See, this just became a hostage situation, and Ohtori prolly thinks he's being smart. With a hostage, you have leverage, you can cut bits off and FedEx them to interested parties. You can demand concessions. And he will, because he thinks he can pull it off.

Or, and here's where I overthink things and they get weirdly complicated:

He lets one of his old students betray him. The guy's plotting gets discovered by Saionji, who takes him on as a potential ally - because the plotting has to be subtle enough that it escapes general notice, but Saionji has to spot it. Akio does his usual escaping act, they get the girl, yadda yadda, student redeemed.

And Akio now has a spy among the Duellists, ready to take them apart. And next time?

Next time he kills Annabelle. And he uses the old student as his pawn, because there's plenty more where that came from.

The message is clear. Trust no-one. I will find a way to strike at you. I will take from you that which gives you strength, and you will beg me to stop by the end.

Said it before, and I'll say it again. If you wanna fuck Clan Hutchins over, you gotta come at 'em sideways.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

There's also this to consider - just as Corwin couldn't act against Akio as the Duke of Sheol without risking war, I doubt Surtur wants Muspelheim brought into a full-scale war with Asgard & co. either. This means, in all likelyhood, that Akio is on his own, and may even have BOTH sides gunning for him, albeit for different reasons.

Bottom line - his existience on any level is coming to a close, the only question is who's going to do the deed, and how messy is it going to get for everyone else before it's complete.

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

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I'm really here, but I'm not here, really.
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"You done goofed." Alucard
TFS - Hellsing Ultimate Abridged

-D-

It took the Chief going to some fairly extensive lengths to just REACH the realm when he was trying to rescue Raven from her father. Admittedly, UF-Gryph isn't a divine anything, but he knows quite a few comparable beings of the appropriate power level that probably COULD have gotten him there, even in the relatively small window of time he had had in which to pull it off. I'm guessing that Akio is sorta/kinda the Pillar/Godking/whatever of Oriphos and thus can completely block (or nearly so) all avenues of access to his realm if he so chooses. If not, then he has access to such means, and no-doubt plugged every hole he could before planning the smash and grab. I highly doubt that with his level of access to arcanum and whatnot he failed to figure out HOW UF-Gryph got into his realm the first time, after the fact, and so I doubt that method ingress is available anymore.

Of course Utena, Corwin, and the rest are no slouches in the "raw brute force when necessary" department, but I just wanna point out that if they went that route they could potentially kill everyone in Oriphos with it, infant and hatchling included, never mind the hundreds of students attending Akio's Academy. Brute force approaches like that may be good for bank vaults, but only if you don't care if some of the contents of said vault are damaged, in not destroyed, in the attempt. And you rarely get the choice of what happens to the items within in such a scenario. And I doubt that even in their aggrieved state that the Trinity and the Duelists would go with the "fuck everyone and everything and get our kids back NOW" approach; they're not the the type to do it.

After all, how many people down the years have they seen, who ultimately managed to turn their lives around and redeem themselves after some initial bad choices that once put them at odds with the Duelists? I can't see any of them going scorched-earth mode with Oriphos if there's even a chance that they could redeem some of the inhabitants.

In the end, Akio doesn't have just two hostages, he's got throngs of human shields from all over the realms to put between himself and his foes, and if someone from the Black Rose prisoners they have after the assault crumbled were to make it known to the Trinity and the Duelists (Saionji and Anakin are the most likely to bring it up, but I'm not discounting Leyna Taggart here either...), I'm pretty sure that they'd agree that going in and cutting everyone down wouldn't be an option. That'd make them no better than Akio himself.

Of course, this assumes that Iona is willing and able to work with the Duelists in time, but historically Akio's downfall has been hastened by those he tries to use as puppets.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Say... that'd be pretty sneaky. And poetic. I like it!

Assuming, of course, that Corwin would be able to undo the god-mojo wammy he laid on Iona and her vessel. Otherwise they'll have to figure out another angle. Maybe via another Fog ship...?