She does not know where she is.
Not exactly a surprise, she’s always had a poor sense of direction;but there’s getting lost in the city, with its myriad-
Wait, she’s done this before. Where has she done this before? It doesn’t seem like the same place, but she doesn’t really remember much beyond the pain. So much pain. Somehow she knows it was her fault that she’s here, wherever here is.
She’s in a room of pink, sitting on a chair with some cutsie chains wrapped around her to keep her from moving. She looks right. There’s a bed, it too, is pink. There’s a plushie of a unicorn on the bed. She looks left, there’s a door.
It opens.
A grumbling old man walks through, his suit a dapper pink, but hair and eyes being rather normal. He has a slight stubble that’s just at the point of being awkward.
“You need to shave” She says
“And you need to learn restraint” He says in a language that is all in one and one in all. It echoes throughout the room like the sound itself has life it does not want to lose, it just keeps going and going, until it stops. He didn’t open his mouth but he did, she saw him, but he couldn’t have, it was closed. But it was open? She looks at whatever the fuck just spoke and speaks herself.
“I’m in trouble aren’t I?”
He grunts, and it is the sound of a church bell with the power of a jingle as he sits down across from her. He fumbles through a few papers before finding one and sliding it across the table. It has a shit ton of legal jargon on it, she doesn’t even get past the first paragraph.
“What is this?”
He rolls his eyes while keeping them trained on her, “it is a contract” he says in the many-tongue “to fix your soul”
She blinks “My soul?”
“Yes”
“My soul is fine.”
He sighs and groans at the same time “Do you remember who you are?” which is a strange question because of course she does, she’s-
She doesn’t know her name. She starts hyperventilating as she tries to recall anything and finds nothing, nothing at all. Like she was a newborn, or an amnesiac. Does she have amnesia? Oh that’s bad, there are things she shouldn’t forget, she knows that. She doesn’t know how she knows but she just does.
The Old Man leaves her to her existential crisis as he takes a sip of tea that is not there.
“Who am I?” she asks.
He taps on the contract slowly, “sign, and you’ll find out”
She hesitates, but picks up a pencil that was always there only just now and thinks it over. Then she looks at the pencil, shocked. It just appeared, but it was always there, but it couldn’t have been. What is happening?
“Did you do this?” she shakes the pencil at him.
He shakes his head, “That was all you”
She stares at the pencil, “How?”
He shrugs and stares impatiently and paces and slams his hands to the table and covers his face and screams and-
She cannot look at him.
“Just sign”
She keeps her eyes on the pencil “what happens when I do?”
He stares, and just stares, nothing else, then he smiles. “You get to keep your soul from shattering, and I get a favor”
She stares at him, “are you a demon?”
He smiles wider.
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“Yes”
-
Alex wakes up on the floor of her room feeling surprisingly refreshed. It is only after a moment of contemplating the lack of pain that she remembers how royally she just fucked up. She signed a contract with a demon but you would’ve died otherwise a part of her says, you don’t know that says another. What if it tricked her? Demons do that right? It’s like their whole thing. But no, the pain was real, and the fact it knocked her unconscious says something about what she did, and it’s not particularly positive.
She looks at her pencil, and for once listens to logic and doesn’t try to roll it. She doesn’t know if it’s safe to do so soon after, apparently, almost shattering her soul.
There is a knock at her door.
She turns to stare at it, as though expecting the demon to come barging into her room. It’s a slight relief when it’s Aki who opens the door, he looks slightly annoyed, but that quickly shifts to concern when he sees her face.
“Are you ok?” he asks
“I fucked up bad Aki” she says.
-
There was no clause about keeping her meeting a secret in the contract. She knows this because all the details were seared into her mind as soon as she signed. The most concerning was how open-ended the favour could be, the only thing he can’t do is eat her soul. Which apparently is a thing, she just hopes he’s satisfied with the soul juice and doesn’t ask anything of her. Because yes, the soul produces some weird shit and part of the contract was that he gets half until the contract is paid or he uses his favour. The longer he waits, the less extreme the task.
She doesn’t know how all this is honoured, she just KNOWS that it is.
Aki’s just been staring at her while she regales her tale.
“You broke your soul trying to move a pencil?” he asks. She nods.
“How? Like actually how. your weird ass predictions are way more magical than some baby-ass telekinesis, yet you’ve been fine the whole time.”
She shrugs “I don’t know, I just know it did.”
“And now you’re beholden to some random demon.”
She nods.
He groans “you need to stop it with all this weird shit. Honestly Alex, I think I’ve aged years just from all the implications of your little discoveries. Now I find out demons are real? What's next? Angels? Fucking kappa’s?”
He takes a moment to centre himself, “just please for the love of…I don’t fucking know anymore, try not to break your soul. I’m pretty sure you need that.”
She nods “ok, yeah, I can do that.”
He sighs and sits next to her on her bed, running his hands through his face. “Anyway, I came here to grab you. Ellie’s ready to give us a long term job, and she wants to meet at some apartments a few blocks down”
Alex perks up at that, causing Aki to let out a light chuckle.
-
Aki rings the doorbell of room three-oh-seven of the apartment complex on Hathers avenue, it takes a few moments but eventually they hear rhythmic thumping approach the door. It opens, and on the other side is an elderly man with a cane. His face is a canvas of wrinkles and his back is hunched.
He looks at them through sunken eyes “Aki, Sasha, and Alex?” he asks, they nod, and he motions for them to come inside. They go past the entryway and are immediately greeted by a kitchen, with a living area to their left.
Ellie is sitting on the couch, watching a documentary about ferrets, her feet on the counter as she seems to be fighting off the urge to sleep.
The old man whacks her with his cane.
“Ow! Morice, you senile cunt!”
“You’re older than me Ellie, now get presentable, you have guests.” Says the old man who just casually hit the Third Finger. The kids can barely believe their eyes as Ellie grumbles curses and doesn’t end the fool where he stands.
Ellie glances at the three of them and lets out a yawn, “Took you long enough. I had to watch a bunch of dumbass animal shows ‘cause Morice is fucking weird. You know elephants apparently hold funerals? I didn’t.”
Aki nods, “I did actually,” he says, getting a few stares from those in the room. “Why do you know that?” Sasha asks incredulously. He shrugs “I like animals. Thinking of getting a hamster once we move out of Lost Hope.”
Morice turns to Ellie, “I like this one,” he says, “I’m sure you would, you decrepit skeleton,” Elli responds. That gets a chuckle out of Morice before he sits on a nice sofa-chair, and leans back with a sigh of contentment. Ellie gives him a concerned look, “your back?” She asks. He waves her off “don’t you worry about me, now c’mon, no need to keep the kids in suspense.” Ellie just nods before turning to them, “well?” She asks, “take a seat.” she spreads her arm at the surrounding couches.
There isn’t enough room for all of them on the loveseat, so Aki ends up nervously sitting next to their boss. Ellie claps her hands together, chrome arms making an echo of steel through the room. “Right!” She says “How much has Akihiro here told you?”
Alex and Sasha glance at each other, then look back to the woman “he hasn’t told us anything.” That gets a look of shock from Ellie, “That’s a surprise” she says, “a pleasant one though, people who know when to shut the fuck up are always valuable.”
“You didn’t tell him to keep it a secret?” Alex asks. Ellie motions her hand in a so-so gesture, “It was implied, but not outright said. It was a test, only downside is I have to explain everything from scratch, but that’s a pretty cheap price.”
Ellie’s eyes go yellow and the TV changes to display a map of Arthas, all the gang territories are marked with their respective colors. “How much do you know about war kiddo’s?” she asks.
Sasha shrugs, “A bunch of people decide to kill each other because of some bullshit.”
Ellie tsk’s “you’re not wrong, but that ‘bullshit’ is more important than you might think. The House, for example, started the war because they needed to respond somehow to all the poking, or they lose their credibility as a group that can protect its holdings. Usually a gang provokes a war in hopes of getting a small chunk of territory.” Her eyes go yellow again and the map changes.
A quarter of house territory is marked in black. “Most wars are short ‘cause no one with a brain wants a repeat of the last Artheinian war” She says, “This war though, has gone strong for almost three months, and looks to continue past new years.” She lets that sit for a moment, “which is why I’ve had one of my associates teach Aki how to drive a Semi.”
The change in subject jars both Alex and Sasha.
“You’re job” she says “Is to protect him on supply runs to The House until the war ends.”