Second Genesis

Grey pursed his lips and scratched the back of his head.

’Yeah, alright. Fair enough. I probably should have expected this coming back here.’

The last time he was here, he had beat up a noble, tied up a Guardian’s disciple, crippled another one, left another one unconscious, basically ripped another apart... okay, he had beat up a lot of Guardian disciples, it seemed.

At some point, he probably should have expected those chickens to come home to roost. The fact he hadn’t even thought about it was just proof of how much bullshit he had been through since the last time he was here.

He sighed and then got a good look at the people around him. He was a little bit surprised about who it was when he saw them.

He’d assumed the Valdi. The dukedom had every reason to want a "word" with him, especially considering he had "commandeered" their teleportation platform to get what he wanted done. Not to mention beat up a whole bunch of them too.

Honestly, he had been very nice. He hadn’t even really killed all that much yet. They should be thankful. But...

These weren’t the Valdi.

Half of them were bald men in grey and white, robes hanging off them, sandals on their feet, hands tucked into opposite sleeves like they were about to pray to him like the angel lady had. The other half were women in white with head coverings trimmed in white-gold that caught the light every time one of them so much as breathed.

A bit gaudy if you asked him. But some of them—okay, maybe all of them—were very cute. They had a nice holy thing going on. If they started giving little flirtatious smiles, he might fold like a cheap lawn chair—

’Focus, Grey. Goddammit, I’m horny as fuck, somebody save me.’

These thoughts made him want to cry more than anything the Genesis System could do to him.

Grey’s eyes moved across the ring and caught sight of two people he did recognize.

The first was a nun standing near the back with her hands clasped in front of her, and she looked at him with a confident quirk of her lips. Rosie.

She’d been watching that mess of a battle against The Boundless’ disciple. Then she had been there when he kicked juggernaut wannabe’s teeth in.

The second was a mountain of a man with a belly that rippled in the light as much as Rosie’s head garb did.

Petri wasn’t a monk and he wasn’t a nun, but he was here too. And his belly seemed to have gotten even bigger. Maybe he was stress eating after getting beat up by him too.

’Hm...’ Grey thought. ’Maybe I’m the problem.’

Somewhere in the universe, Amunet was nodding.

Grey had let Petri walk that day. The reasoning had been simple: Petri needed him for whatever plans of chaos he had stirring in the city, so he wouldn’t reveal just how easily Grey could beat those who used Holy Energy now. Plus, it would have probably been embarrassing as hell to admit that.

Looking at him now, standing in a ring of clergy sent to collect him, Grey started to wonder if he’d misjudged that.

No one spoke immediately.

Finally, the one who stepped forward was a monk with a scalp shaved down to the point Grey thought it lost a layer of skin with it. Either that, or his head was just naturally a rosy, reddish hue. Prayer beads hung heavy around his neck, each one swaying with substantial weight. Like Grey said... gaudy.

He walked with two fingers pressed together and pointed at the ceiling, holding them there like they might fall off if he stopped concentrating.

Grey didn’t even let him get his mouth open.

"At some point, the Genesis System’s gotta start worrying about copyright infringement. Which ninja anime wannabe are you trying to copy now?"

The monk blinked; his expression didn’t shift by a single degree.

"Grey Temolt. By the authority of the Church, you are being detained pending inquiry into your possible involvement in the disappearance of the Guardian known as The Relentless."

Grey burst out laughing.

It came out of him hard and immediate, doubling him over, one hand slapping down on his own knee.

The monk waited, but Grey did not stop.

Yes, obviously, he was related to that. Yes, he did make the bastard disappear. He had put that bitch on a slingshot to nowhere. Honestly, even Grey didn’t know where the hell he was. Grey wasn’t laughing because the accusation was absurd.

But Grey wasn’t really laughing because of The Relentless himself.

He laughed until his ribs hurt, wheezing with tears coming out of his eyes.

Okay, he definitely was laughing because of that. Thinking about how mad the bastard probably was about now, it really made his stomach ache.

"He’s—" Grey got out. "Oh, fuck me—"

And that was when the monk finally frowned. Several of them did, in fact. Not a single one of them was very fond of Grey’s attitude.

Rosie stood in the back of the formation with her hands locked together and stared at him like her gaze was going to be enough to change something. There was nothing funny here in her opinion. Guardians were the pillar the entire Holy Empire’s deterrence stood on.

The nuns and monks were pacifists and symbols; they represented holiness, but they rarely, if ever, took action themselves. The nobles would fight on the front lines, but they were vassals to the Imperial Clan’s power, not their true power. And the Imperial Clan themselves rarely took action because they were too noble.

The Guardians, their disciples, and the Holy Knights were the true backbone of power of the empire. One of them going missing wasn’t just a small incident, and it wasn’t something that would be brushed under the rug.

The Pope himself would be involved.

And this boy was on the floor of the teleportation chamber laughing so hard he was going to hurt himself.

Grey wiped his eyes with the back of a wrist and straightened up, still hiccupping.

"Sorry. Sorry. Not funny at all," Grey said sarcastically.

"You will come with us," the monk said coldly.

"See, here’s my problem with that," Grey said, coughing out the last of his laughter.

Grey rolled his shoulders and let the last of the laugh drain out of his face, and what was left underneath were hints of amusement, but a dangerous edge nonetheless.

"You can’t exactly detain the heir of a dukedom and a prince consort just because you have some worthless speculations, right?"

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