The Devil of Brockton Bay - Chapter 24
It took a couple days, but eventually I managed to gather my Peerage and Crystal in one room and explain the little adventure I had while they were busy.
Unsurprisingly, none of them were happy.
At the situation, at the Empire, and in Crystal’s case at me specifically.
“What do you mean you burned her house down!?”
I crossed my arms defiantly and sank back into the couch.
I wasn’t sorry about what I did.
And I told Crystal that much.
The teenaged heroine grabbed at her hair and barely managed to not scream in my face before stomping off to the corner of the room, leaving me at the mercy of my Pawns.
As the most cool-headed of them, Sam was the one to kick things off. “While she cools down, why don’t you explain why you decided arson was a good idea.” She suggested.
“Yeah, cause that? Way not cool, Rias.” Clover piped up, Alex nodding alongside her.
I sighed and relaxed my posture a bit, because fair. If one of them came back with a story about rescuing a hostage and casually mentioned they burned down someone’s house at the end of it, I would want an explanation too.
So I launched into the story I had gotten from Gloria about her family.
It started out rough but normal enough. A young couple makes a mistake and the girl gets pregnant. She drops out of college to take care of the baby and the father spends most of his time working to support the three of them.
Money is tight and the arrival of a second baby doesn’t help things, but for the most part they are a happy family if not a wealthy one.
Then the father dies, and things start going bad.
Between the funeral costs and normal living expenses what little money the family had dried up quickly. The mother is forced to work two jobs just to keep up with the bills and at this point any hope of finishing her college degree is dead. Around that time, Carl – still Carla at the time – started to make his transition, but since the E88 was still around he decided to do it secretly, stealing small amounts of money to pay for things like testosterone pills and clothes which only stressed things more.
Of course since money was tight and their mother was watching nearly every dollar, it didn’t take long for her to find out. And that’s when I figure she started to genuinely hate her children.
Not all at once of course.
But from the way Gloria described things after her mother found out about Carl stealing money, she started being more selfish about where the money they did have started going.
What used to be special family dinners out at a restaurant became lunches for her alone. Instead of new clothes and shoes for her children, she would spend it on a night out or a new dress. Weekends together with family became nights out with ‘friends’ and coworkers, many of whom had certain views. And while she never outright neglected either Carl or Gloria, she didn’t do much beyond the bare minimum either.
So when she found a device Carl had made in Gloria’s room it was just the final straw that broke the last thread of their relationship. She reached out to the Empire through her new ‘friends’ and sold out her family. The fact she happened to be wrong about Gloria gaining powers when it was actually Carl didn’t make a difference because both of them were dragged into the recruitment attempt and when I took Gloria home to grab her and Carl’s belongings, the mother had already packed and cleared out.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Wow, waaay not cool.” Clover repeated herself, though this time she sounded more disbelieving than upset with me. “No wonder you were pissed.”
Alex nodded. “Yeah, but why burn the house down if she already left? Isn’t that kinda pointless?”
“Oh, not at all.” I smiled darkly at them. “See, someone from the insurance company is going to have to investigate to see what happened and if they need to pay out and will have to look into some bank records. I’m sure the fact Gloria’s mother has been living beyond her means for a while now and recently had a large amount of money ‘gifted’ to her and that most of the possessions were removed from the house won’t raise any flags.”
The girls were silent for a bit before Alex whistled. “Wow Rias, that’s evil.”
“Yeah, you could even call it devilish.” Clover added, getting several groans at the bad pun.
Everyone started to loosen up though, even Crystal wasn’t glaring at me anymore. So I’d take it as a win. This probably wasn’t the last I was going to hear about the house thing though.
“So what do you plan to do with the two of them?” The heroine eventually asked. “They can’t go home and the Empire is still probably after them. You just going to let them crash here?”
I shrugged.
Honestly, I didn’t have a perfect solution. Gloria was currently content to hide out at my house and had taken over as housekeeper for the most part but that was only a short term solution because I couldn’t actually pay her to keep doing so and it didn’t do much for either of the siblings’ living situation.
It also didn’t help that Carl was in a coma. I had healed all his injuries over the days I spent waiting for everyone to meet up, but he showed no signs of waking. I had debated asking Crystal to bring Amy along as a favor, but I knew of her rule against brains and a coma sounded like a brain thing so I didn’t bother.
I probably could have gone to the PRT about the situation if I really wanted to, but Gloria had been adamant about trying anything and everything else first.
“I was actually thinking about offering the both of them a spot in my Peerage.” I admitted. “Unless Gloria changes her mind about the PRT or Carl wakes up, they’re both stuck in a pretty bad situation.” It was why I made it a condition for Gloria to stay with me until she and her brother were in a place to make their own decision about what they wanted to do next. Neither of us expected the coma though and that made things a bit more complicated.
“You sure about that? You only have so many pieces.” Sam pointed out.
“It’s the only way I can think of that guarantees that Carl will wake up any time soon.” I replied. “And once he is we can ask if he wants to hang around or just stay close enough to me for him to adapt like what I offered when I needed to resurrect you. Gloria is going to be on the Empire’s radar because of the mixup and the powers that come from being a devil should keep her mostly safe. And if they don’t want to be long term members of the group, I’ll just take the pieces back eventually.”
“Wait, you can do that?” Crystal asked.
“I know it’s possible, but not how to do it exactly.” I explained, getting a tingly feeling at the back of my throat as whatever geas I was under felt I was getting close to sharing information I wasn’t supposed to. “I’ve heard about oth–” aaand that was apparently too much.
The girls tensed up as they recognised the signs of me being forced to stop talking but thankfully didn’t mention it.
We had been exploring the restrictions I was under ever since we found out about the geas and I was starting to get a good idea about what I could and couldn’t say.
Anything about the little tournament I was drafted into was off limits, as was specifics about alternate worlds. But anything that was public knowledge or easily deduced through that knowledge was fine, which is why I could speculate about reclaiming my Evil Pieces at some point. But when I tried to reference examples from things I had watched or read about before I was dumped here, that triggered the geas.
“...anyway, if it doesn’t work out, I just wait a while and I can get the pieces back eventually.” I finished, acting like the loss of control didn’t bother me.
“How are you going to bring that up?” Crystal thankfully diverted the conversation. “Just casually say, ‘hey, do you want to turn into an evil creature of the night?’. Cause that sounds either like a scam or a cult to me.”
I smirked and turned to face the door. “I don’t need to find a way to bring it up to her because she’s been listening in for a while now. Gloria? Why don’t you join the conversation?”
The girl in question sheepishly opened the door and walked inside. “How did you know I was there?”
“Devil hearing.” I tapped my ear. “It’s a bit more sensitive than a normal human’s. So how much did you hear? Anything you want to ask about?”
“This peerage thing, it can help my brother?” She asked. “And what did Laserdream mean by turning into an evil creature?”
Crystal blushed lightly under the glare of my Peerage. While we joked about the evil Devil thing, they apparently didn’t like hearing it from people not in on the joke.
“Becoming part of my peerage means becoming a devil like me and these three.” I explained, pointing at Sam, Clover, and Alex and leaving Crystal to the nonexistent mercy of the rest of our friends. “Both of you would get the same basic powers as us. The process would fix anything wrong with Carl and wake him up.” ‘Probably.’
“Okay, so powers and joining your group. What's the catch? Cause this sounds kinda like a scam or a cult.” It was kinda sad that she immediately assumed there was a catch but that was just smart in Brockton Bay.
“For one you won’t be human anymore. This isn’t like becoming a parahuman, the process literally changes you into a Devil. Second, while I won’t demand that you become my servant or friend or anything like that, you have to stay nearby enough for us to see each other until you are stable enough to not need my influence anymore.” I wouldn’t say I’d hunt her and Carl down and kill them if they didn’t, not with Crystal in the room, but I wanted to make sure Gloria knew I was serious about this. I didn’t want to be responsible for a Stray. “And finally,” I let myself soften, “If you or your brother do decide to join up and you have an issue, I want to hear about it. No getting blindsided by the gangs or PRT or some other issue because you felt you couldn’t talk to us. Okay?”
Gloria clearly hesitated at the new info. I was fully aware that nothing I said really dismissed her concerns about being a cult, but I didn’t want to give her a false impression that what I was offering was anything but deadly serious.
Eventually she took a deep breath and looked me square in the eye. “If this can really help Carl, then I’m in. But if this is some freaky sex thing? I’m going to break your nose, super powerful cape or not.”
That startled a laugh out of me.
‘Well she has spirit at least.’ Ddraig commented.
Which was good, because that’s what I liked to see.