The night is dark, and the sound of rain drops hitting the ground are soft and comforting to the man standing at an impasse, trying his best in order to stay alive another day.
This is the story of an unfortunate man named Riley, who's just taken something that he shouldn't have, and is paying the consequences for it tenfold.
"Drop it and nobody dies, alright?" Says a man dressed in full black, aiming a gun directly at Riley.
"Bullshit. You're gonna shoot me either way, I might as well make your life a little bit more miserable." Riley says.
"I might think about letting you go if you drop it."
"Do you think I got here because all my risky gambles paid off?"
Riley turns and sprints for a moment, before turning back to defend his head with the briefcase, blocking one of two shots. The other one lodges firmly into his lower leg, causing him to stagger down to the ground.
The mysterious man points his gun inches away from Riley's forehead.
"Any questions before I send you off? I know you're dying to ask." The man says while chuckling at his own pun.
"Why... aren't you using an energy pistol?" Riley queries.
"You stupid, or just buying time? It's for-"
A figure from behind cuts him off, both figuratively and literally. The moment the mysterious man's head hits the ground, the demon begins speaking.
"Energy weapons after the Great Pact are almost exclusively powered by Demonic Energy, making it incredibly inefficient to kill even low ranking demons with it. The larger weaponry used to detain or suppress demons are often large and bulky, or lack the power to hurt anything stronger than a canine. Physical weaponry like lead-firing pistols or knives are generally more reliable for low to mid grade demons, and for the higher ranking ones you'd be dead on the spot regardless. Only way to fight a high ranker is with higher caliber weaponry. Or you can skip the trouble of having to use shoddy manmade weaponry and opt for a Demonic Artifact."
Blood trails lead from the area Riley was previously standing in and lead far away from the alleyway, slightly diluted in the the puddles created by the rain.
"Ah, he left. I believe I have just been speaking all this to myself, then. Quite unfortunate."
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He was right. He's always been right from the start. Demons aren't friends or stupid batteries. They're weapons. Walking talking weapons of mass destruction, powering cities while being able to perform evil freely underneath everyone's eyes.
Riley's heart beats ever so faster as he walks into a nearby hospital and nearly passes out on the white tile flooring, tainting their perfectly polished tiles with significantly more blood than he expected to pour out of the bullethole in his leg.
By the time Riley's gone through all the procedures, it almost feels like hours passed by. Which wouldn't be untrue, but Riley's always been awful at keeping time. Regardless, he finally manages to look at the briefcase that he brought in while he rests at one of the hospital beds.
Inside is a small trinket, which looks a tiny sword with a tassel attached to the pommel. He previously rushed into the previous confrontation and stole the briefcase since he thought it was a bunch of laundered cash or gems like most back alley deals, but this honestly makes him feel as if he just stole someone's birthday gift. It wasn't worth taking the risk running and grabbing it, and definitely wasn't worth getting shot in the leg.
His hands shuffle into his pockets, pulling out a pack of cards with a giant hole in the middle.
"How long has it been since the last time I've sat in a hospital bed like this?"
The deceptively sleek and elegant, yet incredibly buggy and poorly made computer to Riley's left beeps, informing him of someone standing outside.
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"Must be one of my pals. Man, who's stupid idea was it to just not tell you whoever's at the door? Whoever made this piece of junk needs to get a swift kick in the shins. If it's Tom trying to make fun of my life again I'd rather just leap out of the window."
Riley pushes the button regardless, taking the ever so slight risk of Tom into account. But what awaited him was far worse than Tom ever would have been.
A tall man clad in a rough trenchcoat and leather shoes steps inside, his silvery white hair glistening in the bright hospital room.
If it wasn't for the fact Riley recognized him as the demon who cleaved that mysterious man's head off, he'd probably mistake him for an eccentric middle-aged tax collector, or something of the sort.
"It's disgustingly bright in here. Hasn't anyone ever thought of giving the dying a bit more comfort to rest their eyes?" The demon remarks.
"People don't come here to die." Riley says to the demon.
"It's the perfect place to take a life though, wouldn't you say?"
"If you've come here to kill me, don't think you'll get off easy. Everyone will know about the true nature of demons. About how they're cruel and unnatural, lurking in the night to strike their prey. The world will finally understand. That's enough for me, right?"
"A very convincing point. Have you ever taken into account the fact you're prattling on as if this is some grand secret, and you're not just crowding around a bunch of idiots all the time?"
"You won't get away with this."
"I will. I'll even get vacation days for it."
Riley attempts to yell back at the demon, but is interrupted by a throbbing pain in his left arm.
"Dammit, all you demons do is make everything worse!"
By the time Riley manages to look back up, all he sees is the demon leaning directly in his face.
"I see. So that's what happened." The demon says, clearly lost in thought.
"Yeah, you see what you bastards did to me? My arm's covered in painful scars that'll never heal, my parents left me, and I've been unable to find a job forever due to this stupid curse!"
"Seems like you're simply just a dunce, I'd say."
The demon pokes at the wounds for a moment and ponders them.
"This is a telltale sign of extremely poor usage of Demonic Power far beyond your relative strength. Assuming your total hatred with them has remained since you were young, and you believe that you were born to human parents, I would say that you have an unfortunate case of being an illegitimate son." The demon says, quickly wrapping the arm back up and stepping away. "I'm afraid it's terminal."
"What?" Riley replies, obviously shocked from the demon's strange remarks.
"You are a demon. No, perhaps worse than that. You're a demon who has lived so long as a human that you're downright awful at being either of them."
Before Riley can even process the overwhelming torrent of crazy knowledge that was just said to him all at once, he sees the demon reach his hand out.
"Be my disciple. I believe we will get along quite well."
Riley stands up and dusts himself off, before sitting onto the bed and clutching his head.
"Illegitimate child... secretly a demon... it's too much to process. But if I turn this down now then I'd never have a chance to figure out anything about my past. And that'd just be plain stupid."
Riley reaches his hand out and shakes the demon's hand with a firm grasp.
"Oh. I was indeed not expecting it to be that easy myself, to be true. I was expecting a game of cat and mouse or a rather deep discussion about your past."
"No need, demon. It's not like my life matters anyways. Maybe I'll wake up and this is all some silly dream."
The demon gives Riley a swift kick in the shins and introduces himself.
"My name is Drew. And let it be known despite your eternal hatred conflicting with your reality, this is most definitely not a dream." Drew dusts himself off while speaking. "And from now on, I'll be teaching you how to be a proper demon." He says, stepping over to the computer and smashing it on the ground.
Riley's expression is one of both significant amounts of agony, mixed with that of utter confusion. "What the hell did you do that for? We're gonna get our ass handed to us by every cop in the city!"
"Lesson number one. A demon who lets themself be held down by the threat of an uncaring society is nothing more than a dog in the eyes of all others that observe them."
Drew kicks the computer out of the window, making a horribly loud noise as the glass breaks.
"Lesson number two. In the case the law stares you down and tries to trap you in its cage, go where it can neither see nor reach you."
Drew hoists up Riley over his shoulders, and grabs the briefcase as he leaps out the window onto a nearby rooftop, leaping across the city with great speed, heading towards an unfortunate destination.
Riley lands on the ground with a loud THUD, as Drew formally announces something rather important to him. "We have arrived exactly where we needed to be. Your new home, and the place you will be learning all sorts of ways to survive as a demon."
A part of the city barely populated, with only the strong or the stupid willing to stay there for life.
And the reason for such?
It's the hot-spot for all sorts of crime, for both demons and humans alike. What better place to train a new student?