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Chapter 472: Interlude 33

"No." Serafall deadpanned.

"Azazel, stop fooling around." Michael looked the same.

Gabriel just looked aloof.

"What about you, Red?" I asked.

"I\'m happily married, thank you." Red rolled his eyes.

"You guys suck." I huffed. "But seriously, I think everything went well!"

"Before or after we were attacked by a God and both my Sister and Serafall\'s sister were nearly killed along with a bunch of other people that came as guests?" Lucy said dryly.

"We will have to thank the Youkai officially." Michael mused. "I did not realize the extent of the help provided until I talked to my people in depth."

"Yeah..." I let out a sigh, slumping further in my seat. "Heard he saved Vali\'s head, literally. I need to have a talk with him, he\'s too ready to jump into a fight." I shook my head. "How\'s damage going on your guys\' end, Michael. Actually, I never asked about what was happening after the whole \'peace\' thing was brokered either."

Michael grimaced. "Not everyone was happy about a peace agreement between our factions."

"Us either." Serafall snorted. "But I could imagine your end got it worse."

Michael nodded. "A significant portion of our established Exorcists were close to rebelling. I sent Uriel down to quell their anger."

"....Michael, I don\'t wanna tell you how to leader your faction..."

"Brother, I\'m not a fool." Michael deadpanned. Which...was more expressive than I\'ve seen him in awhile. It\'s good to get him off Dad\'s chair every now and then. "Uriel was the best choice because he finally agreed with our decision, and he shared the same sentiments with those who desired continued hostilities."

"So we shouldn\'t expect a random invasion of Exorcists that broke off from the Church?" Serafall eyed him.

"I....admit that such a thing is a possibility, but the majority of it has been...stymied. Uriel did well to keep them held to the same beliefs while also accepting a peaceful coexistence."

Well, we can\'t really fault him for some fanatics breaking off and doing their own things. Shit, we all have to do deal with that crap. The instant the Devils want to throw stones, we can just point at the Old Devil Faction.

Not to mention my own little group that nearly caused another Great War not too long ago.

What a mess.

"How\'d Uriel convince them? His Charisma basically starts and ends at skewering the enemies of Heaven on his flaming sword." I pointed out.

"Ah....well..." Michael scratched his head. "He worded it in an interesting way."

"...I\'m hesitantly curious."

"He said, and I\'ll paraphrase – \'We do not have to live together with the Hell-Spawn. They are and will always be our enemies, but we now need not fear their invasions into our homes as they did before. But make no mistake, this is merely empty platitudes on the surface. The only change now is that we no longer kill any hellspawn on sight. Keep your swords sharp, and your spear close at hand, for there will still come a day in the near future you will need them.\'"

"...Not as bad as I thought." Serafall admitted. "And that\'s basically all we really wanted."

Right, no more kill first, ask questions never. Instead, they\'ll beat the shit out of any Devils that come into Church and Heaven territory, then interrogate them before figuring out where to go from there.

Which.....is admittedly a huge step up.

Obviously, borders are still strict, there\'s just not an open killing anymore on either side.

Mostly.

I think only my people were happy across the board. Sure, there were some idiots who whined and complained about not being able to kill Devils anymore, but....we weren\'t really doing that in the first place? And obviously no more tempting Angels and Church people so blatantly.

Which opens up the problem of recruitment.

We\'re going to need to make a think-tank to figure out where to go from here.

But that\'s for later.

"And what about Kronos announcing that Father kicked the bucket?" I finally asked.

Michael winced. "The ones we brought already knew...."

"Really?" I raised an eyebrow. "That\'s weird, the Church is usually really bad at forcing secrets to be kept."

Michael frowned, but didn\'t deny it. "We told them beforehand. Father Strada did well to speak to them and help them overcome their own difficulties."

"You should just make him the pope." I said offhandedly.

"....That\'s not how it works." Michael sighed.

I shrugged. "I could make it happen if you wanted. Just a little dab of something something into the current pope\'s wine glass, and whispering into some ears when they choose the next one~"

"Azazel." Gabriel\'s tone was...oddly stern. "If you hurt Grandpa, I\'m going to get very upset."

Did she still call him Grandpa?

Jeez, I still remember when he was still a kid trying his best not to ogle her boobs, and now he\'s like a Grandfather to her...

"I was joking." I put my hands up. "You could always have the literal living Saintess be the first female pope."

Well, my joke was met with blank faces from both Michael and Gabriel.

Holy shit, were they considering it?

No....

"Uh....so what\'s the deal with that?" Serafall asked. "I didn\'t want to play 20 questions in the middle of...everything, but yeah."

"We...don\'t know." Michael admitted. "It was without a doubt her, but It\'s too strange."

"Starting to be a pattern here..." I tapped my chin. "First off, why didn\'t you tell me that your mom had Mozart as her Queen, Red?"

"It was supposed to be a secret for now..." the new Lucifer sighed.

"Well, it\'s atleast taking a back seat to the fact that your mom planted a big sloppy one on your son." Serafall mused.

"Hah, is that going viral?" I chuckled.

"Oh yeah, there are pictures of it everywhere. Someone was recording, or a few people were, inside." Serafall grinned.

Nice!

I\'ll need to check out the Devil net later.

Frankly, I didn\'t really think it was that big of a deal. So what if Mama Gremory was banging his son. But it nettled Red, so I kept bringing it up every time I could. I don\'t know why, but seeing him squirm whenever we mentioned how his mom was spreading her legs for his bastard was just so satisfying.

"Can we focus on the issue at hand?" Red sighed in exasperation.

"I would like to stop hearing about certain proclivities, please." Michael smiled awkwardly.

"I don\'t understand." Gabriel tilted her head. "What\'s wrong?"

"Um..." Serafall clamored.

"Red\'s son, and mom are doing the horizontal tango." I replied.

"....." Gabriel still looked at me blankly.

"They\'re having sex and in a romantic relationship." I spelled it out more clearly.

"Oh." Her eyes lit up in understanding, but she immediately lost interest.

A lot of people seem to think Gabriel is some pure and naive woman, which isn\'t entirely the case. Sure, euphemisms go way over her head 99% of the time, but she\'s more than aware of what sex is. She just has almost zero interest in that kind of thing, so it\'s pointless to bring it up with her.

She\'s older than dirt and has watched humans fuck each other over the generations. It\'s barely going to faze her at this point.

Not to say she can\'t get flustered, but there\'s sort of a detachment from it normally. It needs a more personal touch to get past her initial boundaries.

Shit, there was someone who unintentionally did her a favor some years ago and she went to reward them. He asked her for her panties, she just took them off then and there and handed them to him with a smile.

"But yeah, we\'re getting off track." I waved my hand. As much as I loved to make Red uncomfortable over there, and I never thought I would have to consider this, we had bigger problems than Mama Gremory\'s boobs. "Right, Mozart, what the hell? You know I\'m a huge fan, why didn\'t you tell me!?"

"What were we supposed to do, Azzy? Just announce it to the world?" Serafall rolled her eyes. "It\'s already being whispered behind closed doors because we set up that thing to register new peerage members. But Momma Gremory having a long dead musician as her Queen? That\'s not going to go over smoothly."

"Fair." I acknowledged her point. "But is it really him? I mean, I don\'t want to sound insulting, just want to double check."

"Believe me, I checked." Lucy grumbled.

"Oh right, didn\'t you try to recruit him back when he was alive?" I blinked in realization.

Hah, no wonder he was salty.

If I remembered, his family were big music aficionados.

"Yes." Sirzechs looked like he wanted to stomp on the ground and say it wasn\'t fair. "So trust me when I say, that I verified that it\'s him."

"Shit." Was all I could say.

"I remember him. I recall he was a believer, but he never appeared in Heaven. I went to one of his performances before and I admired his talent." Michael smiled wistfully.

"He said he sold his soul to Music." Serafall snorted.

Hah, that\'s funny.

Michael seemed like he forced himself not to chuckle too.

But fuck!

"Alright, so can we do a head count?" I held a hand up. "We got the big titty Japanese woman, The big titty Scottish woman, Mozart, and now the big titty Saintess."

"Azazel, must you say it like that?" Michael sighed.

"Azazel, be nice." Gabriel pouted. "Jeanne is a nice girl, and I don\'t want you to speak about her like that."

"Alright, jeez." I huffed. "You sound protective. Well, oddly, more protective."

Michael\'s expression softened. "She always admired Jeanne D\'Arc greatly. In fact, she handed her a letter right before –

"Ah, don\'t say it!" Gabriel quickly went to shut her brother up, and she was looking adorably bashful.

"Wait, what\'s going on?" I needed to hear this.

"Hnn." Gabriel whined with another pout. "I just...asked her if she wanted to be friends..." She whispered.

Father\'s empty throne....that\'s way too cute and I don\'t even want to tease her.

Alright, Curvy Saintess is off the table in front of Gabriel.

Gabby needs more friends that won\'t hurt her.

"So we got four people who should be dead popping up around Lucifer Jr." I switched back to the topic. "Anyone else think there\'s something going on there." I was guessing that Mozart had something to do with him considering the obvious there.

"None of us are stupid, Azzy." Serafall replied. "Ajuka already brought this up before the whole Saintess thing. We\'ve been looking into it ourselves."

"...and?"

"Well, it\'s not like we have much to go on. We had some people check out where they were supposedly buried, which doesn\'t really tell us much in of itself..."

Yeah, that wasn\'t really any evidence or anything like that.

Ugh.

They were all confirmed too. Scáthach by Lugh, the Saintess by Michael and Gabriel and, well...I couldn\'t doubt her existence either. She had far too much of Father\'s blessing, which raised even more questions. But that wasn\'t something the Devils needed to concern themselves about. Especially with her apparently calling upon Father\'s power to protect the Church people from Kronos\'s attack.

That was something that we\'re scratching our heads about.

It\'s almost like....she tapped into Father\'s system somehow.

Regardless, thoughts for later.

Mozart was now confirmed by them, which I didn\'t have any reason to doubt.

And lastly, the busty Japanese woman was confirmed by Indra himself. Right in the middle of the hall he declared her his daughter.

Shit, he even invited her back to his home without even a second thought.

Seems like there are a lot of volatile things popping up all of the sudden.

"So we got nothing then." I frowned.

Well, that isn\'t entirely accurate. I haven\'t spent much thought on it, but.....I may have a few ideas worth looking into. Some of them sound crazy to even mention, but too many odd things are happening around Red\'s bastard to stick with just the plausible at this point.

It\'s time to start looking into it properly.

"I\'m guessing that Momma Gremory is being tight lipped?"

Serafall scowled. "She definitely knows, but she isn\'t saying anything. And apparently she got pissed at Red when he tried to push it."

Sirzechs didn\'t say anything, but his expression did more than enough to confirm what she said.

"There may be an opportunity..." Sirzechs said lightly. "Mother invited me to a dinner...and she\'s bringing him along."

"Oh wow." I blinked. "I can feel the awkwardness from here."

"You\'re telling me." Serafall snorted.

Well, let\'s see if he finds out anything of value.

My money is on him just scowling silently the whole time. That\'s basically been his default every time his Bastard is around.

Huh, I wonder how Grayfia will react. She\'s been.....distant too. Not that I spend much time paying attention to her other than to see if her skirt flips up high enough.

The more I think about it, the more I want to be a fly on the wall as I listen in on them.

"Can you record it?"

"Azazel, don\'t make me hit you." Red looked at me.

"Fine, fine." I rolled my eyes. "So, how\'s the situation on your end? Ajuka and the Baldie haven\'t come back yet, yeah?"

"We got an update a few minutes ago." Serafall nodded, and everyone got a bit more serious for the main topic. "From what we\'ve discovered, every major entrance to the underworld was attacked except for the ones under the Fallen Angels. It was brief and already over by the time we even left the building, and the damage itself was minimal."

"I\'m going to jump the gun here and say that we absolutely had no hand in this. If I was going to pull something like this off, I would attack our own as well to throw you guys off." I quickly defended ourselves.

"Relax, we know you aren\'t involved." Serafall huffed.

"And what was the objective?" Michael interlocked his fingers, looking deeply contemplative. "This whole situation is odd. Kronos was....is a Tyrant of legendary proportions. I do not see him as being someone who is whimsical in his actions."

Serafall and Sirzechs looked at each other silently.

"Alright, we\'ll talk about a few things." Red relented. "We had some information we hadn\'t shared yet. Stuff we got from....interrogating some of the Old Satan Faction people."

"....and?" I asked.

"We don\'t know." Sirzechs frowned. "We had compiled all the pertinent information, and held the prisoners and.....they\'re now dead and the stuff we gained was destroyed. They hit where we kept them and where we stored a bunch of the evidence we gathered."

"Guys..." I let out a long groan. "Did you really hold back important stuff like that?"

"Hey, we didn\'t know it was important. We barely even got anything valuable enough that led to leads." Serafall defended themselves. "It\'s not like you all send over every scrap of information you uncover about mutual enemies."

....true.

But lately, you guys have been dropping the ball heavily.

Not that I\'m really one to throw stones with Kokabiel, but the point still stands.

"So there was something you had that you didn\'t perceive as important, but that the Khaos Brigade thought important enough to initiate an operation of this scale to silence?" Michael summarized.

"So it would seem." Sirzechs nodded.

I pushed my annoyance to the side. "That opens up the possibility that they\'re working on more levels than we realize. If something slipped through your notice, we need to double our efforts to look into even smaller scale incidents."

Which was disconcerting in of itself. We already know they infiltrated probably every major Faction on the planet, but to know that even holding some smoking gun wasn\'t enough to point a finger was.....it was bad.

I guess it\'s entirely possible that this was a false flag and we\'re still missing the main point, but what are we supposed to do?

We\'re so far into the dark that we\'re grasping at anything we can.

"Well, let\'s look at the bright side." Serafall clapped her hands. "The fact that Kronos attacked us sort of united everyone, right? Even Zeus was being amicable. Not to mention Indra...."

Miracles can still apparently happen even after Dad retired to the farm.

"So....how about we talk about who to send to this team." I leaned in. "And I\'m vetoing both Rias and Sona, those two are far from being ready."

We hadn\'t really decided on who was going to participate from all sides, only that we agreed that it was going to happen. They still need to represent our factions as a whole, and frankly, those two girls were nowhere near up to the task.

"Dick."

"Dick."

They both said nearly instantaneously.

"I\'ll tell you what, if either of them can last against Vali for 5 minutes, I\'ll retract my words." I offered.

They both huffed and turned away.

Thought so.

Still, this was going to be a long talk now. We had to be united even more than before.

I just hope I can get the juicy details about this whole \'Dinner\' thing later from someone.

[***]

Loki POV

Oh what a wonderful day!

The sun is shining.

Well, the moon is.

But it\'s the thought that counts.

And a few annoying Devils are bleeding at my feet.

For some reason, they came down with a terrible case of knives in the back of their heads.

It seems to be rather contagious. And oddly enough, all reported cases have the same source of infection, running their mouths when they really shouldn\'t.

Odd thing that is.

I hummed as I cleaned off my dagger of the blood it had somehow accumulated.

"Apologies, what were you saying?" I glanced back up at one of the few Devils I actually had a smidgen of respect for.

Good old Rizevim didn\'t even bat an eye as I mutilated some of his annoying subordinates.

To be fair, they were just nameless nobodies. Not even of their sacred \'Pillar families\' or such other nonsense.

"I asked if you had acquired the eye." He sounded bored.

"Why, my dear friend, I certainly have." I happily tossed it onto the table between us. "The Titan King was more than willing to lend his aid."

"Hmm." Was his casual reply. "No trouble from him?"

"Mildly, but it\'s to be expected." I waived it off. "He doesn\'t trust us – for good reason – but he\'s willing to lend a hand. Aligning motivations and all that."

"As long as he doesn\'t cause problems."

Well, chaotic pieces are useful in their own ways. Even I can\'t predict how he will always act, let alone our enemies~

"By the way, I think I cracked that research you asked me to look into." I have to admit, his former subordinate....what was his name? Euclide..? Whatever it was. He was a very intelligent man. "We just need one of those Sacred Gears with something tangible inside to test it with."

His research into copying Sacred Gears was innovative, I must say.

Obviously there were significant flaws with his logic and skills, but it saved me a lot of time if I were to do it myself.

"I will find a suitable one." He responded emotionlessly.

"And how goes the Holy Grail?" I slid into a seat, propping my chin up. "I\'ve always been oh so curious about that little trinket."

To think that the Biblical God would imbue an object with his own Divine Authority and willingly allow mortals to wield it.

"The Vampire girl is weak." Rizevim frowned. "It will take some time to reach the state we need."

"Why not just take it from her?" I was surprised he didn\'t do so already.

"More convenient." He said simply.

I shrugged.

If he said so, I would believe it. He wouldn\'t be squeamish about ripping out a little girl\'s soul in the slightest.

"I\'ll be starting on the next plan." I tapped my fingers. "Pandora\'s Box has enough malice now."

"Do you still intend to accelerate the decline of the World Tree?" His eyes flashed briefly.

"Of course." I smiled happily. "Ragnarok has been held off for far too long."

"I will watch the show then."

"I hope you enjoy it."

It\'s always nice to find like minded people.

It\'s funny, I knew I could trust him completely. Someone who wouldn\'t even think twice about killing their own sibling if it meant they got a step closer to any goal they desired.

Simply because, we wanted the same thing and we wouldn\'t step on each others toes. His goals and mine didn\'t perfectly align, but at the end of the day, either was fine with us.

"How are you going to use the eye if the Grail isn\'t up to par yet?"

"I will use mother." He replied, once more without much expression.

Hmm, how diabolical.

Even I wouldn\'t use my mother in such a way. Yet this Devil would use his mother\'s mutated and disgusting body to resurrect a long Dead God.

What a pitiful woman.

I wasn\'t even sure her consciousness completely disappeared.

She\'s probably still trapped in endless torment inside her own mind if she hadn\'t broken yet.

And he simply doesn\'t care.

Maybe he\'s more ruthless than even I am? Because I still love my mother dearly.

"Oh, before I forget." I snapped my fingers, producing the orb that good old Kronos gave me. "The Titan king was kind enough to give me this. I know you\'ve been interested in that Half-Devil recently."

For the first time, he visibly reacted. Actually smiling, and expressing eagerness. "Thank you."

....weird.

But who am I to judge someone\'s tastes?

He\'s a thorn in my side, so if Rizevim wants to play some games with him, by all means. I was about to bring up the details of the whole \'team\' thing that those allied factions seemed keen on, but I decided to ignore it.

A bunch of children were beneath our notice.

Perhaps I\'ll have a use for them in the future, but for now, I wouldn\'t put much thought into it.

Odin definitely had a hand in things, and I had no idea what he was planning, so I wouldn\'t make too large a move on an obvious piece of his.

I would just keep an eye on them for now and see what they get up to.

Well, let\'s see what Odin\'s next move is.

Because if he doesn\'t have anything, Yggdrasil is going to burn.

[***]

A/N

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