the tinkering of tools that his leader was playing with as if they were his toys.
He then sought out the opinions of others, hoping that at least one of them understood.
"I'm tired of fighting." Shemhazai's voice echoed apathetically.
"I want to try something new with my life." Baraqiel's voice echoed melancholically.
"I ain't dying in a war I know that I can't win." Sariel's voice echoed jokingly.
"... That's stupid and you know it." Armaros' voice echoed bluntly.
"I want to enjoy this 'quiet life' that everyone's been talking about nowadays." Penemue's voice echoed laxly.
"You know, there's a job for former war personnel to mop up Strays during peacetime..." Tamiel's voice echoed stoically.
Every. Last. One of them. Brushed him off.
They cast him aside, showing him naught but pity when he needed understanding.
He was alone. He knew that his place belonged with the dead.
Soon, those who were tired of this "peace" followed him, but Kokabiel, sans Lailah, saw them only as disposable.
Just pawns who knew NOTHING of the HELL he went through. If he could, and if there was an afterlife waiting for them, he would take only her with him towards where his friends were waiting.
"... What do you know?" Kokabiel's eyes began shedding tears of rage as his [Asterisk] halo shone behind his eight wings of blackened quills. "WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT MY PAIN?!"
He then unleashes another barrage of [Scorpio] chains towards the pair.
"NO ONE UNDERSTANDS!" Kokabiel roared as Takeshi grabbed the chains with his hands while Leon used his Holy Sword's [Boost]-enhanced future sight to evade and parry the barrage of poisoned anchors. "NOBODY UNDERSTAND WHAT I FEEL EVERY DAMN THING I SEE EVERY TIME I CLOSE MY EYES! I SEE THE CORPSES OF MY COMRADES STARING INTO ME! I HEAR THEIR SCREAMS TELLING ME TO AVENGE THEM! I CANNOT LIVE IN PEACE ANYMORE! I AM GOING INSANE EVERY PASSING DAY WHERE I AM IGNORED!"
"GET OVER YOURSELF ALREADY!" Takeshi then tugged the chains he'd grabbed onto, pulling Kokabiel back before headbutting him into his face before it was followed up by Leon slashing his [Fragarach] towards the Fallen Angel, to which the latter parries with his own light sword that shattered upon impact, sliding back across the ground.
"I WILL NOT BE SILENCED ANY LONGER FOR THIS FARCE CALLED 'PEACE'! [LIBRA]!" Kokabiel's eyes then shine before blasting a pair of thunderbolts that tore apart the earth they were standing on, to which Takeshi and Leon dodged the ground it struck and exploded, leaving behind patches of rotten earth in its wake.
"... That is no excuse and you know it," Takeshi remarked as he and Leon dodged the eye beams. "You wanna die that badly? Fine. We'll give you the warrior's death that you long for!"
"OH, THE MISERY THAT YOU HAVE FELT TO HAVE MISSED YOUR FATE!" Grendel cackled from [Cataclysm Zone]'s verdant gem. "COME, WARRIOR! RECEIVE YOUR ETERNAL REWARD!"
"I swear, you 'holier than thou'-people are the reason why we can't have nice things in this world..." Ddraig grumbled, mentally beating himself up upon realizing that Grendel was being proven right ever still, much to, again, his consternation. "... There are better ways to commit suicide, you know."
"I knew that deep down, talking you out of it was impossible, but still...!" The new Red Dragon Emperor then sighed, knowing that the scantest traces of diplomacy have failed, and now resolves to move to take the offensive. "... So be it. We shall mete out the due punishment, for the innocents that don't deserve your version of the future!"
"For those who we care about and live for today... WE WILL STOP YOU HERE, KOKABIEL!" the Evil Dragon User declared as he and Leon charged through the blasts. "WE WILL NOT SURRENDER OUR FUTURE TO VALIDATE YOUR OWN DESPAIR!"
"So, that's why...!"
Takeshi and Leon both close in on Kokabiel before then delivering a double Rider Punch to his stomach.
"IT IS TIME TO COUNT UP YOUR SINS!"
*KABOOM!*
Ddraig reads his host's memories to get a better read on what's happening as the Stray Cadre was blown back by the explosive double-team. And upon figuring out that Leon was pulling a Kamen Rider Double reference now of all times, all the original Red Dragon Emperor could do was groan.
"... Boy," he said towards Takeshi. "... You are a walking pestilence to common sense itself."
"Don't care. Worth it." Takeshi snickered.
"I swear, you'd love to be in one of Bruce Kalish's shoots..." Leon grumbled, secretly admittedly enjoying living out their shared superhero fantasies together.
Kokabiel growls and snarls as he snorts his broken nose before getting back up. "... 'My sins,' you say?" he hissed before the zodiac wheel-like halo hummed to life behind his eight blackened wings. "Don't get cocky... YOU HALF-BOILED BRATS!"
Ddraig groans as he sees a Stray Cadre also catch the Tokusatsu-reference disease as the three combatants all charged towards each other.
"WE SHALL GRANT YOU A WARRIOR'S DEATH THAT YOU DESIRE, KOKABIEL!" Grendel then lets out a bassy roar as Takeshi's [Savage Predator Incarnation] shoots out all of its jets of flame as his host and the Red Dragon Emperor reengage in their fight for everyone fates.
Further Inside Nemichi Shrine...
"This is the place..." Irina declared as they found themselves standing before an entrance of an old Japanese-style manor that is not part of the original Nemichi Shrine. "I can feel the magic coming from the halls alone..."
Xenovia's ears then pick up on the sounds of explosions coming from way behind. "... The enemy will not wait for us," she pointed out as she manifested her [Durandal]. "I'll clear the way!"
She then cuts down the doors blocking them before the three enter, running into the dark hallway to search for their foe.
"So, where do we find our foes?" Yuuto asked as he kept one [Dust Devil] at the ready in case of combat while Takeshi's estoc gift was slung around his back. "You think they're somewhere in here?"
"It won't matter," Xenovia declared. "I will tear this whole place down all by myself if I must-!"
"Pierce, [Ichimonji]."
Yuuto then limbos under an extended katana blade that ripped through the shoji screens that the Catholic Exorcist narrowly blocks it in time with her Holy Sword's flat before it then sweeps the two Exorcists somewhere else in the manor, separating him from the rest of the group.
"EVERYONE!" he cried out before a voice recorder drops to his foot, playing back Yozakura's voice from the speaker:
"If you wish to seek Father Galilei, find where the koi swim."
Then the broken shoji screens repair by themselves before arranging themselves into a path forward.
"... I'm done thinking about it." The Knight then spurs forth with the clue in mind, crunching the recorder underneath his foot as he runs forward.
Xenovia and Irina both scream as the pair are sent crashing through several more shoji screens by [Ichimonji]'s elongated blade sweeping across the whole building's radius.
"SOMEONE STOP THIS STUPID THING!" the Protestant Exorcists begged as Xenovia then plants her [Durandal] into the floor, braking their involuntary ride even as it rips through the tatami straw mats until coming to a complete stop.
"Okay..." The Catholic Exorcist groaned as she helped Irina back up to her feet. "... We weren't notified that the enemy had additional Holy Swords."
As [Ichimonji]'s elongated blade retracted back to its user, the shoji doors that the steel withdrew back into each open in a row as the blade passes through each dividing sheet, eliciting a steadily-increasing and menacing tempo with each pair of sliding doors parting, eventually revealing Yozakura standing at the end of the exposed hallway, holding out the Japanese Holy Sword retracted its blade back to its default length before flicking it down.
"So the lady of the hour shows herself..." Irina nervously grins as the Stray Exorcist sporting a few burn scars across her already-patched face slowly walks up towards them with an utterly apathetic look on her face.
Even Xenovia was looking a bit unnerved as the ex-Islamic Executor came closer, now finally able to look at her eyes in this lull before the inevitable bloodbath.
They were completely glazed over. DEAD. As if her very soul was forcibly ripped out of her being and all that stood before them was nothing more than a husk, spurred only by vague notions of spite and pure hatred.
"... You're looking rather energetic for someone who should've died an hour ago," the Catholic Exorcist deadpanned as her partner cocked her submachine guns.
"Please, this is nothing." Yozakura then takes out two additional sheathed Holy Swords from behind herself.
"Someone's confident..." Irina commented dryly before she and Xenovia saw the Stray Exorcist discard her two additional Holy Swords aside, their scabbards clattering the contained blades within as they hit the floor. "What the-?!"
"You're right, so that's why I am giving you two a handicap," she boasted before pointing her [Ichimonji] at the Exorcists. "... Now, who's ready to bleed?"
Back at Nemichi Shrine's Entrance...
"[ORION]!" Raynare then fires a flak shot of holy energy towards Lailah, the latter dodging indiscriminate barrage while flying and missing one eye.
"I see you've gotten stronger, Raynare," the Fallen Angel commented before dodging an incoming barrage of sharpened stones shot from her sides, to which she then follows up by throwing green holy energy axes at the Devils.
Koneko dodges the projectiles, skating on her [Kasha] while carrying Pandora on her back, the latter operating several batters of earth-spitting cannons as they rolled downstairs in pursuit of the Stray Fallen Angel.
"HOLD STILL ALREADY!" Koneko hissed out as Pandora Charms the ambient wind spirits in the mountain trails to carry the sharpened earth towards Lailah in order to limit her movements on the ground and air.
"Make me," the Stray Fallen Angel deadpanned as she evades the oncoming anti-air barrage before her nose picks up on a scent of cashmere towards her left. "... Going for my blind spot, aren't you?"
"[ORION]-!"
*CRUNCH*
Raynare gags as Lailah punches her in the gut to interrupt her attack before tossing the Fallen Angel towards the Devils, slowing them down before rushing in with a pair of hatchets made of her own holy energy.
"SHIT!" Koneko tosses Raynare aside before evading the double-hammer swing before Lailah follows it up with a barrage of swings, using her ki to offset the nicks and grazes from each close-shave while carrying Pandora on her back. "Hey Pandora, how long until your eyes come back to working order?!"
"NOT EVEN TEN MINUTES!" the Knight cried out as she continued using the Charmed wind spirits to provide an additional layer of protection between themselves and the Stray Fallen Angel.
"Perfect." Hearing that, Lailah presses the advantage of the Nekomata being burdened with a blind Devil who couldn't even move on her own lest she gets picked off while not being surveyed by her own allies.
First, she throws one of her axes towards the Rook, to which the latter leapt over, to which then Lailah intercepts her mid-jump.
Then, just as Koneko could transition her jump into a dropkick boosted by her [Kasha] wheels, the Stray Fallen Angel morphs her remaining axe into a combat knife, parrying the incoming strike with a quick stab.
And finally, just as Koneko reels in pain from having one of her foot stabbed, Lailah then summons a long needle made of her own holy energy to deal the finishing blow-
"GIN!"
Then hopping off of the Rook's body, the Cath Palug kitten pounces on the Stray Fallen Angel's face, scratching and biting her like a miniature tiger, triggering her gag reflexes to drop her weapon and try to pull the damn cat off of her face.
"GET OFF OF ME-!"
Gin shrieks as her eyes then burn into Lailah's remaining eye, narrowly dodging a pair of point-blank eye beams that takes off her entire right ear as the separated herself from the Stray Fallen Angel, to which was then followed up by Koneko rushing towards her on her [Kasha] before delivering a wicked palm strike to her midsection.
"[Shōgorō]!" Infusing her own ki into said strike, Koneko's application of offensive Senjutsu inflicts internal damage to Lailah, causing her to cough up blood before she was sent flying across the staircase.
Raynare wakes up on time, and sees an opportunity to strike back.
"[Orion]!" The Fallen Angel flies low before sailing across the stairs with the updraft of her wings, gliding across the steps while firing the holy energy buckshot in rapid succession towards Lailah's back.
Sensing that she was being attacked from below, Lailah wills through her injuries to conjure up a holy energy sphere around herself to dampen the oncoming attack and her rough landing, crashing through the torii gate's upper arch and rolling across the gravel path below the mountain.
"Jesus Christ, how stubborn are you?!" Raynare remarked as she and the Devils came down to where Lailah was at.
The Stray Fallen Angel spits a wad of blood to the side before smirking. "Says the weakling who's faring worse than the actual blind person present."
"You're not doing too hot yourself either, you know," Koneko pointed out.
"I'd ask for your surrender, but going off my time working with you and Turel, I know painfully well that you're in way too deep to consider said option," Pandora added.
"Don't get ahead of yourselves, you damn brats," Lailah deadpanned as she raised her hand to her eye level. "... I don't have to do anything fancy when you dumb bitches have walked right into my trap."
She then snaps her finger, to which Raynare, Koneko, and Pandora sensed numerous holy energy signals flaring up behind them.
"... The slain Stray Exorcists?!" Koneko exclaimed as she and everyone else saw those who died under Takeshi's horrific (and space-shattering) singing shambled back up to their feet like zombies, their dark-light wings flaring outwards before they all... floated towards them like listless ghosts, barely acknowledging their presence sans their mistress'.
"... Disregarding the fact on how the Evil Dragon User's singing utterly destroyed these children's souls to the point where I doubt they'll even be reincarnated, I must ask you all a question," the Stray Fallen Angel remarked. "... Are there any files regarding my existence?"
"Nah," Koneko answered. "... Not even Hell's records contain anything regarding your name."
Lailah sighs. "... Figured as such, so allow me to reveal the long-lost secret... along with a demonstration."
*CRUNCH*
*SPLURCH*
Then the reanimated corpses began crushing and mashing into each other, forming a ball of flesh and blood that causes Raynare to gag before vomiting at the sight of this grotesque meatball in the night sky.
"... Pandora, I'm now envious that you are blind right now," Koneko flatly remarked as she is now considering going vegan for a week (for the first time in her life).
"I won't question it," the Knight answered before moving the conversation along. "... What's going on, Lailah?! What are you doing to those bodies?!"
The Stray Fallen Angel smirks.
"... I was the one who bestowed Deus Trinity's essence into the Virgin Mary's womb under Lady Gabriel's vigil," she revealed, causing everyone's jaws to drop upon realizing how much of a big deal Lailah is now. "... Yes. The one who made Jesus Christ physically manifest was because of my labor."
The ball of flesh made of her subordinates begins concentrating within itself, shrinking and collapsing into a visceral-looking cocoon that resembles a cross between a beating heart and a misshapen human fetus squirming and wriggling inside its placenta.
"I'm all out vomit..." All Raynare could do was dry-heave in place of puking.
Now it was Koneko's turn to throw up, the amount of nausea inflicted upon her within the past few minutes being more than enough to humor the option of going to a Buddhist temple and becoming a bikuni nun just to cleanse herself of this memory entirely.
No words could describe how harrowing and just plain WRONG what Lailah was doing is.
"... After I've fallen from Heaven, I retained my connection to this divine miracle, albeit warped and tainted beyond its original purpose," she revealed as the fetus inside this biological abomination of her own making swelled in size, collecting the residual holy energy into this new life she was bringing to reality in a cold and detached manner. "... No longer am I to bring new life to this world through the miracle of conception, but I can create beings close to living beings as approximately close as possible. Granted, it's not 'alive,' conventionally speaking, but it's close enough to move and act according to my will."
The cocoon of meat then ruptures, the life inside breaching outwards like a chick to an egg, spilling out the rancid-smelling primordial soup it was swimming in, overwhelming everyone's noses sans Lailah's as she herself oversees its completion.
"I've refrained from using this miracle that hath been parted to me because I cannot bear the thought of using it ever again to create incomplete abortions that cannot be called life... until now."
Her sole eye then flares up in its dark light, the birthed abomination roaring and screaming to life as a black-red halo along with four pairs of dark-light wings spread outwards and shone like a pitch-black sun, asserting its will to live as Lailah uses her own powers to bring it to life, with its sole witnesses too horrified and disgusted to even move.
"... [Eclipse Armatus], grant this wretch my will and powers so that it may bring destruction."
The creature from the tainted miracle fully realizes, now a horrid mockery of Heaven's Cherubim-Rank Angels, of that being a winged mass of three beings amalgamated together; of which consisted of a humanoid whose skin failed to envelop them, a bestial visage that could only be lionlike if it were made of rotting meat and other small animals schooling as the king of beasts, and a skinned ram's horned head bleating out its cry that shook the earth itself, as if it were calling out the End of Days itself, but to deaf ears and certainly not that of the Heaven's Host.
"... Koneko?" Pandora said as she could feel her fellow Devil's body quake in fear. "... Koneko?!"
"Kill them," Lailah ordered as the pseudo-Cherubim opened all three of its mouths to then blast rays of holy energy at the three.
Desperately, Pandora then gets off of the Rook's back and Charms Koneko to snap her out of the fear-induced stupor, forcing her body to move against the terror while Raynare was blasted to Kingdom Come, not dying due to the fact that said holy energy blasts were messy, incomplete, and Raynare and Lailah both being Fallen Angels, so lessened holy energy rates from both of them saved the former from meeting her demise.
That blast alone snaps Raynare out on time before Lailah could stake her head in with a green combat knife made of her own holy energy, kicking her aside as the two confronted each other while the angelic abomination chased the Devils back up to Nemichi Shrine's staircase.
"... What's with my fucking luck tonight?" the Fallen Angel groaned as Lailah took a deep breath while positioning herself methodically, waiting for an opening as Raynare herself braced herself. "... First Nuriel, now the bringer of the J-Man Himself... lucky me."
Lailah pounces upon her as Raynare blasts [Orion] in retaliation.
At Nemichi Shrine's Koi Pond...
"Ah, finally. I was wondering if you were going to actually show up."
Father Galilei then turns his head around to see Yuuto standing across from where the former was standing, the latter's rage now tempered and calm enough to not rush in blindly.
"Hm, you've calmed down significantly," he deadpanned.
"Oh no, I am still very angry at you, Father," the Devil replied. "I am so angry with what you've done to me and my friends, both in the past and the present, right now, that I've somehow looped back to being very calm. If anything, right now, I should be wanting to kill you, eviscerate you, gut you like a fish and scatter your body parts across the four winds... but I have to ask... why?"
Father Galilei raised an eyebrow. "... You're going to have to be more specific, my boy."
"WHY DID YOU KILL MY FRIENDS?!" he asked. "THEY STILL HAD A FUTURE! THEY DIDN'T DESERVE TO DIE SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T MEET YOUR COCKAMAMY EXPECTATIONS!"
Father Galilei sighs in disappointment. "... Funny thing about that, you're only half-right."
Yuuto was taken aback at this surprising response.
"Yes, all of you were indeed, abject failures," the Archbishop bluntly revealed. "None of you could even get past that 60% holy energy output threshold needed to wield even the lowest-ranked [Excalibur]-fragment, that being [Rapidly]. That said, you, Isaiah, my boy, were the biggest failure of all, showing more natural aptitude with Demonic Swords rather than Holy Swords despite being a Church-synthesized homunculus under my watch... I won't lie, I was both shocked and disturbed at how wrong it has gone."
Yuuto's teeth gnashed in rage at this madman's blasé attitude over the atrocities he'd committed against life itself. "... If I was the so-called 'failure,' then why did you keep me around?!"
"Hm, really, you were just the lab rat for the actual lab rats," Father Galilei revealed, shocking Yuuto even further. "You were... shall we say, the 'stress test'-phase of the Holy Sword Project. I didn't butcher orphans and other homunculi for fun, you know. I had to test out the procedures to see if they were actually feasible for practice before I could order them en masse in other branches' subjects. Honestly, I expected you to croak before you could hit puberty, but really, your natural resilience surpassed even that of other homunculi produced for said experiments. So really, why bother getting rid of you if you were that stubborn? Although, I have to admit, you did... test my patience a little bit, thinking that you're some defender of children when you had no right to be a superhero in the first place."
That last sentence caused Yuuto's stomach to drop as soon as he picked up on the implications behind such malicious words. "... You knew about our escape plan."
"Indeed! But given that the Church itself was about to bring down the proverbial and literal hammer onto my Holy Sword Project... Why bother?" the mad Archbishop dismissed with a shrug. "And really, I could've just stopped there, with you as my archnemesis and me on the run, with naught but broken dreams of heroism and clothes on my back as I went Stray... until, two certain miracles came to me."
He then takes out a lustrous stone that was swirling with a sinister energy from within, causing Yuuto's heart rate to spike at the thing's mere presence that felt both familiar and WRONG.
"The first is this, a culmination of those failures' residual holy energies concentrated into this little trinket," Father Galilei revealed. "I've dubbed this the [Martyr's Beryl], an amalgam artifact that grants its holder a boosted holy energy output..."
He then pulls out a Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver before pointing it against his own temple.
*BANG!*
The bullet goes straight through his head, but the [Martyr's Beryl] glows, causing the wound to immediately patch itself back up, leaving Father Galilei in the world of the living. "... And as you can see, regenerative properties that may as well be immortality."
Yuuto then completely loses it at the mere act of this monster in human's skin use what's left of his former friends as a battery, but just as his [Blast Ogre] and [Dust Devil] could rip the bastard apart, an armored sarcophagus manifests between them, shattering Yuuto's pseudo-Demonic Swords upon contact before Father Galilei takes a few potshots behind the coffin.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?!"
Father Galilei serenely smiles as he pulls out his smartphone. "... My second miracle."
*CLUNK*
*HISS*
Entering the command, the coffin lid opens, revealing a sleeping white-haired girl with braided low twin tails no older than her early teens, dressed in an Exorcist's combat uniform, only with its sleeves detached from her shoulders, and her chest area being occupied with a sort of core-like armor with a hollow indentation at its center.
Yuuto's rage completely collapses into pure horror as he falls to his knees at who he was seeing. "... No," he weakly groaned. "Tosca...!"
"Funny thing, I honestly expected her to die from the chlorine gas I've pumped into that room while I was already packing my bags, but lo and behold, she just had to manifest her Sacred Gear, [Millennia Globe], at the eleventh hour, preserving her for years!" the Archbishop said in a tone reminiscent of how one would describe getting a stubbed toe. "Really, I guess both of us are to blame, since neither of us bothered to go back and check, but to be fair, the Church's Executors might've killed us the moment either of us did double back, so I guess we're both losers in that regard."
"How did you get your fucking hands on her?!" Yuuto asked, resisting the choking sensation of this horrible turn of events.
"A third party reached out to me about a few weeks ago and had her delivered to me," Father Galilei bluntly answered as he then inserts the [Martyr's Beryl] into the chest core before tapping on his phone's touchscreen to then manifest an amalgam blade with parts of [Excalibur Rapidly], [Destruction], [Nightmare], [Mimic], and [Transparency] making up its composition. "I wasted no time modifying her to meet specifications, and now, after decades of my ceaseless labor, she's my sole success."
Tosca's eyes then open up, now glowing a pale shade of blue from her pupils, indicating that Father Galilei has taken full control over her very being while the cowards himself seals himself away in the coffin.
"Tosca," the Archbishop commanded from within his safe space. "... Pick up [Excalibur V]."
Without a word, the brainwashed Tosca picks up the amalgam Holy Sword.
"No..." Yuuto's voice trembled. "TOSCA! DON'T LISTEN TO THAT BASTARD!"
"Tosca," Valper gently said into his phone's speaker. "... Dispose that failure in front of you."
"NO!"
Yuuto was now forced to defend himself from his only friend that had survived that nightmare with him all those years ago.
What was left of the actual Nemichi Shrine was nothing short of a wasteland littered with burn marks and craters.
"DIE ALREADY! [SCORPIO]!"
"AND FUCK YOU TOO!"
"[Boost]! [Boost]! [Boost]!"
As the melody of the battlefield sang within the confined land claimed by the Stray Cadre, Takeshi and Leon fought like beasts against the Great War's veteran and his sheer experience.
Chains of light tipped with divine venom were parried, dodged, and caught as Evil Dragon User and the new Red Dragon Emperor guided their hosts through this chaos.
"Not bad, old-timer!" Grendel sneered at Ddraig as Takeshi rode across the light chains while dodging Kokabiel's holy energy blasts while closing in on the latter with surprising speed. "To think I was afraid of you going soft after you joined the Church!"
"And I can't believe that you're using your head for once in your life besides as a bludgeon," the Red Dragon Emperor snarked as Leon unleashes a [Boost]-enhanced whirlwind with his [Fragarach], to which Kokabiel dissipates with a blast of [Libra]. "... Strange how time changes even us Dragons."
"WE GOT HIM ON THE BACKFOOT!" Takeshi exclaimed as all of his thrusters on [Savage Predator Incarnation] flared up, jetting him across the battlefield. "SEIZE THE ADVANTAGE!"
"RIGHT BESIDES YOU!" Leon then invokes his [Excalibur Blessing] to enhance his own [Scale Mail] and [Boosted Gear]'s [Boost]-feature to enhance his own upcoming punch.
The two Dragons of opposing moral spectrums combine their powers into that of a double Rider Punch...
"... [Virgo]." But Kokabiel smirks as all eight of his wings were enveloped in light before they enclosed around the Stray Cadre, blocking Leon's punch and catching Takeshi's arm into the multi-prong clamp.
"TAKESHI!" Leon cried out.
"FUCK! HE'S PULLING A CRUSHMAN ON ME-!" The Evil Dragon User had no time to complain as the clamp partially released his arm to reveal a pair of glowing eyes.
"[Libra]-"
*KABOOM!*
Kokabiel screams as he felt his eyes get scorched by a sudden flash of heat and smoke blasted from the Evil Dragon User's open palm, to which the latter then follows up by hugging the former around his waist with a crushing clutch before unleashing an explosion of flames throughout his body, setting them both ablaze as Takeshi lifts him up and then performing a brutal chokeslam into the dirt.
But he did not stop there. Once grounded, he then pins Kokabiel down by firing all of his jet thrusters upwards to press him down and begins beating his face in with rocket-boosted flurry of fiery punches. But, that itself did not last as Kokabiel himself escaped via a quick cross-counter, now pinning Takeshi down and beating his face in with his own flurry of fists.
*SNAP!*
Only then, the crown around [Savage Predator Incarnation]'s helmet morphs back to its trap-jaw form, biting down onto Kokabiel's fingers around his fist and trapping him in place, to which the Stray Cadre resorts to beating Takeshi in with his other fist.
"[Boost]! [Boost]! [Boost]!"
Leon then performs a flying knee into Kokabiel's face, accelerated by [Fragarach]'s winds and [Excalibur Blessing]'s enhancements, and sends him flying across the battlefield, ripping his fingers off upon the resulting torque, leaving behind only his index and middle finger trapped between Takeshi's jaw-visor.
"Oh dear, I didn't aim to do that..." Leon shuddered as Takeshi got back up to his feet, the jaw-trap morphing back into a crown, dropping the fingers from the released clamp.
"Haven't done that in a while..." the Evil Dragon User replied before cracking his neck, hearing Kokabiel hiss in pain at his fingers on his right hand being bitten off.
"Still got some fight in him," Grendel commented with a snicker. "Good. Resist more! Make it hurt more!"
"This... is nothing!" Kokabiel declared as the zodiac wheel behind him spun. "... You Evil Dragons... and the Red Dragon Emperor... KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ME!"
"Do we have to?" Ddraig replied. "You're the one making a mountain out of a molehill. Stop thinking that this is all about you, 'Star of God.' Just die and fade away like the rest of your fellow old soldiers."
"I... WILL NOT BE SILENCED!" he replied as his mutilated hand began glowing, slowly turning into that of a crude-looking blade. "You... Azazel, the rest of the Grigori... and everyone else...! KNOW NOTHING! NOTHING OF WHAT I'VE BEEN THROUGH!"
Nobody truly understood him, that much Kokabiel knew.
Before he fell, he actually loved mankind more than anyone else. He was happy to teach them what lies beyond Heaven, beyond the world that the Deus Trinity have ushered them into.
It was for this reason why he fell, and fought in the Great War against his own former Master, to protect the humans that he knew and loved.
Their lessons and gifts were squandered by the fires of war. His closest comrades-in-arms, dead. His remaining rapport, apathetic to his suffering.
The closest thing that he had to compassion was when Azazel offered him his very first glass of whiskey. Soon after, he found himself drinking every day, realizing that Azazel had merely "tamed" him and his penchant for war via his current addiction, ultimately becoming no different from a slave.
This ultimately showed that Azazel, let alone, the rest of this world, never cared for him at all. That realized feeling of betrayal was the worst possible agony he'd ever felt in his entire existence.
"... And you two... shall be the first!" The blade that was Kokabiel's right arm fully manifests. "... And then... I WILL MAKE THE WHOLE WORLD UNDERSTAND MY AGONY! [CANCER]!"
The Stray Cadre swung his light blade, unleashing a wide slash Takeshi and Leon narrowly dodged, cutting down an entire acre of forest with the slash alone.
"Well, fuck me sideways," Takeshi grumbled. "Don't get hit by that, got it."
"HERE HE COMES!" Leon spots Kokabiel flying towards them as he swung down his [Cancer] blade, ripping open wherever it struck, leaving behind nothing but deep and long gashes in its path.
"[PROMOTION: QUEEN]!" Takeshi then uses the all-arounder boost to engage Kokabiel into a range where he can't fully swing his blade, tucking his arms and back inwards before delivering rapid-fire jabs at the Stray Cadre, but Kokabiel uses his other hand to fire a point-blank holy energy shot into his midsection, sending Takeshi flying back into the range where he can swing his [Cancer] blade properly.
"DIE!" The Stray Cadre swings the energy blade, but both Takeshi and Leon clash against it, the former switching to [Promotion: Rook] to catch the blade whereas the latter blocks it with both his [Evalach] and [Fragarach] enhanced by [Boosted Gear] and [Excalibur Blessing].
"YOU WILL NOT DETER ME!" The zodiac wheel behind Kokabiel's wings spin one more time. "[ARIES]!"
A knell akin to a chapel bell rings throughout the battlefield, nullifying Takeshi's [Promotion] and Leon's various status buffs.
"Oh Hell." Leon quickly ducks under the swing as soon as his [Evalach] and [Fragarach] each break in two, whereas Takeshi gets slashed across his chest, sparks flying as he was sent crashing through numerous trees.
The Red Dragon Emperor groans as he is now forced to fight bare-handed as Kokabiel swings [Cancer] towards him, the slashes missing their target as Leon uses both [Fragarach] and [Excalibur Blessing] to reinforce his defensive posture.
"Without your weapons, you are useless!" Kokabiel boasted as he swung his [Cancer] blades down.
However, Leon slips through the trajectory before grabbing the Cadre by his collar and then striking his palm into the Stray Cadre's diaphragm, knocking the air out of his lungs before following it up with a [Boost]-enhanced uppercut.
"And I did not spend five years learning the basics of Bajiquan just to be a pansy when stripped of my tools," Leon deadpanned.
Then, as Kokabiel rolled across the gravel, he heard Takeshi's screams as he emerged from the surrounding forest as a humanoid wildfire, earning the Stray Cadre's ire.
Now Playing: "VOLCANO" by Kentaro Maeda (Ikki) and Subaru Kimura (Vice) (from Kamen Rider Revice)
"WHO'S READY FOR ROUND TWO, BITCHES?!"
"JUST DIE ALREADY!" Kokabiel's zodiac wheel then spun. "[SCORPIO]!"
Then the holy venom-dipped chains all shoot around himself, with Takeshi switching to [Promotion: Knight] to skate his way through the barrage, whereas Leon uses [Fragarach]'s future sight to evade the oncoming barrage.
Hey Nidhogg, how many years do I have left in my tank? the Evil Dragon User asked.
You're down to 60,000 years, the Evil Dragon of Envy informed as more light chains shots towards his host. It's a good thing Grendel's scales are made to take abuse and then some, otherwise, you'd lose more than half from that swing alone.
I'd say! The Evil Dragon of Wrath cackled boastfully as his host grinds across one of the airborne chains with his heel disks like a rail fence to a skateboard. THAT PANSY-ASS BITCH AIN'T NO BEOWULF! NOT WHEN HE'S THAT SCRAWNY-LOOKING!
He's got all sorts of techniques but only one body! the Evil Dragon of Lust pointed out. ... You picked up on that too, right bro?
If he could use more than one at a time-! Takeshi's thoughts were then interrupted by Leon's roar before he punched Kokabiel across his face, cancelling out the [Scorpio] technique and allowing Takeshi to propel himself freely like a rocket with his flame jets. THEN HE WOULD'VE DONE SO IN THE FIRST PLACE!
"SEIYAAA!" Takeshi roars out as he then delivers another punch into Kokabiel's stomach, but this time, the latter counters with a double-hammer fist of his own smashing into his back, only for that to be countered by the flame jets shooting into his hands, turning them into a black lump reminiscent of that of a piece of coal.
"YOU BASTARD! [CANCER]!" This time, the Stray Cadre uses both of his destroyed arms to form light blades, swinging them around as if they were his weapons as Takeshi and Leon dodged and parried each strike that came their way. "HOW?! HOW ARE YOU TWO STILL ALIVE?!"
"Allow me to answer your question with another question!" Grendel snarled as his host grabbed one of Kokabiel's blade arms, the Evil Dragon's scales protecting him from being lacerated by the edge. "Have you ever fought a Dragon before?!"
"WHAT USE DO I HAVE FIGHTING AGAINST DUMB ANIMALS-?!"
"WRONG ANSWER!"
*BOOM!*
*CRACK*
Kokabiel screams as Takeshi pulls the former down with a rocket-propelled body slam while grabbing onto the former's arm, causing it to snap in two from the resulting torque. Just as the Stray Cadre was escaping his pin, Leon then adds three [Boost]s before soccer kicking Kokabiel's chin, sending him skidding across the gravel.
At that opening, Takeshi and Grendel move in, but the Stray Cadre quickly regains footing as the zodiac wheel spins once more as he forces his broken arm back into place. "[LEO]!"
The holy energy envelops his whole body like armor as he then engages the two Dragon Users in a two-versus-one melee, with Kokabiel trying to fly up into the air, only for Takeshi to use his current Balance Breaker former's encumbering weight to slow him down long enough to make Leon ground him with a well-placed punch to his vitals.
"WHY WON'T YOU TWO SUBMIT?!" Kokabiel cried out as he punched his stumps into Leon and Takeshi's punches. "HOW ARE YOU TWO STILL STANDING WHEN I'VE FOUGHT THE GREAT WAR?!"
"Because we're about to end your Great War before you could get it off the ground!" Leon declared as he blocked and countered Kokabiel's attacks.
"And this ain't the Great War anymore, Kokabiel!" Takeshi then parries Kokabiel's fist with a headbutt, taking advantage of Grendel's adamantine scales before kneeing the latter's balls with a rocket-powered knee strike followed up with a brutal foot stomp pinning Kokabiel in place before delivering a faux-right hook hiding an elbow that clocks the Fallen Angel across his face. "IT'S A ONE-SIDED BEATDOWN!"
Leon then slides under Takeshi and Kokabiel's legs before grabbing the latter from behind, using [Boost] to constrict his wings with his bear hug, and then lifting him up while arching his back with a bridging suplex while Takeshi then pre-emptively follows it up.
"I WILL NOT BE DETERRED!" Then the Stray Cadre's wings begin to glow bright. "[VIRGO]!"
Leon's grip slips as the spread wings then traps Takeshi's leg into a multi-pronged vice.
"FUCK!" Takeshi cursed as he tried to break himself free by kicking against the wings with his other foot.
Leon then runs up towards Kokabiel from behind, spotting a weak point where all the wings were emerging from.
"You're not going anywhere!" Then the zodiac wheel-halo behind the Stray Cadre spins. "[CAPRICORN]!"
A high-pitched whine akin to that of a speaker playing the sound when a mic drops onto the floor rocks both Takeshi and Leon's eardrums, causing them both pain, even when the former has pain inhibitors built into his [Savage Predator Incarnation] form.
"Eh, the brat's singing is better," Grendel commented while Takeshi's head felt like it was about to explode.
"You humored yourself as a minstrel, so I figured you'd like my own score," Kokabiel sneered as he raised his arm up. "Now die. [CANCER]!"
*BOOM!*
Takeshi rolls out of the way in time before propelling himself towards Kokabiel. But just as the latter could swing his holy energy blade...
*DING-DONG*
... This time, Kokabiel's testicles have been ruptured by Leon's [Boost]-enhanced kick from behind, as evidenced by the bleeding soaking through the crotch area of his pants while Takeshi punches the Stray Cadre in the throat, causing him to foam at the mouth while tumbling across the dirt.
"I am not used to doing that..." the Red Dragon Emperor commented.
"Whatever works," Ddraig advised as he rolled his eyes at Grendel's laughter in direct relation to the inflicted injury.
"If you wanna know how to not clench up when someone else's balls are being caved in, just talk to me afterwards," Takeshi pointed out as Kokabiel quickly stands back up, pushing himself through his injuries. "Dude. Black Knight. Just drop dead already!"
"NEVER!" Then the zodiac wheel spins once more. "[AQUARIUS]!"
Then Kokabiel's holy energy signature spikes as all of his injuries mend themselves, even his ruptured balls and mutilated fingers.
"And now... I am restored!" Kokabiel boasted upon looking at the shocked Dragon Users. "THE POWER OF DEUS TRINITY'S MIRACLES IS UNPARALLELED!"
"Yes, at the cost of burning over half of your natural holy energy reserves," Nidhogg's voice deadpanned from [Cataclysm Zone]'s central gem as everyone notices that Kokabiel's hair has now grayed. "Try pulling that shit again if you're able to. Because after your third go, a withered old man will have more vitality than you."
"Doesn't matter for shit!" The Evil Dragon of Wrath then cackled wickedly. "LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE! WE CAN HURT HIM EVEN MORE!"
"PLACE YOUR BETS, MOTHERFUCKERS!" Yamata no Orochi laughed like a loon before speaking like a WWE announcer. "WHO'S THE BIGGEST GLUTTON FOR PUNISHMENT?! GRENDEL, THE MEATHEAD MOTHERFUCKER WITH OVER A BILLION KILLS TO HIS CAREER, OR KOKABIEL, THE ONE SEEKING BILLIONS MORE KILLED IN HIS PLANNED SEQUEL FOR THE GREAT WAR?! Don't forget to leave a Like, Follow, and a Review for this story and for whoever's penning this!"
"Hey Leon, how are you holding up?" Takeshi asked while his friend finishes administering his secret first aid with his [Excalibur Blessing] to the former.
"I trained my [Scale Mail] to hold up for at least a week, although I admit that I am kind of pushing the envelope," the Inquisitor answered.
Takeshi nods as he and Leon confront the restored Kokabiel, who himself wasn't exactly doing too hot despite having all of his injuries mended.
No words were spoken as the two sides rushed towards each other like charging bulls that were about to lock horns.
"I WILL ENSURE THAT I DESTROY YOU TWO FIRST!" Kokabiel's wings spread out before going airborne. "[TAURUS]!"
Coils of light encircles his arms and legs as he then speeds towards the Evil Dragon User and the Red Dragon Emperor, clashing his double-lariat against their fists.
Screams of both terror and agony echoed throughout the mountains as the pseudo-Cherubim chased them across the surrounding forest.
"OH SATANS! THAT FUCKER'S SCREAMING SOUNDS LIKE IF ITS IN LOTS OF PAIN!" Koneko cried out as she kept dodging the flurry of beams shot from its three heads that didn't stop screaming. "I'M THE ONE WHO SHOULD BE SCREAMING IN PAIN!"
"Koneko, does that thing have eyes?" Pandora asked.
"TOO MANY!" The Nekomata ducked under another shot as they continued running.
Meanwhile, below the mountain, Lailah was fighting Raynare, although the word "fight" implies that the latter was proving to be enough of a threat.
"How are you not dead?" the Stray Fallen Angel asked as the other Fallen Angel groaned on the ground, bleeding like mad from all over. "... Was slaying Nuriel just a stroke of dumb luck?"
Raynare coughs before she is kicked in the wound, causing her to hack up even more blood.
"Why are you still holding on?" Lailah asked. "You know that you're weak."
"... I know," Raynare answered. "... I should know... because all I did was pick on the weak!"
Lailah raises an eyebrow at her remark. "... Self-contemplation, coming from you?" she commented. "... I guess you did grow during your time AWOL."
"... I... I thought I had a place with you guys this whole time," Raynare remarked. "... Like if I was part of something... bigger. Way bigger than me... something... that I can be proud of..."
"Then your head got too big for its shoulders and now you've run over towards another master when you should've stayed put."
*PUNT!*
The Stray Fallen Angel kicks the other Fallen Angel across her head, sending Raynare tumbling across the gravelly ground.
"... Turel was right," Lailah remarked. "You really are more trouble than it's worth."
"... Not the first time I've heard of that," Raynare heaved out. "... I know... that I'm just some dumb bitch who thought that she was a regular Fallen Angel... but just about a few hours ago, I learned that I'm only half of one."
Lailah blinks at that remark. "Wait, half?"
"Yeah... Japanese too... for about over a century," she shared, her vision getting blurry from the head trauma. "... I dunno why... I didn't make that connection sooner... but goddammit all, that's no excuse to feel sorry for myself!"
The heavily-wounded Fallen Angel wills herself back up to her feet, spreading out her blackened wings and letting out a yell as her eyes were being anointed with her own blood.
"I know... THAT I AM WEAK!" she shouted. "I'M JUST SOME WEAK-ASS BITCH WHO DOESN'T KNOW JACK SHIT! I HAVE NOTHING ABOUT MYSELF THAT I'M PROUD OF, LET ALONE YOU GUYS!"
Lailah could feel Raynare's own holy energy reserves swell, the boosted signature feeling like Nuriel's added onto the latter's base default value.
"So that's why... THIS IS MY VOW!" she declares as her back then manifests an incomplete halo-like backlight. "I WILL BECOME SOMEONE THAT I ALONE CAN BE PROUD OF!"
"Prove it." Lailah then rushes in as she summons her axes in her hands.
Raynare strikes back as her hand then summons forth a long tendril of light before she swung it like a whip. "[CHAMELEON]!"
Lailah easily dodges the messy swing-
*SNAP!*
But somehow, the impact of the strike lands the opposite side where the whip was being lashed towards, striking her left cheek as Raynare moves in with another technique manifesting in her hands.
"[MONOCEROS]!" The light whip then morphs into a thin rapier-jousting lance-hybrid blade, with the Fallen Angel swinging it down towards Lailah before the latter dodges it and follow-up thrusts.
Lailah counters the next thrust with her axes, but Raynare deliberately lets go of her own technique before unleashing her next one at close range.
"[ORION]!" The flak shot shreds Lailah's wings upon contact, but she herself managed to guard the bulk of the blast with a hastily-deployed holy energy shield, but Raynare herself wasn't exactly done. "[CANIS VENATICI]!"
From the ground then erupted several chains edged with numerous kinds of blade attached to each link, binding Lailah by her arms before pinning her down to the earth.
"[MONOCEROS]!" Raynare then discards the chains in favor of the lance, to which she parries the weapon with her dual axe and knife-combo, clashing arms until Raynare thrusts her weapon towards her blind spot, to which the weapon grazes her left shoulder, forcing her to be on the backpedal as the lesser Fallen Angel continued with her advance.
The Stray Fallen Angel couldn't help but be impressed by Raynare's growth. However, Lailah notices that Raynare's skills were functioning rather similarly to another Fallen Angel's.
... It can't be, she thought. Unless-!
"[ARA]!" Raynare then punches the ground to unleash a geyser of holy energy that spewed out like lava, to which Lailah's feet were signed in the process as she went airborne, but Raynare doesn't let the fact that her attacks were mostly whiffing deter her. "[CHAMELEON]!"
The Fallen Angel then swings her whip down towards the Stray Fallen Angel, expecting her to be swatted down like a fly, only for her to instead be flicked upwards.
"WHAT?!" Raynare exclaimed at the unexpected result. "HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT WORK?!"
I see... Lailah thought as she recovered her posture midair. She's naught but a chick still learning how to fly... Unaware of her own full potential with such a power.
"[ORION]!" Raynare then fires off a barrage of flak holy energy shots towards Lailah upon taking flight, and this time, the shots landed in the critical areas, blasting off three of her wings on her entire left side, rendering them useless as the Stray Fallen Angel herself was sent careening back to the earth, landing hard onto her shoulder as Raynare presses the advantage. "[MONOCEROS]!"
Rather than feel rage, Lailah felt pride for the fledgling Fallen Angel's newfound powers. "... It's a pity that we're enemies."
And it was that pride that made her want to try even harder to push her own [Eclipse Armatus] to its limits.
*CRASH!*
Raynare's eyes widened upon seeing Lailah stand and catch her bladed jousting lance made of her own holy energy with only a single hand. "... Thank you for the wake-up-call."
Her right eye then shines bright as the sigil turns into that of a sun peeking out of the crescent moon.
"NOW IT'S MY TURN TO SURPASS MY LIMITS!" The Stray Fallen Angel then manifests her holy energy into a flame-like aura as she pulls the other Fallen Angel by her [Monoceros] as she delivers a flaming haymaker with her left arm. "[SOLIS ARMATUS]!"
*KABOOM!*
Raynare was sent flying after making contact with the explosive lariat, hastily getting up as Lailah leaps towards her with another flaming strike.
*KABOOM!*
She narrowly dodges the explosive strike, to which the Fallen Angel tries to quickly regain ground. "[ORION]!"
This time, all shots of the flak holy energy blast make contact against Lailah, but in the latter's [Solis Armatus] form, she only suffers minor damage throughout her whole body.
"TRY AGAIN!" Lailah then swings forth another explosive haymaker, but Raynare nearly dodges by limboing under the swing, unleashing [Canis Venatici] behind herself to restrict Lailah's movements.
The bladed chains tie up Lailah, wrapping her arms around her body, leaving enough leeway for Raynare to fire her [Orion] point-blank, several times over, shattering the chains wrapped around her and dealing more damage to the Stray Fallen Angel.
"[CHAMELEON]!" Raynare then swings her light whip towards Lailah, but the latter catches it with her burning hand, the impact being nulled.
"Shocked? You shouldn't be," the Stray Fallen Angel remarked as her right eye's sigil morphs into that of a full moon partially eclipsing the sun until it was only a crescent of its former self. "[Luna Armatus]."
Then Lailah begins moving about the battlefield at blinding speeds, leaving behind faint afterimages as Raynare was pulled around like how a child would drag its doll across the dirt.
"[ARA]!" Raynare then blasts the ground itself to unleash several geysers of lava-like holy energy, faintly exposing Lailah's location and flight path, but mattered little.
"[Ramosa]!" The Stray Fallen Angel then throws a single green holy energy knife before it then suddenly multiplies a hundredfold, now raining a flechette of blades around the lesser Fallen Angel.
"[PYXIS]!" Using her own holy energy, Raynare then takes control of the holy energy knives before having them return to the original caster, giving away Lailah's current location with greater clarity. "I don't know how I did that, but I'm not complaining! [CHAMELEON]!"
Raynare then swings her whip around herself, with one of the many swings lashing across Lailah's back, slowing her down just enough to deliver her finishing blow.
"[ORION]!" Raynare then blasts Lailah out of the sky before then charging towards her. "[MONOCEROS]-!"
"[Solis Armatus]."
*CLANG!*
Again, the Stray Fallen Angel stops the spear in its tracks as she reverts to her more defense and close-combat form of her [Eclipse Armatus].
"Shit."
"Indeed." Lailah then winds her other fist back as it glows like the sun. "[Tessera]!"
Raynare, in desperation, uses her lance to guard against the Stray Fallen Angel's counterattack...
*KABOOM!*
The impact triggers an explosion that sends Raynare flying into the woods around Nemichi Shrine, breaking through several trees as the Fallen Angel lands right on top of the pseudo-Cherubim.
"... Why is it sticky?!" she cried out, for despite the surprisingly-soft landing, it wasn't pleasant at all to be on a perpetually-screaming sin against nature blasting unholy death from all of its orifices.
"... Koneko, I sense Raynare," Pandora remarked as the Rook continued carrying on her back. "... And she's on that screaming monstrosity begging for death."
"THEN ASK HER IF SHE CAN HELP OUT!" Koneko exclaimed, her cool all but gone as her mind was being both ripped apart by that thing's mere presence and held together by the proverbial duct tape and chewing gum that was Pandora's Charm affecting her mind.
"YOU WON'T ESCAPE!" Lailah's voice screamed out through the woods as she entered via her [Luna Armatus] form, flying on her new light wings in place of her three missing ones.
"We have another problem!" Pandora informed as she kept her Charmed earth and wind spirits busy via covering fire from all over the mountain.
"HOW LONG UNTIL YOU CAN SEE AGAIN?!" Koneko screamed out.
"ABOUT A MINUTE!" she replied. "PLEASE! HOLD ON!"
Sensing that time was running out fast, Pandora then makes the desperate move to bite her own thumb and trigger the ambient fire spirits within the mountain using her blood as a catalyst.
The sanguine offering ignites a stream of fire that touched down upon the trees, the flames now being fed by the wind spirits providing them with oxygen, causing them to grow ever more massive and wilder, setting parts of the pseudo-Cherubim ablaze, causing its screams to become louder and its beams to become more sporadic and messier in its trajectory.
"Hot hot hot hot hot!" Raynare in panic, flies off and sees that Lailah was now beelining towards her. "OH HELL NO! [PYXIS]!"
This time, she uses her holy energy to direct the flames towards the Stray Fallen Angel, causing her feathered wings and clothes to be set ablaze, messing her up really badly and sending her crashing into the now-burning mountain forest.
"... Huh, that worked," Raynare commented in disbelief before she heard the cracking of falling trees. "Oh shit!"
As she quickly makes her way out of the burning forest, Pandora then regains her sight. "ALRIGHT! I CAN SEE AGAIN!"
"MAKE ME BLIND! HURRY!" Koneko requested.
"GIN!" The Knight then re-summons her Cath Palug kitten familiar before it perches itself before Koneko's eyes. "DO IT!"
The kitten meows as Koneko goes blind, but given that she's also a Yōkai, she can technically see with ki alone thanks to her application of Senjutsu.
That uggos about a few clicks behind us, she thought as the Nekomata could sense its presence pursuing them. ... Time to put it out of its misery.
"Good luck!" Pandora then uses her Charmed wind spirits to lift her up via her Devil Wings acting as her sails as she sees Koneko transition from Nekomata to Nekoshō, burning white with ki as her eyes no longer registered its abominable visages, but only it's pitiful soul begging for a sweet release.
"I'll make it as painless as I can." She then stiffens her hand as it then forms a straight ki-blade with it.
The Nekoshō hears the abomination's pained cries, its skin and meat cooked in the forest fire, now no longer resisting as it sees someone approaching this wretch brought to life against its will.
"[WAIRA]!"
*SLASH*
Upon stroking the hand across the pseudo-Cherubim, the ki-blade temporarily turned into that of a crescent sickle until it faded from existence, the two halves of the severed abomination now disintegrating as its pain finally stopped.
"... tHAnk... yOUuuUuU..."
Koneko could feel nothing but pity for such a creature as it lived out its last moments of its meager and tortured existence, picked up by Raynare and carried out of the now-burning forest.
"So... Pandora gave me the details," the Fallen Angel explained. "... You're blind for now, right?"
"I need it in order for my plan to work," the Nekomata explained. "... So, is the fire gonna burn itself out?"
"It should be before the coming sunrise," Pandora stated. "For now, we should probably find a way to get to Takeshi and help him out-"
"[RAMOSA]!"
The two Devils and Fallen Angel were then shot out of the sky by a barrage of holy energy lances. The trio quickly recover their bearings before landing roughly back on the gravely earth below the mountain.
"WHO THE FUCK WAS THAT?!" Koneko asked as Raynare gulped in fear.
"... Lailah."
Then said Stray Fallen Angel comes roaring out of the inferno, now all six of her wings cooked and featherless, her face and skin covered in soot and seared cuts, her clothes in tatters, her eyepatch over her left eye missing, and her remaining eye now returned to its prior [Eclipse Armatus] sigil.
"By the way, I'm pretty sure I shot her point-blank with [Orion] numerous times and didn't miss more than once, just saying," the Fallen Angel clarified.
"How are you still not dead?" Pandora asked.
"... You have... no idea... what I am fighting for," the Stray Fallen Angel snarled. "... This pain... this agony... is nothing!"
"Nothing to what?" Koneko asked. "... What part of your brain is broken to think that bringing forth that fucking abortion was the right call to make?!"
Lailah sighs, her rage soothed by her welling melancholy. "... Tell me," she said. "... Do you love children?"
The three glance at each other, befuddled by that off the cuff-question.
"... What does that have to do with anything?" Pandora asked.
Lailah then grabs her top's lower fringes before white-knuckling it. "... It has to do with everything."
*RIP*
Then revealing her midriff, Pandora and Raynare sees an "X"-shaped burn branded over where her womb and ovaries were located.
"What the Hell is that?!" Pandora asked.
"... I've only heard rumors, but I never thought I'd see it on a Fallen Angel," Raynare pointed out, her voice trembling in fear. "... That's Heaven's personal brand of shame, reserved only for the worst of their own offenders... the Stigmata!"
Lailah, upon revealing her darkest secret, begins laughing in a broken pitch.
"Okay, so she's bad news, then," Koneko commented, taking everyone else's words and reaction for it given that she could only see everyone's respective ki signatures right now. "... So what did you do to make Heaven pull a 1984 on your ass?"
Lailah shares her past while quietly chuckling. "... I only fell 150 years ago," she revealed. "And I did so willingly... because I wanted a child to call my own."
"Holy crap, so she's about as new as me...!" Raynare commented, comparing her own service record of only about a century.
"You know how the story goes, of me being a former Dominion serving under Lady Gabriel, ushering the miracle of conception unto our believers and delivering their little bundles of joy safely and soundly..." she reminisced in a sing-song tone and pitch. "... I was doing such wonderful work under Deus Trinity's name, even during the Great War, where I carried out my duties to give new life to replace those who fell during the Black Plague, the Crusades, and the Hundred Years and Thirty Years Wars. One day, I began to wonder... if the gift of life is such a miracle that only humans could have it, then why can't us Angels serving the Almighty do His great deed and prosper on our own?"
"... Is that why you fell?" Raynare asked. "Simply because you were curious?"
"No," she rebuked. "... I was in fact, envious of humanity. While they grew and multiplied. We stagnated and died off. While we never aged since our advent, we were unable to multiply. The Great War showed me the horror of death like nothing I've seen before. So much so that I begged the Four Great Seraphs to come up with a solution to recover our lost numbers... but alas, their adherence to upholding Deus Trinity's will proved stronger than my desire for Heaven to prosper... so I chose to fall willingly, blackening my wings by falling in love with a kind human, wed in secret, and I've carried his child."
Then tears leaked from both of Lailah's eyes, the emptied eye socket on her left leaking faster than the one on her right.
"Then the Angels came to personally punish me for my blasphemy," she revealed. "First they damned my husband to the bowels of Hells when he'd done nothing wrong... and then, the branding iron."
The echoes of Lailah's own screams and the searing agony of her swollen womb being branded with a hot-iron replayed in the Fallen Angel's mind vividly, causing her demure and stoic demeanor to crumble like a sand castle washed away by the waves of the ocean.
"... My baby died... BUT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO HAVE SINNED!" she wailed as Lailah incoherently moaned and groaned in a psychotic break of having to relive her trauma. "SO WHY MUST MY UNBORN CHILD BE SLAIN IN ITS OWN WOMB WHEN THEY HAVE DONE NO HARM TO ANYONE?! IS THIS DEUS TRINITY'S WILL?! TO DAMN HIS OWN SERVANTS WHILE THE INGRATES CALLED 'HUMANITY' PROSPER AT OUR EXPENSE AND LABOR?! FIENDS! MONSTERS! MURDERERS! ALL OF THEM!"
Lailah screeches and screams in utter psychosis as she begins pulling her hair out until it was only a frazzled mess.
"... Only Lord Kokabiel cared," she sobbed. "At first... I didn't know what to do when I first joined his ranks outside of the Grigori other than do what the others have done. Take small bits of pleasure defying God and defacing His monuments... but now I understand, even if it were only just a bit. Heaven is damned to obscurity. The world we've long toiled and slaved under was for naught! Humanity... our own believers... DON'T GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT ANY OF US! SO WHY?! WHY ARE YOU STANDING BY THEM WHEN YOU KNOW DEEP DOWN THAT THEY'LL TOSS YOU ASIDE LIKE YESTERDAY'S TRASH WHEN THEY FIND THE NEXT NEW DISTRACTION TO OBSESS OVER?!"
The Devils were left stunned by the Stray Fallen Angel's logic. Besides the President's orders and nothing else to show for it, what else do they have connecting them to humanity as a whole other than smartphones and their monetary gains? What substantial thing kept them bound to humanity itself when they have nothing to give in return?
"Honestly... you might be right."
Koneko and Pandora look at Raynare in surprise as she alone was the one to respond to Lailah's tirades.
"... Humanity... can't care about anything," the Fallen Angel commented. "... I mean, face it, wars, politics, junk food, reality TV... little wonder why I considered them less than insects beforehand. If anything, they deserve everything that they have coming to them and then some. But when we're done... What else is left? What do we do after we wipe them all out? Make Humanity 2.0 where they listen to and do literally everything we say and command like if Earth was now our exclusive MMORPG server? That's not living, let alone existing."
"... What do you know that I don't, child?" Lailah hissed.
"You're right, I don't," Raynare consented. "... But I know why Re:Live is trying to save this world in spite of everything wrong with it. Humanity, their beliefs, their reasons, their mortality... it's all we got besides what Deus Trinity says and goes! If we simply exist to destroy everyone just because they blew us off, then what's stopping them from doing the same to us, with them knowing that it'll all be in vain, and yet will still do so regardless?! Vengeance only begets even more vengeance! It has to stop somewhere before we all welcome oblivion with open arms!"
Lailah's sorrow then cools to that of detached apathy and bitterness. "... Look at you, talking like if you were a human," she snarked caustically. "... Is that you, or your fucking ego spewing that shit out of your asshole that you call a 'mouth'?"
"Yeah, it's my stupid ego talking...!" Raynare admitted before her own holy energy output erupts once more. "BUT AT LEAST I'M TRYING TO DO SOMETHING WITH MY OWN LIFE THEN CONSIGN MYSELF TO THIS INSANITY THAT YOU AND KOKABIEL ARE OFFERING! [ORION]!"
"[Solis Armatus]." The Stray Fallen Angel tanks the scattershot as Raynare attacks with [Monoceros]. "[Tessera]."
"CLANG*
*KABOOM!*
*CRASH!*
Raynare was sent screaming and crashing towards the stone staircase leading up to the main shrine, groaning as she willed herself back up.
"... Stubborn and prideful to the bitter end." Lailah then slowly approached the fallen Raynare. "... You truly are your father's daughter."
Seeing that the fight was now resuming, Koneko and Pandora quickly reenter the fray to slow the Stray Fallen Angel down.
Even if Lailah could no longer freely fly due to her injuries, it did not deter her from continuing with her mad crusade along with Kokabiel to spite all of Deus Trinity and what the Almighty stood for.
"TOSCA! SNAP OUT OF IT!"
*SNAP!*
"She can't hear you anymore," Father Galilei sighed while keeping track of his sole success on his phone. "Then again, real superheroes don't listen to the pleas of a supervillain such as yourself."
The ground around the koi pond was littered with broken pseudo-Demonic Swords, with Yuuto replacing them with another pair of [Holy Eaters].
"TOSCA! PLEASE! WAKE UP-!" The brainwashed [Excalibur V] User remains silent as she swings her amalgam blade down towards Yuuto, breaking his [Holy Eaters] once again, forcing him on the backfoot as he narrowly dodges the amalgam Holy Sword's swings lest he gets his soul obliterated.
"Hm... performance seems a bit lacking," Father Galilei commented as he then readjusts the parameters of Tosca's planted Spiritron Engine. "... Let's raise it up a little bit."
The whirring of the young girl's chest armor becomes louder as her eyes gleam brighter. Then Tosca's moves speed up as her attacks became more aggressive and manic, with Yuuto barely holding on via his Knight Piece's speed boost and Grayfia's training from a month prior.
"... Or is it that little old Isaiah had grown much more than I initially anticipated?" Father Galilei observed from within the armored sarcophagus' window. "... How curious. Perhaps I did dismiss him as a failure too soon. Oh well. No point crying over spilled milk."
The Archbishop then adjusts Tosca's output to become even higher, now causing the poor girl lost to time to begin visibly straining in pain from the sheer amount of holy energy she's generating being too much for her immature (if modified) body for her to handle.
"... I really wished I had a way to age her up," Father Galilei groaned in disappointment before issuing his next command. "Tosca. Ignore the pain and resume disposing of that failure."
With the order given, the agonized Tosca carries out her orders, her movements becoming more sporadic and unpredictable, becoming like a wild beast on a hunt for her prey.
"TOSCA!" Yuuto cried out as he evaded her swings of her [Excalibur V] while glancing at the Archbishop hiding in his coffin. "YOU BASTARD! STOP HURTING HER!"
"I'm not. That's your job, after all," Father Galilei smugly replied. "After all, all supervillains like you are good for being fodder for the real superheroes!"
Wording aside, the madman's words had a point. Yuuto could only realistically play defensively for so long.
Sooner or later, he himself has to kill Tosca with his own hands. But he couldn't.
Just as when he'd gained his resolve to move past his old shame, then said shame came rising from its grave and pulled him back into the black muck that was his past.
He knew Father Galilei was mad beyond comprehension, but never once in his life would he be so concise in using his own past against himself.
He had nothing that could refute the current reality before him. He now found himself back in the same place where he was at his lowest.
"... Isaiah."
Yuuto gasps while he dodges her swing of [Excalibur V].
"... Isaiah."
His ears weren't lying to him. Tosca was still in there.
"Tosca..." he heeded back while summoning more [Holy Eaters] to siphon her excess holy energy. "TOSCA!"
Father Galilei raises an eyebrow. "... Is she waking up now of all times?"
"Hold on, I'm coming!" Yuuto then pushes his [Sword Birth] to their limits. "[Full Release: Holy Eater]!"
Six of the holy energy-siphoning blades around the girl, quickly draining her power source to more manageable levels.
"TOSCA!" Yuuto cried out towards her. "IT'S ME! ISAIAH!"
Meanwhile, Father Galilei was busy trying to fix this little hiccup before him. "... Oh dear, guess our little supervillain learned how to fight smarter."
Just in case, Yuuto adds another [Full Release: Holy Eater] below where Tosca knelt as he approached her. "Tosca...!"
Her eyes then return to normal selves, without the intrusive holy energy signatures shackling her to the Archbishop's will.
"Tosca... it's me, Isaiah," he wept. "... Can you hear me?"
The white-haired girl looks up tearfully. "... Isaiah," she replied softly. "... You've... grown up... so much."
"Hold on, I'm gonna get you out of here!" He then reaches his hand into where the [Martyr's Beryl] was embedded into, but try as he may, he couldn't even make it budge. "COME ON! MOVE!"
"... It's... too late... for me," she revealed regretfully. "... It's so cold... I can't go on."
"No...! There has to be another way...!" Yuuto begged. "PLEASE! I'LL DO ANYTHING!"
All Tosca can do for her long-lost friend was kiss him on the cheek as a sign of her affection.
"... Please," she begged. "Kill me... while I'm... still myself."
Yuuto's heart wavered long enough for Father Galilei to come up with a solution.
"Aha! There we go!" He then tapped a certain command on his smartphone's screen. "... Manual Control Override."
Then, Tosca's body then seizes up as what was left of her mind begins to quickly erode.
"TOSCA!" Yuuto exclaimed as his friend screamed in agony.
"... Yuuto... PLEASE!" she begged with what last vestiges of her sanity she could muster. "... KILL MEEEEEE!"
Her last pleas were garbled into mechanical roars as she effortlessly broke out of her encirclement, her eyes and core now gleaming red, lifting [Excalibur V] up towards the sky before lunging towards Yuuto with extreme prejudice.
"Let the records show, my boy, you brought all of this unto yourself." Father Galilei then begins controlling Tosca directly like a video game-character in an Action RPG.
The now-subservient Tosca smashes her [Excalibur V] into the ground repeatedly, trying to crush Yuuto underneath its massive edge like an overglorified flyswatter and with the dignity of how a caveman would swing his club.
Tosca... he thought as the Devil saw his friend in pain. ... All these years after when you and everyone helped me escape, I thought justice had truly died on that very day.
Tosca swings her sword down vertically, opening up a deep chasm across the earth as Yuuto's dodges become more controlled and measured.
Now I truly understand, that justice itself was dead to begin with, he thought while throwing more [Holy Eater] blades towards her, with the brainwashed Tosca parrying each thrown blade with her amalgam Holy Sword before he himself appeared in place of one of them, striking her across her shoulder with his [Gravity Nail]. ... Rather, it was never about justice to begin with. But atonement.
The weight of his failure to save those he cared about was placed onto Yuuto's shoulders once more.
... I wanted to atone for my failures.
[Gravity Nail] breaks against [Excalibur V]'s swing, sending him flying back from the impact.
I wanted another chance to save you.
Yuuto then places [Full Release: Blast Ogre] between themselves to kick up a massive dust cloud to obscure her view.
So if killing you means that I can save you... even just for a little bit...
Tosca immediately clears the air with her fanning her amalgam Holy Sword, but Yuuto himself was nowhere to be found.
... Then I will. I will save you from this fate worse than death.
"TOSCA! LOOK UP!" Father Galilei ordered, only for him to realize that he was on manual control mode, meaning that he actually has to do it himself. "Aw fiddlesticks."
Yuuto dives towards where Tosca was standing, summoning [Holy Eater] in his hand, only now it was glowing with a harmonious fusion of collected holy energy and his default demonic energy.
"... Hold on, Tosca." Yuuto then closes his eyes and enters into a state of calm as his resolve finally steels itself. "I'll get you out of this mess."
Father Galilei then swings Tosca's [Excalibur V] upwards to swat Yuuto out of the sky.
"... Balance Breaker." Yuuto's [Holy Eater] was then replaced with another sword, slate-gray in construction, gold and obsidian in detailing, crimson runes printed across both flats, and its crossguard emitting a bright light that was holy in its radiance, yet demonic in nature for its source. "... [Sword of Betrayer]!"
*CLANG!*
[Sword of Betrayer] and [Excalibur V] clashed, but this time, Yuuto's blades remained intact against the amalgam Holy Sword.
"Hm, that's quite strange," Father Galilei commented as he read his phone's screen. "... Tosca's parameters are going down from contact with that blade alone... I should adopt a defensive approach."
He then controls Tosca to retreat, to which Yuuto catches up with his Knight's speed and resumes their prior weapon lock.
"YOUR RAMSHACKLE BLADE IS NO MATCH FOR MY OWN BLADE, FATHER!" Yuuto declared.
"Is that so?" Father Galilei then controls Tosca's hands to then tap into [Excalibur V]'s powers. "Time to stop playing around, then."
Tapping into [Rapidly], Tosca moves into a blur as Yuuto keeps up with her, the air ringing with the sounds of clanging steel as both the Devil and slave disappear and reappear out of thin air. He then commands her to tap into [Transparency]'s invisibility in order to further elude Yuuto.
"You can't hide from me!" Yuuto, with his newfound powers, has his mind flooded with new ideas to create new Holy-Demonic Sword-hybrids.
After all, if one pseudo-Demonic Sword isn't enough to last against even one [Excalibur] fragment, why not have a blade that can share the strain with the [Sword of Betrayer] as his base?
Mentally, he then combines [Dust Devil] and [Fay Marker] together, creating a sword that resembles a stained-glass window-sword colored amber and jasper, its patterns resembling a blooming yellow pansy flower.
"Invite, [Marigold Round]!" The new blade then sends forth a golden sandstorm from its swings, each dispersed particle entering the air to uncover Tosca hiding in plain sight. "When the Fae invites you, you don't have an option to turn them down!"
"Dammit! [Transparency]'s useless!" Father Galilei then switches tactics. "Time to fuck up your little brain with [Nightmare]!"
The amalgam [Excalibur V] then taps into one of its other components, and combined with [Rapidly]'s speed boost, Tosca creates a vortex of dark fog around Yuuto, now trapping him in a storm of his own nightmares coming to life.
This time, however, Yuuto stood firm. "... Fear is the mind-killer."
Closing his eyes, he then mentally fuses [Pain Killer] and [Phantom Pain], with his [Marigold Round] being reforged into steely-violet shortsword whose blade, form, and construction resembled that of a surgeon's scalpel.
"Excise, [Nightingale Dirge]." Yuuto then stabs himself in the chest to temporarily "kill" his sense of fear as his offering to gain greater strength as the brainwashed Tosca emerges from the illusory forms of his deceased friends before parrying her surprise strike with the stroke of his shortsword before kicking her aside.
"DAMMIT!" Father Galilei's rage seethed as he then commands Tosca to tap into [Mimic] and [Destruction]'s powers, reforming her amalgam blade into that of a massive blade that was wide and large as a billboard before she then swings it towards Yuuto.
"Giving up on playing it safe?" Yuuto then mentally combines [Land Cleaver] and [Gravity Nail] with his [Sword of Betrayer] taking a new form. "Fine then."
He then rushes towards Tosca as she swung her gargantuan blade down, with Yuuto placing his new baguadao-like greatsword constructed of hardened earth gleaming like diamonds hued with an earthly shade of dark-violet, grinding its edge against [Excalibur V]'s descending edge.
"Reverse, [Plumeria Alto]!" Yuuto, using the absorbed holy energy coming from the giant amalgam Holy Sword, flips the blade's trajectory towards the opposite direction, causing Tosca's arms to raise upwards, leaving her open as she couldn't swing down her blade on time.
"NO! EVADE-!"
Yuuto then roars as his [Sword of Betrayer] then takes a new form: of that being a fusion of [Starlight Flash] and [Hate Buster], forming a small athame-like blade brimming with both demonic and holy energy.
"... Purge."
*shank*
A single tear falls from Yuuto's eye as he stakes his new blade into Tosca's chest, breaching directly into her Spiritron Engine that was keeping her alive. Keeping her enslaved to Father Galilei's mad whims of "heroism."
"... [Gladiolus Solo]."
The glow in Tosca's eyes die down as her body leans over Yuuto's shoulder, feeling his warmth one last time as she finally rests in peace.
"Thank... you..."
*clatter*
[Excalibur V] slips from her grasp as Yuuto hugs her cold body, sobbing as he delivers his farewells to his long-lost friend that he spent the days of his life protecting.
"... Suffer no more." Yuuto continued to sob, holding onto his friend tightly even as her body hung limp over his shoulder and cold as death.
"Well, that was disappointing."
*CLUNK*
*HISS*
"... You!" Yuuto then tries to rush towards Father Galilei, but his knees give out as the Archbishop walks out unimpeded.
"I'd say, being able to use holy and demonic energy concurrently without having said opposing energies collapse onto each other?" Father Galilei remarked with a slight guff. "... Normally, I'd say that I didn't see that one coming, but part of being a scientist of justice is preparing to be proven wrong at some point... Granted, that doesn't mean I like it in the slightest, but all I'm saying is that if you think you're something special just because you did something that seems impossible on the preset... well, I hope you're prepared to be disappointed, because you're not the first."
"... What do you mean?!" Yuuto asked as he got back up using [Sword of Betrayer] as a crutch.
"Sir Lancelot and his famed [Arondight] was a... shall we say, an 'ur-example' of that exceedingly-rare phenomenon happening," the Archbishop explained. "... Granted, the story is that after falling in love with a wed woman, it is commonly said that his insanity rooted from his guilt was the sole cause of why his Holy Sword became 'corrupted' into a Demonic Sword, but some academic circles I've been in cite that the word 'corrupt' doesn't indicate a complete turn towards the dark side, but rather a 'contamination' of a Holy Sword, resulting in a first case of energy hybridization. But you my boy, you might as well be the first in history to not go insane from the fusion of opposing energies. Is it perhaps because you're a Devil, and that the differences of physiologies and brain chemistry compared to that of a human's make all the difference? I, for one, would love to stick around and find out..."
"You'll be dead before you can even hypothesize!" Yuuto then wills himself to swing his [Sword of Betrayer] towards Father Galilei, but the latter wills the [Martyr's Beryl] to his hand and blocks the attack with the stone itself, unleashing a pulse of holy energy that sends Yuuto flying back. "How?! I thought my Balance Breaker can absorb holy energy!"
Father Galilei looked at the swirling stone in surprise before figuring out why he wasn't one hand short. "... But not souls, apparently," he remarked. "... You learn something new every day."
The old Archbishop then rips off his robes, revealing that his old body was also modified with a Spiritron Engine, just like Tosca's own.
"Be honest, Isaiah, did you really believe that I came up with this idea of turning people into cyborgs in a fortnight?" he remarked as he inserted the [Martyr's Beryl] into the core of his own chest piece. "Or did you really think that I didn't plan for you to come for me personally and not prepare for our inevitable revenge match?!"
Then the souls within the abominable artifact all scream as Father Galilei's holy energy output spiking beyond normal levels.
"Don't forget, boy...!" Father Galilei's voice growled as his enervated and saggy-looking body swelled and grew into a more muscular, youthful form, his gray hair and balding scalp now reforming their luscious golden-blonde lock that were slicked back and gleamed under the moonlight. "Before I was an Archbishop, I cut my teeth as an Exorcist for over twenty years!"
Then the muscular man whose upper body was much larger than his legs that were somehow holding up his disproportionately-sized frame lets out a booming roar before raising his hand, causing [Excalibur V] to fly towards his grip, grasping the amalgam Holy Sword into his hand as if it were his own.
Yuuto now finally understood the intent. The Holy Sword Project was never meant to create "other Users" for said [Excalibur] fragments. It was solely to benefit Father Galilei himself, so that he himself could be the "Hero."
There was nothing "heroic" about it. All of those lives thrown down the shitter were just to make one selfish man's dream come true.
"I! AM NOW! SUPERMAN!" the revitalized Valper Galilei boldly declared as he raised his [Excalibur V] into the air. "I! AM VALPER GALILEI! THE 'HERO'! PREPARE! TO DIE! SUPERVILLAIN!"
Yuuto then wills himself back to his feet in time to dodge the incoming swing that causes the earth to erupt upon contact.
Meanwhile, inside the building where Irina and Xenovia were facing Yozakura, the latter's use of [Ichimonji] proved to be rather elusive and difficult to work around.
"Bugger, I'm out of ammo!" Irina remarked as her Uzis ran empty before ducking under another swing of the elongated katana.
Xenovia advances towards the Stray Exorcist with her [Durandal] dragged behind her, but Yozakura easily dodges her thrusts and swings as they were encumbered by the latter's manipulation of their current environment, repairing the damaged wood and shoji barriers while the Holy Sword itself tore through them like tissue paper.
"How are you controlling this place?!" Irina commented.
"This mage's workshop is mine to maintain and control. Keeping it tidy when unruly guests visit is child's play," Yozakura revealed before eying towards Xenovia's wild swings with her [Durandal] "... You have little control over that thing, do you?"
"It doesn't matter as long as I hit you!" Xenovia then charges towards Yozakura as the screen doors slide shut before her, only for her to break through all of them with a single swing.
"Then I better watch myself, then." The Stray Exorcist then disappears into the darkness of her controlled domain.
Quickly, Xenovia dodges [Ichimonji]'s elongated blade shot towards her by using her greatsword as a fulcrum to cartwheel over, blocking the strike with the flat of her blade.
How did she get up there?! the Catholic Exorcist thought as she looked around until figuring out that [Ichimonji] was also a very useful mobility tool. "... Of course she'd find a way to master the world's deadliest stilt in less than an hour."
"That's just unfair and you know it-WHOA!" Irina narrowly dodges an incoming stab from above the rafters. "... I hate her so much."
Then, a thought passed by Xenovia's head that made her think. If she's that elusive, then why hasn't she escaped during the chaos-?
*CRASH!*
Coming from across the room and breaking through several shoji screens, Yuuto's screams could be heard as he tumbles and rolls across the tatami mat floor before stopping right where the two Exorcists were at.
"Hi," Irina awkwardly greeted.
"Hey," Yuuto groaned as he got back up with [Sword of Betrayer] as his crutch.
"What happened and what is that thing-?" Then Xenovia's questions were cut off by another roar coming from the breach, revealing a giant, top-heavy, and muscular man with slicked-back blonde hair, his modesty barely contained in a pair of briefs, his chest contraption droning with the sounds akin to that of a jet engine's and in his hand dragged [Excalibur V] behind himself like a farmer's tool. "... Mr. Kiba, why does that man look like an uglier version of you?"
"That's Father Galilei," he revealed.
"WHAT?!" both Exorcists exclaimed.
"I'll explain later, but for now, WE NEED TO BAIL!" Yuuto said as Valper then charges up his next attack from his amalgam Holy Sword, prompting Irina and Xenovia to follow soon after.
"TASTE MY JUSTICE!" The false hero then taps into [Destruction]'s power from [Excalibur V] as he winds back the mighty blade of legend. "[DESTRUCTION SLASH]!"
A blazing blue wave of pure holy energy swept across the entire mage's workshop, devouring everything that it touched as the three ran from the all-encompassing wave of blue flames that threatened to kill them all.
"WHAT HAPPENED AND HOW DID THAT LUNATIC BECOME FIFTY YEARS YOUNGER?!" Irina asked. "ALSO, WHAT IS THAT SWORD YOU'RE WIELDING?!"
"IT'S A LONG STORY!" Yuuto then spotted their only way out, that being a shoji screen with moonlight basking through its paper windows. "LOOK! IT'S OUR WAY OUT!"
"WE WON'T MAKE IT IN TIME!" Xenovia then flares her own holy energy through her [Durandal]'s blade behind herself. "EVERYONE! KEEP YOUR MOUTHS SHUT OR ELSE YOU'LL BITE YOUR TONGUES!"
In a reckless move, Xenovia releases a blast of holy energy from her Holy Sword to propel herself, Irina, and Yuuto out of the workshop and into the forest before the [Destruction Slash] could consume them all in its fiery embrace.
*KABOOM!*
All three of them were sent flying from the explosion behind them, breaking through several branches and bushes until landing hard onto the earth.
"Ow..." Irina grimaced before a stray rubble flicked off of her head. "... Is everyone okay?"
"Not the first time something exploded behind us like, and as Takeshi would put it, 'like a Vin Diesel movie'," Yuuto replied as he got off the bush where he'd landed.
"I swear, you Devils..." Xenovia rolled her eyes before she heard something land near them that didn't sound like rubble.
The Catholic Exorcist then goes into the bushes before retrieving a pair of sheathed blades, one being a full-length katana, and another being a wakizashi.
"Hey, aren't those like those Holy Swords that Yozakura was holding onto?!" Irina pointed out as Xenovia tries to unsheathe them, but to no avail.
"You try it." The Catholic Exorcist then hands the Japanese Holy Swords towards her Protestant partner, but even she had made a little difference in effort. "... No good, huh?"
"Guess I'm using these as is, then," Irina remarked as she equipped the two weapons as a pair of bludgeons. "... Speaking of Yozakura, where do you think she is right now?"
"She's no longer our problem anymore," Yuuto commented as he looked back at the collapsed mage's workshop beyond the forest. "... Probably because of that team-killing bastard-"
*crash*
The three of them see Valper emerge from the pile of rubble, only covered in soot and dirt.
"How disgraceful..." he muttered to himself as he tapped into [Excalibur V]'s [Mimic]-aspect. "... I guess no superhero would be complete without a costume. [Mimic Form]!"
Then, through his own boosted holy energy, the rubble around Valper all converge towards his own body, cladding and covering him as they all morph into a cross between a suit of armor and a Golden Age-superhero costume.
Reflective of his own newfound sense of vanity, Valper's appearance was now that of a comical parody of a "Knight in Shining Armor" and a "Superhero." Cape, swagger, his luscious locks of gold now longer and flowing behind him like a river of light, and the works, all of which embodied this madman's utter delusion of being a "Superhero."
"... He's just showing off at this point," Xenovia groaned.
"[DESTRUCTION SLASH]!" The three then ran as Valper resumed his prior offensive.
"[LEO]!" Kokabiel's body shines with holy energy as he tanks Takeshi's punch with body before counterattacking with his own.
"[Boost]! [Boost]! [Boost]!" Leon roars as he follows it up with his own flying kick, sending the Stray Cadre flying back after striking him on his stomach.
"THAT DIDN'T EVEN HURT, BITCH!" Grendel roared out as Takeshi's body rocketed towards Kokabiel like a screaming fireball, to which the pair caught each other by their hands before they began pushing down on each other.
"WHY WON'T YOU DIE ALREADY?!" Kokabiel cried out as the Fallen Angel began to push Takeshi down as the latter pushed back against him.
"COMING FROM A STUBBORN OLD MAN WHO SHOULD'VE RETIRED CENTURIES AGO?! THAT'S RICH!" Then the jet thrusters around [Savage Predator Incarnation] flare up, propelling the Evil Dragon User upright and adding more force behind his resistance. "I WON'T LET YOU HAVE YOUR WAR, KOKABIEL!"
"KEEP DREAMING! I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO WANTS A WAR!" The Stray Cadre inputs more of his own holy energy into his [Leo] technique, his wrists growing a set of stout-looking claws of that of its namesake. "AT LEAST I'M WILLING TO ADMIT THAT OUT LOUD! YOU HONESTLY DON'T BELIEVE THAT THIS PEACE BUILT UPON LIES WILL LAST, DO YOU?!"
"TAKESHI!" Leon then slaps Takeshi's back with his [Boosted Gear], adding [Boost] to [Savage Predator Incarnation]'s powers, increasing Takeshi's strength and the propulsion rate of the jet thrusters. "Maybe you're right, Kokabiel. Maybe this peace is too good to be true in a world where people like us exist among the common man... BUT THAT'S STILL NO EXCUSE TO ADVOCATE WANTON SLAUGHTER!"
"[Boost]! [Boost]! [Boost]!" As [Boosted Gear] enhances its User, Kokabiel and Takeshi break off from each others' grapples as the latter then joins Leon performing their double-team lariat into the Stray Cadre's own counterattack with his newly-grown light claws.
*BOOM*
Sparks flew as crossed arms and double-fist claws clashed against each other, the aftershock of the initial impact causing the whole mountain that they were standing on to quake.
"YEEESSS!" Grendel roared out in elation over the three combatants' roars. "THIS IS THE LIFE! COME ON, YOU DAMN BRATS! PUSH IT TO THE FUCKING LIMIT AND PAST IT!"
"You're enjoying this way too much, you fucking brat," Ddraig sighed as he then adds an additional [Boost] to Leon's own attack.
*KABOOM!*
Takeshi and Leon were sent flying back to Nemichi Shrine's entrance whereas Kokabiel rolled across the foundations where the main shrine itself once stood.
The Stray Cadre punches the ground as he gets back up to his feet. "I WILL NOT LET A PAIR OF GREENHORNS STOP ME! [TAURUS]!"
With rings of light around his arms and legs, Kokabiel blitzed towards Takeshi mid-recovery before seizing him by his neck and pinning him against the barrier's edge.
"LET GO OF MY FRIEND!" Leon then rushes towards where the two were at as he punches the Stray Cadre with his [Boosted Gear]...
*CRACK*
"WHAT THE?!" Where both Kokabiel and Takeshi stood was naught but an illusion that fragmented like struck glass.
*KABOOM!*
Then the dispelled illusion releases an explosion that sends the Red Dragon Emperor flying back to the center of the shrine complex, where upon laying down, he saw the real Kokabiel and Takeshi in the air, the latter being choked out by the former as he wriggled and struggled to break free.
"[Gemini]." Kokabiel flashes a smirk as he squeezes Takeshi's throat even harder, triggering a gag reflex that not even Grendel's pain inhibitors could manage, simply because oxygen deprivation didn't count as "pain" that the Evil Dragon couldn't ignore.
... Come to think of it, I think the meathead being choked out to death contributed to a lot of his deaths, Yamata no Orochi commented.
"THANKS FOR TELLING ME THAT NOW OF ALL TIMES, YOU JACKASS-!"
"[Taurus]." Kokabiel then divebombs with Takeshi before him, performing a wicked aerial chokeslam that smashes the latter's back against his own barrier, knocking the air out of his lungs as the Stray Cadre then winds back another punch. "[Leo]."
*SMASH!*
Takeshi's face was burrowed with Kokabiel's clawed fist.
*CRACK*
*SHATTER!*
The Evil Dragon User was breached through the holy energy barrier separating the area from the outside.
"TAKESHI!" Leon reached out his hand towards where his friend fell.
"Boy, we have bigger problems than his well-being." After Ddraig's warning, Kokabiel lunges towards the Red Dragon Emperor's host with extreme prejudice.
Meanwhile, as Takeshi himself tumbled downstairs like Po from Kung Fu Panda, he tried to regain his posture, his thrusters sputtering ember-laced smoke as further down he went, the more the forest itself seemed to be more fire than flora.
"Come on...! Come on! COME ON, DAMMIT!" Takeshi cursed, his words and indignity being only coherent due to Grendel's pain inhibitors. "WORK! YOU SONS OF BITCHES!"
"You're down to 58,000 years," Nidhogg informed. "As expected of fighting an Ultimate-Class in earnest."
Mid-tumble, he then spots Koneko, Pandora, and Raynare, confronting Lailah in her new form just a bit further down.
... You gonna ask the girls to catch you? Yamata no Orochi suggested.
Nah, I got something a bit better. And this time, Takeshi finally gets the thrusters working again, flaring up and straightening his own trajectory. "HUMAN TORPEDO!"
Takeshi then shoots his own body across the stairs, screaming like an utter psychopath on a murder run as his back faced the steps, his eyes looked up towards the smoke-choked night skies, and the top of his head aimed directly at Lailah's "X"-branded midsection.
"WHAT THE-?!"
*SMASH!*
The Stray Fallen Angel in her [Luna Armatus] form has all of her air knocked out of her body before it was then followed up with vomit, puking all over Takeshi's now-burning [Savage Predator Incarnation], the bile evaporating upon the contact with the flames.
"... What's with all the vomiting today?" Pandora sighed as she and everyone else saw Takeshi now grab Lailah by her face before flipping and twisting her around and placing her armpits onto his thighs, her thighs under his own armpits, and her head between his crotch as Takeshi grabs what's left of her wings attached onto her back before propelling further downstairs and towards the ground below.
"PERFECT POWER!" Takeshi declared as Raynare facepalms upon realizing that the Evil Dragon User was about to do another (overblown and fictitious) pro-wrestling move. "WIND OF MT. MCKINLEY: RYUUGAMINE AVALANCHE!"
*BOOM!*
*SNAP*
The Stray Fallen Angel feels her own back and neck being thrown out from the resulting hypertension triggered by the hard landing. But if that was not enough, Takeshi then rips off the rest of her wings with his clawed hands while "releasing" her from the finishing hold, unleashing a set of bloody geysers spewing from her back.
"Brat, I think I love Pro Wrestling now," Grendel snickered as his host released Lailah from her grapple, letting her lay in the pool of her own blood.
"Hope that we give Kokabiel at least one Kinniku Buster for our troubles..." Using [Savage Predator Incarnation]'s heel-disks along with [Promotion: Knight], Takeshi then rolls himself back upstairs to rejoin the fight.
Meanwhile, Lailah herself was barely holding on, unable to feel anything before her chest. "... No... not yet!"
She began crawling, streaking a blood shadow of her own making behind herself.
"... Not until... I get my revenge!"
Then just as her hand could reach the broken torii gate, a black-cloaked figure wearing a blank mirror-mask appeared out of the shadows, dropping two syringes filled with black, ink-like liquids, both just within her reach.
"This is just a free sample," they declared before disappearing back into the shadows. "One dose per person."
In desperation, Lailah then injects one of the vials right into the side of her neck.
"FLEE BEFORE ME, SUPERVILLAINS!" Valper boasted as he swung his [Excalibur V] around like a child's toy, unleashing [Destruction Slash] attacks with each arc that spread around haphazardly. "THE SUPERHERO SHALL PUNISH YOU ALL IN THE NAME OF JUSTICE!"
Irina, Xenovia, and Yuuto were too busy fleeing from the chaotic barrage of holy energy blasts that left them no quarter to strike back.
"HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FIGHT BACK WITHOUT GETTING BLASTED TO KINGDOM COME?!" Irina cried out as she carried the two sheathed Holy Swords on her person.
"How irksome it is to be on the receiving end of [Excalibur Destruction]'s powers..." Xenovia growled before glancing towards Yuuto. "Hey Devil, does your new weapon of yours do anything?!"
"I'M THINKING!" Yuuto then begins running mental combinations of various pseudo-Demonic Swords that he could possibly fuse together, ultimately settling on a fusion of [Blast Ogre] and [Fire Brand]. "GOT IT!"
The Knight's [Sword of Betrayer] then transforms into a two-handed flamberge-like longsword whose blade was ablaze with both holy and demonic fire on both ends.
"Is that both holy and demonic energy coming from the same blade?!" Irina commented.
It didn't take Xenovia two seconds to realize that Yuuto has reached a state where he's able to perform a Balance Breaker with his [Sword Birth]. "... Guess our Lord is more merciful than we faithful can assume."
"Illuminate..." Yuuto then pivots his heel before directly confronting the coming [Destruction Slash]. "... [GLORIOSA BALLAD]!"
The blue holy flames clashed against Yuuto's dualistic energy slash, the former parried by the latter before it was absorbed into the Holy-Demonic Sword's blade and then unleashes an explosive counterstrike towards Valper.
*KABOOM!*
"Did we get him?!" Xenovia asked.
"Oh no..." Irina groaned as neither she or Yuuto couldn't find Valper's body in the aftermath. "... Usually when someone says 'did we get x' after a big attack, it usually means that the bad guy is still alive!"
Xenovia rolled her eyes in exasperation. "... You watch way too much TV-"
*FWOOSH*
"She has a point!" Then Valper suddenly reappears behind the three with his amalgam blade wound back, narrowly avoiding a collective bisection due to all three of them blocking said attack on time with their blades. "And before you ask, [Transparency], [Rapidly], and [Nightmare] helped."
Yuuto growled as he got back up with the help of his blade. "... You know, your whole 'superhero'-schtick is more sad than actually intimidating."
"Oh please!" Valper replied as he casually parries Xenovia's strike with her [Durandal] before effortlessly dodging Irina's dual bludgeons with her dual sheathed Holy Swords before kicking her aside. "Who else is a better superhero other than yours truly?!"
He then unleashes a [Destruction Slash] towards the Knight, but the latter dodges with his Knight's speed as both he clashes against the rejuvenated Father Galilei's [Rapidly]'s speed boost in a series of high-speed clashes.
"You're no superhero, Father," Yuuto rebuked as he clashes his blades against [Excalibur V]. "You're nothing more than a fake. An egomaniac who only thinks that he's a superhero just because he's able to use only a large fraction of a legendary warrior-king's Holy Sword!"
"Oh really?!" Valper sneered as he then unleashes a series of [Destruction Slash] attacks with his amalgam Holy Sword. "THEN TELL ME, MY BOY! WHAT IS A TRUE SUPERHERO?!"
As much as Yuuto wasn't as educated in said topic as say, Takeshi, he knew his rebuttal.
After all, Takeshi himself was a perfect case study on what makes a true "Superhero". "... A real superhero is the one who fights on despite the odds!"
Morphing his [Sword of Betrayer] to [Plumeria Alto], Yuuto then easily parries Valper's swing with his [Excalibur V].
"A true superhero is not solely defined by what powers they hold!" The Knight continued as he pushed the offensive, putting the fake superhero on the backfoot. "A TRUE SUPERHERO INSPIRES HOPE BY BEING THEIR LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS WITH THEIR VERY SOULS! NOT WITH THEIR POWERS ALONE! A TRUE SUPERHERO UPLIFTS THE INDIVIDUAL TO BECOME THEIR STRONGEST SELVES! NOT BY ARBITRARILY MAKING THEM SOMEONE ELSE THAT THEY'RE NOT! A TRUE SUPERHERO SAVES LIVES OF THOSE WHO STILL HAVE A FUTURE! NOT DECIDE THOSE WHO GETS TO LIVE OR DIE BY SOME STUPID SELF-CONTRADICTING STANDARDS THAT YOU ASSIGN THEM INTO!"
"OH REALLY?!" Valper spitefully replies as he then charges up [Destruction], [Mimic], and [Rapidly] of his amalgam Holy Sword for his next attack. "THEN WHO IS THIS SO-CALLED 'TRUE SUPERHERO' THAT I HAVE NOT HEARD OF?!"
"SOMEONE WHO HAS PULLED ME OUT OF THE VERY PIT THAT YOU HAVE KICKED ME INTO, VALPER!" Yuuto then combines [Frost Bite] and [Flame Delete] over his [Sword of Betrayer]. "HE IS NONE OTHER RYUUGAMINE TAKESHI, THE FIFTIETH EVIL DRAGON USER!"
Valper then unleashes a blue flame lion-like slash as Yuuto swings a katana with a stark-white blade with a pattern akin to a blue runic prayer engraved onto its flat.
"Bury... [LILIUM ARIA]!" The Devil then unleashes a blizzard-like slash that freezes over the entire forest and the blue flame lion, eventually, reaching Valper and freezing him solid where he stood.
Everyone else then takes advantage of this opening, with Xenovia charging up her [Durandal] before unleashing a holy energy slash whereas Irina closes in with her sheathed Holy Swords, channeling her own holy energy through the scabbards acting as her bludgeons to strike the delusional superhero on ice as hard as she could.
Yuuto then combines [Cyclone Call] and [Snake Fang] to create a bouquet-like sword with too many blades coming out of the sword's handle. "Scatter, [Guzmania Choir]!"
All of the blades nested on the hybrid blade all then shoot out towards the frozen Valper...
*SHATTER!*
But Valper himself then breaks free from his icy prison as he then unleashes a bellowing roar that deflects all incoming attacks before planting his [Excalibur V] into the ground, unleashing a massive explosion that causes the ground around him to erupt like a volcano.
"EVERYONE!" Yuuto, snapping out of his pain, catches Irina and Xenovia midair before spotting Valper leap up towards them with his [Excalibur V] raised over his head, ready to swat them out of the sky.
In a desperate twist, Xenovia uses the flat of her blade to block the attack, but the resulting impact sends the three crashing towards the main shrine grounds where Leon and Kokabiel were fighting.
"EVERYONE!" Leon tries to help, but he was then cut off with the Stray Cadre's [Cancer] blades slashing across his [Scale Mail], sending sparks flying from each strike before he rolled over towards where the other three had landed.
"Milord!" Valper then lands behind Kokabiel.
"What caused the delay?" the Stray Cadre asked.
"Apologizes, but my boy and I had a lot of catching up to do," the muscular "superhero" answered as the four that were on the ground struggled to stand back up. "... So, you truly believe that boy cursed by the Evil Dragons to be a true superhero? How sad of you, my boy. That boy is the ultimate supervillain, the worst of evils that this world has ever seen! Someone that should be defeated by the real superheroes, like me!"
"Are we really going on about this right now?" Kokabiel sighed before brandishing his light blades. "... In any event, you people will be the first of casualties before the Great War's continuation."
"I won't let you!" Leon then charges towards Kokabiel while using [Boost] and [Excalibur Blessing] to hype himself up for the upcoming exchange.
"[Aries]." A bell-like knell vibrated across the air, not only removing all of Leon's enhancements, but also shattering Yuuto's Balance Breaker in his hands, causing everyone's eyes to widen in shock as the Red Dragon Emperor was left helpless before Kokabiel. "[Pisces]."
*SCHRUCK*
Leon looks down to see that the Stray Cadre's glowing hand had stabbed cleanly through his chest, causing him to cough blood as his [Scale Mail] was undone around his body.
"NO!" Irina cried out as Leon collapsed onto the ground, the latter heaving dryly as he held on while Kokabiel looked down upon him in utter apathy.
"I knew it, you're not entirely human, aren't you?" The Stray Cadre stomps onto Leon's chest wound, causing the latter to scream in agony, prompting Irina and Xenovia to act. "Valper."
The "superhero" incepts both of their attacks with his [Excalibur V] before it was followed up by Yuuto trying to activate his Balance Breaker again, but to no avail.
"NO!" the Devil cried out in distraught.
"So that's your limit, boy? How disappointing," the muscular man remarked with a sneer. "Just hold still and watch your friends die. I'll make sure that they share the same spot in Hell with you once we're done."
Xenovia tries to swing her [Durandal] towards Valper, but the latter parries it with his amalgam blade tapping into its [Destruction] aspect, the resulting blast sending her flying as Irina charges in with her sheathed blades, but the man simply grabs her by her head before jumping up and performing a wicked chokeslam on her, finishing it off by pinning her body down under his foot, slowly crushing her organs as Valper keeps her alive long enough for her to slowly lose hope at Xenovia's repeated failures to deal any damage towards Valper and watch Leon be tortured by Kokabiel kicking the former's wounds.
I... I can't do anything. Yuuto then collapses to his knees as he is forced to watch them slowly die. ... I'm still too weak. Too weak to make a difference.
But as the unholy scene straight out of Hell played out, Yuuto notices the ground below them begin to shift around as if something was about to sprout out from it.
"What the-?"
*BOOM!*
A hole erupts out of the ground, revealing Pandora, Koneko, and Raynare emerging from it.
"THANK YOU, EARTH SPIRITS!" the other Knight exclaimed as she then held up her Cath Palug kitten familiar. "GIN!"
The kitten meows as her eyes then blasts an unholy lantern of light in a manner similar to that of a flashbang going off, blinding Kokabiel and Valper long enough for the other two to deliver their attacks.
"[ORION]!" The Fallen Angel then shoots her buckshot of holy energy towards Valper's back, striking him hard enough to make him stagger, causing him to release Irina from his pin and for Xenovia to take advantage of his loss of stable footing by sweeping her [Durandal] across his other foot, completely tripping him up and followed up with a heavy smash with her Holy Sword, sending the muscular man flying into Kokabiel right as Koneko closed in on the Stray Cadre in her Nekoshō form.
"[Shōgorō]!" The Rook then delivers a double-palm strike imbued with her own ki aimed right at the Stray Cadre's crotch, sending him and Valper skidding across the earth into a pile-up.
In the meantime, Pandora drags Leon and Irina back towards where Yuuto was at. "Please, heal them!"
Yuuto then tries to summon his [Pain Killer] blades, but to no avail. "... I can't," he revealed. "... I've bottomed out on demonic energy."
"NOW OF ALL TIMES?!" Xenovia remarked as she and everyone else stood their ground upon Kokabiel and Valper getting back up.
Leon, groaning in pain, gets back up, healing his own wounds with [Excalibur Blessing]. "... Then let me heal those who are in need of healing," he ordered. "... Also, where's Takeshi?"
"Probably coming back up after laying out Lailah flat on her ass," Koneko revealed, causing Kokabiel's eyes to widen in shock.
"Of all times-WHY?!" the Stray Cadre groaned before growling. "... It doesn't matter. NONE OF YOU WILL EVER LEAVE THIS PLACE ALIVE!"
Koneko then flashes her [Waira] ki-blade as Pandora completes her magic circle to summon forth an army of her personal golems, and Raynare summons [Monoceros] into her hand before joining Xenovia. "Bring it, bitches."
The next round of fighting begins, with Pandora and Leon providing rear support while Koneko, Raynare, and Xenovia confront Kokabiel and Valper directly.
The Fallen Angel beelines towards Kokabiel himself despite the power disparity between them, whereas Koneko and Xenovia clashed steel with Valper's [Excalibur V].
"Aha! To think that a Japanese Devil would be so eager to meet her end upon my legendary steel!" Valper declared as he then unleashes several [Destruction Slash] attacks.
Xenovia then blocks all them with her [Durandal]'s flat before swinging around her own Holy Sword to unleash the same attack back at the false hero, to which the latter dodges with [Rapidly]'s powers, but Koneko him off-guard by kneeing him into his face during his evasive dash, right before coiling her legs around his thick neck that began to cave with her Rook Piece's innate powers.
"So that's [Excalibur]?" Koneko deadpanned before wiping her hands across Valper's eyes to get the ball-smells off of her palms. "It looks butt-ugly."
With a humph, Koneko then jerks Valper up into the air before switching her grappling into that of a rear chokehold as both of them fell back to the ground head-first.
"[Tsurube-Otoshi]!" Infusing her own body with ki to make it denser and heavier, Koneko then smashes Valper's head into the ground via Chokeslam-Brainbuster combo.
Upon letting him go, Xenovia then wastes no time slashing her [Durandal] across the false hero's grounded body, but just as she could deliver the finishing touch, his whole body then erupts into an eruption of dark smoke.
"Oh no, it's happening again!" Irina panicked. "That's [Nightmare]'s technique!"
"Xenovia will be fine, but what about Koneko?!" Yuuto added.
"Don't worry!" Pandora reassured as she then sent her golems to slow Kokabiel and Valper down as much as possible. "... Koneko requested that she go blind with my aid. She can 'see' with ki."
Then within the illusory smokescreen, Valper mistakes the golems for his two primary targets via Pandora molding their builds to look similar to Koneko and Pandora, while the actual two people he was supposed to target came up from behind and slashes Valper across his back with their [Waira] and [Durandal] respectively.
"Apparently, all the holy energy and power in the world doesn't buy shit in brainpower," Koneko taunted.
"Your ceaseless acts of blasphemy shall come to an end, heretic!" Xenovia declares as she points her Holy Sword towards the madman playing "superhero."
Valper, however, only smirked wickedly. "... You think the Church is so clean," he rebuked as he pointed his [Excalibur V] towards the two. "But if you think I'm a heretic, then you are truly ignorant of the Church's misdeeds-!"
*DING-DONG*
Valper's eyes rolled to the back of his head as he was kicked in the dick by Irina from behind.
"I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR BLOODY LIES, VALPER!"
*SPLURCH*
The madman playing hero then lets out a soprano as his rectum was sodomized with the hilt of one of the sheathed [Holy Swords] that Irina had used as her impromptu probing rod, making Valper look as if he'd grown a tail the length of a katana.
"... This battle is where all human decency goes to die, huh?" Leon deadpanned, barely fazed by this development anymore, with Irina now clinging onto Valper's back and hair like a honey badger going apeshit on whoever pissed it off, striking his head with her sheathed wakizashi as a baton repeatedly, allowing Koneko and Xenovia to resume their fight against the now-flailing madman.
"To be fair, we Devils are meant to be a bad influence upon the good humans," Pandora deadpanned as Yuuto could only take a hint of cold satisfaction of having his tormentor suffer like he did under the former's "care". "... Although in our defense, we're not even really trying to, at least intentionally."
"You Devils are beyond incorrigible..." Ddraig groaned from [Boosted Gear].
At the same time, Raynare, taking advantage of the golems with her, fought against Kokabiel while the latter was being encumbered by the sheer number of rock-men that were holding him back.
"GET OFF OF ME!" Kokabiel then throws the golems into the air, only for Pandora to transmogrify them into spikes that fell back towards the Stray Cadre, to which then Raynare causes them to fall down even faster using [Pyxis], the increased acceleration causing the impact to be increased threefold.
"[Canis Venatici]!" Wasting no time, Raynare then summons forth the bladed chains to further damage Kokabiel while he was dazed, but the latter recovers on time to deliver his own counterattack.
"[Scorpio]!"
Both chains collide and tangle with each other until the latter breaks the former barrage, forcing the Fallen Angel to retreat lest she turns to Swiss Cheese.
"You have my powers..." Kokabiel commented. "... Tell me, child. Where did you get it from?"
"Have you looked in the mirror?" Raynare deadpanned, which then caused everyone hearing it to figure out what was happening. "... I dunno why, but I just learned that I'm some half-breed born 103 years ago. What the Hell is with all that, huh?! Why does Lailah know more than any of us about me here, dammit?!"
Kokabiel chuckles before breaking down into a cackle, finding this revelation slightly amusing in hindsight for how long it was beneath his nose. "... So that one night of drunken stupor resulted in you?!" he pointed out. "DON'T THINK FOR A SECOND THAT YOU HAVING MY [ASTERISK] TRAIT MAKES US ANYTHING SPECIAL! YOU'RE NOTHING MORE THAN A MISTAKE I MADE WITH SOME WHORE THAT WAS YOUR MOTHER!"
That statement causes something within Raynare to BOIL.
"... WHO ARE YOU CALLING A 'MISTAKE'?!" The Fallen Angel then rushes towards Kokabiel as she clashes her [Monoceros] against the latter's [Cancer] blades.
*SHATTER!*
But as the light blades destroy the blade-lance, flashes of an unfamiliar memory plays back in Raynare's doubt-ridden mind, unearthing itself like a long-lost beast reawakening from its long hibernation.
Taisho Era Year 13/1925 AD
Another slog of a day for a First-Year in Junior High.
Walking back to her home in a 4 mile-long trek from her school to her small coastal fishing village in some backwater part of Honshu that no one gives a shit about, she lets out a deep sigh as fiddles with her frazzled black locks.
Life at both school and home weren't exactly great for her. The former were filled with nothing but jeers and ire from her peers who were always on her case of being a "bastard child" and books and texts that she had a very hard time understanding despite being able to read them just fine. The latter was just boring and quiet, rarely seeing the woman who raised her at home, only coming home late at night while she was half-asleep from either studying or keeping the candlelight on for when she came home.
It was only her and her mother, the latter working tooth and nail to keep her in school at a fishery that was on the verge of being bought out by industrial bigwigs. She honestly hated everything about her life, for how neither of them were able to simply "fit in," leaving no one but themselves to watch out for.
"I'm home-"
The moment she slides the doors of her seemingly-empty home, she finds the woman who raised her collapsed on the floor.
"Mom?" The girl dropped her bookbag in shock. "MOM!"
The woman's head was burning up, her breathing was labored, and her skin was palicid.
In desperation, she ran around the whole village and began to cry out for help, somehow managing to get a doctor to come to her home for a check-up.
"Typhoid Fever," the doctor said. In a word, the woman raising her was not long for this world.
The girl stopped going to school and put herself in her mom's shoes to provide for the dying woman. It didn't take a week for her to die painfully and slowly, the bed sheets wet with her blood and solely occupied by its sole occupant.
"Poor girl's all alone in this world now..." one woman attending the funeral commented as the girl stared at her mother's grave.
"Does she have any relatives that could take her in?" one man asked.
"Last I heard, the woman came here with the kid in her womb all by herself," a second man pointed out.
"I don't think her mother's family would bother keeping around a bastard child as another mouth to feed..." an old woman remarked.
Those words behind her back were nothing but white noise to the girl. After all, nothing changed.
She only had to look out for herself. No one was going to help her, after all, so why bother?
And so, the years of her youth passed by, working at the fishery until it was bought out and later let go due to her lack of experience and the fact that she was an orphan.
By the time she'd finished with her last day on the job, she found that her home was now being surrounded by suspicious-looking men.
Something stirred within her. A sense that her time had come, but this inevitability did not comfort her in the slightest.
If anything, it made her want to live in spite of the futility.
Even after she was snatched from behind and lifted off the ground.
Even after her pleas of help were muffled and gagged as she was abducted.
Even after being beaten and silenced into stillness as her life was upturned.
She understood. She finally, truly understood what it meant to feel and be truly weak.
She understood it... and she learned to hate it the moment she'd learned of it.
Blood spilled everywhere as her hands radiated with light. Screams of horror replaced their arrogant swagger as the girl, for the first time in her life, smiled.
She learned "joy." It was found in "power."
And so, left on her own in the middle of the mountains, the girl settles into the wilderness, adopting their ways of "dog-eat-dog"-mentality, hunting whoever she could find that crossed her path.
Rich, poor, man, woman, old, young, it mattered not who they were, what their backgrounds were, and how much they had on them.
As long as the girl knew that she was "stronger" than those she killed, she was content.
Then one day, her usual hunting grounds ran bare of prey.
Seeking out new grounds, she found a giant iron boat with various uniformed men and boxes being loaded onto it.
Upon sneaking aboard, she later learns that the Taisho Era had passed.
It was the "Showa Era" now. She didn't care as long as she found her opening.
Unlike her previous forays, she didn't need to kill in order to eat, for there was plenty to eat on board. And as much as it would benefit her to kill everyone on board, she could tell that they knew what she didn't, so she kept them around to save herself the trouble.
Soon, the boat made landfall, and the girl snuck out and found another bustling city in a land that was not Honshu.
She freely began exploring, spreading out her black wings for the first time before taking off, looking down upon those same soldiers she saw on board kill, loot, and rape every living being they can find within each city they crossed with their might.
She learns that there were others like her, those who paraded their strength over their weaker counterparts. She would admire them, if she didn't know that she was already the strongest person she knew.
But she had no interest in stealing other people's prey, so she flew further East.
There she found lots of weak people to prey upon, particularly those that were deemed the "Untouchables."
Then one day, feeling bolder than usual, decides to target someone a bit higher on the food chain.
It didn't take a second for her to get her ass laid out flat by none other than Azazel himself.
"Hm? What do we have here?" the revealed Cadre said to the trembling girl. "... Hm, a hybrid? Ah, I'll figure out who your parents are on a later date. So, what's your name, lass?"
The girl gulps, realizing that the man standing above her was too strong. "... Nara... Nara Rei."
Azazel scratches his chin in curiosity. "... Going by Asian customs... Surname first, given name second," he thought out loud. "... So, Rei Nara, huh?"
He then claps his hands, spooking the girl.
"Alright! I made my decision!" the Cadre energetically declared. "I'm taking you with me and have you join our secret club, the Grigori! We can always use more members!"
The girl blinked stupidly, both at the man's sheer flippancy, and at the fact that there's actually a secret club where more people like her exist.
"So, before we go, do you have any last requests before you stop living among humans?" Azazel requested. "It'd be quite rude of me to just spirit you away unprepared and whatnot."
The girl was given an offer that would change her life forever.
So as a testament to her her new life, she made one request:
"Make me forget my life as a human," she requested, much to Azazel's surprise.
"Okay, I shall grant you your wish." Then her own shadows began to envelop over her entire body as she could feel her own pain and past humiliations, as if all that filth she was smeared in was washed away in a cleansing rain. "... From now on, your name shall no longer be 'Nara Rei'."
For the first time in her life, the girl can finally feel at peace with herself, saying goodbye to her old life.
"... Your name shall now be 'Raynare'."
And good riddance.
"What else can I call you but a 'mistake' when all you've accomplished in your meager existence were nothing but mistake after mistake?!" Kokabiel rebuked as Raynare's [Ara] misses its blasts while the Stray Cadre counters with [Libra], the latter dodging in time before she flies up towards the former. "YOU SHOULD'VE DIED WITH YOUR MOTHER LIKE THE FAILURE YOU ARE, YOU DAMN BRAT!"
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" The Fallen Angel then summons [Canis Venatici] to whip Kokabiel with her bladed chains, but the latter easily evades the barrage by outrunning her attack with his [Taurus] technique. "I WON'T LET YOU TALK DOWN TO ME EVER AGAIN! I REFUSE TO STAY WEAK LIKE I WAS BEFORE!"
"WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT STRUGGLING, GIRL?!" Kokabiel then uses his [Virgo] technique to pincer the Fallen Angel between his light wings, but Raynare parries his strike with her [Chameleon] light whip, with the opposite side striking Kokabiel's blind spot to make him whiff his attack before quickly switching over to his [Cancer] blades, which in turn were guarded by [Monoceros]. "WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT LIFE THAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT YOU DESERVE A CHANCE TO PROVE YOURSELF WHEN YOU'RE NOTHING MORE THAN A FILTHY HALF-BREED THAT WORMED HER WAY INTO THAT GUTLESS COWARD'S GRACES?!"
"I DON'T KNOW!" Raynare shot back as her blade lance shatters, forcing her to fire [Orion] from point-blank into a volley. "BUT I WON'T GIVE UP ON MYSELF BECAUSE OF THAT!"
The shots all connect onto the Stray Cadre, shattering his [Cancer] blades before the rest of the volley makes his way towards him.
*KABOOM!*
But however, as the smoke quickly cleared, Kokabiel wasn't even harmed, with Raynare realizing that the rest of her shots had passed through his body as if they were air.
"[Pisces]." The Stray Cadre revealed before switching to another technique. "[Taurus]."
In a blink, Kokabiel appears right before Raynare before the former headbutts the latter.
"[LEO]!" With his strength enhancement, the Stray Cadre then delivers a double-hammer fist down onto the Fallen Angel's head, plummeting her back down to the ground as Leon runs in to save her.
"[Boost]! [Boost]! [Boost]!" Leon then pulls out his [Excalibur Blessing] to heal the Fallen Angel's injuries before catching her and running back as Pandora covers his escape with her golems slowing them down.
"Is she okay?" Pandora asked while she and Gin kept the rear lines stable through their artillery support.
"Barely!" Leon then begins healing the rest of her injuries with his Holy Sword. "Come on, don't die on us!"
Then screams of Irina, Xenovia, and Yuuto were heard as all three of them were pushed back to Nemichi Shrine's entrance by Valper, the latter's armor being covered in scratches and his blonde hair looking more disheveled and unruly, wildly swinging around his [Excalibur V] to take out the rest of the golems summoned by Pandora, clearing the field.
"Lord Kokabiel, before we send these heathens to Hell, I have all but one request." The muscular man then turns his posterior around towards his boss, pointing the sheathed Holy Sword stuck into his rectum by its hilt. "... If possible, can you please remove this thing from my gluteus maximus? I don't mean to complain, but it's starting to get really uncomfortable and I can't quite reach around with my muscles getting in the way."
Kokabiel groans in disappointment before just yanking the thing out of his asshole, causing Valper to scream like a girl as the former tosses the uncomfortably-wet katana aside in sheer disgust.
"Now that we have that little distraction addressed..." The Stray Cadre then points his hand out towards the group before the entrance as a well of holy energy begins to well onto his palm for the final blow. "... Any last words-?"
"HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY!"
Then Takeshi, skating upstairs with his [Savage Predator Incarnation]'s heel disks rolling across the steps, breaks through the gate's upper arch before the rest of his thrusters blast their jets to full throttle, propelling him towards Kokabiel in a meteoric rocket dropkick to the latter's face.
*CRACK!*
Leon winces as he and everyone sees the Stray Cadre lose more than a couple teeth in the process, but just as Takeshi could follow up his surprise attack, Lailah then flies over from the group's heads in her [Luna Armatus] and as she flies low towards under where Takeshi was at, she then quickly swaps over to her [Solis Armatus] form.
"[Tessera]."
*BANG!*
She then delivers her own explosive double-uppercut that pitches the Evil Dragon User up into the air, sending him flying towards the sky as Kokabiel regains his disrupted posture to then aim his holy energy blast towards him, only for the attack to then transform his ball of light into a massive bow nocked with a light arrow the size of a small missile.
"Out of all the enemies I've fought, you are by far, easily, THE WORST I'VE EVER HAD TO DEAL WITH!" Kokabiel then fires the arrow of light towards Takeshi, striking him into his back as he is then propelled further up into the air by the rocket-like arrow. "[SAGITTARIUS]!"
*KABOOM!*
"SENPAI!" Koneko cried out as the arrow exploded into thousands of smaller arrows...
*whistle*
... Which then resulted in all of them now falling towards them like a bombing run.
"RUN!" Irina cried out as Leon then carried Raynare on his back before joining the others in their flight.
*BOOM!*
*BOOM!*
*KABOOM!*
Fiery explosions peppered the very mountain that Nemichi Shrine stood on, with the hapless group now fleeing for their lives unless they want to live out their Michael Bay movie-fantasies.
"OH MY GODS!" Pandora cried out as she hugged Gin as if her life depended on it. "CAN'T WE JUST HAVE A NORMAL DAY FOR ONCE?!"
"IF WE DON'T GET A FULL-RANK PROMOTION AFTER THIS ASSIGNMENT, I SWEAR TO GOD, I'M GOING TO QUIT BEING AN EXORCIST!" Irina screamed as she could feel her thighs be singed by the blasts going off behind her while the rest of the mountain got lit up like a birthday cake.
"JUST FOCUS ON SURVIVING PAST THIS NIGHT AND THEN COMPLAIN!" Xenovia pointed out as she wasn't exactly doing any better.
"WHERE'S TAKESHI-SENPAI?!" Koneko cried out as she ran. "I SAW HIS KI GO UP INTO THE AIR BEFORE IT WAS CONSUMED BY THE LIGHT!"
Yuuto then sees a certain silhouette careening over their heads and towards the mountain base below. "I THINK THAT'S HIM!" he pointed out. "HE'S STILL ALIVE!"
"HOLD ON, TAKESHI!" Leon then runs ahead with Raynare in tow, with all six of them now running like mad as the number of explosions began to swell the further they went down. "EVERYONE! JUMP!"
And just as they reached the destroyed torii gate...
*KABOOM!*
Now all of them lived out their own Vin Diesel movie fantasies (twice in case of Irina, Xenovia, and Yuuto), flailing their arms and legs as if they were swimming across the air as Takeshi then crashes like a meteorite before where they all landed, his [Savage Predator Incarnation] being forcibly broken out of upon impact and back to his base armor form.
"Ow..." The Evil Dragon User then pulls their head out of the gravel. "... Is everyone okay?"
"We should be the ones asking you that!" Irina commented as they all saw Takeshi shake himself off after taking Kokabiel's [Sagittarius] attack point blank.
"Can anyone else still fight?" Leon asked.
"Nope," Koneko grunted. "... I'm bottomed out."
"Me too," Pandora added. "... I barely have enough demonic energy to make one golem."
Xenovia tries to pick up her [Durandal], but she can barely keep herself upright. "... This is my limit, apparently," she grunted before collapsing back onto her knees. "... How regrettable."
"Nidhogg, how many years are left in my tank?" he asked the Evil Dragon of Envy in his [Cataclysm Zone], ignoring the others' genuine concern for his well-being.
"50,000 and soon to be less," the Evil Dragon of Envy answered as both Kokabiel and Lailah descended before them, the latter switching out her [Luna Armatus] to [Solis Armatus] upon landing. "... Whelp, if you have any last-minute off-the-cuff plans in that brain of yours, I suggest you use all of them now."
"Yeah." Takeshi then presses a button on his belt. "Figured."
"[Transfer]!" The Sacred Gear announced, summoning forth an eight-branched urumi. "[Kokatsu Denryū]!"
Takeshi then cracks the blade whip across the ground as he cracks his neck side-to-side. "You guys rest up until you're ready to get back in," he suggested. "I'm gonna hold the line as much as I can."
"... Have to admit, the boy's showing spirit despite the odds," Lailah complimented.
"I still loathe him all the same," Kokabiel growled as he brandished his [Cancer] blades. "WHY WON'T DIE ALREADY?!"
"Because the Evil Dragons will kill me if I do?" Takeshi deadpanned as he stepped towards the Stray Fallen Angels. "... Here's the thing, old-timers. No one gets to choose how I die. End of discussion."
Takeshi then activates [Promotion: Queen] as he then swings his multi-headed urumi towards the Fallen Angels, breaking the ground and spreading kegare all over the battlefield.
"KA~KA KA KA KA!" the Evil Dragon of Lust cackled out as the Fallen Angels instinctively fled from the spiritual pollution. "I love it when they run! ALL THE MORE REASON TO FUCK THEM UP!"
"[ARIES]!" A bell-like knell rings across the battlefield to nullify Takeshi's [Promotion], prompting Lailah to attack from behind.
However, Takeshi squats under the incoming punch as if he could see it coming without looking at her general direction before wrapping her arm around with the sharp-edged bands.
"PEEK-A-BOO, BITCH!" Takeshi then swings around the caught Fallen Angel as a flail, striking Kokabiel with her flailing body while she herself was now being contaminated by the Evil Dragon's kegare.
"IT BURNS! IT BURNS!" she shrieked out as her body was repeatedly pummeled into the gravel like a metronome before she was swung into Kokabiel upon her return trip, the latter catching her with his [Leo], now catching the same pollution that his subordinate was suffering as it spilled over to him.
"THIS... IS NOTHING!" the Stray Cadre boasted as he tried to free Lailah.
"Go ahead, keep saying that if it makes you feel any better!" Yamata no Orochi taunted. "You, my man, are easily the biggest killjoy I've ever run into. I mean, why bother fighting for the dead when you can fight for fun?! Why bother with the pretense of nobility and tragedy when it's just easier to admit that you just want to decorate your collection of pikes with the heads of those who gave you shit?! I mean, is it really that hard to cope with the fact that you wasted your fucking life over a bunch of worm food?! Man, I've killed for WAY less, but my man, as to quote my bro: 'get over yourself'."
In that burst of rage, Kokabiel successfully frees Lailah...
*RIP*
... At the cost of her entire right arm, causing her to let out a scream so harrowing that one would assume that it belonged to a Banshee.
"[Aquarius]!" In desperation, Kokabiel then expends most of his remaining holy energy to regrow her missing arm, but due to the kegare contaminating her being, her arm comes back misshapen and warped, all the while Kokabiel himself became white-haired and withered like an actual old man. "... I'm so sorry, Lailah. I couldn't save you properly."
"... I can still fight, Milord." Then gritting her teeth in pain, Lailah then gets back up before handing her superior a syringe full of black liquid. "... I don't know what this is, but it's the very thing that got me back from the brink. Lord Kokabiel, use it if you must."
"WHY ARE YOU JUST STANDING THERE?!" Xenovia cried out. "HURRY UP AND ATTACK THEM-!"
"SHUT IT, BITCH!" The Evil Dragon of Lust barked back. "I'M HAVIN' MY TEA-!"
*BOOM!*
Then came crashing in Valper Galilei, landing behind the Fallen Angels like a superhero's three-point landing. "HAVE NO FEAR!" he declared. "I AM HERE!"
Everyone heard crickets to that man's cringeworthy response.
"... All Might you are not." Takeshi then reengages the now opposing group of three while Leon goes into healing duty with his [Excalibur Blessing].
As everyone else was being healed, Yuuto could only look on at the fight happening before them, Takeshi fending off the three of God's wayward children all by himself at his currently-weakest form.
And yet, here he was, utterly helpless and useless, unable to create a sword out of his [Sword Birth] after exhausting himself too soon.
A sense of regret now plagues his heart, with them seeping over the facade as tears fell from his eyes. "... I'm sorry."
Irina and Xenovia took notice as Yuuto was now breaking down entirely.
"I'M SO SORRY, EVERYONE!" he wailed as the fight raged on before them. "I'M SO SORRY THAT I DRAGGED YOU ALL INTO THIS MESS! IF ONLY I HAD GOTTEN STRONGER! IF ONLY I HAD LET GO OF MY HATRED SOONER... THEN MAYBE WE WOULDN'T BE STARING DEATH IN THE FACE-!"
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, YUUTO?!"
*CLANG!*
Takeshi's [Kokatsu Denryū] ground against Valper's [Excalibur V] while he himself evades Lailah's [Tessera] attack and Kokabiel's [Scorpio] chain arrays.
"YOU DON'T NEED TO APOLOGIZE FOR SHIT!" The Evil Dragon User continued talking while fighting off three formidable opponents all by himself. "THIS IS OUR CHOICE THAT WE'VE MADE TO FOLLOW YOU INTO THIS PANDEMONIUM!"
"[Niku]!" The urumi then transforms into a cudgel staff as it then parries [Excalibur V]'s [Destruction Slash] with its own burst of kegare.
"HOW DID YOU-?!"
*CLING-CLANK*
*DING-DONG*
Valper wheezes in pain after being systematically struck in the balls before Takeshi switches back to the [Yoku] urumi form of his Sacred Gear to keep the Fallen Angels away.
Kokabiel, in spite of his weakened state, tries to blast the group while the Evil Dragon User was too busy, but Leon parries the holy energy shot with his broken [Evalach] heater shield, redirecting the shot elsewhere.
"My friend's right," the Inquisitor stated. "You didn't drag us here against our will. We chose to stay here because we don't want you, let alone anyone else we care about to die. What the Church did to you and your friends was unforgivable. Not because they let the Archbishop continue his own inhumane experiments, but because we ourselves are no better when push comes to shove. Yet still, there are good people out in the world that we can't let them suffer like we have. So please, Yuuto Kiba, forgive yourself. Forgive yourself because you've done nothing wrong!"
"[Gemini]." Then at the last moment, Takeshi accidently swings into an illusory version of Lailah before the copy explodes.
And as Kokabiel's creation did its work, Lailah then quickly followed up with another attack.
"[PROMOTION: ROOK]-!"
"[ARIES]-!"
"[DESTRUCTION SLASH]-!"
"[TESSERA]!"
*KABOOM!*
Thanks to Yamata no Orochi's eightfold sensory enhancements, the dampened impact followed by his body rolling across the dirt, Takeshi could only experience a sense of agony that felt like being roasted alive by a flamethrower and then promptly tossed into an iron maiden for good measure.
Takeshi's base armor fades along with [Kokatsu Denryū], revealing his battered body that was cut up during the numerous fights prior.
"It's about damn time...!" Kokabiel heaved out as his compromised body strained itself to move forward. "... I guess my war won't happen, but I'll settle for killing you brats as recompense!"
Takeshi dryly snickers. "... Neener neener."
"Well, he certainly won't bravado us to death..." Valper deadpanned as he rested his [Excalibur V] over his broad shoulders. "... Well, time to send them on their way-"
Before anyone could react, Yuuto then stands before them, drawing his estoc.
"... Senpai?!" Koneko exclaimed.
"S-STAY BACK!" the Knight shouted as he pointed his mundane blade at the three enemies. "... I won't let you!"
The two Fallen Angels exchange puzzled glances while Valper just laughs.
"YOU?! PROTECT THEM?!" the fake hero sneered. "WITH WHAT?! THAT LITTLE TOOTHPICK YOU CALL A SWORD?!"
*SNAP*
With a single stroke of the Holy Sword, the estoc's blade breaks in two.
"Face it, Isaiah, you've always been a failure from the day you left the synthesis tank that you were made in," Valper taunted. "... No matter how hard you try, you can't save anyone, no matter how strong you are. In this world, STRENGTH IS JUSTICE! WEAK LITTLE PISSANTS LIKE YOU NEVER STOOD A CHANCE OF SAVING EVEN AN INSIGNIFICANT LITTLE ANT!"
However, even after that caustic remark, all Yuuto could do was snicker at his words.
"... So you finally admit it," the Knight remarked. "... All that time, all that experimentation that sent many innocents to their graves... it was simply all about power. 'Justice' really was just a fancy word made up by those pushing us around. I thank you Father. For teaching me a valuable lesson."
"... Senpai?" Koneko said as Yuuto began chuckling once again before laughing like a complete madman.
"THANK YOU FOR OPENING MY EYES AT LAST!" he rapturously exclaimed, ripping off his shirt to reveal his body covered in surgical scars, marks of Valper's abuse marred onto his very being. "I FINALLY UNDERSTAND THAT I'M NOT HERE TO AVENGE MY FRIENDS! I JUST WANT TO KILL YOU! I WANT TO FUCKING MURDER YOU SIMPLY BECAUSE I DESPISE YOU! I HATE YOU, FATHER GALILEI! I HATE YOU FOR BRINGING ME INTO THIS DISGUSTING WORLD THAT YOU CLAIM TO WANT TO CURE FOR, ONLY TO FESTER ON AS ONE OF ITS MANY, MANY PATHOGENS! MY FRIENDS?! MY SCARS?! THEY MEAN NOTHING! I HATE YOU! I FUCKING HATE YOU! PURE AND SIMPLE! I WILL HATE YOU EVEN AS I BURN IN HELL FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY!"
Valper growls as he raises his amalgam Holy Sword towards Yuuto in rage. "THEN DIEEE!"
Irina shut her eyes whereas Xenovia tried to lift her [Durandal]. Koneko tries to reach out towards Yuuto while Pandora froze like a deer in the headlights. Leon tries to take his place, and as for Takeshi...
*CLANG*
"WHAT THE?!" Valper exclaimed as his [Excalibur V] was stopped by an unforeseen force.
Yuuto however, had his eyes blink naught for once, so fully saw what had happened around him.
Just as the amalgam Holy Sword could cleave him across his twain, a fire-like pulse repelled the strike. And it didn't come from him.
"So now, you finally understand..." the Evil Dragon of Wrath's voice echoed throughout the air. "... Took you long enough, you fucking brats."
Coming from Takeshi's [Cataclysm Zone] was none other than Grendel's voice, the verdant gem emitting this scorching aura.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" Kokabiel growled in fury. "WHERE IS THE EVIL DRAGON USER PULLING ALL THIS SHIT?!"
"YEAH!" Yamata no Orochi also interrupted. "WHAT'S WITH THE BLUE-BALLING, GRENDEL-?!"
"SHUT YOUR FUCKING HOLES! ALL OF YOU!"
*THUMP*
Everyone sans Takeshi and Yuuto were blown back by the spreading heatwave unleashed by Grendel's roar, with the two Devils standing at its epicenter of the created inferno.
"... Yuuto, I finally understand you," Takeshi revealed within the inferno, his eyes dripping with tears as his own heart began to feel what Yuuto had been feeling throughout his whole life. "... To have so much hatred in your heart that it defined your very being... to think I've understood so little about you... I SHOULD BE THE ONE APOLOGIZING, DAMMIT! I'M THE DUMBASS THAT SHOULD'VE BEEN PUNCHED BACK THEN!"
Yuuto shakes his head. "... As long as you understand," he replied, his own heart feeling Takeshi's empathy and will solidifying his once-turbulent emotions. "... But my hatred won't end with Valper's end. It's now my life-long responsibility. The beast within me that I will have to live with from now on. But nevertheless, I will never let it consume me ever again. I WILL NOT LET MY REGRETS HOLD ME BACK FROM THE FUTURE ANYMORE!"
Then Grendel's cackle echoed within the flames, elated as the sign that he'd felt from Yuuto ever since back at the train ride leaving Akihabara finally paying dividends. "So that's the source of your Wrath!" he remarked. "You no longer deny the truth, correct?"
"Yeah," Yuuto answered. "... The pain inflicted was merely one moment. The only one letting the scars fester was me, and no one else!"
"Do you accept this rancor and sorrow that fuels this boy's Wrath, brat?" Grendel asks Takeshi.
"I do." Takeshi snarls as he feels his chest getting warmer and warmer by each passing minute. "I accept his Wrath wholeheartedly! I ACKNOWLEDGE HIS SUFFERING AND DESPAIR AS MY OWN!"
"THEN WILL YOU LET THIS ROT HOLD FAST ONTO YOUR VERY SOULS UNTIL YOUR EXPIRATION?!"
"NEVER!"
Then Takeshi's heart glows with a draconic sigil.
"I WON'T!" Yuuto shouted as his heart glowed the same sign as Takeshi's. "I REFUSE!"
Grendel then cackles triumphantly as the answer he'd heard was satisfactory.
"THEN DECLARE THE NAME OF THY FATED PARTNER!"
"TAKESHI!"
"YUUTO!"
*SPLURCH*
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Xenovia exclaimed as she and everyone else seeing this infernal ritual occur witnessed both Devils plunging their own hands into their very hearts.
"... Ddraig, do you know what's going on?!" Leon asked as the Red Dragon Emperor himself couldn't help but feel that this had happened before in his lifetime.
In fact, it was like watching history repeat itself before their very eyes.
Both Takeshi and Yuuto growled painfully as they then ripped out something from their hearts, uprooting two halves of a metallic heart with barbed cables dangling around its circumference.
"YUUTO!" Takeshi cried out as he and his friend-no, blood-bound partner held their own halves of their hearts of tempered metal. "... You ready?!"
Yuuto grins. "DO IT!"
The boys roared as they then combined their metal hearts into their flats...
*CLANG!*
The sound it made upon collision was akin to that of a hammer striking an anvil. Once the halves connected, the spiked cables stabbed into their wrists and began pumping their bloods into the combined vessel itself, their souls linking into a bond that will never break.
Their siphoned blood turned to molten iron, thumping like an earthquake as both of their powers surged!
"IT'S SHOWTIME!" Grendel's flames then intensified as all of them closed in around the pair until it became a spiraling spire of draconic fire.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING?!" Kokabiel panicked.
Lailah then switches over to her [Luna Armatus]. "WE HAVE TO STOP THEM-!"
"[Atrocity Rise]!"
"WHAT?!" Everyone exclaimed as the disabled Balance Breaker announced its resurrection.
"[Crime Force Re:Sonance]!"
Pandora blinked stupidly upon hearing [Cataclysm Zone]'s announcement. "... Did Takeshi unlock a new power while we weren't looking?"
Takeshi's roar could be heard from within the roaring flames, and did Yuuto's own roar matching with the former.
The flames then reveal the Evil Dragon User back in his [Savage Predator Incarnation] Balance Breaker form, whereas the Gremory Knight held onto his broken estoc that was now absorbing the flames from the Evil Dragon of Wrath, morphing and evolving into a new form befitting of its newfound powers.
Gone was the broken blade from France and in its place was a rusty rubicund-shaded bastard sword whose tip was dual-pronged as if there were two separate blades that combined to form into a whole sword. Throughout its construction was a dark-slate and black highlights resembling an abstract Dragon's visage, and right above its pointed and sable diamond-themed crossguard was a singular, sword-like rune that glowed like molten iron.
Overall, this new sword that Yuuto held wasn't Holy nor Demonic. It was something else entirely. A mobile forge compacted into a sword. A testament to the Devil's newfound resolve to embrace his Wrath wholeheartedly, ridding himself of all pretense and justifications to propel it forward.
Yuuto's Wrath no longer needed those preverbal training wheels. Nor is he alone in this thorny path of self-actualization anymore.
"Wha-What..."
Yuuto's eyes reopen, alight with a renewed resolve and refined Wrath.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING YOU'RE HOLDING?!" Valper cried out in utter disbelief, unable to understand that abnormal sword that he'd never found in his years of ceaseless study of both Holy and Demonic Swords.
The linked metal hearts are then absorbed into Takeshi and Yuuto's hands, the latter leaving behind a draconic rune emblazoned onto his palm.
"Devour, Brand of Brutality..." Both He and Takeshi readied themselves for the final battle. "[BANTENTABAN]!"
Now Playing: "Mirage Mirror" by Wataru Hyuga (Daiji and Kagero duet) (from Kamen Rider Revice)
"Alright, Yuuto..." Takeshi then cracks his neck and shoulders. "... Let's go kill those motherfuckers."
The two renewed Devils charged towards the Fallen Angels and Valper, the Evil Dragon User dragging the former pair into his fight whereas the latter took on Valper head-on and without fear.
"HOW?!" Lailah exclaimed as she switched over to her [Solis Armatus] to fight off Takeshi. "I THOUGHT YOUR BALANCE BREAKERS COULD ONLY BE USED ONCE PER DAY!"
"I SURE AS HELL DON'T KNOW!" Takeshi cackled as the renewed power felt really good, especially when he beat his burning fists into the Fallen Angels' body like a sandbag. "I'M NOT QUESTIONING IT EITHER!"
"[LEO]!" In desperation, Kokabiel enhances himself to fight off Takeshi with Lailah, but the Evil Dragon User was too invigorated to properly fend off entirely, sending both Fallen Angels flying. "DAMMIT!"
As everyone watched Takeshi and Leon fight on by themselves, Leon's heart began to stir within himself.
"... Ddraig?" he asked the Red Dragon Emperor in his [Boosted Gear]. "... What do you make of all this?"
"Honestly, I had a slight feeling that the Evil Dragons would end up breaking the laws of the natural world just to gain an upper hand," the Dragon answered as he saw Takeshi catch Lailah's arm under his shoulder before snapping her elbow and then throwing her into Kokabiel's [Virgo] technique, crunching her body into the multi-pronged clamp before she was hastily released. "But to willingly bequeath his own power to two separate vessels... that's practically unheard of!"
Then Leon looked at his [Boosted Gear] before squeezing his hand into a fist. "... You know, there might be a significant chance that we all might die here," the Inquisitor confessed. "... But if that's the case, then I'd rather die fighting than survive a coward!"
"You think that you got enough left over for one more Balance Breaker?" Ddraig asked.
"I'm using what's left in my tank until there's nothing left but fumes!" Then Leon poses before running towards the battle. "IT'S MORPHIN' TIME!"
"[Welsh Dragon]!" Then the rubicund [Scale Mail] clads his body before he then leaps towards Lailah with a wound-up punch as his introductory attack. "[Balance Breaker]!"
Pandora blinks as he sees the Inquisitor tap into his Balance Breaker state so easily. "... He can do that?!"
"Unlike [Cataclysm Zone], [Boosted Gear] is significantly less fickle on part of not having to house Evil Dragons within," Xenovia explained as Takeshi and Leon stood back to back while fighting off Kokabiel's [Scorpio] and Lailah's [Ramosa] attacks, the former parrying every last one with his fiery fists while the latter evades and parries using his [Boost]-enhanced [Fragarach]'s future sight abilities. "Although I am surprised to see the Evil Dragon embodying the Deadly Sin of Wrath be so cooperative."
"Maybe the Evil Dragon know what we normally don't," Irina commented as she saw Yuuto matching Valper blow-for-blow during their clashing of steel, [Bantentaban] sparking against [Excalibur V]'s edge seamlessly. "... I'm kinda speaking out of my butt anyway, but I just have that feeling, you know?"
That statement causes Pandora to begin thinking about her own feelings that she couldn't understand herself. ... Do they know what I'm actually feeling?
Raynare then wakes up groaning in pain as she saw the Evil Dragon User be in his [Savage Predator Incarnation] form once again, rubbing her eyes to make sure that she wasn't seeing things.
"... I think I missed something while I was out," the Fallen Angel remarked. "Can someone fill me in?"
"[Boost]! [Boost]! [Boost]!"
"[Promotion: Rook]!"
Seeing that they were enhancing themselves, Kokabiel then strains himself to spin the zodiac wheel halo behind his back once again. "[ARIES]-!"
"HELL NO!" Then spikes of red sparks formed in Takeshi's hand. "TASTE MY RAGE!"
By Grendel's declaration, the Evil Dragon User then throws the red nails towards the Fallen Angel, with one striking Lailah in the head, and two of the spikes striking Kokabiel in the chest.
"HA!" the Stray Cadre boastfully laughs. "YOUR BLUSTER AMOUNTED TO NOTHING-!"
Then suddenly, Lailah then pounces onto Kokabiel like a rabid animal, scratching and attacking him as if he were the enemy.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" Kokabiel barked out as the Fallen Angel savagely beat him. "I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY! THEY ARE!"
"How does it taste?" Grendel's voice declared. "My new technique, my refined blood rage, [Āglæca's Nails]!"
"WHAT?!" The Stray Cadre then kicks Lailah off as he tries to use his [Capricorn] technique to slow her down, but it doesn't respond to his command at all. "My powers! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THEM-?!"
"The only way you're fighting me is my way, and that means no non-attack magic or anything of the sort!" Grendel declared as Kokabiel then throws Lailah to Leon, to which he dodged the manic Fallen Angel's lunges rather easily. "And if you don't want to fight, THEN I'LL MAKE YOU!"
"FINE THEN!" Kokabiel then rushes in as he then brandishes his [Cancer] light blades across his arms before Takeshi and Leon resume their fighting.
Meanwhile, Yuuto and Valper were clashing blade to blade in their fated duel.
"What is happening?!" The fake hero panics as his attacks felt as if they weren't as effective against the Devil than before. "My holy energy output is superior! My weapon is the legendary blade of a famous hero-king! How can some anomaly be besting me?! IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE! IT'S IMPOSSIBLE FOR THERE TO BE ANOTHER TYPE OF LEGENDARY SWORD!"
"So much for being 'prepared to be proven wrong,' huh?" Yuuto taunted as she swung his new rubicund sword. "IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT YOU, ISN'T IT?!"
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I'LL SHOW YOU THAT [EXCALIBUR] IS THE ULTIMATE SWORD!" Then Valper taps into [Rapidly] to then move into a blur, disappearing and reappearing in and out of sight as he drew closer towards the Devil. "DIE! [RAPIDLY ASSAULT]!"
The blinding barrage of swings were then easily parried by Yuuto's counters, the latter being able to sense where each other was going to come from before they could reach him.
"So basically, there are now TWO Evil Dragon Users?!" Raynare pointed at Yuuto who was wielding a new type of sword that was entirely unique to him.
"When you put it like that, yeah, that checks out," Koneko confirmed, citing her logic as sound before trying to read Yuuto's ki. "... Yeah, in place of his demonic energy reserves, there's now... an entirely new source of energy powering him."
Xenovia blinks at that assertion. "BUT THAT'S LIKE GUTTING A CAR OF ITS ENGINE AND REPLACING IT WITH THAT OF AN AIRPLANE'S!" the Catholic Exorcist declared. "HE SHOULD BE DEAD FROM THE ATTEMPTING OF THAT PROCESS ALONE!"
"Uh, I think we literally saw that happen," Irina pointed out, recalling how Takeshi and Yuuto literally ripped both of their hearts out before combining them into one metal heart pumping both of their blades into the same vessel. "... Evil Dragon bull?"
"I think my head's gonna explode if I think too much about it..." The Fallen Angel then groans before lying down as Yuuto then knocks Valper out of his flurry.
"DON'T GET COCKY!" The false hero then taps into his amalgam Holy Sword's [Nightmare]-aspect. "LET'S SEE IF YOUR MIND IS STRONG AS YOUR RESOLVE!"
Unleashing a plume of black illusory smoke, Valper then summons various copies of himself ala an impromptu legion.
"That's... disgusting," Xenovia gagged.
"I officially hate [Excalibur Nightmare] with all of my being," Irina grunted.
"[NIGHTMARE LEAGUE]!" All of the Valper-clones charged towards Yuuto. "DON'T BOTHER SEARCHING FOR THE REAL ONE WHEN WE'RE ALL THE REAL DEAL!"
Yuuto however, simply smiled manically. "Why thank you!"
[Bantentaban] then opens up its entire blade like a pair of clamps or pincers.
"SO IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY OF YOU TURDS I FLUSH DOWN THE SHITTER, HUH?!"
The first Valper-copy then swings their own version of [Excalibur V] towards the Devil...
*CRUNCH*
Only for the amalgam Holy Sword to be DEVOURED by the rubicund blade along with both of his arms and head.
"Next."
*CRUNCH*
Another sword and wielder was eaten.
"Order up."
*CRUNCH*
And then another, and another, and another, until the Valper-clones all began to flee in panic.
"I do love fast food... ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S SELF-SERVE TAKEOUT!" Yuuto then begins to take the role of "predator" as he gleefully hunts down the Valper clones, the latter now beginning to trip each other to get ahead, each of them thinking that they're the "real" Valper Galilei, and thus, the most deserving to live.
"What the Hell is going on?!" Xenovia remarked in shock.
Pandora's eyes then picked up on what Yuuto's [Bantentaban] was doing. "... It's specifically eating swords," she pointed out as Yuuto gleefully danced in the rain of viscera and shattered metal. "... The Evil Dragon's sword... eats other swords."
"YEP!" Yuuto cackled as the high of the new power ran rampant through his every vein coursing across his entire body. "[BANTENTABAN] IS SPECIAL IN THAT IT'S A SWORD SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO DESTROY OTHER SWORDS! I CALL THIS ABILITY [SWORD EATER]!"
Only one Valper Galilei remained, and whether he was the original or the clone was irrelevant. "... [Sword Eater]?!" he parroted in panic. "... P-Preposterous! Heresy! Blasphemy! Defiler! HOW COULD YOU EVEN THINK OF SUCH AN INSIDIOUS THING?!"
"Because a certain someone taught me that a sword, no matter its origins or its powers, are merely tools," Yuuto answered. "And like every tool, I will treat them as such and use them accordingly. I am done fearing the Holy Swords that you have worshipped as an idol where you have sacrificed countless lives before it, Father. I am going to break you along with your precious swords."
"SH-SHUT UP!" Then in desperation, Valper then taps into [Transparency]'s powers, turning himself utterly imperceptible as his voice boomed across the air like an omniscient god. "I WILL NOT TOLERATE SUCH WORDS UTTERED BEFORE ME! [TRANSPARENCY PROVIDENCE]!"
Then from all sides, several invisible gashes rip across the earth, forcing Yuuto to dodge each strike burrowing into the earth.
"A SWORD MERELY AS A 'TOOL'?! RIDICULOUS!" Valper's voice howled in the wind as more slashes rend across the lands. "A SWORD IS A HERO'S SYMBOL! THE VERY CONDUIT OF THEIR JUSTICE! HOW DARE YOU THAT YOU REDUCE IT TO A MERE TOOL, YOU INGRATE-!"
Yuuto then plants [Bantentaban] into the ground as the blade opens up to then have a row of [Sword of Betrayer]-copies lined up like a weapon rack.
"WHAT THE-?!" Irina exclaimed as she and everyone else saw the other Gremory Knight then summon multiple versions of their Balance Breakers.
"You think I'm pissing you off now?" he taunted as all of the blades summoned from within his [Bantentaban] all began to glow. "Then I bet this will really grind your gears!"
Then the six Holy-Demonic Swords all each turned into two copies of [Excalibur Rapidly], [Excalibur Destruction], and [Excalibur Mimic] (in its katana form), shocking everyone.
"This is [Sword Eater]'s true ability, [Re:Release]!" Yuuto then grabs all six fake [Excalibur] fragments before swinging one off-handedly, striking Valper and exposing his location. "Whatever swords that my weapon devours, it can reproduce for my use!"
Then the copied [Excalibur Rapidly] and [Excalibur Mimic] shatter after a single use, revealing the trade-off.
"But since you carelessly threw copies of your [Excalibur V] in my way..." But Yuuto then instantly reproduces more of the fake [Excalibur] copies with his [Bantentaban]. "... I guess you really couldn't help it, right Father?!"
"SILENCE!" Then Valper then taps all five fragments' powers into himself through his [Excalibur V]. "I swear... I WILL DESTROY YOUR MOCKERIES OF A HERO'S WEAPON! A THOUSAND DEATHS AND A THOUSANDFOLD MORE FOR YOUR TRANSGRESSIONS!"
Everyone hearing this resisted the urge to groan upon seeing that Yuuto's former tormentor had now adopted his victim's prior stance when it comes to Holy Swords.
"... The irony of it all," Xenovia deadpanned as she looked at her [Durandal].
"I guess in the end, Kiba-san really did get his revenge," Irina commented before remembering a certain adage that she'd heard in passing. "... 'He who laughs last, laughs best,' huh?"
"Koneko?" Pandora remarked.
"Have been working my bat familiars overtime recording everything," the Rook revealed. "... I'm starting to think that I should consider a job prospect in making movies."
"Speaking of..." Raynare then looked towards the other fight, where Takeshi and Leon were fighting Kokabiel (with the now-berserk Lailah fighting whoever got close to her).
"[Boost]! [Boost]! [Boost]!" Both Leon and Takeshi punch Lailah into Kokabiel, turning the Fallen Angel herself into a projectile.
"KEEP UP THE MOMENTUM!" Grendel cackled as his host and his friend charged in while Kokabiel was distracted with the berserk Lailah.
"DAMMIT!" In desperation, the Stray Cadre then takes the syringe offered to him by his subordinate prior before administering to himself.
*thump*
Kokabiel felt his heart quake as the blood in his veins flowed faster. Then his holy energy output swells, the eruption of energy as he could feel his emaciated body be revitalized.
However, his eyes and nose begin spouting blood at nigh-lethal quantities, now understanding that he'd basically poisoned himself for a burst of power.
"... Whatever it takes!" He then unleashes a burst of his newfound powers, sending Lailah flying back towards Leon before he and the maddened Fallen Angel rolled with each other across the gravel while Takeshi and Kokabiel clashed fists.
"You know that you're about to die, yet here you stand!" Grendel cackled as the Evil Dragon User pushed on against the Cadre's show of force. "COME ON! UNLEASH YOUR RAGE!"
Both Takeshi and Kokabiel wind their other fists back before punching each other into each others' faces at the same time via a cross-counter.
Meanwhile, Yuuto was using the replica-[Excalibur] fragments against Valper as the latter was losing what little was left of his composure, being pushed back as the former parried every strike and blow that he'd tried to execute.
"HOW?! HOW ARE YOU BEATING ME?!" the madman exclaimed as he desperately blocked the coming swings of the Devil's [Bantentaban]. "I'M A SUPERHERO! YOU'RE JUST A SUPERVILLAIN! HAVE YOU EVER READ A COMIC BOOK IN YOUR LIFE, BOY?! DON'T YOU KNOW HOW THESE STORIES END?!"
"Yeah, the superhero beats the supervillain and saves the day," Yuuto answered without irony as his rubicund bastard sword ground against [Excalibur V]'s edge, wearing down the latter's ramshackle amalgamation with each connected attack. "... Get over yourself, Father. You're no superhero, nor I am a supervillain that you make me out as."
"THEN WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU, ISAIAH?!" Valper roared out as he then unleashes his [Destruction Slash], to which Yuuto then summons six replicas of [Excalibur Destruction] from his [Bantentaban]'s weapon rack.
Yuuto smirks wickedly, enjoying his former tormentor's despair. "... You're my dinner, bitch," he answered. "[Full Re:Release: Destruction]."
All six replica [Excalibur] fragments shoot out from where they were summoned from before landing around Yuuto and then unleashing a blue wave of demonic and holy energy that peters out Valper's [Destruction Slash], leaving the battlefield scorched with blue flames.
"... Should I get that technique patented?" Xenovia asked as she mentally counted how many times that other people ripped off her technique that she used with [Excalibur Destruction].
"No copyright law in the world is going to stop them," Irina pointed out. "... Come to think of it, does copyright law apply to supernatural beings?"
"Assuming that they don't kill the bailiff," Koneko deadpanned as Pandora listened in on the exchange confusedly (due to her not knowing how modern day-courts work). "... Or the entire courtroom for that matter."
Yuuto then swings down his [Bantentaban] towards Valper's [Excalibur V] as the latter raises it to block the attack...
*CLANG!*
*crack*
The amalgam Holy Sword begins to fracture, much to the fake hero's shock. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!"
"Having my cake and eating it, it seems!" Yuuto then pushes Valper back as the pair then eventually reach Leon and Lailah, the former trying to rip the latter off of himself before the Fallen Angel then attacks Valper instead while under the effects of [Āglæca's Nail] stuck through her head.
"Hey, how about a team-up?" Leon asked.
Yuuto nods as both of them then give the pair a double-punch followed up by Leon throwing the Devil towards the staggering pair, swinging his [Bantentaban] through the two.
*SLASH!*
The attack doesn't kill, but gravely wounds both Lailah and Valper, which was then followed up by Leon's [Boost]-enhanced dropkick that sends the pair flying into Kokabiel right before Takeshi can punch him.
"OH COME ON, MAN!" the Evil Dragon User bemoaned as the three enemies landed into a pile. "I HAD HIM-!"
*BOOM*
"ENOUGH!" Kokabiel cried out as his [Asterisk] zodiac wheel-halo began spinning faster and faster. "I've had enough of you brats making this battle, the one that I've waited for centuries... TO BE REDUCED TO A VAUDEVILLIAN FARCE!"
*SHATTER*
Now Playing: "DIVE INTO THE MIRROR" by defspiral (from Kamen Rider Dragon Knight Japanese Dub)
The zodiac wheel shatters, and in its place was nothing more than a pitch-black disk dark and starless as the void of space, with the void-like darkness slowly consuming him.
"AFTER I AM DONE KILLING YOU BASTARDS, I WILL USE WHAT IS LEFT OF MY LIFE TO KILL YOUR LOVED ONES NEXT!" The shadows enveloping Kokabiel elongated and stretched as fourteen stars shone in its void. "THEIR HEADS SHALL DECORATE THE PIKES! THEIR HOMES WILL BE IN FLAMES! THEIR SURVIVORS IN DESPAIR!"
However, in spite of this, Takeshi, Leon, and Yuuto stood firm.
"It is despair that shall be your goal, Kokabiel!" Leon declared.
"No matter what, we will defeat you without fail!" Takeshi added.
"For those who fell before us and to those who are alive today...!" Yuuto then readies his [Bantentaban] as the swelling shadow eclipses them. "... WE WON'T LET YOU TAKE ANOTHER LIFE!"
The shadow lets out a shrieking roar that then shatters the [Āglæca's Nail] ran through Lailah's head, snapping her out of her blood rage before releasing herself from Valper.
"What happened...?" The Stray Fallen Angel grimaces in pain before looking up. "... Lord Kokabiel?!"
The shadow then solidifies itself into a giant, black serpentine form vaguely resembling a Dragon. And emerging from its horned head was Kokabiel, now lacking a shirt as only his upper body then takes command of this creature.
"Behold, my strongest, and final form of [Asterisk]!" the Stray Cadre declared as both he and the shadowy snake roared. "... [OPHIUCHUS]!"
The ones watching the battle could only stare at this monstrous form that Kokabiel had taken in what can only be described as an act of sheer desperation (as if he weren't already in one).
"Hey, is it just me..." Raynare remarked as she looked at the form. "... Or I am getting a sense of déjà vu?"
Koneko nodded. "... I think he's aping on senpai's Evil Dragon-schtick."
Xenovia's eyes widened upon realizing what Evil Dragon was the Stray Cadre basing his [Ophiuchus] technique on. "... Samael."
"The 'Serpent of Eden' of all things?!" Irina panicked. "Isn't he like, the VERY FIRST EVIL DRAGON IN ALL OF EXISTENCE?!"
"TAKESHI!" Pandora cried out as she tried to help with her powers, but her lack of demonic energy rendered her all but useless. "DAMMIT!"
"Ever the useless parasite that you are, Pandora."
The other Gremory Knight shrinks upon hearing the Stray Cadre's voice directed towards her.
"Just so that you know, it was I who let you into the Grigori on that fateful night in the first place," he revealed, causing Pandora's heart to freeze like ice at that revelation. "I could've easily let you freeze outdoors and let the Titan Cult or Olympus' demigods have their way with you. I only took you in because I found your powers to Charm the world's elements useful to my future war plans. And yet here you are, spurning my goodwill by running to MY enemies, thinking that you're one of their own, when in reality, you're nothing more than a parasite, another mouth that they have to feed while you barely contribute. Have you no shame, you ungrateful little brat-?!"
*thwack*
Raynare throws a pebble to Kokabiel's head. "SHUT UP, YOU SACK OF SHIT-OLD FART!" the Fallen Angel defended Pandora as she flipped him off. "YOU'RE THE FUCKING PARASITE HERE! SO WHY DON'T YOU GO FUCK YOURSELF LIKE YOU DID TO MY MOM, HUH?!"
This provocation catches the Stray Cadre's undivided attention. "THEN YOU TWO SHALL BE THE FIRST TO PERISH-!"
*KABOOM!*
Takeshi's intercepts Kokabiel's [Ophiuchus] with a fiery uppercut. "Your opponent is me!"
"[Charge]!" announced [Cataclysm Zone]. "[Atrocity Overflow]!"
Grendel's fiery form then materializes itself behind Takeshi as the two then exchange a bro-fist. "Hey brat, I got an idea."
And just as when Kokabiel recovers his bearings, Takeshi then backflips onto Grendel's knees, landing perfectly as the latter then grabs both legs standing on his crouching knees, both balancing each other perfectly before the former then throws his arms up with his fingers curled like a pair of claws.
"Rawr."
Everyone immediately stops fighting upon seeing that off-the-cuff course of action happen right on the battlefield.
"I... what?" Lailah remarked.
"What are they planning?" Leon groaned.
Valper then tries to take advantage of an opening, but Yuuto easily parries the sneak attack with the swing of his [Bantentaban]. "Distraction, perhaps?"
"I mean..." Koneko scratched her head at her senpai's course of action. "... It's working?"
"I've now stopped questioning your Peerage's Pawn's behavior," Xenovia deadpanned.
"Yeah... I got nothing." Irina shook her head.
"... You two look stupid," Kokabiel commented on everyone's behalf as Grendel then lifted his leg up...
*BOOM*
*CLANG*
... And one sumo stomp adds on another layer of armor.
"... What's happening?" Pandora asks as the Evil Dragon's fiery avatar then begins repeatedly and rhythmically stomping onto the ground, building up more armor around himself and his host.
"DOSKOI! DOSKOI! DOSKOI!" Takeshi chanted before he and Grendel both leapt into the air for one final stomp. "DOSKOI!"
*BOOM!*
The built-up armor plates then all build up completely around the Evil Dragon and User, morphing the pair into a bigger form.
Gone was the Evil Dragon User and Grendel, and in place was a scaly construct that grew in height and bulk, transforming the pair into a full-scale replica of Grendel himself, with flames spewing between the serrated verdant scales before it then lets out an explosive roar as it confronted Kokabiel's [Ophiuchus].
"[Violent Duel Festival]!" announced [Cataclysm Zone] as Takeshi is now fully wearing Grendel's physical peak form as his new combat suit.
"Who looks stupid now?" the Evil Dragon User taunted before clanging his fists together, sparks flying as the candor echoed like hammers unto anvil. "TIME TO BREAK YOU IN TWO, YOU OLD FART!"
The replica Evil Dragon of Wrath then begins wrestling with the shadowy serpent as the latter fights back viciously, to which then the fighting resumes in earnest.
"[TESSERA]!" Lailah then throws her armored fist towards Leon.
"[Boost]! [Boost]! [Boost]!" The Inquisitor then clashes his fist against the Stray Fallen Angel's.
"GET OUT OF MY WAY!" Lailah cried out as she wrestled against the Red Dragon Emperor. "LORD KOKABIEL NEEDS ME!"
"There's no use talking sense to her anymore," Ddraig pointed out before Leon could protest. "Put her out of her misery. It's the least we can do."
Leon roars out before viciously beating the Stray Fallen Angel in with his fists, to which the latter does the same after rolling him over to the bottom, the desperate struggle continuing as no one side had the means to deal with the other in one fell swoop, resorting themselves to this brutal melee.
Meanwhile, Yuuto and Valper continued with their duel, the former now out of [Excalibur] fragment shards to reproduce anymore copies to use against the madman, but the latter's [Excalibur V] was heavily damaged and chipped all over with various gashes that look more like wounds than mere scratches brought upon by wear and use.
"What... WHAT KIND OF SWORD IS THAT THING?!" Valper panicked as he was pushed back. "I CAN'T SENSE EITHER HOLY OR DEMONIC ENERGY WITHIN THAT THING?! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ANOMALY?!"
That statement causes the cogs inside Yuuto's head to spin as he then comes across an answer that was not only rooted in truth, but surely to further demoralize the fake hero and his delusions that he calls "justice."
"This sword, [Bantentaban], the Brand of Brutality, is neither Holy or Demonic!" the Knight mockingly regaled as he maintained his offensive, pushing his Knight Piece's speed boost to their limit, running circles even around Valper's [Rapidly] aspect. "This is a Draconic Sword! THE VERY FIRST ONE IN ALL OF HISTORY!"
That revelation catches those hearing it off-guard.
"A... Draconic Sword?" Irina remarked in shock. "... Can such a thing truly exist?"
"We see it, as much as we like to deny it," Xenovia pointed out. "... The Evil Dragons spit on everything sacrosanct, so of course they had to break another taboo as easily as breathing."
"Backhanded much?" Koneko deadpanned while Pandora trembled as she held onto Gin.
"NO! IMPOSSIBLE!" Valper screamed as he was staggered further back by Yuuto's strikes against his damaged [Excalibur V]. "A DRAGON CREATING SOMETHING BELONGING TO A HERO! THAT IS A PARADOX! AN IMPOSSIBILITY! Unless...! UNLESS-!"
*CLANG!*
The fake hero was sent flying into where Lailah was thrown towards, the pair colliding against each other before Leon then pulls out his broken [Fragarach] and swings a [Boost]-enhanced vacuum slash that was less focused when it would have a full-length blade, but nevertheless powerful enough to toss the two up into the air like ragdolls.
"I want to do something...!" Irina gritted her teeth before realizing that she couldn't even draw the wakizashi Holy Sword that she had with her. "... But what?!"
She then looked towards Xenovia, who was also contemplating the same thing as the blue-haired Catholic Exorcist looked at her [Durandal].
"... Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"What are you thinking?" Raynare asked as she joined. "... Look, I don't know what your guys' plans are, but tell me if I can help!"
Meanwhile, Takeshi while in his Grendel-suit suplexes [Ophiuchus] before the latter tries to constrict him with its length. But just as he could be bound, the Evil Dragon User breaks free by blasting all of his flames from the vents between each of his serrated scales, throwing Kokabiel off before catching him into a headlock.
"JUST DIE ALREADY!" Kokabiel raved, his mind completely lost in the storm of panic.
"NEVER!" Takeshi then lifts the shadowy serpent up before jumping up and then plummeting straight down and slamming Kokabiel headfirst with a Brainbuster.
After that attack, Kokabiel breaks free before whipping Takeshi back with [Ophiuchus]'s tail and then firing a beam of holy energy towards the replica Grendel, but the latter fires back with a dense plume of fire from its open mouth, clashing pillars of opposing energy before both colliding forces collapsed upon each other.
Takeshi and Grendel came roaring out of the pyroclastic smoke, bashing Kokabiel aside as he rallied towards Leon and Yuuto, both of whom were able to push back their own oppositions, until all three gathered on one spot.
"LET'S FINISH THIS!" Then the Evil Dragon User roars through the replica-Grendel, now spewing jets of flame between his scales as he gets onto all fours for a crouching start.
"YUUTO!"
Then the Knight looks back, spotting Irina, Xenovia, and Raynare throw a sheathed wakizashi and [Durandal] towards him.
"USE THEM!" the Catholic Exorcist cried out.
"SHOW THAT BASTARD WORSHIPPING HOLY SWORDS IN PLACE OF OUR LORD HIS PLACE!" Irina cheered.
The Knight then opens up his [Bantentaban]'s [Sword Eater] form and devours the sheathed Holy Sword whole before catching the latter between its clamps. But [Durandal] itself resisted being chewed up and devoured, so instead, it snaps itself in half to escape from being eaten whole, sacrificing half of its original length to fuel the Draconic Sword.
"Everyone... thank you." Yuuto then channels his own draconic energy as Leon charges up many [Boost] enhancements until the green gem's radiance reaches critical.
"CHARGE!" Leon, Takeshi, and Yuuto all ran forth as Kokabiel, Lailah, and Valper all did the same as both parties prepared to meet in their final exchange.
"[RAMOSA]!" Lailah then firsts summons a swarm of green holy energy knives that were all thrown towards her enemy, to which Yuuto's [Bantentaban] opens up as he then grabs the smaller-replicas of [Durandal] and the unsheathed wakizashi Holy Sword.
"[Full Re:Release: Durandal X Kotetsu]!" The three replica Holy Swords then all flew towards the flying light blades into a formation, destroying the entire flechette storm, allowing both Takeshi and Leon to charge in.
"I-I WON'T LET YOU-!"
"MOVE, BITCH!"
*WHACK*
The replica-Grendel backhands the Stray Fallen Angel aside, sending her flying towards the horizon until she was nothing more than twinkle in the sky.
"... Huh," Koneko remarked as she and everyone else stared at Lailah's sudden exit. "... Guess she went the way of Team Rocket."
"We're gonna have to find her later," Xenovia pointed out.
Meanwhile, Takeshi and Leon close in upon Kokabiel and Valper, the latter of the Dragon Users charging up all the [Boost] he can to deliver his final blow.
"TAKESHI! WITH ME!"
"HELL YEAH!"
Both boys then throw their fists towards Kokabiel and his [Ophiuchus], as the shadowy serpent opens its mouth to take a bite out of both of them.
"[Maximum Boost]!" announced [Boosted Gear] as Leon unleashes all of his [Boost] enhancements through this next and final attack. "[Longinus Break]!"
"SEIYAAA!" Takeshi roars out as [Violent Dual Festival] blasts its jets until the flames turns blue, propelling him even further against the Stray Cadre's last act of defiance.
"I... WON'T... SUBMIT!" Kokabiel then puts his very life into his final attack.
Then from behind [Ophiuchus], Valper then jumps up towards the clash as he raises his amalgam [Excalibur V] into the air.
"I WILL NOT LET YOU MAKE MOCKERY OF MY JUSTICE!"
The Holy Sword then taps into all five fragments of [Rapidly], [Transparency], [Nightmare], [Mimic], and [Destruction] into a singular, prismatic blade of his own holy energy while his Spiritron Engine inside of him goes critical.
"FATHER!" Then Yuuto runs up across Grendel's back before leaping into the air. "I WON'T LET YOU HAVE YOUR WAY EVER AGAIN!"
"[Dual Charge]!" announced [Bantentaban], much to everyone's surprise as the "Brand of Brutality" acted much like Takeshi's [Cataclysm Zone]. "[Atrocity Re:Sonance]!"
With both Evil Dragon User and fated partner in close proximity, both sides begin strengthening each other as the Draconic Sword opens up its blade before unleashing a stream of pure draconic energy that forms into a long, dark-red beam sword.
"DIE! [QUINTESSENCE BLAZE]!" Valper then swings down his rainbow holy energy slash towards Yuuto specifically, but the latter refuses to relent before his tormentor ever again.
"This is for all of my friends that I've failed to save...!" the Knight recited before opening his eyes, now blazing with absolute clarity of his newfound purpose. "... AND IN ODE TO THOSE WHO I LIVE FOR TODAY!"
Yuuto roars as he swings his [Bantentaban], his grip and stroke reinforced by the spirits of those who he had failed to save, pushing him through the dark veil that had blocked his eyes from the future that he deserves.
"[Violent Bolide]!"
*SLASH*
With a single stroke, Father Valper Galilei's body was clove in two from the waist-down.
*SHATTER!*
Within a single exchange, [Excalibur V] finally shatters, releasing all five fragments from their amalgam.
*CRACK*
And within one more second...
"NO! NO!" despaired the Stray Cadre. "NOOOOOO-!"
"DESPAIR IS YOUR ONLY GOAL!" Leon declared as his [Longinus Break] finally begins fracturing [Ophiuchus].
"FOR VICTORY...!" Takeshi added as the blue jets of flame pushed through the shadowy form's eroding facade. "WAS NEVER AN OPTION FOR YOU!"
*CRACK!*
Kokabiel's humanoid body was laid out by Takeshi, Leon, and Grendel's fists, uprooting him from his ultimate technique and sending him tumbling across the gravel until he and the upper half of Valper stopped rolling at the same place.
The replica-Grendel disassembles, returning Takeshi and Grendel back into their separate forms as Kokabiel struggles to stand upright.
"I see..." The Stray Cadre begins laughing mirthlessly as crackles of electricity sparked around his now-broken body. "... So that's why the world... has gone mad..."
"What do you mean?!" Pandora replied as she and everyone else watching ran over towards Takeshi, Leon, and Yuuto.
"... This world... felt wrong... the moment I found myself... alone... in my suffering!" Kokabiel remarked hoarsely. "... This world... is now a free-for-all... to those willing to take it...!"
"You're not making any sense, at all, you old fuck," Koneko pointed out. "Twenty words or less before you explode, would ya?"
Then Valper laughs, his once-youthful form now withering back to his prior age. "... I FINALLY UNDERSTAND!" he exclaimed. "DEUS TRINITY HAS DIED! AND WE, HUMANITY, HAVE KILLED HIM!"
Irina clicks her tongue. "... How dare you speak such blasphemy!"
"Save your indignity," Xenovia advised as she held the Protestant Exorcist back with her snapped [Durandal] (now the length of a shortsword with a width of a cutting board). "... Let the heretic espouse what he deludes himself as the truth."
"She's right," Raynare added as she glared at Kokabiel, who finally looks his age of having been existing since the dawn of man. "... Just ravings of sad, sick old men. Believe me, I'd know."
Both Kokabiel and Valper laugh as sparks flew from their bodies like malfunctioning machinery that was about to shut down.
"Alright everyone, time to pose!" Takeshi announced as everyone struck their poses before the imminent explosion as Koneko's bat familiar holding her smartphone (at 15% battery) took its position.
"... Hope you brats don't regret making this choice!" The dying Stray Cadre breathed out his last as he fell to his knees. "... FOR IT WILL BE THE LAST MISTAKE YOU'LL EVER MAKE!"
And the light of life leaves his eyes, Kokabiel falls with Valper's expiration.
*KABOOM!*
"... I swear, all of you," Ddraig groaned as everyone posed like Uchū Sentai Kyuranger before the pyroclastic clouds.
Once the battle ends, everyone collapses to the gravelly floor as Takeshi and Leon's Balance Breakers disperse, Grendel's fiery forms dissipates back into embers, and Yuuto's [Bantentaban] returns to being a broken estoc sword, now its snapped blade's flat branded with the same draconic sigil that was used to link himself and Takeshi's souls with each other, and dropping a chewed-up tsuba crossguard of the Holy Sword that [Sword Eater] had devoured along with half of [Durandal].
"It's over at last...!" Leon groaned out with everyone else. "... I swear, this assignment is easily the worst one I've ever endeavored."
"I can't feel anything below my neck..." Takeshi grunted. "... Wait. Now I can. Ow."
"Senpai..." Koneko droned listlessly. "... Can I like... crash at your place?"
"Someone call the President so she can drag us back home..." Pandora weakly remarked, kicking herself mentally for not being allowed to have a smartphone (due to playing blind).
"... The [Excalibur] fragments," Xenovia pointed out. "... We need to get them-"
*crumble*
Then all of their hearts stopped cold upon seeing who descended down Nemichi Shrine's staircase.
"... Yozakura!" the Catholic Exorcist shuddered.
"HOW IS SHE STILL ALIVE?!" Irina asked. "I SAW HER GET SWEPT UP BY VALPER'S [DESTRUCTION SLASH] EARLIER!"
The Stray Exorcist shrugged. "... You think that can kill me?" she boasted. "... Whatever this world can throw at me, I faced worse odds and lived."
"Shit... shit... shit!" Yuuto then tries to get up, but slips back down face-first into the gravel. "DAMMIT!"
"Takeshi, we have no other choice...!" Leon heaved as he struggled to get back up to his feet while helping his friend back up at the same time.
"... Fuck this day," Takeshi growled in pain as he feels his legs begging for mercy (and Grendel enjoying the sensation). "... You wanna fucking go?! THEN BRING IT ON-!"
Then, the Stray Exorcist begins clapping.
"... What," Raynare remarked as she and everyone else saw the African Stray Exorcist continue clapping rhythmically, the mood and tone of the applause bordering on sardonic.
"A congratulations is in order to your foolhardy, yet fruitful efforts," Yozakura revealed as she walked over towards one of the [Excalibur] fragments, stepping on the flat of [Rapidly]. "You have all proven yourselves worthy of life."
"... 'Worthy'?" Irina gasped out before growling in rage. "IS THIS SOME KIND OF SICK JOKE TO YOU-?!"
*TWACK*
Then all of the sudden, the Stray Exorcist kicks the Holy Sword towards the Protestant Exorcist, the blade landing right in front of her as Yozakura proceeds to kick every last [Excalibur] fragment towards the group until all of them were returned to their possession.
"You're right, I do find some amusement in all of this," she revealed. "But like everything, even jokes get old."
"You know, I'm starting to think that you didn't cut my head off just for the Hell of it...!" Raynare pointed out. "... What's your beef, woman?!"
"My... 'beef'?" she replied in a puzzled manner, not getting the slang.
"She means to ask what's your point in doing all of this shit," Takeshi clarified, causing Yozakura to nod.
"... Well, then allow me to answer that with a question of my own," the Stray Exorcist replied. "... Did Kokabiel or Valper tell you of Deus Trinity's demise?"
Irina's heart begins to boil over with rage as Xenovia tries to hold her partner back. "... You... YOU DARE TO SPEAK OF SUCH BLASPHEMY?!"
"Don't tell me that you also buy their lies as well, heretic," Xenovia commented.
Yozakura bitterly chuckles to herself. "... Oh, you naive, naive, naive little fools," she mocked. "... If God was alive, then why hasn't mankind gotten their heads screwed on right? Why are there genocides, war, atrocities, prejudices, and whatever content that every news station across the world eats up like pigs to their troughs filled to the brim with slop every passing day? Or is all of this some sort of 'Grand Plan' that we mortals cannot comprehend? Is this what God is? Nothing more than some neglectful figure who has long turned His eyes away from this sick, sad, world. If God planned to kill my family right in front of me when I was merely a child, then yes, I have every right to be angry. If God is truly not dead, then I will find Him, and fucking kill Him, with my own, two, hands."
"HOW DARE YOU!" Irina screamed out in fury as she tried to pick up her [Excalibur Mimic], only for her enfeebled hands to slip from it. "... Is that why you betrayed the Church after they took you in?! Is that why you went astray?! They wanted to help you find redemption, but you pissed it all away for the sake of your own hatred against the world! You betrayed those who wanted to help you grow! How could you...!"
"So says the overprivileged First-World gaijin-born brat," Yozakura dryly rebuked. "... Get over yourself. Cite the name of God all you want behind your actions. At least mine are for my own and no one else."
"... So is that why you handed me that voice recorder?" Yuuto asked, shocking everyone listening. "... You deliberately outed Father Galilei's location to me when you had no benefit to. Why?"
Yozakura simply smirks. "Simple," she said. "I despise people like him, plain and simple. He is the kind of human being that perpetuates all of this world's problems: the ones who delude themselves that such concepts as 'justice' exist. What a load. I see the actions of today as what they are: not as acts of heroism or redemption, but simply murder. I won't judge!"
Everyone listening to this Stray Exorcist could comprehend only one thing.
Kokabiel was someone who was stuck in the past. Lailah was a victim pushed too far. Father Galilei was batshit crazy.
But Yozakura? She was EMPTY. Hollow.
She was nothing more than a ghost drifting about from place to place aimlessly. A zombie walking among the living, finding joy in nothing.
She simply kills because that is what she internalized as the cold, hard "truth."
"... What the Hell happened to you to make you like this?" Takeshi asked, his voice trembling at the implications behind her nihilistic worldview.
"I'd love to tell you..." Then the Stray Exorcist then pulls out a gas mask before putting it on. "But that's a story of another day."
Takeshi then sees her pull out a canister with a very bad sign printed on the cylinder, resembling a yellow triangle.
"Shit," Takeshi curses as Yozakura then pulls the pin as the canister releases a hissing stream of discolored gas. "NERVE GAS!"
Everyone runs screaming as if their lives along with their trembling and partially-fractured legs depended on it, fleeing from Yozakura as the latter makes her exit under the cover of the chemical weapon's hazardous plumes.
"... I hate her," Irina remarked as she and everyone else took refuge at an alleyway in Seki City's limits.
Takeshi then pulls out his phone before making a call. "Hey President..."
"What is it?" Rias answered on the other side, the faint sounds of running water being heard over the call. "... You found Yuuto, right?"
"Mm hm. I'll tell you the rest after you pick us up from Seki City." Takeshi then begins to nervously chuckle. "... By the way, does your House have any Magicians that specialize in dealing with biohazards?"
A few moments of awkward silence occur during the call.
"... What the Hell happened?"
Meanwhile, at Iblis, Hell...
"DAMMIT!"
Angrily, the Devil dressed in a white suit threw relics of great power into his suitcase.
"Kokabiel, you useless bastard, you screwed me!" he exclaimed as he continued packing in his hotel room. "That idiot! What kind of a God raises such a useless piece of shit?! He puts my balls in a vice and then, oh, how convenient! He goes off and dies! This is a fucking disaster!"
Upon finishing packing, the Devil then makes his way to the front door.
"Not like I'll get the chance to kill him myself all over again-"
*WHAM!*
*CRACK*
Right before he was about to open the front door, it was then kicked in with such force that he was sent flying all the way to the windows, breaking his back against it as his suit spilled open of all of its contents.
"Well, well, well," a sultry voice said, revealing none other than Venelana Bael-Gremory, dressed in her IMP officer's uniform (and badge indicating her rank as Deputy Chief of said semi-clandestine law enforcement agency) consisting of a commissar cap, sharp dark-blue and red suit with a pencil skirt accentuating her hips and a long black trenchcoat draped over her shoulders, while smoking a lit cigar that she held in her white-gloved hands. "Leaving so soon, Lord Iok Vassago? After bringing over my guests all the way to your humble abode?"
The revealed culprit behind the whole mess saw that House Gremory's matriarch being flanked by Zeoticus, current Lord of House Gremory, Venelana's husband, and renowned in the Great War as "Hell's Jailor," along with Falbium Asmodeus, the "Shadow Warden of Gehenna," and his personal company of 36 IMP officers that he'd hand-picked for this operation, with all of the men dressed in their uniform according to rank (Zeoticus being Major, and Falbium being the Chief of IMP), and all of them storming into the room to apprehend the mastermind.
"T-THERE MUST BE SOME KIND OF MISUNDERSTANDING HERE!" Iok protested as his hands were bound with the red chains of Zeoticus' [Lock Control] while the whole area was blocked off by Falbium's [Absolute Defense] to prevent any escape attempts by the apprehended culprit. "I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE ACCUSING ME OF FOR, BUT THERE'S A PERFECTLY GOOD EXPLANATION THAT'S PLAIN TO SEE-!"
*HISS*
The caught Lord of House Vassago has his left eye burned by Venelana's lit cigar, shutting him up by making him scream in agony and prevent him from making any excuses.
"Listen carefully, you piece of horseshit," she rebuked as Iok was wrestled back up to his feet by the IMP officers. "We didn't come here so that you can tell us a story. We already know everything that we need to."
Then Venelana grabs him by the collar of his suit before pulling his face closer towards hers, her pupils glowing red as they menacingly glared metaphorical holes into Lord Vassago's very soul.
"Pray," she ordered the trembling Devil. "That is the only thing you can do while you're still alive."
9th of June, 2019 AD
Despite the promises made, everyone simply crashed at the ORC building right after the mission was over.
Everyone in the main office groaned as the exhaustion of this whole incursion prior came crashing down onto them, with Rias laying her head onto her desk, Takeshi, Koneko, Pandora, and Yuuto crashed out on one of the sofas each covered in their own share of filth, Akeno was pacing about listlessly, wondering if she should make either coffee or tea, Leon, Irina, and Xenovia were crashed out on the other sofa, the latter two plopped onto the former simply because he was the biggest, and Raynare was all but collapsed onto the floor face-down.
"Ugh, this sucks..." Takeshi grimaced as Koneko rested her head on his lap, Pandora groaned onto his shoulder, and Yuuto was snoring away while sitting next to him on the same sofa. "We busted our asses nonstop for about a whole week..."
"Could've been worse." Akeno then let out a yawn as she rested her boobs onto Takeshi's head. "... It's kinda like being bitten by a dog."
Takeshi grumbles as he looks up while said mammaries were resting against his face. "... I'm serious, Akeno-senpai," he rebuked. "Our time isn't for free, you know!"
*bzzt-bzzt*
"Hold on, I got a call..." Rias just then elects to take the call at her desk. "... Hello, Lady Mother."
"Oh, you poor thing," Venelana's voice replied from the other side. "... Just call me mom, for old times sake."
"Alright..." Rias then lets out a yawn. "... So, mom. It's been a while since we talked over the phone. So, what is it?"
"Oh, I've heard that you and your Peerage along with some Church agents have been stuck playing games with Lord Vassago."
Everyone immediately wakes up upon hearing that name as their culprit behind the wild goose chase that was Kokabiel and his Cluster.
"... At least we got a name," Takeshi replied, too tired to celebrate the discovery of the man behind their mess.
Rias blinked upon her mother's confirmation. "... Who told you that?"
"He told me himself."
"Let's just say that he's a bit too loud to organize any kind of conspiracy," Venelana explained as she was being escorted out of an abandoned building while the other IMP officers rigged the whole place with holy energy storage silos that doubled as high-powered explosives (from the Grigori's surplus arranged by Kokabiel and his war hawk faction prior to his exile, that which then Lord Vassago smuggled them through channels leading to Hell's borders before they were intercepted by the IMP) while drenching the whole place that the culprit was confined to with gasoline. "He was blabbering it away to just about anyone in every remote part of Hell. Even the dead would've known what was happening. Anyway, me and dad along with our close friends will make sure that nothing like this happens ever again. It was a real pain for you, wasn't it?"
"Nah. I wouldn't say that," Rias reassured. "Compared to what the rest of my Peerage and the Church agents had to go through, this little revelation isn't worth the headache."
"By the way, thank you for you and your Peerage's hard work, along with those Church agents who got caught up in our little mess," Venelana said. "Now, I realize that it's hardly enough after what you and everyone have gone through, but I'll put in a little sweetener at the end. Can you switch to a video call?"
Rias then switches the phone call over to video, to which it then revealed Lord Iok Vassago stripped to his boxers, tied up to a folding chair by Zeoticus' [Lock Control] chains, gagged by a black demonic energy barrier of [Absolute Defense], and his body being covered in numerous bruises as if he was beaten up by several men shortly before his current predicament.
And around him were several jerry cans of gasoline that were all punctured and spilling their contents towards the bastard responsible for nearly restarting the Great War.
"... So," Rias remarked as she smacked her lips apprehensively, not even remotely satisfied by the fact that easily one of the Underworld's Council of Nobles most punchable Devils being reduced to such a sorry state. "You're skipping the trial and jumping straight to execution?"
"Of course."
*click*
*KABOOM!*
*RUMBLE*
Venelana then hands over the used remote detonator to one of the IMP officers as she lights another cigar for herself as the building behind her collapses into a pile of rubble.
"... Termination confirmed," one of the IMP officers said as he looked at his tablet with a flatline.
"... Yeah," Rias said from the other side of the phone. "... I guess that was kinda cool."
"Well, I hope that we call each other soon," the Gremory Matriarch said as she entered the IMP patrol van with Falbium Asmodeus being squeezed between herself and her husband. "... And not because of some wannabe terrorist acting up down here. Until then!"
She then disconnects the call as the van drives away from the abandoned building as the rest of the IMP officers stay behind to dispose of the body after recovering it.
"... So," Falbium said. "... Thank you for coming all the way out here on such short notice."
"When I heard that my daughter and her Peerage got involved, all bets were off," Venelana explained.
"I told you that Iok was an asshole!" Zeoticus pointed out.
"You say that about everyone in the UCN," the Gremory matriarch deadpanned.
The three IMP officials all sat quietly as the van drove into the city limits of Gehenna.
"So," Venelana remarked as she looked towards the two men sitting next to her. "... When do you want our next threesome?"
"Lady Venelana, you know that I have work," Falbium pointed out.
"Our eldest son signs your paychecks. I'm sure that he'll understand," Zeoticus reassured.
"I get paid by your said son to do nothing," the Chief of IMP clarified. "... That and I crap out after doing both of you once each. Nor do I wish to risk having to pay child support for an ex-Asmodeus candidate's offspring."
"Aw, and let that gift down there go to waste?" Venelana commented with a flirtatious smirk and a chuckle. "... No like, seriously. Get laid already."
"Can't." Falbium then lets out a yawn. "... Too much work."
Meanwhile, at the Underworld's Council of Nobles' Parliament House...
The gathered members of the Underworld's Council of Noble all watched in horror as they saw the implicated Lord Vassago be blown up before the footage became static.
Placed on each of their own tables were copies of files and pertaining evidence of the culprit's wrongdoing. Illicit transactions with an unidentified third parties and proxies, attempted smuggling of various weapons of mass destruction disguised as harmless energy regulators, poaching and shipment of a fully-grown Cerberus (now being taken care of by Falbium's Pawn running the Familiar Forest, Abaddon), and harboring and escorting fugitives, that which being Kokabiel and what little of his war hawk faction that haven't been apprehended prior.
If there was only one silver lining, it is that Lord Iok Vassago was a lone wolf actor behind all of this conspiracy. But still, the rest of his House are now going to have to pay serious reparations to House Gremory and the Grigori while having to scramble to appoint a new Lord or Lady to lead their House, or else they'll go the way of Houses Ose and/or Flauros (i.e., EXTINCT/stripped of their nobility entirely).
As for why Lord Vassago did such a thing in the first place, a few guesses were thought of. Some assumed that it was a gambit to get rid of House Gremory or at least their Peerage housing the current Evil Dragon User. Some believe that this was an act of pure spite after Iok was spurned by Venelana in favor of Zeoticus, despite the former hailing from a more prestigious House. And some giving Iok the benefit of the doubt hypothesize that the now-dead Lord Vassago did all this in a misguided belief that the Devils could come out on top should the Great War resume after weakening both the Grigori and the Church, not counting that there are still Heaven's Host and a plethora of other polytheistic gods to deal with.
Whatever the case, it didn't matter. Lord Iok Vassago was dead. His plans were completely foiled by a bunch of kids, Church agents, and a Fallen Angel of all people. And the one responsible for making sure that everything went as such was none other than the man standing behind Lord Rustal Bael's seat.
"So..." The morose-looking Lord of House Bael and the Council's Chairman flinched as an armored hand pats onto his shoulder, revealing none other than Re:Live themselves, their visor glowing under the shade where the superhero stood underneath. "... Are there any further objections to our upcoming arrangements?"
No one speaks a word. Not Rustal, not Galileo, not Carta, not Ein, and certainty not the remaining Lords and Ladies of the Council spoke a word raising a single protest lest they suffer this superhero's wrath.
Re:Live smirks underneath their helmet as everyone before them behaves themselves.
"Good."
10th of June, 2019 AD
"Ow... ow... my everything..." Takeshi grimaced as he and the rest of ORC's bodies cramped like crazy even after they spent all day getting treated, with Koneko clinging onto his summer uniform whereas Pandora used her cane for its intended use as they all left school for the day, where the skies were overcast and slightly muggy.
Meanwhile, Yuuto himself was suffering especially worse, having to skip school simply because his body was numb from 30 days of nonstop fighting (against Re:Live of ALL PEOPLE), and once the adrenaline wore off, he crashed especially HARD.
And Takeshi missing out on Super Hero Time after he'd declared to defeat Kokabiel in order to not miss it didn't help matters either. But that wasn't the end of all of their problems.
"... How are we supposed to... find another club member... like this...?!" the Evil Dragon User groaned as he and the two girls supported each other to the best of their abilities.
"I think I saw... Himejima-senpai... packing boxes... the night before..." Koneko pointed out, her legs trembling while fighting off the urge to just pass out on her feet. "... We might have to move... our operations into... the school itself... soon."
Pandora's lips trembled upon hearing that. "... If only I hadn't made that decision," she remarked. "... If I'd only kept my mouth shut!"
Takeshi pats the Knight's head reassuringly. "... It's not your fault, Pandora," he said. "... I bet Re:Live would've done it regardless of our input."
Then waiting by Kuoh Academy's front gates was none other than Irina, dressed in her nondescript tracksuit and hooded jacket. "Hey guys!"
"Hey..." Koneko then tumbles before she is caught by the disguised Protestant Exorcist and Takeshi. "... What are you doing here?"
"Well..." She then looks aside. "... Now that our assignment is over, my group is going to leave this country by the end of this week. I just wanted to hang out before we go and all."
"Yeah, that checks out..." Takeshi then yawns before rubbing his eyes. "... How are you standing upright?"
"[Excalibur Blessing]," she answered. "... That and as soon as we got back to the chapel, I slept off my pain for like sixteen hours."
"Full of energy, as usual..." Koneko sighed before looking up at the gray skies. "... Wanna go to 7-Eleven and pig out?"
"Yeah." Irina nods in agreement. "I wanted to buy a few things for the guys back at the chapel anyway. Wanna come with?"
"Why not?" Takeshi replied. "... Maybe the ambient holy energy is something we need to wake ourselves up."
Pandora groans. "... I swear Takeshi," she deadpanned. "The Evil Dragons are becoming a bad influence on you."
Meanwhile, at Kuoh Town's Chapel...
"And that concludes my report, Lord Raguel," Leon spoke towards the small projection appearing on a magic circle drawn onto a parchment placed upon the main altar before the stained glass windows, showing a man with four pairs of white-quilled wings, and with a short, swept-back blonde hair, dressed in an ornate white and golden robe reminiscent of that of a judge's robes with a mint-green sash-like raiment draped around his shoulders, with the words "Fairness" and "Justice" written on each end of the cloth in incomprehensible-looking texts printed in swirling gold that only those of Heaven know how to read and write. "... I apologize for the delay, but our battle with Kokabiel took a lot out of us."
"Understandable," the Seraph of the Four Gentle Judges replied in a neutral tone. "Regardless, you and your fellow faithful have done a great service to us all. I'll notify the rest of Heaven and the Church of Kokabiel's failed machinations and deeds of your valor."
"Thank you." The Inquisitor bowed his head. "... And of the [Excalibur] fragments, have they reached their destination?"
"The Magisterium have indeed received them, and while the damages they've suffered were immense, their cores are still intact enough to reforge them back to their former glories," Raguel revealed before sighing. "... To think that [Cataclysm Zone] could bequeath its powers to others while having a designated User through this [Re:Sonance] phenomenon... and to create a Draconic Sword, no less. Your childhood friend is quite the character, isn't he?"
"I'd expect no less from him, Lord Raguel," Leon responded wholeheartedly. "His will to not submit to evil is... may I be so bold to say about a Devil, inspiring, to say the least."
The Gentle Judge of Fairness smiles gently. "... Perhaps he is a sign of changing times," the Seraph hypothesized. "Perhaps he's showing us that the old binary of good and evil being solely defined by where we come from is coming to an end... alas, I'm getting ahead of myself."
All Leon could do was nervously chuckle as his heart then wavers as he was afraid to ask the only concern he had left.
... If you're going to say it, say it, Ddraig pointed out. Hiding it is going to make things worse.
"You appear troubled, Inquisitor," Raguel remarked as the Seraph noticed Leon's left hand balling into a fist. "... If you have any concerns, speak. I will judge fairly after you have said your peace."
"... As Kokabiel and Father Galilei breathed their last, me and everyone present heard something... rather harrowing," Leon began. "... I don't know if this counts as heresy, or me mishearing something, but I can't hide this anymore, Lord Raguel! Please tell me!"
At the same time, Takeshi, Koneko, Pandora, and Irina entered the chapel with bags of snacks and drinks in hand.
"Ow ow ow..." Koneko grimaced as the ambient energy stung like pins and needles all over her and Pandora. "... That's one way to substitute coffee."
"Yep, that hit the spot..." Takeshi stretched his shoulders and arms as the stings of holy energy woke him up completely after 36 hours of ennui. "... Wonder if I can come here to train for my holy energy resistance. Can I?"
"I'll ask the Pastor here if he can allow you to!" Irina reassured as she reached for the door leading into the nave...
"TELL ME, LORD RAGUEL!" Leon's voice cried out from behind the doors. "IS DEUS TRINITY REALLY DEAD?!"
Everyone on the other side of the door dropped their bags in sheer shock as the Inquisitor begged his superior for a straight answer, to which Raguel could do nothing but sigh.
"... I'll deal with the consequences when they come," the Seraph resolved before giving his answer. "... Yes. Deus Trinity is truly dead. Only the Great Seraphim, the Magisterium, the Four Great Satans, and Governor Azazel know of this. None of us know how our Lord in Heaven perished, but we've lost all contact with Him roughly a millennia ago, when He just... disappeared."
Now with the truth revealed, Leon slumps onto one of the pews closest to the altar, his mind and body on the verge of shutting down from hearing this crushing revelation.
"... Why?" he mumbled before getting back up. "WHY DID YOU LIE TO ALL OF US?! WERE WE ALL DYING FOR SOME GREAT LIE ALL THIS TIME?!"
"It was only a means to an end, not on purpose," Raguel answered. "... We had to bring an end to the Great War no matter what lest all of mankind went extinct from our endless fighting with the other gods, Devils, and Fallen Angels. The peace treaty was to prevent our followers and the world that which they live in wasn't destroyed, or at the very least, prevent further loss of innocent lives. Take my word for it, Inquisitor. The other Pantheons would soon rather destroy themselves after wiping the Three Biblical Factions out after learning of Deus Trinity's demise. I only request that you keep this confidential-"
*creak*
"... You're lying." Irina had opened the door with Takeshi, Koneko, and Pandora standing behind the former, all of whom were in various states of shock. "... Inquisitor... Lord Raguel... PLEASE TELL ME THAT YOU'RE BOTH LYING!"
Leon's expression pales upon realizing that the four of them had overheard his entire conversation. "... Why?"
"I SWEAR! WE DIDN'T MEAN TO!" Takeshi panicked before looking down at his manifested [Cataclysm Zone]. "... Please tell me that they're lying! TELL ME THAT KOKABIEL'S WORDS AREN'T TRUE!"
From the central gem of the Sacred Gear, a low snicker was heard.
"... What the?"
Then a low chortle...
"KA~KA KA KA KA!"
And then the Evil Dragons began cackling, unleashing their wickedness upon those hearing of this terrible news.
"To be fair..." the Evil Dragon of Envy snarked. "... No one asked."
Now it was Raguel's turn to adopt a look of pure unadulterated HORROR as he and everyone else learn that the Evil Dragons were already in the know of Deus Trinity's demise.
"... Why?" Irina's voice trembled in sorrow. "WHY?!"
"I always knew that you Church folk were full of shit since the Crusades!" the Evil Dragon of Wrath scoffed. "If I had one regret, then it's that I never got to kill Deus Trinity with my own two hands! I bet He would've put up a Hell of a fight!"
"And besides..." the Evil Dragon of Lust chortled sadistically. "... That old fogey upstairs couldn't even kill any of us for good, so what made you assume that God would be around forever?! KA~KA KA KA KA!"
Irina's heart shatters into a million pieces as the Evil Dragons laugh at the news of Deus Trinity's demise, utterly destroying her life's purpose and everything that she lived and fought for all of her life.
Even the Devils present couldn't feel anything but horror as they were inadvertent recipients to this horrible news.
"... God is dead?" Pandora then fell to her knees. "... The Almighty... the bane of all polytheism... Deus Trinity... has fallen... without our knowledge?"
"Someone tell me that I'm still dreaming...!" Koneko laughed like a loon as she curled up into a ball. "... If God is dead... then what is the point of everything?! Was all of our suffering for naught?!"
Takeshi was utterly speechless, his mind unable to fathom as the various misfortunes of his life, all of his struggles, all of his chances and opportunities, and [Cataclysm Zone] being placed onto his soul... wasn't a part of some grand, universal plan, but just sheer luck and anarchy.
It made too much sense why the world was the way it was right now. But it did not bring him any closer to solace at all.
"Irina..." Takeshi then tries to reach out to the broken Protestant Exorcist...
*SLAP!*
Only for her to slap his hand away.
"... Don't touch me," she snarled as she looked back up to the others, now a sense of paranoia and despair claiming her very soul as she saw them no longer as her trusted allies, but as liars and deceivers who seek to only use her. "GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU MONSTERS!"
Shidou Irina sprints out of the chapel, screaming her bloody lungs out as her mind frayed at this horrible revelation, with no one able to stop her from disappearing into the streets of Kuoh Town.
Even Raguel was stumped at how utterly WRONG everything had gone. Normally, he'd have to kill the Devils and the Inquisitor right then and there, but with the knowledge that even the Evil Dragons being aware of Deus Trinity's demise after all this time, it's safe to assume that the entire protocol infrastructure has been compromised since the beginning.
In fact, Kokabiel's knowledge of Deus Trinity's death was the writing on the wall for the Gentle Judge of Fairness: the secret that kept the Great War from resuming was no longer a secret anymore.
Defeated, Raguel sighs in disappointment. "... I'll inform the Four Great Seraphs and the Magisterium of this revelation," he revealed, causing Leon's heart to skip a beat in shock. "... Stand by until further orders."
The entire chapel goes dead-quiet as rain begins to pour down from the skies outside, leaving the four inside to stew in their broken minds burdened with this not-secret.
However, there was another who listened in.
Xenovia, hidden behind the wall next to the open doors, gripping her rosary that was given to her by her parent figure that had raised her in the Church, tugs onto it hard enough to break the links coupling the necklace.
"... Liars," she growled quietly before dropping her silver cross. "... I've fought for nothing save for the service of those sitting upon a throne of lies."
Even she began to waver. Xenovia Quarta, the steadfast warrior of God and His faithful, now doubting if continuing this pointless fight was worth it anymore.
Then, she then remembers a certain date as Xenovia looked at the calendar hanging by the wall across from her.
June 15th. This coming Saturday.
"... The Evil Dragon User said something about a deadline."
Steeling herself, she then runs out of the chapel's front doors without looking back, her mind tormented by the echoes of the Evil Dragons' laughter mocking the faithful and feeding upon their despair.
Back at ORC...
"Good grief, why nerve gas of all things?!" Rias exclaimed as she and Akeno ran over the post-battle cleanup reports of her House's Magicians having to fumigate what was left of Nemichi Shrine before rebuilding it, with the public facade being that there's a natural gas leak happening nearby. "... I swear, it's like if Kokabiel and his goons are mocking us beyond the grave now that we have to deal with the Shinto Pantheon regarding this mess!"
"To be fair, President..." Akeno remarked as she tapes down another box. "... It's not as if our enemies abide by the Geneva Conventions."
"Because screw human-made laws and regulations when you can level a whole town with a single wave of your hand, right?" The King Piece Holder groaned before placing her head onto her desk. "... So, did Sona say anything about any spare clubrooms?"
"Nothing as of yet," the Queen replied, causing Rias to groan. "... And to think that there are bombs planted in our home due to Re:Live."
"I swear to the Satans, I'm actually considering praying to Deus Trinity to beg for a miracle to happen," Rias remarked before getting up. "... I'm gonna take a walk out on the halls. Call me when something happens. Or when that damn Fallen Angel decides to stop mooching off of us."
The President of ORC then walks out of her office to destress from this mess of a situation she found herself in, letting the white noise of Japan's Monsoon Season play as her ambiance.
Looking around the halls, she recalls how when she first founded her Peerage, she was practically fixing this place up all by herself simply because she insisted that she'd do it. It took a month, but by then, this neglected school building was good as new.
As her Peerage grew, so did this place's value. It no longer became a base of her Peerage's operations. It was their second home away from home, where their found family could come together and help each other.
And now it was going to be reduced to a crater simply because someone stronger than her and the Four Great Satans came about and put this asinine "trial" before her.
"... I hate that so-called superhero sometimes-"
*knock-knock-knock*
"Who is it?" Rias then approaches the front door and finds Irina, her yellow raincoat draped over her Exorcist uniform and she herself soaked to her pores.
Her eyes were glazed over with despair, looking as if a fundamental piece of her had been ripped from her heart.
Through the sounds of the beating rain, Rias could hear only the following uttered from Xenovia's lips:
"... Help me."
To Be Continued...
And that concludes the reboot's "Chapter 25."
I. NEVER. LEARN.
All kidding aside, I did know that this chapter was going to be EVEN LONGER than the previous chapter, but still, I had to get at least 5k words in per day and it took all week.
With that said, this chapter:
If I had to describe this chapter's combat structure, I can only describe it in these two terms: "Combat Breakdown" and "Villainous Breakdown."
Everyone on both sides came in with their tanks full, fully prepared, and ready to kick ass. Then as the fight drags on, resources run out, stamina is gradually depleted, and sanity is pushed to the brink as copious amounts of body horror and off-the-cuff moments mid-fight scenes that I swear, I must allege that I did not play Call of Cthulhu.
As for the latter, it's meant to show that Kokabiel and the rest of his faction's grievances, while valid, ultimately don't hold up for how self-defeating they are in the long term.
Kokabiel's Fatal Flaw is his empathy, in that he cares too much, so much that he's practically stuck in the past. From his motivations of restarting an OLD conflict, to being tech-illiterate, to looking down on the younger generations (he flat out considers Stray Exorcists working for him as expendable and not worth crying over), and right down to his [Ophiuchus] technique being a derivative of the first Evil Dragon, Samael (and given that he's NOT in [Cataclysm Zone], it's safe to say that he's not much of a threat compared to the Seven Deadliest Evil Dragons).
Kokabiel's empathy is so poorly-regulated that it loops around into becoming hypocritical. He's a sad old man who should've died during the Great War. Or that he did and all that's left of a once-kind hearted "Star of God" now turned into a bitter shell of his former self that can't seek nothing but avengeance, despite claims to the contrary.
Lailah's just a victim of circumstance that ended up being radicalized by Kokabiel simply because Heaven wouldn't respect her choice to become a Fallen Angel in order to start a family of her own. Although having the reputation of being the one to plant the J-man into the Virgin Mary's womb left her in the risk of suffering a "Broken Pedestal" from her ex-collages, so much to the point where they forcibly aborted her child and damned her human husband to the bowels of Hell. Yeah. Little wonder why she went crazy after nearly dying twice.
Father Valper Galilei... Yeah.
His youthful form is based on Inspector Justin Bringer from ZZZ and Ira Gamagōri from Kill la Kill, with his armored form being based on Yu-Gi-Oh's CXyz Comics Hero Legend Arthur, and all of them have that top-heavy superhero build rippling with muscles and is just loud with power and machismo.
He only looks the part. But peel away his facade, he's nothing more than a selfish man who only wants to be a hero out of obsession that he deluded into thinking that was "justice."
And I think this quote from the late producer of Kamen Rider, Tohru Hirayama, on why people like Valper Galilei and his sense of "justice" and views on "heroism" are a PROBLEM:
"Stop talking about fighting for justice. Even Nazis preached about justice, and I don't know what justice is. A bad person is someone who deprives people of their freedom, no matter what title they advocate. Kamen Rider fights to protect human freedom against enemies who take away our freedom."
In the end, Father Galilei may have not been an actual Nazi, but he would've well fit in with them.
Now onto our heroes:
Yuuto's character arc ultimately isn't about getting revenge. It's about moving towards the future by killing the past that has held him back. First Valper Galilei, then his old childhood friend Tosca, and finally his own regrets that he'd been stewing in since his rescue.
It's even symbolized by [Cataclysm Zone]'s new feature: [Re:Sonance], where Takeshi chooses to share his "fated partner's" burden that the Evil Dragon attunes with a Metaphor: ReFantazio reference.
Yes, Yuuto's Sin Affinity is Wrath. And yes, I will implement this mechanic to the rest of the ORC members in the future. Feel free to figure out which Sin Affinity belongs to who.
As for the [Re:Sonance], Yuuto's "Brand of Brutality," [Bantentaban], is based on Elsword's [Conwell] (the Infinity Sword-version). And its unique trait, [Sword Eater], cements Yuuto's newfound perspective: Swords are merely tools, not idols to worship.
This is evidenced that all of the [Re:Release]-copies are all single-use, indicating that Yuuto's not using his [Sword Birth] as his sole raison d'être anymore. Hell, at that point, he practically surpassed Father Galilei in every possible form. He no longer sees him as a great enemy, just another enemy to kill/dinner to devour.
Irina said it best: "He who laughs last, laughs best."
Oh, and it's under its own classification of being a Draconic Sword, which means that it doesn't get affected by the Holy-Demonic binary, while using draconic energy's ability to armor-pierce EVERYTHING.
As for Takeshi and Grendel, they finally turn the latter's blood rage into a viable technique: [Āglæca's Nails].
They are basically Warhammer 40K's Butcher's Nails, and now rather than being a semi-indiscriminate AoE that risks friendly fire-incidents, Grendel can now AIM his blood rage at certain targets, opening up a lot of strategic potential in the future while also presenting a Catch-22 to those affected:
Can't get any angrier? Say goodbye to using some of your magic. Can't use magic in the first place? How about a free super-roid rage enema?
Neither or both? Still doesn't stop Grendel from punching you to death.
And no, [Violent Dual Festival] is not Juggernaut Drive. It's more of an additional armor layering that allows Grendel to fully manifest into his prime with Takeshi behind the wheel.
Leon's [Boosted Gear], contrary to [Cataclysm Zone], is less conditional in its usage, and Leon has trained to the point where he can use his [Scale Mail] repeatedly whereas Takeshi's Balance Breakers are once-use post-morph breakage and have to enter a cooldown. It's a more "Boring, but Practical" Sacred Gear while still being as powerful.
As for Raynare, she found out who's her daddy.
Her true name, "Nara Rei," is spelled like this: "楢 黎," her given name ("Rei") meaning "black" whereas her surname ("Nara") meaning "oak." Also, her general lack of intellect stems from the fact that not only she had to quit school really early, but it's implied that she has a learning disability that wasn't accommodated for at the time due to it being the early 20th Century. And her resilience (and canon stubbornness that contributes to her demise) is symbolic of an oak tree representing strength, endurance, prosperity, longevity, and resilience (she embodies it both straight and ironically).
As for her general lack of intellect and phishing habits, let's just say that she didn't have a good time at her own school back in Taisho Era-Japan. Being born a bastard is a social death sentence, being only half-Japanese just makes it worse, and having a learning disability that was never addressed is just the cherry on top.
Little wonder why she begged Governor Azazel to remove her memories of her past life... until now. Because no one can actually forget memories, just have different levels of clarity to each past event.
And the resulting aftermath... yeah, Lord Vassago got away as much as he did simply because Kokabiel was a large enough cutout to hide behind. Too bad his espionage infrastructure was SHIT.
To be fair, in the original fic, even Vassago admits that his motives didn't matter much, so Venelana getting her sweet revenge via a mafia-style execution (broadcast to the rest of the Underworld's Council of Nobles and Rias' phone), and yes, she and Zeoticus are members of the IMP and Falbium is their superior, but the latter is so apathetic to his work that he only bothers working when there's a crisis going on.
Moral of the story, don't wake Falbium up unless you want him to skip your trial and jump straight to your execution.
And don't screw with Re:Live. Just do what they tell you to do and they won't have a reason to sic all of the Underworld's deadliest Devils and themselves on to said poor victim.
And for the biggest hammer to fall... Deus Trinity being dead.
NGL, in the original fic, it felt... wasted? So to spice it up, I brought in Takeshi, Koneko, and Pandora as additional witnesses, with Irina herself playing the role of the "Unwitting Instigator of Doom" just because she had to go out to buy snacks at 7-Eleven.
And to make matters even worse for everyone involved, THE EVIL DRAGONS KNEW OF DEUS TRINITY'S DEATH THIS WHOLE TIME. That knowledge was also foreshadowed by Grendel's words to the Stray Exorcists during Pandora's introductory Arc.
Although, that add-on might've saved the Devils' lives, given that it also reveals to Heaven that the secret was already out long before the current information leak, so at that point, smiting them ain't gonna do jack shit.
I also put Raguel in since he's more of a "Reasonable Authority Figure" compared to the rest of Heaven. As the Gentle Judge of Fairness, he'll only deliver the sentence AFTER hearing everyone out.
To him, everyone, whether if they're human, Devil, Angel, or anyone in-between, deserve their day in court with due process.
And now with Irina on the run and Xenovia running to Rias for help, NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME ANYMORE.
... Let's hope that the Arc's last chapter is a lot shorter.
Tune in next time... when everyone has to contend with the truth. Until then!
Headcanon Voices:
- Sariel: Koji Yusa (JPN), Landon McDonald (ENG)
- Armaros: Toshihiko Seki (JPN), Brent Mukai (ENG)
- Penemue: Konomi Inagaki (JPN), Celeste Perez (ENG)
- Tamiel: Kenichi Suzumura (JPN), Josh Keaton (ENG)
- Tosca: Ayaka Suwa (JPN), Anjali Kunapaneni (ENG)
OC Fancast:
- Renewed Valper Galilei, the "Hero": Kohei Kiyasu (JPN), Julian Rebolledo (ENG)
- Raguel: Kenji Nojima (JPN), Alejandro Saab (ENG)
Tokusatsu References:
- Yamata no Orochi pulls Gai Amatsu's catchphrase of "1000%" from Kamen Rider Zero-One in reference to Kokabiel's groin being caved in.
- Obvious Kamen Rider Double references are obvious. Leon Ainsworth is the main recipient of said references during his [Scale Mail] fights.
- Leon's mentioning of Bruce Kalish after the pyrotechnics (from Takeshi's [Savage Predator Incarnation]) is a reference to his run in producing Power Rangers during the Disney Era, where there were so many explosions that Michael Bay would be green with envy.
- Yuuto quotes Shinnosuke Tomari from Kamen Rider Drive after he's given a clue to Father Galilei's location.
- Lailah's use of her evolved form of [Urnal Binary], [Eclipse Armatus], to create a pseudo-Cherubim from the corpses of the Stray Exorcists (in place of the original fic's Cerberus) is conceptually based on Akyachuuga (a cyborg fusion of all three Vice-Shogun of the Jark Matter Empire) from Uchū Sentai Kyuranger.
- Kokabiel and Raynare's shared (and hereditary) trait, [Asterisk], base their named techniques on Kamen Rider Fourze's Zodiarts MotW, with the Stray Cadre's attacks being loosely based on the 12 Horoscopes while the regular half-Fallen Angel bases her attacks on the remaining/lesser constellations.
- Lailah's evolved form of [Urnal Binary], [Eclipse Armatus] has two modes each based on dual forms: [Solis Armatus] is based on Ultraman Arc's [Solis Armor] and Kamen Rider GeizRevive's [Gōretsu Form], while [Luna Armatus] is based on Ultraman Arc's [Luna Armor] and Kamen Rider GeizRevive's [Shippū Form].
- Lailah's [Ramosa] and [Tessera] techniques are references to Ultraman Arc's [Luna Branch Saucer] and [Solis Knuckle Impact] attacks respectively.
- Takeshi, while using the [Niku] form of his [Kokatsu Denryū] during his solo fight, pulls a Dairanger reference on Valper Galilei via striking the thighs before the nut shot via a staff-like weapon.
- Takeshi and Grendel's [Violent Dual Festival] is based on Kamen Rider Revice's [Rex Genome]'s Remix form, right down to Takeshi's butt ending up in front of Grendel's face. Conceptually, it is also based on the esoteric practice of putting "giant mecha forms" from the Kamen Rider series, like [Breaking Mammoth] from Zero-One, [King of Arthur] from Saber, and a couple others.
- Yuuto's finisher with the Draconic Sword [Bantentaban], [Violent Bolide], is named after Kamen Rider Zero-One's Raiders' [-Bolide] finishers.
- During Kokabiel and Valper's requisite post-mortem explosions, all of the victors pose like the core nine members of Uchū Sentai Kyuranger as the following: Takeshi (Garu/Ookami Blue), Leon (Lucky/Shishi Red), Yuuto (Stinger/Sasori Orange), Grendel (Champ/Oushi Black), Irina (Hammie/Chameleon Green), Xenovia (Spada/Kajiki Yellow), Koneko (Naga Ray/Hebitsukai Silver), Pandora (Balance/Tenbin Gold), and Raynare (Raptor 283/Washi Pink). The reference for said pose is from the Novum Terram Fandom wiki's image for the Kyurangers.