17 Church's Soldiers

The familiar voice cut through the red haze of rage and pain.

"What is going on here?"

Everyone froze, Excalibur Destruction inches from Kiba's neck.

""EREN!"" From his place on the ground, the Knight heard Akeno and Rias shout in surprise. It was the King who continued. "Sona! Get him out of here!"

"A human?" Kiba heard the executor with the sword at his neck mutter in confusion.

"Have you tried talking him out of something," the student council president asked rhetorically with more than a little bit of anger. "We heard a commotion, and he insisted on checking it out."

"I recognize a fight when I hear one. Especially one with metal blades." Kiba heard Eren say dryly.

Only the Knight's long experience with the dying boy let him understand that much of his tone.

Eren was speaking in that dead way of his, like nothing in the world mattered. From his position, the Knight couldn't see the boy's face to know his expression.

"Now, will someone explain what is going or will I have to start hitting things with my cane?"

"What have you done, Sitri?" Xenovia snarled, finally pulling the hateful blade from Kiba's neck and pointing it at Sona. "A hostage? What have you done to him? Torture? Is there no low your kind will not sink to?"

"Sitri? And Rias called you Sona?" Eren asked, and Kiba could finally look at the boy and notice him tilting his head in question.

The blind boy was off the bench, standing with the Sitri heiress on the far side of the clearing they had their fight in. Sona had kept him clear of the fallen trees and holes they had torn through the dirt.

Of all the exorcist said, only the names had given the former mercenary pause.

"I told you my family is foreign, right," Sona hurried to explain, a note of panic in her voice. "When I moved to Japan, I went by a Japanese version of my name. Souna Shitori, rather than Sona Sitri."

"Huh," Eren grunted. "That explains a lot. You should have told me. I'd have called you Sona."

"I'd like that," Sona said, relief in her voice at Eren's easy acceptance of her words, but she still glared at the exorcist. "And no. He is not a hostage. He was simply resting on a nearby bench when we heard your fight. If you are done, we will leave."

"Ah, Lord." All the devils winced in pain as the other exorcist, Irina, recited a prayer. "Please save this lost lamb from the devil's clutches and return him to the flock."

Eren's face was still set in his placid expression as if all emotion had drained from him. Still in a daze, Kiba noted that his friends hurriedly looked at each other, trying to communicate silently.

This was bad. They needed to get the boy out of there. If things devolved even further, they wouldn't be able to keep Eren safe if the exorcists attacked.

"If nobody will explain what is happening, I will have to get involved." Eren started to draw his blade, but Kiba's ragged and rough voice stopped him.

"Senpai," he croaked. "These are my juniors. They have my goal. It is right here."

All eyes looked at the fallen Knight.

"Yuuto!" Rias resumed her rush to his side, paused by the arrival of the unexpected guests, and began worrying over him and checking for injuries.

Even a little nick from an Excalibur was fatal to most devils.

"I see," Eren said, returning his blade to his cane with a click. He poked around a bit with his cane till he found an exposed stump and then, unmindful of the dirt, sat down. "Are you going to kill them?"

The casual way he asked the question, the complete disregard for human life, sent a shudder through the spine of the newer members' backs.

Both exorcists focused more intently on the older boy, reevaluating him.

"Who are you?" Xenovia asked bluntly. "Are you also a survivor of the project?"

"I have no idea what project you are talking about," Eren denied. As he spoke, Kiba was glad to see Akeno, Koneko, and Sona circle around the boy, ready to protect him in case things went bad.

"The Holy Sword Project," Kiba spat out as Rias lifted him over her shoulder. "It took in orphans. Ran experiments on us. And when they were done with us? They killed us. Guns. Gas. They killed us all. Except for me."

Kiba was laughing bitterly, even as tears fell from his eyes.

He felt weak.

Impotent.

His vengeance was right here!

And not a single blade of his survived a clash.

Rias tightened her hold on her Knight even as Asia gasped and Issei's gauntleted fist clenched. The others already knew about it, but they all still looked angry. Even the executors looked uncomfortable.

"They're from the church," Kiba rambled. "All the pain we went through? They got the reward for that. This is my chance for vengeance."

Eren snorted.

"There's no such thing as a holy sword," he denied, unable to see the blades glowing power. "All swords exist to kill. It is as simple as that. But the church doing something like that, I can believe. Religion is for the mad, the desperate, and the cattle."

"Who are you?" Xenovia asked again, anger filling her voice. "Who are you to question God and his followers?"

"The Devil," Eren deadpanned as the actual devils winced in pain again from the exorcist's use of the word. "And I've never seen proof of god or that he cares about his followers. I have seen a few churches, though. I saw one collapse, killing all the 'followers' inside like bugs. No god saved them. I've destroyed a few myself. So who are you, followers of a god that isn't there?"

Sona and Rias hurried to share a few looks, and the redhead sent a few subtle directions at her Peerage.

The devils were tense, ready to act at the first sign of actual conflict, but they were also quiet. More than anyone else, they understood that Eren had a way with words.

For good and bad.

So long as everyone kept talking, killing time wouldn't be too bad.

More than that, it gave Asia time to heal the fighters and for them to recover. Every second that passed, the devil's side was in a better position if it did come to a fight.

Irina Shidou didn't seem to care.

"Shidou Irina," she introduced herself cheerfully, waving her whip-sword around. "Nice to meet you, Heretic-kun."

"Xenovia Quarta," Xenovia said with displeasure, much less exuberant than her companion. "I should not be surprised by your blasphemy, given your company. Swine lays with swine."

The devils bristled, but Eren simply hummed in thought. He still didn't express any emotion. Like he was going through the motions rather than feeling anything.

It was incredibly off-putting.

The last time he had been like this for so long was almost a year ago.

"Quarta? And with the church?" He tilted his head, idly tapping his cane. "Any relation to Griselda Quarta?"

Everyone stared at the blind boy in shock.

Except for Issei, who whispered into Koneko's ear.

"Who's that?"

"Exorcist," Koneko whispered back. Low enough that Eren couldn't hear, but Kiba was still a devil. "Top five."

"How do you know her?" Xenovia bit out, hands tightening around her sword handle. Irina looked from the blind boy to her companion in confusion.

"We've met. At a church, believe or not," Eren deadpanned. "How's her leg?"

Kiba was the fastest person there.

He had been on guard ever since the exorcists had appeared. His eyes tracked the Excalibur's like a hawk watching a mouse.

He was still almost too late.

CLANG!

Eren didn't flinch as Excalibur Destruction was deflected less than a foot from his face.

The devils lept into action, surrounding the boy even as Xenovia retreated from her failed blow.

"Xenovia!" Irina cried in surprise as the blue-haired girl snarled.

"That's him!" The exorcist spat. "Eren Yeager! The Child of Evil!"

Irina's eyes widened, and Excalibur Mimic returned to its sword form.

Kiba didn't see any of it. He was too busy staring in shock at the black sword in his hands.

He had summoned it on instinct.

It hadn't shattered.

"Griselda should have survived," Eren said blandly, still not emoting. "If she got help quick enough, she should have even been able to save the leg. If she died, it was not my fault."

"She's still alive," Xenovia spat. "No thanks to you. You left her for dead."

"She shouldn't have gotten in my way."

"She was protecting people!"

"The people she was protecting were mercenaries and sex traffickers."

"They had surrendered! They were asking for sanctuary! From you!"

"I'm sure that matters to their victims."

"You blew up a church!"

"It should have been better protected if it didn't want to get destroyed."

Was he dreaming?

Was this real?

It was too surreal that Kiba wondered if he had actually died under Destruction's blade.

On one side was the shouting girl, waving a sword larger than herself and shouting accusations.

On the other was the blind boy sitting on a stump, answering blandly without any emotions.

It was like a twisted parody of Kiba's recent outburst of hysteric rage.

And the subject matter was even more unbelievable.

Eren, young, sickly and blind, knew Griselda Quarta? Had fought her? Beaten and injured her?

It was like Kiba was in a world where up was down, left was right, and his swords could suddenly stand up to an Excalibur.

Nothing made sense anymore.

But his body moved all the same.

CLANG!

Excaliber Destruction bounced. Kiba did it again.

His sword deflected Excalibur.

This time, the attack didn't go without response.

"ENOUGH!" Rias shouted, glowing with power as Issei placed himself in front of Kiba and Eren. "You got what you wanted. Leave. Now! Another attack like that, and we will respond with lethal force."

Xenovia looked like she was ready to argue or even put up a fight, but she wasn't the first to respond.

"Why don't you?" Eren asked Rias. He was still speaking in that cold, plain monotone. "They're here. You outnumber them. I can help with the bodies. So why don't you kill them? They're Kiba's enemies, aren't they? Targets of vengeance who hurt him? So kill them."

Everyone looked at the boy, some in horror and others with consternation.

"Just as I would expect from the Child of Evil," Xenovia spat as she lept back towards her partner, facing the group side by side. "Bring it on. We are not scared of any of you."

"We are not killing anyone," Rias insisted as she glared at her friend. "If they were the ones who hurt Yuuto, I would. But they aren't. They're no older than us. So long as they leave us alone, I promised not to interfere and will not break my word."

Eren didn't know anything about the politics involved, Kiba could understand. He couldn't even see who he was threatening to kill.

As far as the blind boy was aware, there was a fight. He approached and found out it was the target of the Knight's vengeance. Everything Kiba knew about Eren Yeager told him that Eren would not hesitate.

But...

"I..." Kiba said, voice low with realization. "I didn't want to kill them. I just wanted to destroy their swords. Those cursed things. They're the reason all my friends died."

Both exorcists looked at the Knight in surprise, and Rias' eyes glowed with pride.

"Mmmh," Eren nodded. Then he pulled out his sword again. A sense of familiarity once again struck Kiba, like he had seen the flat blade somewhere before.

Eren held the thin sword before him, parallel to the ground.

Then he brought his elbow down on it.

It snapped.

The thin sword could not hold up to even the sickly boy's strength.

Bending down, the blind boy pawed around momentarily before finding the broken blade and picking it up. Without a handle, the razor-thin sword cut into his fingers and palm.

"Eren!" Sona shouted in shock, reaching down to get the boy to drop the blade even as his fingers bled. By the time she held his wrist, Eren had already thrown the sword at Kiba.

It missed. By a wide margin.

Eren was still blind, after all.

But it sank into the ground in the middle of the clearing, feet away from the Knight.

"If you are going to be stupid enough to believe that, use that sword. It will do you just as well as anything you might have," Eren said as the others fretted over him. He ignored them, pulling a roll of bandages from his pocket to wrap his hand.

Asia was already healing it, but he could not see the green glow.

"If that one breaks, I have dozens of the things," he said. "They're sharp. Made to cut through flesh. They'll cut you just as easily as any other blade."

"That will shatter in a second in a real fight," Xenovia said derisively.

"A sword is not meant to break swords," Eren replied. "A sword is made to kill. Ask Griselda. That blade is sharp enough to kill your actual target."

Then, the blind boy faced Kiba again, who was staring from his white blade to the razor in the ground.

"Hating inanimate objects is stupid. I know. I hated those walls for years. I still do. But your vengeance should never be against the walls but against the people who built them. It doesn't matter if you tear a thousand walls down if they are rebuilt."

Kiba started laughing.

He laughed and laughed and laughed.

Of course.

Of course, Eren was right.

So Kiba laughed and cried.

Excalibur had been broken before. That's why there were multiple swords now. Made from its fragments.

Kiba could break them and break them and break them, and there would still be fools who would torture children to reforge them.

Killing their wielders wouldn't even accomplish anything, either. There were always more slaves to the church to pick up the pieces.

It was all so pointless.

"Senpai," Kiba choked out through a sob. "What am I supposed to do?"

"That is your choice," Eren said simply. "I can't see your Path. I don't know what you will do or how it will end. All I see is my own. I had my vengeance. And I ended up alone for it. I would do it again, but I have regrets. Will you?"

Kiba looked at the exorcists. These girls had everything he had been promised. He looked at their swords. Those blades he and his friends had died for.

Then he looked at Rias, the girl who took him in even though he might not have anything to offer.

Akeno, who took care of him, taught him and cared for him like a sister.

Koneko, who looked up to him and held his hand on the first day of school because she had been scared.

Issei, the clumsy junior he took under his wing. Yuuto hadn't been called a Damn Handsome in weeks.

Asia, also betrayed by the church, yet so devoted to caring for others still.

And then he looked at the sickly boy on the stump.

At his Senpai.

At a twisted mirror of what he could become.

The black sword dissolved into motes of light.

"Now that this... disturbance has ended," Sona said with a sigh as she adjusted her glasses. "You can take your leave. We will not interfere with your search."

"Ah," Irina gasped and bowed in farewell as she spoke cheerfully. "It was nice to see you again, Issei-kun. Take care of yourselves, you filthy heathens."

Xenovia looked like she had swallowed a lemon, but she understood that further conflict would not help her mission. Still, she had a question she needed answering.

"How did you do it?" She asked, looking at Eren. Since he didn't respond, probably because he didn't know she was talking to him, the exorcist continued. "How'd you beat her? She never said."

"Beat her?" Eren asked. "Griselda? I didn't. I was nine. Nobody expects a child to stab them. I tricked her. It's why I went for her leg, to stop her from being able to fight in the first place. You can fight with one arm but not one leg. She was in the way of my mission, and I got rid of her threat. As simple as that."

"Why didn't you kill her?"

"Why would I? She hadn't wronged me. She wasn't even my enemy. I might have if she had a gun, but all she had was that stupidly oversized sword. She wasn't worth the loss of time it would take to kill her when my prey could run at any second."

Despite himself, Kiba couldn't help the snort of amusement that left his lips, mirrored by Akeno.

The idea that Griselda Quarta, famed exorcist and terror to devils everywhere, had been tricked by a human child and left to die because she 'wasn't worth killing' was too damn funny.

Xenovia's fingers twitched, but she swallowed her words and turned on a dime to stomp her way out of the forest. Irina hurried to follow with one last cheerful wave towards Issei.

There was a beat of silence as everyone waited for them to gain some distance.

"Dramatic." Koneko deadpanned.

"I only understood half of what just happened," Issei said, raising his hand as if in question.

"That's more than I expected."

"Hey!" Issei cried in self-defence as he whirled. Then he froze as he realized who had spoken. "Did you... Did you just make a joke?"

"Help me back to the bench," Eren said in his monotone, utterly unaware of the looks of disbelief he was receiving. "You haven't told me how the date went yet."

"Ah," Issei gasped and hurried to pull the boy up, slinging an arm over his shoulder. His face, as well as Asia's, was flushed completely red. "Hehehe." He laughed nervously as he led the boy back the way he came. Asia hurried to follow.

Those who remained watched them leave with a mixture of emotions.

"That boy," Akeno muttered, placing her hand on her cheek as she shook her head in silent laughter. "I can't tell if he's a good influence or not."

"Should I bake a cake?" Rias asked out of nowhere. When they looked at her, she explained. "For Eren's first joke with us. He's opening up. We should celebrate."

"He just told us to kill a couple of girls he had never met before," Kiba snorted, but he was smiling.

"I think it was sweet," Akeno giggled. "He was defending his Kohai."

"What do you think, Sona," Rias asked her rival, who continued staring after the departed boy. "Chocolate, vanilla, or ice cream?"

"I am not interested in cake flavours, Rias," Sona said as she removed her glasses to rub her eyes tiredly. "What I am interested in is how a nine-year-old human boy was able to injure one of the most dangerous women in the world enough that she couldn't fight anymore?"

"Anybody can be defeated if they are taken by surprise," Akeno shrugged. "I wouldn't expect a kid to stab me in the leg, either."

"...Sneaky," Koneko said with a thumbs up.

"Maybe," Sona said lowly, looking thoughtful.

"What is it?" Rias asked.

"Don't you think Eren is being too... blase about all this?" Sona asked, looking around. "He hears a sword fight and goes toward it instead of away. In that entire conversation, only my name gave him pause. I think..." She trailed off, worrying her lower lip.

"Eren's life hasn't been normal by any stretch," Akeno pointed out wryly.

"But that's just it," Sona pursed her lips as she adjusted her glasses. "Everything about him is slightly off. Names that don't fit. Events we can't trace. A timeline that doesn't line up."

"Lying?" Koneko asked with a frown.

"No way," Rias denied instantly. "There is no way I will believe what he... That what he told us is a lie. There was too much emotion, too many details, and over too long a period of time. Maybe your family's agents missed some stuff, that's all."

"It's possible, but everything on that file was verified. We are missing something. Some key fact. Some clue that will make everything make sense. And..." She paused, giving the matter another moment of thought. "And I think he knows something is going on."

"What do you mean?" Yuuto asked.

"I don't think he knows about the supernatural, or at least not fully, but he didn't even flinch when Asia started healing him."

"If he fought Griselda Quarta, he probably ran into other supernatural beings while he was active," Akeno nodded in agreement with Sona's words. "He probably saw things he couldn't explain but never got a full explanation of how the world really works."

"Should we tell him," Rias asked eagerly.

"Eren... probably already knows something is up with us," Sona continued, worrying her lip. "He's sharp enough and known us long enough that I can't imagine he doesn't know we aren't regular students. Today would just be proof. But he hasn't brought it up. It might be best to leave it for now. Until he asks, at least."

"Fine," Rias pouted. "But I get to be the one to tell him. I already have a speech and everything."

"Fufufufu," Akeno giggled behind her hand, eyes twinkling in mischief.

"There is another thing, though," Sona said, her smile muted as she shook her head at her rival's antics. "We might need to be more careful from now on. Eren has enemies. And now, they know he is here. Or at least the church does. We need to get those exorcists out of our territory immediately. I will have my Peerage send out their familiars to search for the Excaliburs."

"Trouble," Koneko nodded as she punched her fist into her palm.

"Hm," Rias gave the matter some more thought. "I know we said we would leave those exorcists alone, but we can do that and keep an eye on them. Maybe subtly point them in the right direction if we find the swords first." She looked at Koneko, who nodded, and then to Yuuto. "Can you do this?" She asked softly. "I don't want to leave Koneko alone when Excaliburs are involved. Can I trust you to keep calm and back her up?"

"You can," the Knight said as he saluted with one of his swords. The black blade glinted in the light.

"Hopefully, we all get out of this intact," Sona muttered as she eyed the blade curiously.

The next day, Kokabiel, cloaked from surveillance and scouting the local leylines under Kuoh Academy, found a blind boy sitting on a bench.