“Oh look, Lew!” Angel said as the portal behind her winked close. “It’s that country with all the criss-cross line writing again! We were just here the other day, weren’t we?”

[There’s a bunch of those, so it might not be the same place,] Lew reasonably pointed out, though even he had to admit the writing appeared to be the same. [Don’t forget the universal translator spell.]

“Got it!” she assured him. She had almost said ‘Roger,’ but the demon had been extremely adamant about never saying that particular affirmation. She didn’t understand why, which mostly had to do with her still being very confused about how the events in the British pub several months ago had come to pass, but she didn’t mind switching up her vocabulary in this regard if it would make Lew happy. Her only condition had been that he allow her to continue to say ‘spectacularrific’ and ‘cool beans,’ which the demon had referred to as ‘not a real word’ and ‘your choice to be lame I guess’ before agreeing.

Her spell applied, she turned her attention to scanning the area for her target. The trouble was, there were a lot of people here. The street was so packed full of people that Angel was put to mind of the schools of fishes she had seen that one time her Mama took her to an aquarium. This mass of people moved that way, and that mass of people moved this way, and there were bunches of cars too, which just added to her confusion. The one thing she could say for sure though was the people here seemed to be doing a very good job of following the traffic laws regarding crosswalks. There were a bunch of roads that met at this intersection, and periodically all of the traffic would stop, and every pedestrian in the area would flow into the street to cross to wherever they were going. It was quite the sight to behold and unlike anything Angel had ever seen before.

The problem was, the swarms of people moving all over and intersecting with and diverging from one another meant that Angel was having zero luck actually finding her target, even with her locator spell active.

“Well shoot, Lew, this is a right pickle,” she declared after ten minutes had gone by with no sign of her target.

[Yup, looks like it. Sounds like you better ditch this place and find a nice bar. I haven’t had anything to drink in ages!]

“I drink water all the time, Lew,” Angel replied as she flipped open her Ledger and read the entry to see if there might be any hints to point her in the right direction. “Masuyo Fujiwara of Tokyo. Masuyo likes to people watch from a cafe in the underground mall in Shibuya, where she grievously trolls people online.”

[That’s oddly specific for an entry, and what part of ‘bar’ did you not understand? I need some liquor in my body.]

“You mean my body.”

[Wench, stop rubbing salt in the wound and drink some goddamn vodka!]

Angel did not do this, as one might imagine. This was both because she actually tried her best to do a good job while she was working—drinking on the job only being productive when one’s job was to drink, a very interesting profession indeed—and because she had been raised to avoid alcohol and still felt bad that she had inadvertently tasted a sip of beer at the aforementioned British pub. Instead, she began asking passersby for directions to the underground mall the Ledger had mentioned and found her way there after getting turned around a few times. From there it was a simple matter of finding a cafe, sticking her head in, and confirming the red outline of her target was present. The woman was idly tapping away at her phone from her booth while lazily enjoying a small cup of coffee, her eyes occasionally flicking up to gaze curiously at this or that person.

Angel’s target now found, the problem as ever was actually corrupting the target.

“Okay, so… Uh…”

[It is ridiculous that it always takes you until now to actually try and figure out how to go about corrupting the target.]

“Well I gotta see ‘em first!”

[Why? You’ve already made it obvious you’re not going to go for the classic seduction, so you’re not figuring out their type or anything. Something about their face? Ah yes, this one has blue eyes, so adultery is the way to go! Thick eyebrows? Obviously a sucker for keeping a fallen wallet!]

“Oh! You’d think that would work?”

[The wallet thing? Sure, I guess, but that’s pretty weak stuff. If she’s not straddling that line hard, then she’ll still be heaven-bound.]

“But she does have kinda thick eyebrows, I think.”

[For the— y’know what? Believe whatever you want if it makes you feel better, but you better figure it out quick. It looks like she’s on the move.]

Sure enough, Masuyo stood and moved to the trash can to throw away her cardboard cup then started making her way towards the entrance where Angel was still dithering on how to go about her least favorite part of her job.“Pardon me,” the woman said as she started to slip past Angel, who scrambled to get out of the way.

“Oh, uh, sorry!”

She seemed startled at Angel’s reply and paused to throw her a curious glance. “You speak Japanese?”

“I don’t think so?”

[You’re joking, right? Universal translator spell ringing a bell? How the fuck did you think that worked?]

“Hn, perhaps not that well after all,” she replied, already looking disinterested and turning to leave again. “Goodbye.”

“W-Wait! Do you, uh, maybe want to… get some ice cream?!”

[What.]

“What?” Masuyo stopped and turned back to look at her, looking very confused and a little bit irritated. “I’ve got to get to work, lady.”

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to make you late! I just thought you looked like someone who might enjoy eating a whole bunch of chocolate ice cream.”

“If this is a joke, then I’m missing the punchline,” she drawled. “Better luck next time.”

She took off far quicker this time, speed walking down the corridor of the mall with her eyes alternating between the phone held up in front of her and checking where she was going. Back at the cafe entrance, Angel huffed and put her hands on her hips.

“Well shoot, I thought that would work.”

[I know I shouldn’t, but I’ll bite. Why ice cream, and why not the wallet thing?]

“Everybody loves chocolate ice cream, don’t they? And her eyebrows weren’t thick after all.”

Lew sighed, a sound unusually similar to a cat reminding itself what it had eaten by puking it back up. “Hurry up or you’re gonna lose her, and while you’re chasing her down, what does ice cream have to do with corruption?]

“Ain’t it a sin to overeat?”

[Remember how I said keeping a lost wallet was weak? You’ve blown clear past weak and into ‘why are you even bothering’ territory.]

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Angel managed to catch up to Masuyo by the escalators, and her arrival didn’t go unnoticed by her target. “Maybe things are different wherever you came from, but stalking is a crime in Japan.”

“Look, uh, I think we maybe got off on the wrong foot.”

“Obviously, but that’s to be expected when you’re a crazy stalker. Leave me alone!”

People were starting to stare, which was exacerbating Angel’s growing discomfort.

“I’m not!” she insisted, particularly flustered by the accusations being thrown at her. “I’m just trying to make sure you go to hell when you step outside and die!”

The sensation of falling backwards down an ascending escalator is not unlike falling backwards down a flight of stairs. The key differences are centered on the makeup of the surface the falling individual will be striking as they lose their fight with gravity, the upward movement of said surface working against the backwards momentum of the fall, and finally that falling backwards down an escalator almost invariably means a public setting wherein the falling individual may bring other unwitting bystanders along for the ride. In this particular instance, Angel was thinking about none of that, however. Her immediate train of thought was occupied with processing her surprise that Masuyo had taken her declaration poorly enough to shove her away shortly before the two of them could reach the top of the escalator—she ought not have been surprised by this reaction, since ordinary individuals tended not to take declarations of ominous portents from suspected crazy stalkers very well. Her target’s reaction to her own behavior appeared to be one of abject horror both with herself over what had in all likelihood been an involuntary, unintentional reaction and with the fallout of said reaction as she watched Angel fall backwards towards an elderly couple who had already been clutching at the moving handrail for support.

Angel, being in a demon’s body and thus possessing its infernal strength, instinctively snapped her hands out to grab the aforesaid handrail and might well have arrested her backwards momentum altogether if demons had been likewise known for their dexterity. This being not the case, she instead managed to punch the clear plastic paneling the moving handrail’s track was built upon, which did nothing to stop her from striking the elderly couple hard enough to send them flying backwards. Masuyo, Angel, and the elderly couple not being the only people on the escalator, a cycle of havoc began that echoed down the escalator until literally everyone on the escalator except for Masuyo had fallen with varying degrees of consequence upon the affected group. Some only suffered blunt force trauma to the head and body upon striking the metal escalator stairs at speed and a loss of dignity as they literally fell head over heels down an ascending escalator, which though not good signifies the rest of the chumps to follow in this list had a very bad time of it indeed. One lady who had been desperately holding in the need for the bathroom suffered the quiet dignity of dying nigh instantaneously when her head smashed into the corner of a stair at speed followed by the prompt leakage of shit and piss everywhere. A different gentleman saw the oncoming disaster and attempted to jump ship to the next escalator over, but like demons and their notable lack of dexterity, he slipped when the person above him fell backwards and clipped his lingering foot, which sent him instead falling down a descending escalator and starting a bonus catastrophe.

Angel, whose long hair got caught in the escalator, suffered a unique, more notable injury. Though she initially only suffered from a mild discomfort and the inability to lift her head up off of the stair, she was ultimately scalped when she reached the top of the escalator and the stair her hair was caught in looped back under to move towards the bottom again. Lew’s screech having been previously established as resembling the reproductive act of eagles, the author wishes you to know Angel’s variant was distinct, and not unlike the demon’s at all. Her shriek was far more akin to that of two peregrine falcons arguing with each other, presumably over who can dive the fastest. Angel had never been scalped, you see, and it was a feeling unlike any the author can describe having never been scalped herself, though the feeling would doubtlessly be painful, what with how the better part of the skin on one’s skull has been forcibly removed.

Masuyo, having not intended anything further than conveying ‘back off’ in a time-worn fashion, promptly vacated her lunch. This was a perfectly understandable reaction in light of having watched the repercussions of her snap decision, especially as she had not fully moved away from the top of the escalator in her horror, which meant she had a front row seat to Angel’s impromptu haircut. The natural consequence of Masuyo being practically on top of Angel when the former puked, however, was said stomach was emptied directly onto the open wound that hitherto was the roots of Angel’s hair. Angel’s target turned and fled the scene in dismay, and the only saving grace in the entire debacle whatsoever was Angel, having a demonic body, did heal from her grievous wound. Her clothes being less fortunate though meant she was covered in blood, bile, and clumps of brutalized hair when she rushed to follow.

“Wait! Wait!” Angel cried as she sprinted to keep up, trailing various pieces of body matter in her wake.

Her target shot a look of disturbed fright over her shoulder before redoubling her efforts to lose her tail. She did an admirable job of it too, to give credit where it was due. She might have even managed to elude Angel, had the enormous intersection from earlier been allowing pedestrian traffic when she got to it. Instead, she got a participant trophy in the form of a stylish head injury of her own when a meteorite fell out of the sky and lodged itself in her forehead by caving in her brain. The odds of dying this way were exceptionally low, which made it interesting, but what was nearly as interesting was everyone in the vicinity of Masuyo’s abruptly lifeless corpse screamed in abject terror and scattered like chickens from a fox, yet somehow nobody ran into traffic.

“Aw shoot,” Angel declared as she skidded to a stop, her scalp having already healed over and her hair being half grown back. “Why didn’t she just listen? I tried to tell her!”

[Yeah, well, people tend to not react well when you inform them they’re about to shuck this mortal coil.]

“I didn’t!”

[You are not the ruler to measure by, kid. Faaar from it. Now then, might I recommend moving away from the dead body? You’re attracting a lot of attention looking different and being covered in shit.]

“Pretty sure this is puke, not shit,” she replied, though she did turn to go, leaving a cloud of black smoke behind with the body. “Wait, is that a thing people can learn to do?”

[What, shit out their mouths?]

“Yeah!”

[You hummies are always spewing shit,] Lew snarked, [but as for your actual question: No. The Krae do though, if you want to see an intelligent life form do it.]

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that country,” Angel replied with interest, as she drew a portal to the top of a building nearby.

[That’s cause you’re a pitiful hummie. You people think you’re hot shit just because you got to your only satellite and put a space station in orbit. It’s fucking pitiful, really. But yeah, Kra is another planet that’s full of owl people. Call themselves Krae.]

“Owl people? Wouldn’t life on another planet evolve differently than anything here on Earth?” Angel asked as she set down her backpack, stripped off her defiled clothes, and began pulling out a clean set.

[That’s a surprisingly insightful question out of you. Wouldn’t have thought you knew anything about evolution. What gives? Also, ‘Earth?’ Is that how you’re supposed to pronounce it? I thought it was Ear-th.]

“I like nature,” she replied with a shrug. “So you’ve been calling our planet Ear-th?”

[No, no, no. I call it Hummieball. I just thought you people called it Ear-th.]

“Oh, okay. So what about the Krae?”

[What about those shit spewers?]

“That,” she said as she pulled on the last of her clean clothes and considered what to do with the dirty ones. Also how to clean off her backpack, which was also filthy. “That’s what I want to know about. Also about how owl people evolved on another planet.”

[Oh, right right. Sorry, still got my mind on that whole ‘Earth’ thing. What a fucking weird way to spell it. You’d think it would be with a ‘ur’ instead.’ Anyway, God made them that way.]

“But you were just talking about evolution…”

[Duh. God set all that evolution shit in motion. I mean sure, you could just let things happen organically, but then you get really fucked up races like the Ötain. Believe me, you don’t wanna see what those creeps are like. Nah, it’s way simpler to just plan with a goal in mind.] He paused for a moment then added, [So… What are you doing still standing around here for?]

“Oh, I’m trying to remember the time conversion. I think the laundromat is still closed.”

[For the umpteenth time, you can just make your clothes clean with a spell! You didn’t even have to take them off, you pervert, getting naked in public where any pigeon passing by this skyscraper could see you! Also, even if you’re still stuck on this idea of ‘supporting small businesses’ or whatever, you can go to any hummie wash parlor in the world. Hell, you could do it right here! There’s probably one around here somewhere.]

“Well… what if we went to one on Kra? This was my only job for the day, so we could explore!”

[Krae don’t wear clothes, kid. Most intelligent life doesn’t, though I suppose you hummies did get the short end of the evolutionary stick. Not sure what God was thinking when he made your species have barely any ability to sustain your body heat naturally.]

Angel, who had already fished out the plastic bag she used to transport her soiled clothes, immediately deflated. “Aww… So I can’t go see Kra?”

[When the fuck did I say that? Just don’t expect a place to wash your shit there is all. Rock that portal, kid!]

Angel didn’t need to be told twice. “Hooray! This gonna be spectacularrific! Here we go!” she said with a smile and a flourish of her finger as she made the portal and jumped through.