The lack of buildings, vegetation, and the abundance of curses allowed anyone, even those without a bond, to scan through the town. This is how they survived the lunar patrols as it was impossible to sneak up on them with no one noticing, and yet Henzo not only exited the only tall house but also covered a mile within a minute. That is if he had to escape one’s line of sight.

“That girl and her lies.” Mary frowned.

“I don’t lie,” Debbie startled Mary, popping up from behind.

“Of course not! When do you ever...” Mary rolled her eyes so hard they almost disappeared into her skull.

“I did not lie,” Debbie corrected her previous statement.

“Yes... Henzo carried three soldiers, jumped from the second floor, landed outside the compound, covered all traces of his superhuman strength, then covered a mile... all within five minutes,” Mary’s glare bore into Debbie’s throat, making her stutter.

“Well... If you put it that way!”

“You there!” Mary’s yell stopped a teenager dead in his tracks. “Where is everyone?”

“We’re heading to the meeting you organized,” he replied in a shaky voice.

“Rephrase,” Mary demanded with a low, almost bestial roar.

“Ric’s meeting,” he corrected without missing a beat.

“Wait there, I will join you,” Mary ordered, then turned her glare toward Debbie one last time before leaving her to reflect on herself.

— — —<>|*|<>— — —

Ric had already depleted his reserves to boost Henzo for the round trip of the errand. He planned to manipulate the gullible citizens of Hope, but with Mary in the mix, he sought a fail-proof plan.

“How did you overextend yourself again?” Ric inquired.

Henzo explained the absurd scenes that had transpired multiple times already, yet even for the umpteenth time, they made little sense. “Ha-ha!” Ric nodded along. “Now, once again, and this time make more sense, will you?!”

“We have little time, young man,” an old man urged.

Ric spared him a fleeting glance before turning back to Henzo for a better explanation. “You might not... But I have all the time in the world,” he scoffed.

“Not what I meant, child. You know who could be here at any moment,” he warned.

Ric replenished Henzo’s stamina, enough for him to limp along. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the old man while summoning others to carry the carcasses.

With all eyes fixed on Ric, he addressed the people. They all hoped to dive right into the plan, fearing Mary’s wrath, yet Ric took this opportunity to express his frustration.

“What the heck is wrong with you people?”

“You have to be more specific,” the old man said. The crowd agreed with a nod and stared at Ric.

“The little toothless one...”

“Kids,” Henzo added.

“... Call her mom. The slimy, bent-over mothballs...”

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“Geezers—Erm—old people.”

“... Call her daughter. And people her age call her sister. How in Lucifer’s name does that even work?”

“Maybe we should save that question for when we have more time,” Henzo said, elbowing Ric in the ribs and prompting a yelp.

“Once mom’s here, you won’t be having such a huge crowd,” he urged.

“Eh,” Ric’s lips twitched. “I already took care of that. She won’t be here.” The crowd gasped in horror as he chuckled and clarified further. “She isn’t dead, just roaming around the woods until I say otherwise,” he assured the crowd. ‘Which in her case is a dead sentence,’ he chuckled to himself.

While the pre-planned, well-placed teenager took Mary on a wild goose chase, Ric planned out his next steps to use the naïve citizens of Hope with a bit of hope.

You dangle a carrot and the hungry bunnies hop into the stew to become yours, Ric always said.

“Skin, dry, and leave some muscles behind,” Ric ordered, pointing at the bodies. “All of you are so pathetic; the fires you conjure won’t harm the skin too much, so go at it as if your dinner depends on it because it does.”

By now, the people had developed a unique hearing state that allowed them to tune out Ric’s insults and concentrate on the instructions for their next meal.

Ric and Henzo supervised the group while they followed the instructions to modify the carcasses into skin suits.

Once the trio were turned into suits, Ric separated the citizens into groups who could fit into said suits for the next step.

Debbie stumbled into their practice of “how to be a dick” while searching for Mary. She couldn’t believe she made it here before Mary did and with a much slower pace than her usual walks. That old hag had even left an hour before she did and still wasn’t anywhere close to the demon’s domain of influence.

Everyone tried to convince her to help them act, with her being the queen of drama or a unique lifeform cramped with myriad, unstable emotions.

Debbie scoffed and yelled at people who were a tad too on the nose with blatant insults. Ric manipulated her with the same carrot, laced with whipped cream for good measure, and soon, Debbie joined the ragtag duo of dictatorship, turning them into the trio from hell.

As the head of the drama department, Debbie claimed her first payment by snatching away the old man’s walking stick, the sturdiest wood in the entire town. She used the cane to whip the people who wouldn’t follow simple advice.

“Straight,” Debbie smacked the old man on his weak knees, worsening his hunched back. Yet he pulled himself upright, almost straightening his arched spine for the first time in years. “Hmm...” she frowned and smacked his back harder. “Straighter,” she commanded.

“What the heck is wrong with her?” Henzo gaped at the scene. “I never witnessed this side of hers.” He wanted to hurl all the butterflies stored within his stomach. “You think you know someone, and then they turn to... whatever this is!”

“I love her,” Ric grinned. “How old is she?”

“Huh? About my age.”

“Okay... how old are you?”

“About your age,” Henzo’s frown deepened.

“Thousand four hundred and seventy-nine years?”

“Fourteen,” Henzo corrected.

“Four more years.” A creepy smile spread across Ric’s face.

“For what, exactly?”

“Wait for that long and I might let you in on the secret,” Ric winked, sending a shudder down Henzo’s spine.

“Forget that I asked.”

“Your loss,” Ric turned his gaze onto the eliminated crowd. “The rest of you, get to the construction.”

“What construction?” they exclaimed.

“Well, my castle, of course. Before I...”

They tuned out the insults and scattered to secure the materials required for a castle and lavish kitchen.

In the next hour, Debbie weeded out people from the selection and narrowed the options to the top seven candidates. The rest she banished from the town for being hopeless for her cause.

Henzo bowed in her stead and consoled the angry citizens, who now saw Ric in a better light compared to the devil princess. He also had to tackle Ric before he picked up any crazy ideas from Debbie’s haughty, devilish persona.

Among the seven finalists remained the old man, the former owner of the walking stick, Yanko, a former circus traveler who was kicked out for being too funny.

A girl, Rika, along with her four siblings, fit perfectly within the crab’s suit. All of them were born and raised in the dump called Hope. Debbie counted all of them as a single entity because only their combined gymnastics could fit them inside the crab suit.

In the last came Wrilo, another young girl with a voice that sounded like a man’s. She lacked acting skills, but only her voice suited the bat suit.

“You are at the gate,” Debbie played out another scenario. “How do you request permission?” She pointed the stick at Yanko.

“Please open the door,” Yanko said, stamping his feet and standing straight with an air of command.

Debbie’s cane flashed forward, and the old man expected the strike, covering his face. She scoffed at the response and redirected its trajectory to the old man’s groin.

“Ouch!” Ric exclaimed. “I don’t know if I have to toughen her up more or smoothen her out for four years.”

An icy hand jolts Ric out of his devilish dreams, and he turns to find it belonging to Henzo. “You need help, my friend,” Henzo says, with a half-deadpan and a lost-cause expression.

“And you need to stop doing that half-and-half thing with your face,” Ric retorts, “at least during conversations.”

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