Sacred Gear: Heavenly Crown

Chapter 5: Fallen From Grace (2)

"Yeah...nothing good to say about that guy. He LOVED war. Always laughing on the battlefield, hungering for stronger opponents. The guy was insane."

"Once again, something you should have said earlier. Ok, as of now, he's our main suspect. Next is Penemue..." The three continued going down the list until all suspects had been exhausted of all information. "So, as of now we have suspicions of Kokabiel and Satanael. Kokabiel has a motive, being that he loves conflict and nothing says conflict like a war, he has the attitude, and he has the ability to get followers. Satanael we simply have no way to clear suspicion of. I think it's obviously Kokabiel."

"That's great and all, but that doesn't necessarily help us solve the issue," Michael pointed out.

"I'm not done yet. Now, we know who did it, we reason out whyhe did it. This is simply a matter of using logical reasoning and risk vs reward analysis to come up with hypotheses on his reasoning and we pick from those which is the most likely and proceed based on that, so long as it wouldn't negatively impact any of our other theories in case one of those happened to be correct. Now, think. A Fallen Angel Cadre steals three fragments of Excalibur from the church. Why?" Issei closes his eyes and thinks for several minutes. "I think this is lining up nicely. Before I finish that thought though, how do you know Kokabiel, or I suppose I should say 'our suspect,' is going to Kuoh?"

"We were able to track his destination with the swords to Japan. Japan is largely a devil-owned area, so we used every available resource to locate any other Fallen Angels in the region and the only signatures we were able to get were found here."

"That's...surprisingly good deductive reasoning. If he told you or dropped a note we might have to rethink this whole thing, but I'd say I've got a pretty good theory. It's not necessarily a good thing, but I think it's accurate."

"Well? Are you going to tell us or are you going to leave us in suspense while you go to a commercial break like those anime you watch?"

"I'm touched that you paid attention for once," Issei said sarcastically. "But no. Alright. Remember, this is all just conjecture made off probability, logical reasoning, and assumptions made from not necessarily reliable sources."

"That doesn't sound reassuring..." Michael pointed out, sounding relatively worried.

"It doesn't need to. I think you'll agree with me. Anyway, here it is. Kokabiel is a combat-loving warmonger. He wants and craves conflict, right? So, it stands to reason that he and Azazel do not get along. Since Shemhazai is in agreement with Azazel, Kokabiel is now stuck in peace. Since he cannot convince the leadership to go back to war, he'd need to wait for one of the other factions to initiate the conflict. That hasn't happened yet, so now it's up to him to reignite the war. He steals the Excalibur Fragments, powerful weapons revered by the church. What does he want to do with them? He wants it known that the Fallen Angels stole them, so he 'hinted' that it was them by making himself seen. This makes the Angel faction aggressive towards the Fallen Angel faction. It was a member of the Cadre, so us believing that it wasn't done under the leadership's knowledge isn't something we'd necessarily be willing to accept and move on with. It would be different if a low or mid-class Fallen Angel stole one fragment seeking glory, but no. This is a Cadre stealing three. Kokabiel knows we couldn't overlook that, so we'd now be forced into conflict with the Fallen Angels. With that conflict set up, he takes the swords to Kuoh. A known devil territory, thanks for telling me that by the way, and home to Rias Gremory and Sona Sitri. Two pure-blooded heiresses of surviving pillar families. What next? He kills them with the holy swords. Murdering the two devil heiresses in devil territory will enrage the devils, forcing them to retaliate against the Fallen Angels, but not just them, they would also retaliate against us. We failed to protect such powerful weapons, ergo, whether we committed the murders or not, we were indirectly responsible. Holy weapons of that caliber are extremely effective at killing devils. Now the devils and the Angels are angry at the Fallen Angels, the Fallen Angels are forced into combat with the attacking parties, and the Angels are defending themselves against the devils while attacking the Fallen Angels, which reignites the three-way war and frees Kokabiel from punishment, as Azazel will be unable to get rid of one of his strongest warriors in a time of war."