Tejina stared at the scene before her. She could see the crowd, sure, a sea... well, a smallish bay of crazed fans that had looked like they were enjoying the music. Now, they were all wide-eyed and quiet. It wasn't hard to understand why, though. First, four guys had walked around the back of the stage, and one of them had buried a pipe in the guitar's amp, cutting Kireiko's seven- minute solo short. Then, Aki's dad got up on stage, with a green cape slung over his usual metal-armor getup, and let forth the most cheesy bad guy line that she had ever had the displeasure to hear. Kireiko, on her right, set his guitar down almost reverently, and then ripped his jacket off. She noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that he looked pretty good without a shirt on. Taller, somehow. Further thoughts of this nature were diverted by a soundless flash from her right, and what the heck was Matsuro doing over there? Whatever he had in his hands, it most certainly wasn't a drumstick. Was Tejina worried? Oh, no. Aki had as good as told her that something like this was going to happen, and Becky had promised a nice bonus if the fight looked good. Now, all that she had to do was figure out a way to chase them off before Kireiko got mad... One of the four guys, his face concealed behind a cheap cat mask, started towards her. "Ha, ha, okay, this is the part where I wave my hand and subdue you, right?" Tejina was surprised to hear her voice coming through the speaker system, until she looked down to see the microphone in her hand. Might as well make the best of things, she thought... "Okay, here goes!" Three elaborate gestures later, Tejina was ready to panic. While she was perfectly content to not have become a warrior of justice, or whatever else that Sailor Delight was supposed to stand for, some practice might have come in handy. In fact, she didn't know anything about what she could do. And there was something sinister about that guy's mask, the way it bobbed up and down... almost as if he were checking out her... A moment of white-hot fury passed through her mind, and she clenched her fists. What -did- she know how to do? She could sing. She could play that little synth keyboard well. She could out-shop any eight of her friends. She could... wait a minute... Tejina threw her right hand out at the oncoming man, holding the microphone in her left, and shouted, "CARDO SUWARU!" --- Do-Gooders, episode/part/chapter 3 "A Huge Fight! But Just What Is Going On?" By Andy Kent Original concept by Twoflower --- Kireiko flexed his muscles. He hadn't spent much time like this, really, mostly just showers, and it was always a kick to cut loose a little. He smiled at the two that had leapt up on his side of the stage, displaying fangs that would have looked good on a very large and poisonous gorilla. "Which one of you two broke the amp?" "You know, this isn't worth sixteen hundred yen an hour..." The other man chuckled nervously. "You're just saying that because you were the one that broke the amp." "I did not... AARGH!" The first attacker found himself lifted up in the air, feet dangling a full foot from the stage. Now, Kireiko mused, was time for fun. Well, it wasn't musing, exactly. He had realized, in the past, that he wasn't nearly as smart when he was, er, displaying himself. Now, he couldn't remember the reasoning exactly, just that he shouldn't try to act too smart. It wouldn't matter. "Guess I'll get to play more than my guitar... you know what my favorite sport is?" A weak smile spread across the man's face. "Um, backgammon?" "Professional wrestling, American-style! Let's go!" --- Matsuro leveled his sword at the lone punk on the left side of the stage. This was just perfect... he'd come to play tonight, not to brawl, and it seemed overkill to use a weapon of the coming apocalypse on this guy, but hey... it was handy. "Go. Now." The man, staring out the eyeholes of a ridiculous paper bag mask, nodded. "Hey, that's no fair!" Two heads swiveled to look at Becky, who had surged to the front of the crowd. She waved her arms frantically, yelling, "You can't go after him with a sword, when he's unarmed! You're the good guy!" The crowd murmured in agreement. "But... but... he attacked me!" Matsuro waved his free hand towards the other guy, who looked like he was trying to crawl into his own belly button. "It doesn't matter!" Becky folded her arms across her chest. "Those are the rules." Another figure shouldered his way near the stage. "Here, this will make it even!" The white-suited guy cradled something in both arms... "Hey, you! Catch!" The paper bag turned around just in time to catch the massive sword. It was huge, over eight feet long, with another four of handle, and Matsuro almost fainted as his opponent started swinging it around with one hand, casually slicing a gash in the floor of the wooden stage. "Hey, thanks!" He continued advancing on Matsuro. "No fair getting outside help!" Matsuro ducked, almost sprawling on his face as the huge weapon passed over him, making a low-pitched "swooooosh" sound and taking the top off his microphone stand. "So, not so confident when you don't have the bigger sword, eh?" The man behind the paper mask grinned. He could really get into this. Heck, maybe there was something to that mumbo jumbo that Villyn had been spouting; he could move this sword around like it was a toy. "Come on, then, and face the UNKNOWN MINION!" He launched another sweep, just missing the boy. --- "Hey, OW! These things STING!" The cat-masked guy was enclosed in a cloud of... Tejina wasn't sure, but it looked like a bunch of cut-up credit card bits. He swatted frantically at them, trying to keep them out of what of his face that the mask had left uncovered. Tejina grinned. Maybe there was something to this besides the costume, after all. She nodded, bringing one hand up in a sweeping, overly dramatic gesture, and yelled, "CHEKU BOUNCE!" The offender was flung upwards, in a spray of pieces of stage, credit card, and shredded clothing, and disappeared behind the gym. She cocked an eyebrow at Villyn, who had taken a step or two back, and laughed into the microphone. "What, is that it?" --- Kireiko let the first punk's body fall off the stage, where it lay quiescent as the crowd took turns surging over and stepping on it. The other one still stood, resting his hands on his knees as he tried to shake off the stunning force of the half-oni's attacks. It wasn't going to do him any good... he, in turn, was picked up, and the crowd nearest the stage cheered as he performed a picture-perfect reverse suplex on the hapless minion. Okay, something whispered in the dark and not-often-visited recesses of Kireiko's mind. This is fun, they're loving it, but time to finish up... he raised both his arms, placing thumb to thumb and gruesome claw to gruesome claw, leaving a diamond-shaped space open in the middle of his hands. The crowd failed to procude the expected cheer. Oh, well, must be a cultural thing, then. Kireiko decided to settle for picking the man up and ramming his face into the stage a few times. --- Matsuro backed warily. The others didn't seem to be having any problem, which made perfect sense for the muscle-bound Kireiko but was a bit puzzling in Tejina's case. He was worried about her... heck with it. He was worried about himself right now. Why did they get the ordinary Joes and he have to deal with the monstrously strong one? The Unknown fellow swept his sword out again, the arc leaving a huge gash in the stage as Matsuro jumped back again. That reach advantage was just too much. He felt his foot brush against his drum set. "Got you now!" The Unknown Minion raised the sword over his head, preparing to slice the impertinent kid lengthwise. No, this was not good. Matsuro got ready to dodge, then realized that if he did, the sword would neatly bisect his favorite drum before continuing on its merry way. Trying to kill him was one thing - after all, he'd had more than his share of that in the visions - but nothing had -ever- threatened his drums before. He put both hands on the hilt of his sword, bringing it up to block. Man, this is gonna hurt, he thought as the sword descended. He heard the expected , but instead of it being followed by sudden pain in the shoulder and then the forehead, Matsuro's arm merely twitched a bit. He looked up, not realizing that he'd closed his eyes in anticipation of the shock until he opened them again, and saw his sword neatly embedded halfway through the other. The Unknown Minion blinked, concealed by the paper mask, and pulled the sword away. He braced the tip against the stage, placed his foot against the nick, and pushed... and bent the sword neatly in half. "Aluminum," he groaned. "HEY! That was expensive!" The fanboy in white dropped to his knees, cradling his spiky hairdo in his hands. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a custom-made zanbatoh?" Matsuro gave the whiner a flat look. "Deal," he said. Turning to the Unknown Minion, he smiled. "You could try running?" "I think I will..." Minion set a new land speed record for an unmodified human running in fear of his life while wearing a paper bag over his head, and within seconds had completely fled from the campus. Matsuro glanced at Tejina, as she dusted off her hands, and caught a glimpse of Kireiko out of the corner of his eye. The guitarist had lifted the lone remaining minion over his head and was spinning rapidly. Matsuro winced as Kireiko promptly embedded the poor sap in the outer wall of the gym, producing a sound usually heard only in tomato sauce processing plants. --- Tejina smiled at Villyn. It was the sort of smile that you noticed had way, way too many teeth involved, like the person smiling was more interested in displaying how sharp their teeth were than any indication of pleasure. Villyn barely resisted the temptation to loosen his collar with one finger. "Well, MISTER let's-go-ruin-everybody's-good-time, are you done? We've got a gig to finish." The one calling herself Sailor Delight placed her hands on her hips and stared at him. A quick glance around told Villyn that his minions had been thoroughly repulsed. Obviously, something had gone dreadfully wrong. His darling Aki had told him that they were just classmates of hers; how had they gained access to such... such POWER? The burly one had finished posing and flexing to the crowd, and was now picking a two-inch incisor with a six-inch claw, and the slight one was staring at his sword (just where in HELL had he been hiding that thing?) as if it were a viper. No matter how much confidence he had in the Armor of Eternal Domination, it was just as well that the boy wasn't trying out his weapon after all. "Um... NO! Of course I'm not done, you foolish... fools! While you were distracted by my minions, I rigged THIS!" Villyn fumbled in his cape and came up with a retractable ball-point pen. "Behold! If I so much as twitch my thumb, the entire stage will be blown to smithereens! What do you have to say to -that-?" Tejina blinked. "But you were standing there the whole time." "THAT DOESN'T MATTER!" Villyn started chuckling in a particularly evil and nasty fashion. He'd found that it was incredibly effective in motivating his legions of fanatical troopers, and also in getting him extra elbow space on the subway. "Now, unless you surrender to my demands, I'll blow you and these people to kingdom come!" "Okay, shoot." The big one, who was even -more- ugly with his shades and jacket off, cracked his knuckles. "Um..." Villyn thought fast. "You must surrender unto me a copy of your demo tape!" Tejina blinked again. "What, you liked it?" "Yes, actually, I did. It's got a nice rhythm, you know... ENOUGH OF THAT! I merely desire a copy to add to my personal collection! Now, will you satisfy me, or shall I push the switch?" "I'm tempted to let him push the switch." Matsuro turned to Kireiko. "You?" "Give him the tape already. We've got an act to finish." Tejina walked to the back of the stage and bent over, intent on fishing a small pack out of the tangle of wires. Unfortunately, the particular angle of the stage prevented both the crowd and her two friends from verifying whether or not there was indeed a super-deformed animal shape printed on her panties. Villyn was at a perfect angle to notice, but his attention was focused completely on the bag; after all, what was a quick thrill compared to the first steps of world domination? "Okay, here you go. Tell your friends!" Nemesis Serendipity Villyn smoothly tucked the tape into one of his many armored pockets and spun around, walking towards his waiting conveyance. Tonight was successful beyond any of his wildest dreams. Not only had he managed to disrupt the concert in a display of his fearsome power, but he had also arranged for the heroes to dispose of his hired help before they had a chance to collect their pay. AND he now had a most excellent tape to listen to while he plotted his next fiendish agenda. Life... was... good. --- Tejina waved the microphone a bit at the speakers, allowing a blast of feedback to drown out the crowd's murmurs and assorted cheers. "Okay! Now on with the show..." Matsuro stared at the handle of his new sword. "Where the hell am I gonna put this thing?" "Back where you got it from, I suppose." Kireiko dug a spare shirt out of the pack that had held the promotional demo tapes and pulled it over his head. "Damn, this is gonna owowoowoowowowoowowowow!" Steam curled from the back of a newly-pressed white tee as Kireiko, now back to normal size and proportions, picked up his guitar. Matsuro gulped as he considered trying to impale himself with the sword. "Nuh-uh; I'll just hide it back here. And what was that?!" "I'll tell you later." --- Becky met the three as they left from backstage. After a bit of tweaking, it was found that the amplifier was completely shot, and the Do-Gooders' debut promptly became an "unplugged" concert. All told, it had been pretty successful. "And the way you got rid of that guy? I thought you were just going to do something hammy, but that was GREAT! You're not one of the Sailor Senshi in disguise, are you?" "Of course not! Heh." Tejina grew a pair of sweatdrops, one for each pigtail. "That would be silly." "I was just teasing you. Here, we got your money... with bonus, as promised." Kireiko neatly reached over Tejina's head and plucked the wad of yen out of Becky's hands. "Good, I've got to get a new amp." "HEY! Give that back!" Tejina glared daggers at the guitar player. Matsuro shrugged. "You were the one who said that we shouldn't incorporate instrument-destroying stuff, you know." "Oh, and I just love your duster, Matsuro!" Becky nearly drooled as she stared at the handsome boy. He looked like he was right out of her favorite series, RGB Visual. Funny, though... he hadn't worn that on his way -to- the concert... --- --In a corner of Valhalla... Somewhere, in a place that was certainly a lot more like an afterlife than any location on Earth. A place of warriors. A place where warriors tended to go to drink lots of alcoholic drinks with four-letter names like "mead" and "grog" and suchlike. For thousands of years, this led to a great deal of chaos and a lot of mop duty for the poor schmucks running the place, until the same schmucks figured out that they could save countless thousands of man-hours of effort repairing tables, chairs, and people by simply installing a weapon check to the front door. While this policy was decreed as tyrannical and overbearing, the warriors got used to it, and it did make for less fighting, which they did enough of already, and more wenching, of which virtually all were in favor. Given that Valhalla served countless numbers of vicious warriors, many of which indeed never left, that amounted to a truly large pile of weapons. Thus, the powers that operated Valhalla needed a staff especially dedicated to maintaining and storing these weapons, in case said warriors had to go off in a hurry. These positions were filled exclusively by dwarves, being both practical and in touch with Valhalla's roots, as it were. (Affirmative action has yet to trickle in to Valhalla, and when it does the occupants will spend an entire half-hour laughing before they go back to drinking and wenching.) On this particular day, at this particular hour, in fact at the very moment that Kireiko was busily holding the night's take just out of Tejina's reach and having rather more fun watching her jump for it than was proper, two of these very dwarves were taking inventory. For those who don't know, inventory is the act of finding out that the list of what you have on the shelf does not match what is actually on the shelf, and arranging matters so that the person taking inventory is never blamed when the notice eventually comes to light. These two dwarves (call them Balin and Dalin, because the author is no authority on dwarvish language or nomenclature and feels better about ripping off Tolkein than D&D books) are as highly skilled at this facet of weapons maintenance as all others. That is to say, they stink at it; after all, the skilled craftsdwarves are busy sharpening and oiling, not rummaging through old, dusty piles of swords that would likely never see the light of day again. Dalin sneezed, for the umpteenth time, and cursed his all-too-stereotypical overlarge nose, also for the umpteenth time. "Come on, 'urry up, I wanna go back up already." "Quit whining," Balin responded. "'Ere, tick these off the list... hammer, Mjolnir, one. Singing sword, six. Lightsabers, assorted, three dozen. Variable swords, two. Progressive knives, giant-size, ONE. And it's a bleedin' huge one, too!" "Got it. Wot else?" "Sword of Slaying, three. Sword, Vorpal, five. Sword, cheap steel katana..." Two rummaged through a bin. "Eighty-six. Sword of Duality, eighteen. Sword of Sharpness, seven." "Back up one. Says 'ere that we have twenty of the bleedin' Duality." "There's only eighteen there, you sod." "I'll mark it as twenty. Slip a couple o' them cheap katana ones in there to make it up, eh? Nobody'll care if we lose a few of those." --- Tejina, now dressed in jeans and sweater, munched on a rice cracker. They'd all stopped home, dropped off various instruments, and now they could discuss, calmly and rationally, exactly what had happened out there. "So, what, are you a magical girl, Tejina?" Kireiko chuckled. "NO! I am -not- a magical girl! It's not my fault that I have this thing!" Tejina waved her transformation pen at the two boys. "No fighting with Darkverse people, no sappy songs, nothing!" Kireiko blinked, rocking back in his chair, but Matsuro leaned forward in his. "Darkverse? I've never heard it called that before." "Did I say Darkverse? Ah heh." Tejina pointedly avoided looking at the other two. "Yeah, but I always thought it was the Dragons I had to worry about..." Matsuro shrugged. "Nothing ever mentioned any Darkverse." Ah ha! An opening. "Dragons? What are you talking about, Matsuro?" Kireiko smiled. "Yeah, and where did you get that sword? It kicked ass!" "Um, long story." Matsuro shrugged again, and his eyes unfocused. "I've been having the dreams for years now, you know. Sometimes they'd whisper, sometimes they'd scream, and I never could quiiiiiite make out what they were babbling about, except for the Dragons. For some reason, I'm not supposed to like them. Dunno what it means. Oh, and Mom gave me the sword. Don't ask where she got it." PLEASE don't ask, he silently added. "My turn?" Kireiko watched the other two nod. "You guys met Mom and Dad, right? You know how they are." Tejina flashed back to several instances where Kireiko's father would throw paperwork around the house, slap bills on the sides of the furniture, and shout silly things while working a calculator. "He always struck me as kind of odd for a cost accountant." "Yeah, he didn't used to be an accountant, you know. Back in the day, him and Mom would run around doing demon hunter stuff. You know, chasing ghosts, curing curses, that sort of thing? Anyway, this one oni cursed them. To hear Mom tell it, it tried to get fresh with her in the middle of a summoning and Dad relocated its family jewels to its throat." Matsuro winced. "That's harsh." "Yeah, so it is." Kireiko smiled. "Anyway, I'm half-oni myself; that's the curse. Also why I spent all those years in America." "And why you have such a girl's name?" Tejina held up her hands as Kireiko raised a fist. "Joking, joking." "Well, cut it out, okay? Or I'll start calling you Little Miss Magical Girl." A voice called out from the other side of the room. "It's Sailor Delight, not Little Miss!" The three turned to see the small, interestingly cute black cat that was scratching at the sliding door. Tejina's head fell to the kitchen table. "Oh, great, not this again..." --- Keiko finished the ties that secured her cape to the rest of her costume. Tonight would be the night, she mused; the night that all of her plans came to fruition. Well, started to come to fruition. Well, sort of fruition... For years, she had been teased in school. She was the average girl. She had unrequited crushes on cute guys that didn't return her feelings because they were pining after some bubblehead. She wore glasses, thick ones that made her eyes look big. She even had acne, an affliction that not a single of the other girls and damned few of the guys in her class had ever suffered through. In short, life had spent a lot of free time dumping crap on her. It was time to return the favor. Had life made her bitter, Keiko thought? Damn skippy. Which is why she sat, cross-legged and wearing an outfit comprised of not quite enough black leather, in the middle of a pentagram drawn with chicken blood that she had drained from last night's dinner. Around her sat various scented candles (mostly potpourri, but the books never did detail which scent was most important and she was on a tight budget, especially after all that leather) and every occult object she could find, stylish or not. She should be able to contact the nether regions pretty easily with this setup, right? All she would have to do is chant the final words of the spell, and all her sacrifices would be worth it. The money she'd saved for the books. The hours practicing her evil laugh. The stares she'd received when purchasing the various bits of her costume, which were sold only in stores that catered to people with rather odder tastes than hers, it seemed. "Come to me, oh darkest lords. Grant me thy power and through me afflict the mass of humanity. Make me your instrument of infamous destruction. I summon thee, Be'elzebub!" With the requisite flare of dark power, the room erupted in a black haze, obscuring Keiko's view of the walls. Something formed in the center of the room, something dark, something evil... Keiko blinked. A devil-thing had indeed presented itself before her, but she had never expected it to be quite like this. She could have bought portly; after all, gluttony was one of the seven sins of the particular dark pantheon she'd chosen to invoke. She could have even bought the way that it looked around like a tourist, since demon summoning was definitely not something that was considered common nowadays. But there was no way, no way in Hell, that she would buy its Hawaiian shirt. "Hiya, there. That's a cute outfit, you know! Um... what am I doing here?" "Um..." She had figured on some basic worship and kissing-of-rear, followed by the standard deflowering and then some kind of dark pact. The details were a bit fuzzy, true, but nobody had written about a demon that didn't know what to do when it was summoned. "You are Be'elzebub, lord of the ninth ring of Hell, right?" "No, I'm Be'alzebob. I can see where the trouble happened; we're cousins, see, and people get us mixed up all the time. I'm just lord of annoying technologial improvements, that's all." "Be'AlzebOb?" Keiko almost fainted from shock. "I'm sure that I had the pronunciation right..." She frantically rummaged through a stack of books, producing a pocket tape recorder, with which she had recorded the name. Stabbing the "play" button, she listened to it as it played back the correct pronunciation, tone perfect. "I said -that-, not... whatever you are." The demon laughed. "Oh, well, since you used one of those, it pretty much became my department by default. So, you got any requests? I'm here already." "NO! I mean, YES! Teach me the dark magic that I'll need to pay back those that have ruined my life! I'll do anything!" "Dark magic, huh? I'll have to ask the missus about that, I think. Come along, then..." Be'alzebob held out his hand. --- Tejina leaned back in her chair, absently looking at the large Titanic poster that Becky had found for her a few weeks back. For once, the thoughts that flowed through her head had nothing to do with the incredibly handsome guy in the picture... The cat had introduced herself as Daisy and proceeded to help herself to a beer from the fridge. For a magical girl's helper animal or whatever it was supposed to be, it was pretty dirty and mangy, in a sort of cute way. "See," Daisy had said, "a few years back, the Darkverse guys acquired a controlling share in a few computer companies. By purchasing or eating their competition, they managed to get a copy of their operating system on every computer on the planet, and arranged for them to all go down at the end of the millenium." Oh, great, Tejina had thought. She had to stop Microsoft? "Nah, somebody else is picking up the slack, so we don't have to worry about it. In fact, I'm kind of unemployed at the moment. Normally, I would have crashed at your place, you know, nice cute pet type, but I can't -find- you unless you transform, and you haven't done a whole lot of that lately!" Well, no. "But now at least I can hang out here." After that, Daisy had headed to the shower, mumbling something about checking on her granddaughters. Life had always been a little strange, Tejina thought, but this was a left turn into the land of the loony. She was, apparently, a magical girl sans evil organization to oppose. Oh well; it made for one great gimmick for the band. And the crowd had loved it! She'd have to convince Kireiko and Matsuro to get attacked more often. Those two... she'd always suspected that Kireiko wasn't entirely human; not only was he ludicrously buff and strong, but every so often when he was thinking of a practical joke to play, his eyes would flash red. It was kind of disturbing, in an attractive way. And Matsuro... he had always been quiet, always had those spells when he stared off into space and ignored everything. She would have asked his folks to take him to a psychologist, maybe get him some medication, but he didn't seem to have any. This whole weird world-saving-or-destroying-depending-on-mood thing actually fit him like a glove, now that she thought about it. Becky had said something about getting them another gig. This was good; they could stick with the Do-Gooders schtick until the record contracts came in or they bombed a performance, whichever came first. Tejina briefly wondered exactly what Becky had in mind, though. --- "Brother Maynard!" The head of the Tokyo Local Secret Cult of Cthulhu, otherwise known as "his eminence", stormed into the basement lair. "Maynard, you slacker! You haven't given me a report on your progress in finding a suitable host for the return of our master!" Maynard looked up from his computer, saw who was shouting at him, and promptly fell over in his chair. "Y-y-your eminence! Um, well, we did locate a suitably powerful entity! Just last night, I and my cohorts visited its lair!" His Eminence stroked his beard, thoughtfully. "Good, good. Where are these cohorts?" "They were, ah, c-c-consumed by the oni, your Eminence." "Consumed?" His Eminence rubbed his hands in glee. "It infused them with its evil essence? Most salutary! Come, bring them, so that we may negotiate with the oni before we betray it and give its mortal shell to Cthulhu!" "Ah, no, your Eminence, it did not infuse them, it consumed them. Ate them, in fact. I was just faster than the other two, that's all." "Oh. Well, carry on then, Brother Maynard." His Eminence turned on his heel, throwing a "Ia, Ia, Cthulhu Ftaugn" over his shoulder. Maynard righted his chair and sat before the computer. "Next time, we'll have to find a weaker oni..." --- Matsuro closed the door to his loft, threw his duster over the nearest chair, and looked at his sword. "What in heck am I going to do with this?" It hadn't come with a scabbard, and he didn't particularly want to go fishing around in his intestines for one. After a minute, he hung it from his coat rack, covering it with the duster. Today had been pretty good, all told. With Kireiko's amp busted, they'd finally been able to produce some -really- good music, instead of the thrash that they'd generally put out. Tejina had been on the ball as well, and he'd delivered his normal level of perfection. In retrospect, even the attack had been good. Anything to interrupt a guitar solo, he thought, grinning. To be honest, it had come as no surprise at all that Kireiko was actually part oni. In fact, he'd been shocked that the big guy had managed to hide it that long from Tejina. Then again, she'd never shared a gym shower with the guy; a mistake that Matsuro had made once and only once. He briefly wondered where Kireiko had managed to hide those tentacles during the fight. Tejina, though... he laughed out loud. That had come as a complete shock. Fortunately, that mangy runt of a cat had shown up and interrupted things before anybody asked for more explanations. A talking cat. It was like something out of one of his visions. Right on cue, the piece of Pocky that Matsuro had been idly chewing on transformed, writhing, into a huge snake and burrowed its way into the gelatinous red walls. Great, he thought, just great. "Matsuro. You must go to Tokyo." Nothing he could see this time, just a lingering sense of madness and evil intent. "Where have you been? I've been living in Tokyo for six years now!" The voice paused. "Ah, yes, quite. Well, then, it's time for you to fulfill your destiny. Get to it." Matsuro sat down on the huge expanse of nothing and grinned. "So, you're finally going to tell me my destiny? This should be interesting. Go ahead." "Um, actually, I don't know your destiny. I always figured that you had something in mind..." Out of the red and humid darkness, something small and blue pulsed. "It's probably not important, anyway. Just go do something." The walls suddenly focused, and Matsuro fell from his perch on the ceiling fan. Well, at least it hadn't been the flying monkeys, again. Matsuro collected his thoughts, putting his latest hallucination out of his head. Where was he... oh, yeah, Tejina. God, she was cute in that short fuku. --- Keiko hesitated as Be'alzebob held his house's door open for her. The events of the last twenty minutes had her spooked but good. Sure, the door was made of a slab of living flesh, and the house of obsidian stone... but it looked just like a little suburban home. So did the other fifty that they'd passed after she'd been pulled into Hell. They had gardens of nightshade and hemlock. They had blood red picket fences, for heaven's sake. She wondered if they kept a hellhound in the little house she could see through the razor-wire fence. Inside was nice, though. The carpet was thick and the color of dried blood; the walls were hung with pictures of people undergoing various tortures (she stopped to pause at one particularly gruesome scene, much to Bob's delight); and screams of damned souls resounded through the entire place. Bob, because she thought it was silly to think of this softy as a Be'anything, sank with a groan of relaxation into an overstuffed recliner and motioned for her to sit on the couch. She did so, alert for any sign of movement, and found that it was actually comfortable. "Darling, are you back already? It's been so long since anybody's been called from around here!" The voice, horrible in its lilting tones, echoed from another doorway. "Yes, dear, I'm home. Come meet our guest! We're in the living room." Through the door came another demon, this one definitely female. She wore her hair in an elaborate bun, which was impressive considering that the whole thing was comprised of little writhing snakes. She had on a red house dress with a flat black apron. She had tea. "Oh, aren't you just darling! No, now, don't get up." The newcomer sat down next to Keiko on the couch. "Be'alzebob, you didn't tell me that you had a human friend!" "I didn't. She just called me, some kind of accident or something. Ah, that's good tea. Honey, this is... you never told me your name, little girl!" "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm Keiko." "So nice to meet you, Keiko." And so passed a completely bizarre hour, with Keiko socializing with two demons that were actually so aggressively mundane that it scared her more than anything she'd imagined herself. They'd turned down the screams, piped in through what appeared to be a state-of-the-art stereo, and Mrs. Bob had fetched her old family antique book of dark and secret magick, because after all what kind of demon needs a silly thing like that nowadays? And they'd taken her home, with the book and a nice box of chocolate cherries, and let her go. Keiko shrugged. She knew when to take "yes" for an answer. Besides, now she had a mission. There was a reason that evil wasn't rampant enough in the world; Hell had lost its touch. They hadn't gone completely straight, they'd just forgotten how to have a good time. And Keiko could show them. --- Kireiko banged on the door. "Come on, Dad, open up! This isn't funny!" The door was unlocked, but evidently Dad (or Mom, and they never admitted which one it was) had taped up the anti-demon ward again. "I'm hungry! I swear, if you don't open this door -right now- I'm gonna take my shirt off!" The door swung open, revealing his mother, who had the offending ofuda in her hands and a sheepish look on her face. "Come in, son. How was the band?" "I'm home, already. We kicked ass!" Literally. "That's nice, dear." He was halfway to the stairwell when an envelope shot out from the study and attached itself to his forehead. "There's your allowance, son!" "Thanks, DAD," Kireiko growled. His father hadn't fought any demons in years, indeed not in Kireiko's memory, but he had never stopped flinging those papers around. He'd accepted the sticky note in the same way that the soldier had accepted the repeating rifle, for that matter. Kireiko stomped upstairs, making as much noise as he could, and slammed the door to his room shut behind him. He counted the money in the envelope. Put together with the band's pay, it would be juuuust enough to buy a new amp. A better one, this time. He sighed. Tonight had been fun. He couldn't remember the last time he'd crunched somebody like that and not felt bad about it afterwards. For that matter, he couldn't remember ever feeling bad about it afterwards. A smile formed on his lips as he recalled the fight. It figured that Matsuro was some kind of psycho. Guy was always running around on rooftops, talking to himself, never smiled. Never. He could drum, though, and he wasn't too annoying to hang around with, so it wasn't really a problem. The sword was a nice touch. How -had- he smuggled that up there without anybody noticing? Tejina, though, she was going to be a problem. He'd accepted that he was a half-oni years ago. Heck, he had a lot of fun with it, every now and then. But she was a magical girl! A genuine, dyed-in-the-wool silly poses and little talking pets magical girl. There was probably something in her contract about not dating the enemy. Well, it sure wouldn't stop him. After all, if he could put up with the cat and the silly poses, she could put up with horns and the occasional tentacle. Besides, they were all open-minded about that kind of thing, right? Right? Right. Damn, she looked good in that short fuku. --- Aki bounced a desk lamp off of her father's armored head. "I can't believe you! You came -this- close to ruining everything!" "Okay, enough already! Next time I'll do my marauding elsewhere. Are you happy?" "No, I'm not happy!" Aki waved the printed e-mail under her father's nose. "Do you know what they said? They -cut- the activities budget! You DID ruin my prom!" "Now, now... all it needs is money, right? You should think more like me, Aki. How could I aspire to conquer the world if I can't come up with some cash for my little girl? Now leave me alone. I have to listen to this tape while I plan how I'm going to get the funds that you need." Nemesis Villyn, middle name excluded, turned around and popped the tape into his armor's built-in player. "Daddy, don't you DARE!" --- WHAT FIENDISH PLAN WILL VILLYN CONCOCT, INSPIRED BY THE ROCKING MUSIC OF THE DO-GOODERS? WHAT WILL KEIKO DO WITH HER DARK KNOWLEDGE? HOW LONG BEFORE MATSURO AND KIREIKO GET IN A FIGHT OVER TEJINA? WHAT DID DAISY MEAN BY "GRANDCHILDREN"? WHAT ABOUT VALHALLA? OR THE CTHULHU WORSHIPPERS? IS THIS COMPLICATED ENOUGH YET? FIND OUT NEXT WEEK! -Andy -- "He'd been an angel once. He hadn't meant to Fall. He'd just hung around with the wrong people." Crowley, Good Omens