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Chapter 311: Interlude 21

What a nightmare the past few days turned out to be.

The only reason I hadn\'t ripped Azazel\'s head off yet was the Fallen Angel we had tightly secured. Not to mention all of Kokabiel\'s wings were torn out, that couldn\'t have been pleasant.

Tearing a Devil\'s wing out? Painful as all heck, but they would eventually grow back with some healing. Tearing an Angel\'s Wing out? That\'s permanent and it\'s one of the worst things you could do to an Angel. I know from speaking to a few that they would rather be defiled and Fall than to have their wings taken. Their wings were basically their connection to Heaven, to the Big Man himself. To lose those was a fate worse than death.

Had to resist the urge to push all these papers away from me. I couldn\'t just ignore the problems and have the others handle everything this time.

We were.....surprisingly close to having things topple down despite our efforts.

And after what we did to the Old Satan Faction after Momma Gremory was kidnapped, they would have salivated at the chance to undermine us and push for war had things gone wrong.

Had...my Sona been killed....

"Serafall."

"Huh?" I looked up to see Ajuka giving me a look.

"It\'s getting cold in here."

I looked down at my hand, a little bit of frost had gathered where it was touching the table. "Oh, sorry." I chuckled awkwardly, going back to my papers.

Sirzy didn\'t even react, and that baldy Falbium was away dealing with other things. Which, translated to, he was too lazy to come all the way over here. Granted, he was sitting at the borders with the Fallen Faction, acting as a deterrent, but still.

Lazy bastard.

So, for now, it was just the three of us.

Atleast I don\'t think I was the only one getting angry the more we read. It\'s funny, we knew what happened, after talking to everyone involved....mostly everyone that is.

A certain group decided to disappear before we arrived, leaving us with many – many questions. But what were we supposed to do, go walk up to the Youkai and demand some answers? Yeah, that\'d go well, especially after they just saved our behinds.

Not to mention we apparently know very little about them now.

Jeez, it wasn\'t even six months ago that the Youkai were ignored because they were so.... insignificant. I mean, it\'s not like I wouldn\'t have loved to smooth things over with them after several incidents....that admittedly was had caused. But it was never at the top of the priority list and was constantly moved to the bottom of the list by other more immediate things. The Shinto Gods didn\'t really care much about the Youkai, so we in turn didn\'t really care about them.

When was the last time our interests intertwined? Or that we actually needed something from them? Hell, their strongest could be matched by so many of ours, and we outnumbered them like 100 to 1 at this point.

Then Sirzechs had to go screw the pooch and apparently pushed his bastard son away. Wasn\'t that a nice thing to find out afterwards.

\'Oh, by the way, I have a Son I didn\'t want to care for, so basically abandoned him in the human world. Don\'t worry, he\'s basically a human so it doesn\'t matter. What\'s this? He suddenly popped up throwing hands with a God?\'

Fucking Sirzechs\', I ought to smack him – again.

How much bullcrap have I had to deal with because of his \'inconsequential\' Half-Devil son.

And I work Foreign Relations.

Even Ajuka\'s been more than annoyed at having to deal with some of the domestic stuff. He\'s the unofficial \'moderator\' or whatever for the DevilNet.

He\'s been running some PR control since things have blown up, but it\'s like only putting a Band-Aid on a cut off arm.

If we hadn\'t taken full advantage of pushing the Old Satan Faction back, they would had blown this up even more and we would have been in a much worse position.

The hypocrites despise Non-pure Devils, but they\'d gladly tote him around if it meant sticking it to Old Red.

I skimmed over a document that listed our total loses from when a large group of Fallen Angels attacked one of our outposts along the border.

347 Dead, 1021 Wounded.

No notable names, so the old foggies wouldn\'t kick up too much of a fuss, but this was just one of dozens of clusterfudges that popped up over the last couple days.

"Ugh...." I let my head fall to the table, knocking away a stack of papers. "Do we have any good news? Anything? I\'d take a kitten being saved from a tree right now. Because if I have to read one more report of how many we\'ve lost, I\'m going to strangle Azazel when he finally shows up."

"....I suggest not reading pages 201 to 314." Sirzechs winced, pushing a few papers to the side himself.

"I move that we replace myself with baldy. All in favor!?"

"Denied."

"Double Denied." Ajuka snorted.

"Mou~ I hate this." I huffed, picking up another few papers in my hand as I began reading more reports. "But seriously, any good that came out of this mess?"

"We did discover a few bases that had been infiltrated by the old Satan Faction, coincidently, they were hit by the Fallen." Ajuka replied, not even looking up. "Which gave us a couple possible leads towards this Khaos Brigade and their operations."

"We didn\'t even find anything significant from turning over all those other places before. Did we really get lucky from something like this?"

"Don\'t know yet, we haven\'t had time to investigate with the...more immediate concerns right now."

I furrowed my brow at that. "What\'s the word with His Brightness?"

"Micheal....is still coming to the talks we have schedules. So far, those haven\'t changed, but...he requested some accommodations which we conceded to. Instead of it being just a handful of us, he is bringing along some other Seraphim to back him up.

"Oh my me." I let out a whine. "Please tell me he isn\'t bringing Metatron, he\'s sooo cringy, and not the good kind."

Ajuka snorted again, and I could tell he felt the same way. "No, it\'s not Metatron. He\'s bringing Gabriel and Uriel along with a few Hundred Angels."

"Well....can\'t really blame him." I grumbled.

The talks we had been planning for years and we finally found common ground enough to talk about peace. And they almost imploded by Azazel\'s stupid subordinate. The fact that Michael was still willing, even with some concessions, was good for us.

Still, the trust between us right now was.....flimsy.

And we were in a really weird spot where neither side could really afford an open war. We had recovered our population significantly, but we still lost so much between the Civil War and the Great War. If it came down do it, I doubted the Pillars would survive another huge crisis. And on Heaven\'s end, their population was still all but the same, if worse off since they can\'t really get more Angels. But damn if they don\'t have a Gun to everyone\'s head. If we truly fought, no one would win. We would push heaven far enough, and they would simply point all that stored power from being the most popular faith in the world. And It would come right down on our heads.

I didn\'t care for all the pureblood Devil nonsense, but I did have my pride as a Sitri. I didn\'t want to see my own, and the other Pillars go extinct.

I let out a sigh of relief when the Teleportation Circle on the other side of the room finally lit up.

Out walked Grayfia followed by Azazel.

"Heyo!" The Fallen Angel cheerfully greeted, only to be met by silence. "....tough crowd."

"Azazel." Ajuka gave him the same look he did me.

"Yeah, yeah." The Fallen Angel sighed. "Just a habit at this point." He found a seat opposite of us, falling into it with clear exhaustion on his face. "Sorry I\'m late, the meeting with Michael tool much longer than expected."

"And what\'s his stance?" Ajuka asked, turning his attention fully to Azazel.

"I finally got him and my other siblings to believe me when I swore on Father\'s name. That and I offered to go up to Heaven and hook myself up to the big chair and do it again where there\'s still enough Juice left to smite me if I did lie about it."

"So, Michael was willing to talk down the Church and the other Angels?" Sirzech\'s asked.

"It was a close thing....but yeah." Azazel sighed again. "You know how the humans are, so quick to raise their swords. I had to offer a lot of concessions and very publicly. Honestly, it was mostly about them verbally ripping into me that settled the fanatics. That and the fact that I handed over half a dozen Sacred Gears of decent power."

"How come you don\'t give your Sacred Gears to your underlings? You have a lot of them sitting on the shelf." I never really understood that.

"Angels can\'t use Sacred Gears." Azazel blinked, staring at me. "Did you not know that?"

I just shrugged. "Never really cared to ask before. Thought it was something about your beliefs or whatever."

"Pfft, yeah right. If we could, a bunch of my people would have spat on that immediately if they could. But no, we can\'t use Sacred Gears, something about it doesn\'t work well with Angel souls. If any of us tried to throw caution to the wind, well, it would rip us apart after a bit of time. Seen it a few times. I\'m working on something right now to overcome that.....but I keep getting forced into other issues so it isn\'t finished. But I give out a few every now and then to our non-Angel members, it\'s just....I\'d rather they don\'t\' accidently make their way back to the broken system."

Made sense, I guess.

"So you smoothed things out fully?" I asked.

"I wish." Azazel rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It\'s going to be awhile before things go back to how they were. Even ignoring the Vatican attack, which got scarily close to succeeding, 13 cardinals were attacked, four of them are dead."

Oof, yeah, Light Bright himself probably is having a hard time settling his human followers.

"Hmm..." Ajuka shuffled through some papers. "Yes I have the report here. Two of the attacks were with Fallen Angels disguised as Devils, which in turn had a group of more.....stringent believers immediately decide to counter attack after \'we\' supposedly failed."

"Yeah, just one of many other fuck ups throughout the day. Honestly, only about half of them were actually false flag operations set up by Kokabiel. The others came about by him playing each side against each other. We\'re lucky that Lucifer Jr didn\'t just kill Kokabiel, otherwise we wouldn\'t have a good scapegoat to parade around." Azazel shook his head in annoyance. "It wasn\'t just Devils and Angel either, Y\'know? He made sure that we were \'attacked\' too. The Fallen I had assigned here were killed and made to look like it was Devils. Among.....many other bases and outposts I had set up across the world."

Hehe, Lucifer Jr. Seeing that nickname for him, always made me giggle.

"The ones you told us about beforehand?" Sirzech\'s narrowed his eyes.

"Hey, I stuck to that agreement, don\'t get all Michael on me. I only sent some brats that your two sisters could handle if they bungled their job, which they apparently did. I had my own house cleaning today, and one or two...trusted hands I had to cut off. Kokabiel had apparently usurped their command without me even knowing."

Hmm, I remembered now. He asked us to send some of his mooks to watch over a few Sacred Gear users he supposedly identified. It wasn\'t....strange in of itself, he did that all the time. Being around our Siblings though, that was always call for concern.

In the end, we felt like it would be a good learning experience for Sona and Rias to \'manage\' their \'territory\' with \'hostile\' forces nearby.

Of course, it was supposed to be all smoke and mirrors.

"Our only saving Grace – pun intended – is that no one of.....worth was actually killed. Sure we lost a lot of people numbering in the thousands, but no one with enough clout to kick up a fuss and cause any long term problems. We\'re going to have to settle down the more hotheaded people under all three banners, but we can walk away from this relatively unscathed if we do it carefully." The Fallen Angel added.

"We\'re lucky that that Zekram was willing to side with us. I don\'t think he wants an open war either, but it\'s hard to get a read on him sometimes." Sirzechs let out a sigh. "Had to promise him a few things, but he\'s keeping the Older members from causing problems."

"He\'s suddenly had an interest in Wilhelm." Ajuka added. "He wanted a meeting, but we couldn\'t guarantee that."

"Well, the kid\'s a hot commodity right now. I kinda regret how I went about things last time. Didn\'t think he\'d be the one to save my hide. Now I\'m going to feel like an ass when I go apologize." Azazel looked thoughtful. "Oh well, should we get to the down and dirty details now?"

Sirzechs looked at Grayfia and she stepped over, handing him a stack of papers before silently going back to the side.

"That\'s the best report we have right now." Sirzechs explained. "We\'re still trying to.....verify some things. But right now, we\'re just assuming it\'s all true and preparing for any worse case scenarios."

"Hmm, best report? There should have been a lot more \'witnesses\' right?" Azazel asked, not looking up, but skimming the papers in his hands.

"My Sona-tan~ gave the most comprehensive one, so that\'s what we\'re working with. We crossed referenced it with the others. We had them each give their own recounts and then compared them. But this is the best we have right now." My Sona-tan, always so good at this kind of thing. I can\'t wait until I can steal her away and have her do all my paperwork!

"Wasn\'t Milf Gremory also there? Why isn\'t she here explaining things?" Azazel asked, looking up.

"....Please don\'t refer to my mother that way." Sirzechs sighed.

"And to answer that question~" I would happily be the one to say it, I knew Sirzechs was too embarrassed to. "Apparently, Momma Gremory got a little close to a certain Junior." I giggled.

Azazel opened his mouth and closed it again as if to process that. "Nice."

"Right?" I agreed.

"Time and place." Ajuka grunted.

"It\'s important." I said with a completely straight face. "Why else would Wilhelm come save our sisters if he wasn\'t banging your mom, Sirzechs?"

"Ugh." Sirzechs dropped his face into his hands. "Please don\'t\' say it out loud."

"Alright, alright." I rolled my eyes. He would have happily joined in if it were anyone else. "But seriously, we got lucky. She said that both our Magic Phones didn\'t work and any attempts at Teleportation were cut off. Somehow Wilhelm overcame that when she called with some strange gem."

"Huh, I heard something similar about him before. I think he has a method of Teleportation that I\'m unfamiliar with." Azazel tapped his chin.

"Not just you, go to page 12." Ajuka replied. "I also cant\' seem to understand it, and I\'m guessing this group is increasing."

Azazel flipped through several papers and his eyes widened. "What?"

"Yup." I popped. "As I said, we were really lucky."

"How sure are you?" Azazel looked uncharacteristically serious.

"Pretty damn sure, based on the context clues. Obviously, there\'s no definite proof, so we can\'t point a finger, but....."

"You think Loki was helping Kokabiel?" Azazel breathed out setting the papers down. "Father above, no wonder Odin called me!"

"Odin called you?" Ajuka questioned.

"Yeah, he was asking me about the whole meeting and stuff. He never cared about that before, but he was suddenly interested. No wonder! I was going to bring it up, but he seemed to want to participate."

"As an outside party, or an extension of the Norse Pantheon?" I narrowed my eyes.

"I don\'t know yet but.....he wouldn\'t normally care enough if it was just for himself." Azazel looked contemplative. "It\'s not really well known, but the Norse are in a mess right now. The Giants are very openly starting stuff again, and there are voices in the Asgard court who are calling for Ragnar?k to resume. Odin\'s son, Vidar, really isn\'t in a good position and the court as a whole hasn\'t been since the old man passed his throne over to him. A lot of people don\'t like that the youngest of Odin\'s children is leading them, thinking it should be Thor or Baldur, even if those two are fine with it."

Of course it\'s always some bullhicky like that.

"Seriously?" I looked skeptical. "Why would they want their own apocalypse? That just sounds silly."

"Hell if I know." Azazel threw up his hands. "But I\'m pretty damn sure Loki\'s the mastermind behind it. The Old bastard hinted at that too and told me to be careful in not so many words."

"This....this is big." I began thinking of all the possibilities. "If we could get an agreement with the Norse, that would give us a lot more legitimacy with other factions."

"We\'re getting ahead of ourselves." Sirzechs tapped the table, thinking carefully from the look on his face. "Lets worry about our own business before talking about including to outside Pantheons."

"Alright, we\'ll talk foreign politics after." Azazel waved his hand. "But if Loki was helping it makes sense why Níeh?ggr appeared. If there was any Norse God that Dragon would listen to, it\'s probably Loki who has just as bad a personality."

"Among other interesting things about that dragon." Ajuka flipped a page. "And we now know the source of the one that appeared in Japan. Thanks to your...agent, you provided some more details."

"Yeah, that too" Azazel sighed again. "Vali has been raging ever since I picked him up and so has Albion. He came to me and demanded I make a spell to help Albion get a body like Ddraig apparently does."

"Atleast we know where both Dragons are currently. Never a good thing when one of them abruptly pops up, it usually leads to a large disaster." Though, the person who possessed the Sacred Gear in question was the bigger issue.

"Well, I noticed it in his fight with Susanoo, but I wasn\'t\' 100% sure." Azazel shrugged. "But yeah, confirms it, I guess. Somehow that kid got his hands on the Boosted Gear. And it explains why Yasaka didn\'t care about my help in transferring Sacred Gears if he was able to get one himself."

"Do you have any idea what he did?" Ajuka asked, no absence of interest in his voice when the topic of spells usually comes up. "How was he able to create a fake body of another dragon, and apparently put Ddraig\'s soul into it from what we were able to gleam."

"I haven\'t got a single clue." Azazel shook his head. "It\'s not like I\'ve had time to sit down and contemplate it. I\'ve been running damage control almost 24/7 since the incident."

"Chalk it up to him being a Magical Genius?" I snorted. "Gets around a Teleportation Block that an apparent God of Magic put up. Then creates Ddraig a new body and lets him come out of the Sacred Gear."

"Whatever, I\'ll care about it later when I can sit down and try to go through it." Azazel grabbed his papers again, flipping through them. "Do we know anything about the people he brought with him?"

"The one who fought Loki was Scáthach." Ajuka plainly stated.

"You\'re sure?" Azazel blinked.

"They heard him speak her name, and it matches her description. Wielding a Demonic Spear, using Norse Magic. And fought Loki until he retreated. Oh also summoned the Gate of Skye, incase that wasn\'t enough"

"No chance of a reincarnation or spirit inheritor?"

"Not unless she sequestered herself away from decades to train herself, then randomly decided to appear now."

"Fuck." Azazel spat out. "I heard the rumors, but I was hoping they were rumors. That\'s going to get the Celtic Pantheon annoyed. Not to mention it brings up many questions – like, how is she alive. I actually met her before, when I visited Yasaka, but.....I guess I was hoping I was wrong."

"It would explain Wilhelm\'s Magical Talent too." I spoke up, earning their attention. "If she taught him, well, how many other teachers are at her level in the world?"

There wasn\'t any argument against it, so it was a safe bet based on everything.

"Wait, wasn\'t that Dragon supposed to be dead too?" I realized it just now.

"Oh, that\'s not that surprising. It\'s supposedly come back a couple times in the past, but this was the first time it came back from total destruction. So, everyone thought death stuck for that Evil Dragon finally, and that it\'s been so long. Apparently, It absorbed a lot of life force from eating the roots of the World tree to the point that as long as Yggdrasil exists, he can keep coming back eventually." Azazel explained briefly.

Oh, didn\'t know that.

Made sense too.

"But why are you so upset about the Celtics? They don\'t really come out anymore." I would know, I\'ve tried to reach out only to be denied.

".....You didn\'t hear this from me, but Michael had been in talks with Lugh and Odin when the Fae first started appearing, before the whole mess in Japan. They\'ve been popping up and they all agreed to pull resources to push them back out. It\'s the first time the Celtic Pantheon had made any overt moves in years no centuries, and they have a sort of agreement with Heaven, so it\'s going to carry over to us most likely."

"I remember hearing something about Heaven having agreements with them. It\'s one of the reasons that even the Human side of things didn\'t see their culture completely destroyed and that even the Church left important places and religious practices of theirs alone over there." Sirzechs commented, tapping his finger again.

"Yeah, in return, Lugh agreed to lend a hand every now and then. He got along with Dad pretty well back in the day. Probably because they\'re similar Deities." Azazel replied.

"Hmm, this is the first I\'ve heard about the three way agreement. What kind of support are they offering to each other?" Ajuka asked.

"Well, it\'s mostly to protect their followers. Not much they have to worry about themselves. I think Odin was having the Dwarves start pumping out Iron Weapons. And Holy Stuff from Dad\'s corner seems to be a good counter to Fae Magic, so Michael was having his priests team up with Lugh\'s Druids who could find the pathways that were opened up to the Fae realms."

"No wonder we haven\'t heard much noise about Fae coming from there." I wish I had known this earlier. I could have used this knowledge to maybe squeeze us into the agreement, lend a hand, get some goodwill or even some talks. Would have been worth it even if we had to spend a lot of money.

"They\'ve been handling things pretty well, until, you know, the Wild Hunt popped over to Japan." Azazel snorted.

"I think we\'re getting off topic." Sirzechs stopped his tapping, shifting in his seat.

"Yeah, yeah, where were we?" Azazel went back to the papers in his hands. "The Girls he brought with him."

"Mmm, from what Sona and the rest said....they looked....intimate?" I offered. "I asked Momma Gremory, but she just said it wasn\'t her place to say."

"Huh, so the kid has a harem already? You must be so proud." Azazel smirked towards Sirzechs.

"Maybe if his mom wasn\'t a part of it." I giggled again, making the red-headed Satan double facepalm.

"Can we focus?" Ajuka interjected.

"I\'m always willing to focus intently on Milf Gremory." Azazel\'s eyes sparkled in amusement. "But yeah, important stuff. We can admire Sirzechs\' mom after."

Well, I\'ve admired her once or twice myself and had to change my panties afterwards.

Sirzechs just opted to sigh again, ignoring the fun poking.

Ajuka wasn\'t actually getting annoyed, which made me think he also found it funny. But he was keeping a straight face through it. That or he just realized the situation was completely crap and was letting us have our small bit of fun.

"Moving on." Ajuka finally decided to end it. "Let\'s talk about the Excalibur Fragments that turned up. I\'m sure Michael is going to be interested in what happened to them."

"Well..." Azazel scratched his head. "Kokabiel was actually with me when it first happened and I honestly had no idea he was the one who stole them. Thankfully he didn\'t get all of them, but it was enough to apparently reforge a portion of the original thing."

"Did Loki help remake that thing?" I questioned. "Otherwise, I don\'t know why they haven\'t remade it already."

They already had a lot of different Holy Swords in their vaults, I don\'t see why they would keep it in pieces when a stronger singular sword would most likely be better.

"No." Azazel grunted. "The form he took – to look like a Priest."

"Sona and Rias said something about that. And one of Rias\'s peerage members said he recognized the priest? Kiba had some history or something I think." I flipped through a few pages until I found what I was looking for.

"The Holy Sword Project, I\'m aware of it." Sirzechs shifted in his seat. "It\'s how Rias found Kiba and added him to her peerage. He\'s the only survivor of it and that Priest was the one leading it before he got excommunicated. They experimented on kids to see if they could give them the Holy Power to wield Holy Swords. I wouldn\'t be surprised if he was the one who remade the sword."

"I haven\'t been able to investigate, for obvious reasons." Azazel sighed. "But that\'s right, that guy was thrown out awhile ago, but Kokobiel, in his infinite wisdom, thought it a good idea to secretly reinstate the majority of the excommunicated Priests that he brought with him to further inflame everything. I think Loki killed him at some point and started running around with his face....hopefully only in a metaphorical sense."

Hmm... Sona said that there was a another mad Priest who wielded the sword, and when we reached out to Michael in an official capacity, he denied that they were working under the Church. And he also littered the outside of the school with the corpses of his....henchmen? Subordinates, or whatever you wanted to call them.

All the excommunicated people he grabbed hold of, he thought it was good enough to just have their bodies be present when he tried to kill Sona and Rias.

Unfortunately, Michael was intent on retrieving the sword but we didn\'t have possession of it currently.

"Any word on the one who took the reforged Excalibur?" Sirzechs asked.

"Nope." Azazelpopped. "The little lady who took it – according to your people – is the same one who wielded a Sword that apparently put that one to shame. And that\'s not even mentioning the Sheath that turned into a shield. Honestly, I\'m starting to wonder if Dad was the one who ripped off the real thing here. "

There was....a strange silence that came over the room. The Whole Excalibur wasn\'t something to be dismissed. If wielded by a competent person, it was a threat even to us if it was complete. From what we were able to gleam from their fight with the makeshift version, it was still diminished from its prime.

Maybe adding more pieces would increase its Holy Power?

"It left me breathless." Ajuka read off the paper infront of him with a tired expression as he shifted back to us. "The Holy Sword didn\'t burn them even when they got swept up in it." He furrowed his brow in confusion.

"Hey, don\'t ask me, I really have absolutely no idea. She called her sword – Excalibur. And no way was Dad\'s toy putting out that kind of power. But on a side note, we have a pretty good idea of what happened to the Pendragon Family awhile ago. And Michael is also more than aware of such an absurd burst of Holy Power and he\'s scratching his head too."

"So does this mean that the Youkai are linked to the Pendragon Family?" I bit my lip, voicing my thoughts out loud. Neither were anything of significance previously, but with how things suddenly turned out, we had to pay attention to them and their allies at this point.

"Worth remembering, but unimportant right now." Ajuka replied before looking at Azazel. "So you have no idea about this Holy Sword? Neither does Michael?"

"No idea." Azazel shook his head. "Believe me, if Michael had a weapon like that, it wouldn\'t be unknown."

"He\'s probably interested too?" I quirked an eyebrow.

"Oh yeah, I promised him I would try and look into it."

Hmm, maybe we can use this too?

"So we have absolutely not idea." Sirzechs rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Something that powerful right under our noses, and not a single one of our factions knows?"

"Yeah, it\'s weird." Azazel shrugged.

"Which seems to be a habit when it comes to him." Ajuka adopted a contemplative look. "Every time I tried to analyze that Magic he uses, es back with stranger results and I can\'t get anywhere with it. It seems like many strange and inexplainable things keep happening around him."

"Preaching to the choir here." Azazel grumbled in response. "I\'m still stuck on how he managed to bypass Dad\'s prison for Ddraig. That should definitely have been impossible, but it\'s not even the strangest thing I heard about that whole fight."

"Right, we\'ll get to that after." Ajuka looked back down. "Two more strangers – a blue skinned woman? I believe she identified herself as \'Jinn\'? And she looked almost exactly like her name sake."

"They come in all shapes and colors. I haven\'t seen a Djinn since that one I hooked up with when the Church was still crusading." Azazel smiled wistfully. "Don\'t know why she would name herself after her race though."

"I thought they were extinct." I frowned. "The Church did a number on the region when, as you said, they were crusading."

"Nah, there\'s still a few hundred here or there." Azazel shook his head. "They just don\'t like connecting with any other factions. Too many times they\'ve been taken advantage of."

Yeah, I could see that.

"According to everyone present, she showed a masterful use of Magic." Sirzechs looked like he was rereading a few pages. "How many Fallen were bombarding them only for her to hold it off without much effort?"

"Yeah, impressive, I guess. Though, Kokabiel didn\'t have many powerful subordinates. Most of his Legion were two winged angels with the random four winged one thrown in. I think he preferred that to be honest."

"Was it always like that?" I questioned.

"Oh yeah." Azazel\'s eyes lit up with a hint of nostalgia and even a little pride. "He was one of Heaven\'s best Generals. He would take in the....weaker of our numbers and lead them to defeat much more powerful enemies. I..." Azazel let out a sigh. "I guess he couldn\'t ever let go of those days and didn\'t know how to live if he wasn\'t warring again."

I might feel pity for him if he didn\'t try to restart the war and was going to get my Sona killed to do it.

"And the last and maybe even more problematic one...." Ajuka frowned and I couldn\'t help but feel a similar sentiment.

"The woman who for some reason, Indra decided to lend his weapon to." Azazel snorted in barely held annoyance. "No idea what that ass is thinking. He despises us and now he interfered in some way? I think he could match pops when it came to his future sight, which makes him all the more confusing.

"You think he had another kid?" I asked, looking around the room. "I know that the Gods these days try not to make any new Demi-Gods, but one pops up every now and then."

"If he did, then it just makes me question what for." Azazel looked tentative. "That one never does anything without a reason."

"Maybe it was a replica?" I offered.

"Yeah right." The Fallen Angel scoffed. "That bastard would never let anyone replicate his weapon. He\'s not like Thor who would happily have people running around with Fake Mjolnir\'s, he would start smiting if he found out."

I\'d take his word for it. The Hindu Pantheon was one that we had absolutely no contact with. Not for lack of trying either. We may as well be regular humans to them in how much they ignored our existence.

"The Shinto Gods aren\'t going to like it if he\'s putting his hands over to Japan again."

"He\'d have to be stupid to do something so blatant right now. Especially with how the Winter Queen made them go on high alert. I heard that even Izanami is up and about and pissed off." Azazel replied.

"That was something I wanted to ask. My own sources were vague, can you tell us more about this Winter Queen?" Ajuka asked.

"That\'s going to need a few drinks and an even less formal get together." Azazel scowled. "Let me put it this way, I would rather deal with Lucy again than have anything to do with that lot. Atleast with Lucy, you could count on him to act evil for the sake of it, or to do whatever he could to spite Dad. The Fae, though, they\'re fucking bonkers and you never know what ridiculous shit they are going to do. Only that you\'ll regret it in the end."

That didn\'t bode well.

Atleast we don\'t have anything to do with them, so we can just watch from afar.

"Well." I clapped my hands. "Time to talk about the man of the hour himself!" I happily declared, though everyone else looked like they were sucking a lemon. "Apparently, he\'s the new Red Dragon Emperor, I\'m sure we\'re going to get very little flak for him not being with our faction after that reveal."

I don\'t think my sarcasm was missed.

We were already getting called out on the fact that Wilhelm wasn\'t part of the Devil faction, and it was obvious.

Another Devil that could fight Gods, and he wanted nothing to do with us. The Old Satan Faction didn\'t even need to do anything, most were pissed at that. It was no secret Devils worshipped power, and to know that we missed out on such a powerful Devil, well, people were angry.

Especially reincarnated Devils or Half-Devils. Both of which.....lacked any significant representation in our government. Not that we didn\'t have their best interesting at heart....relatively speaking. But who could they point to and idolize as \'one of them\'?

I don\'t think the kid even knew that he had such a huge fan following in the underworld.

Maybe If Momma Gremory kept screwing him, he might come around to us?

Should I ask her?

That would be a fun conversation.

\'Hey, Momma Gremory, we need you to spread those amazing legs of yours for the betterment of the Devil Faction.\'

Hell, I\'d join in if it meant it would work.

Well.....Admittedly, I just want to take that woman for a ride myself.

Kind of jealous there.

She turned me down back when she was still with her Husband, before Rias and Sona were born. I never really tried anything since then. I guessed it would be weird since she had seen me a bunch of times when I was a kid.

"And with what Lady Gremory said before, and what we\'ve witness thus far, he appears to be a very masterful Magician. I would call him a Genius at this point, and that might be too light a word. How long ago was he just living a normal life without any supernatural awareness?" Ajuka also commented.

Yeah, that\'s a little hard to believe.

Less than a year.

Less than a year ago he was a kid who didn\'t even know he was a Half-Devil, and now he\'s taking out Seraphim and fighting Gods.

That made everyone go silent again.

How long did it take us to get to this level?

And we haven\'t even seen him use the Boosted Gear to its full capabilities. How strong was he exactly?

"It\'s interesting and everything, but I\'m focused much more on something else, something both Michael and I shared confusion with." Azazel finally spoke up.

"Oh right.....that." I felt a headache coming on.

"The fact that he apparently wielded the strongest Holy Weapon Father ever made, and used its Balance breaker, becoming an Angel while it was active." Azazel looked utter dumbfounded as the words left his mouth. "Do I really need to say how impossible this should have been? Half-Devil, Full Devil, just touching the damn thing should have turned him to ash, I don\'t care if he\'s fighting Gods. That\'s just not something you can ignore."

"First the Sword, and the Spear now." Ajuka spoke up. "Is it possible they discovered a way to prevent Devils from being affected by Holy Power?"

And that was a....chilling thought.

Not so much that I wouldn\'t love to have such a thing, but the idea of it would lead to, well, war probably.

If Devils suddenly lost their biggest weakness.....would they be content to allow Heaven and the Fallen to dictate any terms to them?

Not to mention that Michael and Co would do everything they could to stop that kind of information from spreading.

"Does he share a similar theory?" Ajuka looked rather serious, and it\'s obvious he came to the same conclusion that I did.

"He would be stupid to not consider it." Azazel said plainly. "And the theory only gains credence due to what happened to Kokabiel. You said that he was completely stripped of his holy Power. Even if his wings were gone, he should still be full of the stuff if....diminished."

"Yeah....He barely felt more than a human to be honest." I replied softly.

"He\'s going to try and ask for the Spear back, from us, isn\'t he?" Sirzechs asked.

Azazel winced, showing that Sirzy hit the mark.

"He does know that we have nothing to do with him, right?" Sirzechs was, notably, not shrinking back when the topic of his bastard was being discussed.

".....He\'s been questioning that based on what happened."

"I can\'t even fault him for that." I groaned. "It does look like we\'re related....you know, besides the obvious..." I muttered under my breath.

And I guess technically we did have a link with him in the form of Venelana.

I was joking before, but maybe we should pressure her to bring him back?

Hell, we have plenty of women if that\'s his thing. He had a Harem, so he\'s definitely got a love for women. Maybe we can use that for our benefit?

Just have to figure out what kinds of girls he likes. Well, several of them were busty and had wide hips, so that\'s a good place to start. Did he screw Venelana just to piss of old Red, or does he just like her as a woman?

Could be both, I guess.

I would need.....details from her later.

Lots and lots of details.

"So even if Michael is still coming, he\'s probably going to be asking for impossible things." Sirzechs tapped his finger on the table.

"I have a suggestion that might help." Azazel offered.

"A suggestion that could smooth things over?" Ajuka repeated. "If it could land us an official Peace Treaty, then by all means."

"Why not invite the Youkai to join in and work an agreement with them as well?"

"Are you serious?" I blinked at his answer. "You do realize we\'re almost universally despised by them, right?"

"And who do they hate more right now?"

I was about to respond until I realized exactly what he was talking about. "You want to use the attack to offer them peace and wash over all our past actions?"

That....wasn\'t a bad idea. They might just be willing to bury the hatchet if we supported them in their own war somehow. While we\'ve butted heads, we\'ve never thoroughly attacked them like the Fae have.

"But would our own people go for it?" Sirzechs questioned.

"Wouldn\'t they? Look at who\'s backing their corner now. Before you had Yasaka and Nurarihyon, both of which are notable and famous Youkai. Hell, only a handful of Devils outside of you lot would even be able to match them. And now, they have multiple people that can fight Gods, and a bunch of other powerhouses that just popped up with them." Azazel countered with a fairly decent argument.

"But why would they agree? We aren\'t exactly warring with them right now, and they with us. Why would we need an official peace treaty?" Sirzechs furrowed his brow. "We could always draw up some kind of agreement outside of this meeting if needed."

"Would they want anything if it wasn\'t something on this level? Yasaka hates us, Fallen and Devils, maybe Angels too. I don\'t think she\'d want to trade or anything like that with us if she didn\'t absolutely have to. But a Peace Agreement that\'s back by other factions? That might be worth her wile."

If the Celtic and the Norse get involved, then it gives more authority to any agreements we come up with. That may just work out, granted, it would follow up with concessions from us for past grievances, but it might be a pittance in comparison to getting a full peace with Heaven and the Grigori.

"And if we invited them, Michael would probably accept just so he could get a chance to meet with Wilhelm." I bit my lip, thinking it over. "And at that point, we could easily just direct him towards the Youkai when he comes asking for the Spear. It would be easy to just wipe our hands with that whole thing."

"And his little group were directly involved. Michael would want to hear from an outside source either way." Azazel nodded along. "And I can say for sure that Odin wouldn\'t be against it. He\'s shown.... interest towards the kid too. Just don\'t mention Izanami around him, they\'ve been feuding for a little while now."

I\'m still skeptical that Yasaka and Nurarihyon would want anything to do with us in this case. But.....if they joined in on an official Peace Treaty with other factions that would enforce it and not rely just on our \'word\' then that might sway them. Not to mention they could use the treaty to easily argue for aid when it came to their War with the Fae that attacked them.

Azazel did say that Heaven and Odin were in on another agreement about combating that particular nuisance. Would the Celts be against having a fourth joining in? If we brought them into and set them up with that, it would give us a lot of good faith that we previously didn\'t have.

"What do you think, Serafall?" Both Ajuka and Sirzechs turned to me. "You\'re the Foreign Relations expert here."

"Its\'....possible. We\'re going to need to work out some things, but I would say it\'s worth a try. Worse case, we\'re right back where we started and we\'re going to have a hard time with negotiations anyways."

There was no loss from trying to bring them in.

And it might put the Shinto Gods in a more open position for some talks as well.

They\'re barely better than the Celts when it came to seclusion.

I did hear that Wilhelm and Izanami had some kind of relationship, that could be a good door to have access to in the future.

"Alright, it\'s another avenue to look at." Sirzechs nodded in approval. "But for now, we need to talk about what concessions you\'re going to make, Azazel."

"Ugh, fine." The Fallen Angels sighed, taking out a few pieces of paper and tossing them onto our desks. "Those are a list of my notable assets for the Grigori. The ones I put a star next to are those that are....publicly \'valuable\' but that I couldn\'t care less about. The ones with a square are the less notable ones but I really don\'t want to lose."

"You\'re lucky we\'re just doing this as a formality." I snorted, looking at what he had to offer.

"Formality my ass, you\'re going to rake me over the coals when we go to the real meeting in a little while." Azazel huffed in annoyance.

Well, that\'s true, but it\'s also your fault, idiot.

It was just best that we got ahead of everything before presenting Azazel to the council and publicly shaming him like the Church did to make our people feel better. We\'re still trying for peace, we didn\'t want to actually cause huge tension between both factions.

We knew that he wasn\'t involved but we still had to be seen \'punishing\' the Fallen Angels for what happened.

It just so happened we were going to get some nice new stuff in the process~

As fun as this was to watch Azazel sweat as we carefully went over his stuff to take, I was more concerned with the upcoming Peace talks that were going to be held.

It was shaping up to be a much bigger event than we had initially planned.

***

Oh boy, long ass chapter and I\'m really late. Got no good excuse, was caught up looking into the latest WoW expansion after not playing for like 10 years.

So, something I wanted to talk about because people were getting upset about the whole \'Aura\' Thing last chapter. Let\'s assume the worse case scenario, it becomes an easily accessible thing for all of Devil Kind...what exactly does that change? Devils already have absurd tools available to them, they have Real Magic available to them. Not to mention, if any devil wanted, they could learn Touki which is much stronger than Aura in the long run and they\'re a long lived species. Wilhelm was only doing it because of some guilt he had towards Issei about stealing the Boosted Gear from him. There are very few acctual consequences in the long run.

Anyways, if you want to read 7 chapters ahead or support me, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / astoryforone