Grendel #30

Grendel breaks into the Tower, directly confronting and attacking Innocent XLII. Innocent fights back surprising well, considering Eppy's enhanced strength and weapons. He holds his own, but Eppy eventually grabs Innocent's robot hand and pulls it off, then escapes in glee.  Innocent's assistant, Lucas, tries to help Innocent with his presumably wounded hand, but it turns out that it was actually a false prosthesis--only a glove.  Underneath, he had a clawed hand.  Innocent is revealed as Tujiro XIV, the vampire from the Christine Spar arc.  He kills Lucas and east his eye.  His child helpers, Stool and Piddle, lick the blood from his hands; they are seemingly vampires as well.
 
Pellon Cross continues to trek across the desert, but finally collapses.  Luckily Zebra and Kierch find him and bring him home.
 
Orion brings his information about the bananas to the Board, but they were still not sure what he was going to do with it, and tell him not to say anything. He is finally fed up with going through official channels, quits his commission, and holds a press conference to tell the world about the bananas and other corruption.  Sherri Caniff wishes he hadn't done it, but still supports him.  He goes underground to continue his plans against the Church, now unencumbered by any official group he needs to answer to.  He starts up a base near Mount Rushmore.
 
Cross brings the plutonium to Innocent, who takes him by surprise and attacks him.  Cross fights back, but as a mere human can't handle Innocent/Tujiro's vampiric strength and speed.  Saying that Cross may be one of the very few who could actually handle his gift, Innocent turns Cross into a vampire and locks him up.
 
Innocent then goes to South America to get the bananas, and to give a big broadcast to the world.  However, Orion overrides it with a pirate broadcast of his own, telling more about what he has found out about the Church, including the fact that they had plans for a nuclear weapon.
 
Orion's sisters, Cesti and Neki, are harassed by members of C.O.P., who try to take them in to interrogation based on the plans of Mother Aimee, but they refuse, since they are not members of the Church.  However, it is clear they are now marked for difficulties, and Orion tries to get them to come with him in exile.  They refuse.
 
Innocent returns to the Tower only to find that Cross has escaped.

The animal metaphor this issue starts with a snake, which eats a puppy, but is then itself stalked and eaten by an alligator.  It's unclear how to read this: is the snake Innocent, eating Lucas?  But then who is the alligator?  Is the alligator Innocent, eating the snake, which is Cross?  Or do they not stand for specific individuals?