(New Leaf) Canicular - Seirios Pt. 1 (Patreon)

AN: I struggled so fucking hard with this chapter, I literally wrote the majority of it today. It will probably go through some changes and additions over the next two weeks as I write the next chapters, but here’s what I have for now. I plan on writing the “Seirios” finale section of the arc as one continuous piece that I just arbitrarily split into three or four parts to be their own chapters, and this is part one, which as I said, will likely get some additions, though the “when” on that is a bit more iffy, depending how on-schedule I can manage to be.

Old School Building Rooftop

The light of an unfamiliar star hung high above Kuoh Town, a softly-glowing pinprick of blue-white light that stood out against the empty cosmos of the early night sky. Most pedestrians didn’t notice at all, seeing as people don’t tend to look straight up for no reason, and of the few who did, most of those only dismissed it as an unusually bright star for so early in the night, before continuing with whatever they were doing before.

This was not the case for any of the town’s supernatural denizens and visitors who were in the know.

If Rias wasn’t convinced of the need to contact her brother before, she was now. This was getting out of hand, fast.

“Whoa,” Issei muttered, lifting his Boosted Gear to partially cover his eyes.

“What a brutish way to announce yourself,” Sona commented dryly, adjusting her glasses. “They’re practically begging for our attention, letting their power out that wantonly.”

“I don’t know, there’s something refreshing about how straightforward it is,” Rias countered casually, putting up a confident front to not let her inner thoughts on the situation leak through and lower morale. Sona glanced at her, seeing right through her anyway.

‘Remind’s me of an anime, in a way,’ Rias thought to herself, considering the waves of energy radiating from the ‘star’ practically yelling their intentions. She hummed, before crossing her arms under her bust and spoke to her [Queen] stood beside her. “Akeno, how would you say this one compares to last night? I can’t get a good read at this distance.”

“It’s getting brighter.” Koneko quietly pointed out from behind, her precious [Rook], wonderful [Knight], and foolish, darling [Pawn] all flanking her. Asia wasn’t with them on the roof, the vulnerable healer having agreed to stay inside with Gasper. If the prisoner started to break containment, then he might need someone present to send for help while he attempts to make his Sacred Gear work.

“It is.” Sona agreed. The light had already been hanging unmovingly in the sky for nearly half an hour, so any change was worth mentioning. The rest of her own peerage had already been sent out with the exorcist girls, to try assaulting the barrier around Kuoh the moment the ‘star’ first appeared. They had asked the exorcists to assist, and the two girls had agreed as a way of returning the favor for returning Destruction.

‘The further those swords are from Kiba-kun the better,’ Rias thought suppressing a sympathetic grimace. ‘Especially with Uzumaki-kun’s confirmation of that man working with Kokabiel’s sect. Nothing good could come from him hearing of that development.’

Even the blond ninja had disappeared. Where to, Rias wasn’t sure; she just knew that he was aiming to meet up with one of his contacts to go on the attack.

To the perspective of anyone on the other side of town and looking up, the star would have suddenly begun slowly moving across the sky, picking up speed as it went. For the devils though, it just started to get bigger and shine brighter.

The falling star was, in actuality, a Fallen Angel’s aura of Light brought to bear, roaring its presence to all who would hear its message.

“They’re coming straight for us,” Akeno commented idly, eyes narrowing at the growing blue light. Within moments, the Fallen had crossed enough distance to be discerned through their Light by the naked eye, and was still fast approaching. “And not very,” her [Queen] said, finally answering her question. “This one is significantly weaker than the one I fought. Still very dangerous, but barely even half the amount of raw power. If I were at one hundred percent, it’s possible I could defeat them myself, but not likely. I would have to have backup or get lucky early on.”

‘Alright, sound’s simple enough.’ Rias cocked her hip, lifting a hand upward and let her clan trait flow, forming a glowing orb of Destruction at her fingertips. “I should be able to handle her just fine, then.”

“If you could land a hit without getting hit yourself, yes. But that would mean you’d be actually moving in a battle for once.”

“I’m not that bad anymore,” Rias huffed, gesturing towards Kiba, who stood at the ready like a gentleman knight. “I’ve been training with-”

“Five seconds.” Sona interrupted, her long-time friend’s body brimming with her own demonic power waiting to be unleashed. “Be ready for anything, something’s strange going on.”

The rest of the Rias’s peerage readied themselves, tensing in preparation to defend and retaliate to any attack. Kiba created his [Holy Eraser] and made some distance so as to not clump up, Issei stepped up to stand by Rias’s other side with his free hand covering [Boosted Gear]’s green gem, and Koneko– ‘Are those Grimmjow's Desgaron claws?!?! So cool~!!’– moved to stand beside Akeno.

Sure enough, a gust of wind heralded the arrival of the source of the blue Light, who surprisingly slowed to a stop some distance away, silently hovering several dozens of meters away and above the devils. Far enough to have plenty of time to react to an attack and dodge, while close enough to have their voice heard by the enhanced senses of the devils.

Their energy was still blasting out of their body in a controlled aura, the pervasive Light putting the devils present into a state of instinctual discomfort and messing with their senses.

Rias surged her demonic power into an aura of her own, crimson laced with flickers of darkness, nearly matching the raw power of the Fallen and beating the Light back.

The Fallen in question was an eight-winged woman with the same blank mask and black cloak combo as the other two high-end Fallen the peerages had encountered, except her hood was down from the start, revealing short and messy black hair and glowing blue eyes.

Sona shifted when the Fallen didn’t immediately attack, and Rias suppressed a confident smirk when she felt what Sona was doing.

“Unknown Fallen,” her rival called out. “Identify yourself. Are you or are you not aligned with the sect of Fallen Angels disturbing the peace?” The garb the woman wore made it obvious, but Sona gave her a chance to try talking her way out of a confrontation anyway.

The Fallen stayed silent, their power suddenly pulsing and shaking in an odd way. Koneko and Akeno shared a glance.

“She’s laughing at us,” Koneko muttered to the group.

Rias frowned, only partially faked. If the woman was going to waste time, blasting out her power in a way that made it difficult to sense the subtle stuff, that was fine by her.

The woman was clearly in league with the troublemakers, so Rias had no intention of sparing her at all either way. She was just waiting for Sona’s much more subtle water magic, hidden by the clashing auras, to get in position. With the distance the Fallen was keeping, it would take more than a single potentially dodgeable attack to defeat the woman, so they were stacking the deck as much as feasible for a quick and efficient kill to save their strength.

“Speak up in your defense,” Rias demanded authoritatively, her orb of Destruction compressing to the size of a marble at the tip of her pointer finger. Multiple tendrils of water that were harder than steel snaked through the trees, preparing to strike from below to immobilize the target. “If you don’t, I will end you where you stand for the crimes of your associates.”

They already had one eight-winged Fallen captured, and containment was already a bit iffy. There wouldn’t be any mercy for this one. She would either leave Kuoh immediately, or die.

Koneko’s tail stiffened, and she and Akeno both spun around with alarmed expressions, getting a surprised glance out of her.

“Enough.”

Rias snapped around, half-turning to face the new voice even as she kept her bloodline ability aimed at the still-silent woman, even as said woman lowered her aura’s output to a much smaller area around herself.

“It would be a bit difficult for my herald here to meet your demands, little Gremory, Sitri.”

Floating up in the sky just behind them was another Fallen; a man with long, pointed elfin ears and blood-red eyes that encompassed the entire sclera, long and straight black hair that framed a sharp and aristocratic face, and wearing a high-collared multi-layer black cape with golden pauldrons over a black suit.

If it weren’t for the ten raven wings spread out behind him, Rias might have mistaken him for some foreign vampire lord.

“Kokabiel, I take it?” She acknowledged with a frown, taking in the situation and visibly shifting her aim towards him. Sona’s water was in position now, and the woman was much less of an immediate threat.

“You see-” The ten-winged cadre of the Grigori ignored her and continued, gesturing to the woman. “-Murzim here literally cannot answer you. She decided years ago that her voice wasn’t suitably dramatic enough for announcing my presence, and preferring to put on a show- like you saw moments ago- tore her own vocal chords right out of her throat.”

‘Her name is literally “Herald”? Or is it a title?’

The newly named Murzim reached up to pull her cloak down slightly, getting a wide-eyed glance and a double take from Issei as she exposed a long and jagged scar across her neck.

“Woah, what the fuck…?” Issei shivered.

Naturally, her perverted [Pawn] was obsessed with women of many shapes and sizes, so the proof of a woman, even an enemy, willingly self-mutilating like that? It probably hit him harder than most of the other violence he’s experienced before.

Kokabiel chuckled. “It was one of the most foolish things I’ve ever witnessed; she nearly bled out before the healers got to her, but I can’t deny that it was an interesting way for my subordinate to prove her devotion.”

“How expectedly barbaric of your kind,” Akeno scoffed, electricity sparking at her fingertips. “Is there a point to this chatter, or are you simply trying to unnerve us for your own amusement?”

“The point, daughter of my brother-” Kokabiel drawled, smirking thinly when her [Queen]’s expression suddenly turned murderous. “-is that stories like that are hardly unique among our kind. We are Grigori, Angels who turned our backs on Father, on the seven heavens themselves, all to pursue our own ambitions with our own strength, no matter the price! And my ambition? Mine is to take us to our rightful place at the top.”

Kokabiel’s menacing smirk, which had been widening the entire time as he spoke, suddenly twisted into a snarl. “We were winning the Great War when the ceasefire was called! The Devils were fragmenting into civil war, while Heaven was weaker than it had ever been, and all the while our own numbers grew by the day! If it weren’t for those damn fools I call my brothers and sisters choosing peace over victory, all would be ours, our strength unmatched!”

He stilled before smirking again, lifting a hand from the inner folds of his cap to gesture around him. “And so here we are. By stealing the most venerated holy swords of the church, killing the siblings of the two Maou most dedicated to maintaining this fragile excuse of a peace, and framing the church’s exorcists for it, I will restart the Great War and cement the Grigori as the strongest faction!”

“What?!” Issei yelled in outrage, stomping on the ground while still clutching his gauntlet. “As if we’d let you lay a finger on Buchou, you castlevania-knockoff freak! Her perfect oppai are mine!”

“You’re delusional!” Akeno spat. “Even if you had numbers, you’ll never have enough power to defeat Sirzechs, let alone God himself.”

“Yeah, what Akeno-senpai said!” Rias’s [Pawn] needled, any nerves over the situation seemingly disappeared.

Kokabiel’s smirk twitched.

“Stronger beings than the imposter Lucifer have been killed in the very war we were winning, girl. True strength is more than just raw power. It’s skill, strategy, timing, even luck.” He looked down at Akeno with grim amusement. “Even ‘The Strongest’ can fall, if the circumstances are right.”

“The heavenly dragons,” Sona surmised instantly, making Issei pause and shift awkwardly.

Kokabiel just chuckled, not deigning to confirm or deny.

“Regardless,” he moved on with a sigh, his smile thinning coldly as his eyes narrowed. “With Sellzen missing, and my original plan for the Excaliburs being derailed so thoroughly, the last bit of fun I had planned for this operation has been ruined. Even so, you may rejoice!” He flourished his hands and held one out towards the silent woman. “As some of my officers have requested a chance to gain accolades, they will be the ones to occupy you, salvaging the situation and serving as the replacements for my entertainment!” His fingers curled, the middle finger and thumb connecting. “Murzim, if you would.”

He snapped, and Murzim’s aura surged anew, reaching upward like a beacon toward the sky.

Within seconds, Rias felt more than saw the two more ‘stars’ appear far above them. Rias looked up, and witnessed a dark purple meteorite come crashing down into the forest a ways away like a bomb, sending up a dust cloud over the wooded canopy. The other Light in the sky, a dark red glow, shot off further south before fading out, moving towards the group attempting to assault the barrier to get a message out.

She looked back down to see a line of trees falling in a path towards the club house, and an absolute unit of a man bearing six wings barreled out from the wood line onto the lawn in a spray of shattered tree trunks. Towering well over six feet, bald and shirtless with bulging muscles on his bulging muscles, the man looked like the stereotypical anime depiction of strongmen and wrestlers everywhere. The size of his body made his wingspan look small in comparison.

“I had originally wanted to have you battle hellhounds,” Kokabiel commented casually, “but I’ve decided that would be a dull challenge without the inclusion of Freed. Therefore, until I grow bored, you will face two of my captains. I will not personally intervene or harm you devils in any way, not even if you are able to defeat my subordinates.” Kokabiel assured the devils with a smirk. “Wezen, Murzim… fight to your hearts content.”

Kokabiel rose and drifted backwards, laying back as if he was leaning on an invisible surface.

“Finally!” The muscle-bound man roared with a wide grin in a deep baritone, spreading his arms wide with clenched fists. “Some fucking action!! Which one of you pipsqueaks can take the most hits!?!?”

The blue aura of Murzim blazed behind them once more.

Rias glanced to the side, meeting Sona’s eyes. The Sitri nodded.

Then Koneko stepped forward, staring down at the massive Fallen, her claws at the ready.

“Perv, hit me.”

Xenovia turned around just before they crested the hill near the outskirts of Kuoh, beyond which was where the barrier’s border lay some distance away. Only humans and light-aligned beings could freely pass through it, so it was up to her and her partner to help their hosts get an emergency call out. Looking up into the sky, she readied Durandal and out to the others with her usual calm seriousness. “Enemy incoming. Hup!”

Even as the faithless humans-turned-devils around her reacted in perfect synchrony, readying spells and swords and fists alike in expectation of some form of attack, Xenovia had already raised her sword and was swinging down, unleashing a cutting shockwave that tore its way into the rapid-fire rain of blood-red Light spears bombarding their positions, shattering their energy into little more than a sparkling light show. The few clusters that escaped her destructive wave by virtue of being on its outskirts were still blown wildly off course, scattering mostly-harmlessly around the Sitri aligned devils instead of into their ranks.

The barrage continued, and so did Xenovia’s swings, her focus on defending through the use of unstoppable offensive power as the glow of scattered energy around her brightened further and further the more spears she destroyed, until all she could see was red.

“Look out!” One of the [Knight] girls shouted out needlessly. Xenovia already expected the enemy before she’d even made a sound.

A silhouette blitzed through the upper side of the glowing haze in a burst of speed, a cloaked arm outstretched and spearing down for her neck with a knifehand.

Xenovia didn’t have time to dodge, and wouldn’t have attempted to either way. She was already acting purely on instinct and faith, feeling that her last swing was enough to destroy the last of the barrage, and instead already redirecting follow-through into an all-out attack, just the way she preferred.

Proving her belief, a golden blur swung up almost faster than she could see and Irina appeared at her side, parrying the speeding limb up and over both their heads.

The enemy combatant didn’t even have time for his eyes to widen beneath his mask before Durandal passed between them like warm butter, both halves of his body being blasted away in a spray of gore an instant later as the shockwave hit.

The hill was silent for a moment as the dust settled, the exorcists and devils standing on untouched grass within a ring of cratered earth. Outside of the circle some meters away, two long sections of grass were stained with misted blood and fresh fertilizer as red as the fading Light energy.

“Was that it?” The lone male devil called out in confusion. “The rest of us didn’t even have to do anything, they must be stupid to think that one guy was enough to stop us! Do we even know how many wings he had?”

“Oh, I saw!” Irina confirmed, fiddling with Mimic’s shape beside her, the shards of Excalibur Rapidly partially sticking out of its current form as an eastern-style buckler shield.

Despite the sword having been shattered into pieces, being incorporated into its sister sword even as haphazardly as it was allowed some of its power to continue being channeled, considering they were originally the same sword anyway. A crude, borderline blasphemous solution, but one that worked.

Though they’d only interacted briefly, Xenovia resolved to once more thank the honorable blonde who’d returned Destruction to her when they next meet. His name was Uzumaki Naruto, if her memory served her correctly.

“She has-” Irina glanced at the viscera. “... Um, had, three pairs.”

It didn’t truly matter, Xenovia knew. The amount of wings an Angel had just represented their limits, not their actual power. More wings usually came with more power too, but having a lot of power didn’t mean you had the ability to channel it all at once correctly. The opposite was true too. Being capable of channeling vast amounts of power at once didn’t mean they had greater reserves of power than another who could barely create a single spear of Light per minute.

She knew all of this intuitively, not even having to actively think about it for a moment; just an instinctual understanding. She herself had needed the church alchemists to seal most of Durandal’s power, just so she could control it safely at all. An Angel’s wings were the same, but in reverse.

The point being, that Fallen was relatively fast, but weak, having spent the entirety of their reserves on the barrage of spears as a distraction to close distance safely.

“Stay vigilant,” the [Queen] of the Sitra peerage came to the same conclusion as Xenovia, warning the rest of the group who had already started to relax. “They’re trying to test-”

The Shinra flung her arm out, and a large ornate mirror appeared behind one of the spellcasters of the group, a sonic boom ringing out. The crack of a sniper rifle going off in the distance reached the group a second after the Light bullet had already been reflected.

“Oh no, I let my guard down…” The girl lamented with a small pout. “Thank you for the save, Miss Tsubaki.” 

“Tsubaki Shinra.” Xenovia made a decision, having had enough of the cowardly tactics already. The [Queen] shifted to acknowledge her, but kept her eyes peeled and scanning the horizon for more threats. Xenovia approved. “If they will not come to us, we must make them. Your comrades in the Gremory have proven honorable, so I will trust you as well. Carry us the rest of the way, we are close enough and your flight fast enough that these cowards will be forced to confront us directly if they wish to stop us from succeeding. We will crush them then.”

“I concur,” Tsubaki nodded. “Yura, you get Miss Shido and I’ll carry Miss Quarta. Everyone, no straight lines. Don’t make yourselves easy targets. Let’s go.”

For the second time in twenty four hours, Xenovia found herself looking at the landscape from above courtesy of a devil, only this time, she was held tight by Tsubaki as they sped through the air in randomly looping patterns. Her safety was entirely entrusted to the devil in question, completely out of her own two hands; something she never would have considered before the church assigned her this retrieval mission.

Tsubaki dove sharply under a trio of Light spears attempting to intercept them, the skies having become a circus of glowing attacks from all directions.

Xenovia could honestly say she wasn’t a fan, though that may just be her stomach not liking all the sudden direction changes she couldn’t anticipate.

It would’ve been so much simpler if she had wings of her own…

Central Kuoh

A feminine figure cloaked by a dark gray poncho ran through shadowed alleys and side streets, staying out of the illumination of the streetlamps as she made her way towards the train station. As she went, she snuck under multiple nearly invisible dark shapes in the sky, patrols of low-level Fallen Angels that no normal person would notice, except for maybe mistaking them as large ravens passing overhead.

The closer she approached, the more frequent the patrols were. The station itself would be under constant watch by the foreign beings, she knew, just like the two highways out of town were. There was no way she’d be able to make it inside without getting caught.

She slipped out onto the sidewalk from the cover of darkness and calmly approached a bus stop shelter some dozen blocks away from the train station, sitting down alone. Half a minute later, businessman wearing a suit and tie strolled up, set his briefcase down on the bench, straightened his suit jacket, and sat down a couple feet away from the suspicious female.

Shinra Himitsu lowered her hood, reached into her poncho, and pulled out two glass vials full of a dark red liquid, sliding them over to the man without looking.

He was still wearing those stupid sunglasses despite it being nighttime, as always.

She kept her face forward, not letting out any hint that they knew each other.

“Those glasses are too obvious.” Ah, she slipped.

“Obviously not, considering I made it back without issue,” Special Agent Tarou retorted. Her senpai collected the labeled vials of blood and tucked them into an inner pocket of his suit. “On the contrary, It’s you who couldn’t stand out more if you tried, aside from maybe dressing as a clown and yelling into the night. A poncho on a cloudless night, as well as that ridiculous lower face mask, and appearing from an alley with no doors, windows, or outlets?”

She had no counter-argument, and sat silently stewing in bad vibes.

The night bus heading toward the east-side residential districts arrived minutes later, and both got on, sitting at different ends. Four stops later, Agent Tarou disembarked, Himitsu slipping a note into his pocket as he passed by her in the aisle. After three more stops, Himitsu disembarked with her hood back up and walked two more blocks, before cutting into another alleyway.

Cassius had followed the clearly suspicious woman from high above, ever since he had seen her step onto that human bus. As a natural-born Fallen, he was, naturally, only a low-ranking member of Lord Kokabiel’s army. With only two wings, despite many more years of service than most of the raw recruits in the Canis Minor organization, he was weaker than most, and often stuck with the most boring of jobs such as janitor work or patrolling areas that get no action.

As such, when he spotted his chance to maybe earn a promotion by capturing someone suspicious, maybe get some fun if it turned out he was wrong, and the woman was just an oddly dressed mortal, he made sure not to call it in just yet.

‘And risk some other sorry bastard swooping in and stealing the credit? Hell no,’ he thought as he floated over the lip of the buildings his prey had ducked between. ‘This one’s mi-’

Cassius blinked, mouth dropping open out of his control as pain unlike he had ever felt tore through his chest and back.

He barely registered his prey glaring up at him with a chilling malice, nor the thirty-meter-length tanto blade skewering straight through his breast and out the other side. The only thing going through his mind was that maybe, just maybe, he was the prey in this situation.

Himitsu alone stepped out of the alley a few minutes later with a brand new guitar case slung over her back, most of her questions having gone unanswered by the now-dead Fallen, and a twisted sense of relief in her chest.

At the very least, she could say with certainty that deep in her heart, she still felt no pleasure in bringing death and suffering to other beings. Just a grim reminder that there was still work to do.

She needed to make a call; confirm the delivery and pickup were successful, with no witnesses.