Interview With Ichigo (Patreon)

Mand'alor asks: Lord Wrath, out of all the people and entities in the world who would you most like to fight, also is there any room in your heart for another lover?

Ichigo says: Who would I most like to fight? Easy, Sirzechs. Even if he's significantly stronger than me, he just has one of those really punchable faces, you know? Very cathartic. Oh wait, there's a part two to this questions. Let's see, is there any room in your heart for ano-...seriously? Going back to your first question, you want to know who I don't want to fight? My wife and familiar.

Look, I'll be honest with you, I'm pretty young, even by human standards. Hell, I was nineteen years old when I got married. Not because I fell in love, but because some whimsical and selfish self-proclaimed goddess, who continues to assert she was acting in my best interest, wanted me to be. I liked Yasaka the moment I laid eyes on her. I liked her even more as I got to know her and spend time with her and Kunou. The impromptu divinely decreed marriage may have sped our relationship along, but I feel like over the course of a few years we would have reached there eventually on our own. Now, when I call her my wife, it's not because of her patron deity, it's because I absolutely think of her as my spouse and love her dearly.

As for Tiamat...wow, where do I even begin with that? My domineering, conceited, sociopath of a dragon rampaged into my life and wound herself around my heart. And in my head.

Anyways, I'm pretty content with where I am in life. Hell, I'm more than content, I'm damn happy. Which is more than what most people can say. Will there be additional dynamics in my fairy tale, as Grayfia likes to say? I don't know. Maybe. Ask me again in a hundred years. If there's one thing I learned about the immortal world, never say never.

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AizentheGoat: Wrath, my main man, how you feeling today?

Ichigo says: Wow, do you have any idea how rare it is for someone to ask me that? It's always: there are conflicts here! Nobles demanding things there! Escaped sinners way over somewhere! Or 'your dragon ate another diplomat' or 'your wife just raised tariffs and it's screwing over our exports!' I can't remember the last time someone who I'm not sleeping with asked me that question. I'm doing great, thank you for asking Aiz-AizentheGoat?!

Sera! Dammit, get security in here now!

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Qliphoth7 asks: Lord Wrath, what are your duties and responsibilities as the 5th prince, and when will you have a press release about your peerage for the eager public?

Ichigo says: When I'm not hunting down Sinners, I rule over my personal territory of Infernity and oversee it's restructuring. My predecessor did little in the way of building any sort of solid infrastructure, so the Princedom was basically a wasteland when my Satanic siblings dumped it in my lap.

In regards to the Empire as a whole, each of the Ruling Satans directly oversees a ministry of the Devil Empire. There's an actual official name for the Empire, but Sirzechs thought it would be hilarious to curse the name so that any human who heard it would suddenly find themselves breaking out into hives. So for your sakes I'll hold back. Speaking of Sirzechs, he oversees the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Nobility and the Ministry of Commerce. Serafall oversees the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Intelligence. She's been pushing for the establishment of a Ministry of Entertainment but the rest of us have unanimously been vetoing that brilliant idea.

Ajuka heads the Ministry of Research and Development, the Ministry of Magic and the Ministry of Rating Games. Falbium oversees the Ministry of Offensive War and the Ministry of Defensive War. And as for me, technically I'm in charge of the Ministry of Order and the Ministry of Law: our internal police and our judicial system. But since I'm really new to the whole Devil gig and am still learning about my new found species, my siblings have Lady Valac heading the Ministry of Order and Lord Phenex heading the Ministry of Law, but the two of them work closely with me and keep me in the loop of things on a weekly basis. I'll officially take over in a decade or two when I'm more learned about the law.

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Ai asks: Lord Wrath, in between all that is happen and future headaches and responsibilities, do you still have time to shred your axe? Have you apply it also onto your latent powers?

Ichigo says: On occasion sure, it's a good way to relax. I sometimes play on the weekend when Yasaka suddenly has something important come up that cuts into our personal time. When I have free time in the Underworld, if I'm not with Tiamat, I'll usually spend it in my Inner Sanctum, so sadly most of my guitars are in Kyoto. Have never actually tried applying my power to a guitar though. I'll ask Ajuka if I can borrow one his techs to rig something in the future maybe.

By the way, for those of you wondering what an Inner Sanctum is: when a Devil ascends from an Ultimate Class to a Satan Class, they go through a fundamental inner change. It's not like they go Super Saiyan and, poof, more power. Their essence is refined into something closer to a Demon's than that of a Devil's. For most Ultimate Class Devils, the process generally requires the complete destruction of their physical body, retaining consciousness through their demonic essence, super-condensing their essence and removing any impurities, and then restructuring it into a new physical body. Depending on a Devil's lineage the process may have additional steps or be something different altogether.

But once a Devil becomes Satan Class, their demonic power can't be openly used in public because the resulting demonic miasma from their sheer presence will pollute and twist the the nearby area, killing or mutating the natural world. So in order to train our powers, Satan Class Devils and Demons have pocket realities called Inner Sanctums, where we can hone our powers in peace without worrying about killing off everyone in our own territories.

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SplooshMeister asks: You mentioned that Sirzechs is better in some ways but also worse in others when compared to the original Lucifer, and I was hoping you would be able to go into more detail about that?

Ichigo says: Full disclosure, I've never met the original Lucifer. But from what I've heard the guy was pretty unhinged. Both the Fallen and the Angels will openly admit that he was easily the greatest of the Heavenly Father's children, but for whatever reason, he went completely insane. The Demon Lord Lucifer was totally incapable of loving anyone but himself. Though according to some contemporary records, he didn't even manage to do that. Sirzechs, on the other hand, loves quite fiercely. It's probably what he and I have the most in common. We love too fiercely. We'd go to the ends of the world, and then some, for those we love.

Most history books will tell you Sirzechs rebelled against the families of the Original Satans to preserve our race and keep it from going extinct in a continuation of a senseless war. That's not even close to the truth. If you dig through the books, Hell, if you ask the people who remember, you'll hear a name: Ansannia Gremory.

She was Sirzechs' first cousin. The daughter of the current Lord Gremory's deceased younger brother. She and Sirzechs were born in the same decade, so they grew up together and spent the entirety of their childhood by each other's side. They were close, very close. There was even talks of the two...well, never mind. That's not important. Belphegor, the Original Sin of Sloth, was the last surviving Sin after the Great War. He took a liking to Ansannia, who was a renown beauty even by Devil standards, and sent House Gremory an offer to make her a concubine.

House Gremory was in a bad spot then: Sirzechs was too powerful for his age, and in the strife and instability of the post-Great War period, he attracted too much attention from the remaining powerful Demon Lords. They either wanted him a slave under them, or outright dead to remove a potential rival. House Gremory did all they could to protect him, but they were faced with opposition on all sides. And he wasn't as powerful then as he was now and the original Gremory had been badly wounded in the Great war, so it sealed itself in its own Sanctum. So Ansannia accepted the offer for concubinage on the condition Belphegor aid House Gremory and protect her cousin. One week after she married into House Belpehgor, the Sin traded her to House Asmodeus. And then she was sent to House Beelzebub, and then House Leviathan and then finally House Lucifer. And the Lucifers then sent her back to House Gremory. In four separate boxes. Each one bearing the emblem of the Original Satans, a stark warning to the Gremorys to know where they stand.

Less than a year later, Sirzechs and Ajuka announced their rebellion.

The Civil War? The Burning of Ser-Amon? The Citadel of Au Groggurath being turned into a 100 mile crater? The sundering of Gragziand? The persecutions and extinction of dozens of Noble Houses? Millions of our kind dead? You think all of that was done in the name of preservation and reform?

No.

That was revenge.

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NASUverse Addiction asks: Ichigo, since your connected to Hell and it's been a year and a few months counting since you became a Devil, can you feel the Beast of Apocalypse? How do you feel that your slowly losing your Humanity? And now that your literally the Antithesis of Heaven, does that mean you have an Opposite Counterpart in the White Army?

Ichigo says: Been a Devil for closer to two and half years now, honestly. Also, how in Lucifer's name do you even know about that thing? Most people don't even know it exists. But to answer your question, no, I can't feel it. It's locked away behind some damn powerful seals. Not a single trace of it can be felt so long as those seals are in place.

How do I feel about losing my Humanity slowly? The reflection of my soul is some battle lunatic hyper-albino doppelganger, I have a primordial dragon meshed into my mind, my wife's a centuries old nine tailed fox that is a holy facet of the divine sun, I unwittingly became the embodiment of evil anger and Hell itself has slumbered in soul since I was fifteen. I didn't slowly lose my Humanity. It was kicked out without ceremony. My brain just needs time to catch up to my body and soul, that's all.

Do I have a counterpart in the White Army? Wow, someone is really milking this interview for all it's worth, aren't they? While I honestly couldn't give a crap about the Heavenly Diametric, most mystics and mythographers have me opposed to Haniel the Eternal, Scion of Light, Seraph of Joy. I haven't had the chance to meet her myself, but supposedly she's really easy to get along with. Though I doubt she'd extend that same courtesy to me.

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Old Ahsoei asks: Mr. Ichigo, can you tell us a brief summary/description about what you regularly do whenever you spend time with Sirzechs, Serafall, Ajuka and Falbium....Or your other colleagues, basically.

Ichigo says: Uhh, I can't give you specifics. Generally speaking, when the five of us are all together, we're discussing state secrets and matters of governance. Well, I suppose I can give you the basic rundown. We schedule meetings at two separate hours. There's the Falbium hour, and then there's actual start time of the meeting which is 3 hours later. The first 10-15 minutes is usually just benign banter. You know: How've you been? How's the family? Killed anything interesting lately? The usual office talk. After that, we take turn giving reports from our respective ministries and just discuss different strategies on where to go from there. It's not unusual for meetings to take entire days. Luckily for us, Ajuka created these pocket dimensions that are time dilated. An hour in the Underworld can be translated into a entire days in them.

As for my Reavers...well, it's mainly just me pointing and them smashing whatever happens to be in that particular direction.

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CS999 asks: Lord Wrath, knowing how selective your colleagues are with their peerage; have you given any thought as to whom you would trust to fight by your side?

Ichigo says: You know, when Ajuka first gave me my Evil Pieces, really dumb name by the way, he told me to give a lot of thought on who I use them on and also when to use them. He told me not to fall into temptation and use them all in one go. He said something along the lines of me having centuries to find the right fit for each Piece. Hell, Sera was one of the first people to get them from Ajuka and she still has multiple left over Pieces. So I'm in no rush. Do I have people in mind,? Oh yeah, for sure.

I gave my Queen Piece to Yasaka, but she outright rejected me. She said she doesn't want to be a Devil. She has too much pride and love for her kind and their immense history. Plus, she doesn't want to give up the position she's held for centuries now. Especially since it would mean Kunou would have to take up her mother's place at such a young age. Which is more than fair. But I told her to keep it anyways. Even if she doesn't want to use it, she's the only Queen for me.

And I've already used one Knight Piece and one Rook Piece. I used the Knight on-

Serafall says: Oh Lucifer, that is so cuuuute! Berry-Berry offered eternity to his precious wife but she stubbornly holds on to her mortality, turning away from him and tearfully declaring she does not want to change herself and who she is, even for the man she loves! Berry-Berry then grabs her from behind and desperately clings to her! He whispers soft love into her ears and tells her he'll love her no matter what, and when her lifespan runs out, he'll follow her to the grave! It's soo romaaaaaaantic!

Ichigo says: Fuck off, Sera!

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Neonparty asks: When are you going to be shooting the sinful strawberry?

Serafall says: As soon as possible!

Ichigo says: No! We are not! There will be no shooting, no filming or any kind of reenactments of your sick, twisted delusions!

Serafall says: Huehue! You'd think that! But all the cameras today have captured enough of your facial expressions and voice to generate perfect deepfakes through our state of the art technomancy!

Ichigo says: ...Zangetsu

Serafall says: Eek!

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Meril says: Ah, apologies. But , I am afraid the Princes have decided to have an impromptu game of tag. On behalf of my master, I thank you all for your time and interest. We apologize for not being able to answer everyone's questions, but they really seem to be quite engaged with their current recreational activity. I would highly recommend you stay in doors for the time being, least you be burned to ash or frozen solid. And please, do feel free to enjoy the bar.