iCarly: Devil's Due
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I don't own iCarly…but it's a fun concept. Had to play a bit with the ages and years. So what else is new?
Maybe an AU. I'll find a place to fit this in later. Maybe.
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Devil's Due, Chapter 1: Don't Talk to Strangers
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The year is 1999. The city is Seattle, Washington, Planet Earth, 3rd Age, Millennium 2.0. I walk into the building that houses the human children, and sees to their education. I am directed to my classroom by an impertinent human adult whom I fantasize about punishing for his lack of manners. He could do quite well with just nine fingers; many humans have lost whole arms. I enter the room indicated, and simply find an empty seat and sit. I understand later I was supposed to be introduced to the class, but honestly, I'd rather forego such nonsense. It's not like I'm going to be here long enough for anyone to have any business knowing my name, anyway.
Their educational process is primitive, of course. Someday, they'll come up with something better, but for now, I suppose this serves the purpose.
My uncle has left me here, while he attends to certain business matters here in the mortal world. He has every confidence that I can handle myself, has left me with only a few simple instructions, none of which I really needed to hear.
As I implied, my people's method of education is…let's just say, somewhat more advanced.
It's a challenge to just sit through the insipid human instructor's interminable speech. She's wrong about several things anyway, and I have to refrain from correcting her. I wonder if she'll ever shut up, then have to stifle a grin. Of course she will….when she's dead. I remember that scene, even though it hasn't happened yet, stopping by to see her lifeless body in its casket. Finally finished talking, did you? I suppress the hilarity I feel, both then and now, however. No matter how entertaining her funeral is, no true benefit would be accomplished by me laughing out loud. And my sort are practical beings, after all.
Recess: ah, finally. Release from within that desultory prison. Yet am I cognizant of the very real possibility that my uncle has not left me here by mere accident. Perhaps I am to take away some valuable experience from this debacle. And my kind live for experience.
Without any real direction, I follow the trail of emotion and wander over to a group of immature humans playing some primitive game involving weighted sticks and a leather-wrapped ball. I suppress a snort of derision. Not even any contact? Why couldn't they have hunting classes here? I could get into that. But this? Please.
"Hey!" I turn, realizing I am being addressed, albeit impudently, as seems to be the norm here in this world. It's no wonder their social order is on the verge of collapse. "You wanna play?"
I almost say, not like that, before I remember I am supposed to keep a low profile. It just wouldn't do for the humans, even these immature ones, to recognize the predator in their midst.
And to this end, my eyes are carefully cloaked by an illusion no human power can penetrate. For should someone look into my eyes without that illusion….
They would see me for what I truly am.
I am what humans would call a demon.
I remember watching the human movie, "The Exorcist." It was an incredibly funny experience. Humans actually think we operate like that? Of course, it was a bit uplifting, even if a trifle overdone, to see (well, actually, to imagine) the misery "we" had brought upon the human girl Regan, even if it was totally fictitious. Humans have such a naïve approach to such things as Eternity.
But while simply causing distress and misery is enjoyable, to a degree, there must be some point to the whole matter. Otherwise, it's really no more than what some humans have called "horror porn." Simple horror, the destruction of the flesh, the torture of the mind, for no purpose. And ultimately unsatisfying. Like eating the icing off a cake and not the cake itself.
Yet humans themselves seem to be inordinately fond of such "horror porn," as is evidenced by the recent spate of movies and television shows mostly dealing with ever-more graphic violence and "implied" scenes in which members of their species—usually females, of course-are tormented in ever more explicit scenes. I guess nobody makes the connection between the attraction of such movies, the human drive to protect the half of the species that bears offspring, and the never-to-be-sufficiently-filled money purses of those who produce them.
Or perhaps they do. I don't really care.
All this goes through my minds in less than a second, while the immature human stands in front of me, still waiting for an answer to his question. My first inclination is to snort and turn away, but that would show no style, no class.
It would be better to have some fun with him, first.
"I….might," I say. "What game is this, anyway?"
He gapes at me. "What game? This is baseball! What planet are you from?"
If only you knew. "We don't have this game where I come from," I tell him. Which is true. "So I don't know how it's played. What, do you hit that ball with this?" I indicate the bat. Of course I know what it is. I remember from my future self.
His eyes shift in what I'm sure he thinks is a crafty way. He plans to take the "newbie" into the realm of painful experience. Hm. With a little training, he could make an adequate low-level demon. However, it's true he'd never amount to much. No strategic sense. "Yeah, you stand right there," he shows me a spot, "and you try to hit the ball when it's thrown at ya. Here." He hands me the bat, and makes a signal to the pitcher. He thinks I don't know what he's just signaled for. I'll let him think that…for now. "Just give it a try."
This day has been an education for me in learning how to suppress my expressions, so as not to give away too much, too soon. "Alright." I deliberately handle the bat a bit clumsily.
The pitcher winds up, and throws what I'm sure he thinks is a terrific pitch—straight at my face. And I grasp at time, in the non-Euclidean way my sort can, and it slows to a crawl.
I step to one side, and with the strength of one of my kind, I swing the bat. Whack! The ball is sent careening up and completely out of the schoolyard playground, completely missing the ball trap at the corner of the diamond. The others watch in open-mouthed astonishment as it passes beyond sight.
I step back to the boy who initially thought he was conning me into getting a ball in the face. "Doesn't seem so hard," I say, handing him the bat back. "But it's not for me." I walk off.
"Hey!" He calls to me. I restrain the impulse to impress upon him, somewhat forcefully, that my name is not "Hey." "What about our ball?"
I shrug. "I was told we aren't supposed to leave the playground," I reply. "There's nothing I can do about your ball." And I turn and walk off.
The air of unhappiness is somewhat enjoyable. My sort enjoy human emotions greatly, and the easiest to produce are the negative ones. That doesn't preclude our enjoyment of pleasurable ones; it's just that some of us, I guess you'd say, "specialize." Usually, it's the laziest ones. I like to think I'm not one of those. Still, waste not, want not.
I sit on the steps behind the main building, drinking in the sensation of disappointment from the young humans. They'd intended worse for me, so, even if I were capable of feeling guilt, I wouldn't. But…that is not the only emotion I am sensing. At first, I pay it no attention.
"That was some hit," says a voice behind me. I turn and look.
The speaker is a blond girl, with naturally curly hair falling to her shoulders. Her pretty face is illuminated by a pair of blue eyes, the entire array making for a quite attractive girl, by human standards, and one that is studying me intently. "You really hit it outta the park."
"Yes." I wonder what the point of this conversation is. Yes, I did. And?
"You never played before?"
"Never." One of my future selves has some memories of a time in 2018 when I played, for a reason I shan't share just yet. But that has not happened yet, here in this universe.
"You're a natural. Maybe you should try out for the team."
"I'm not interested." Where is Uncle Darien? I hate being so tied to linear time like this. I'm ready to go.
She sits down beside me, as though I had asked her to, or given her permission. Oh, well, if the silly girl's going to pester me, I suppose I can pester her right back. "Games like that don't really interest me." I'm far more interested in much more intricate games requiring centuries to complete.
"Well, I love 'em. But the guys won't let me on the team."
Completely against my will, I'm getting drawn into this conversation. "Really? Why not?" I lean back, my elbows on the steps behind me.
"'Cause I'm a girl. And I'm good at it. And nobody wants to get beaten by a girl." She draws her knees up to her chin, staring out at the playground.
"What difference would that make?" I'm honestly puzzled. Beaten is beaten. Doesn't matter by whom.
She looks at me oddly. "You really are from another planet." Try another universe, I think. "Nobody, no boy, wants it getting known that he got whipped by a girl."
"If you say so," I muse, not really interested in this conversation. I wonder why the silly girl has singled me out. And why she won't go away and leave me alone. Is she flirting with me? I hope not.
I take another look at her, this time seeing her as only I can. Hers is a beautiful soul, true….but to my surprise, I note several lines of potential emanating upward from her head, and curving downward.
Into Darkness.
In that moment, I make what I already know to be an ill-fated decision, but the sort my kind are justifiably famous for. I want her soul. I want to have it, to hold it, as my very own, forever. I want to start a collection, with her as the first. My very first. I want to cuddle it, to slather it with my attention, to drink in the life of Forever, of experience, emotion, and feeling. But the only way I will ever have her soul, is if she gives it to me, freely and voluntarily, knowing who and what I am, and knowing what she is doing. That takes some effort. But anything worth having….
But if her soul is lost to Darkness, it is lost to me. Therefore, that will not happen.
I will have her soul. Somehow. No matter what it takes.
"I'm Sam, by the way." She sticks her hand out to me, in a standard human handshake. "Sam Puckett." I return it, all the while wondering exactly how to respond.
Again, one of my future selves supplies the answer. "I'm Devlin. Devlin Bendarian."
At that moment, we hear the screams coming from the alley. "Mad dog! Look out!"
We both turn, still sitting on the steps there. The dog is coming our way, and even to human perception, it is obviously terminally tainted by rabies, its mouth foaming, its eyes glazed over, not really seeing anything of the world it once knew. The creature's brain has been eaten away by the virus, and now the body of the dog serves only as a means of propagating the disease. It is beyond recovery.
I make an instant decision. I am in no danger, of course, but Sam is. While it is true there is a treatment for this disease, still, it is still life-threatening. I can only have her soul if she continues to live long enough to give it to me. "Get behind me!" I order.
"What? Dev, come on!" She tries to pull me by the arm. "We've gotta get outta here!"
But the dog could overtake Sam. "Just do as I say!" I snap. "And stay behind me!" The command in my voice hits her like a physical blow, and I sweep her behind me. There is no one in front of me. Good.
I close my eyes momentarily, and deliberately drop the masking illusion that gives my eyes their normal seeming appearance. Then I open them. I look upon the dog, the vehicle by which the disease propagates now, and look it fully in the eyes.
Nothing that lives, nothing that has any spark of soul, spirit, or any measure of life whatsoever can look upon the unshielded eyes of one of my kind, and continue to live.
The dog freezes instantly, the blood vessels in its brain bursting, its heart exploding, its limbs spasming and locking in awkward positions. The virus, too, within the animal "sees" me, knows what I truly am…and dies. I hope it dies in pain, but it's only a virus.
I quickly close my eyes and re-establish the masking illusion. It just wouldn't do to glance around and have humans drop like flies in front me. One must observe simple courtesy, of course. It shows style.
I turn back to Sam. "Are you alright?" I hope I sound solicitous enough but not too much. I already know she's alright.
She's looking at me strangely. Maybe, maybe if she sees me in a heroic light, it will make the acquisition of her soul all the easier…but I don't want to overdo it. Just a little finesse… "Devlin, what did you just do?"
"Me? Nothing." I cast a glance over my shoulder at the body of the dog. "It just dropped dead."
"You…you were about to take on a rabid dog…to save me?"
"Well, yes."
What comes next is a complete surprise, to me and to all my future selves. She slaps me, and open-handed blow that would fell an ordinary human of my seeming age. She's obviously quite strong. "Don't," she says in a low, dangerous voice, "fight my battles for me! I don't need a Mr. Hero!" With that, she turns and rushes into the main building, even as animal control agents belatedly converge on the scene. I imagine they'll want some answers, of some sort, though what they'd hope to get from what appears to be an eight-year old boy is problematical.
My gaze followers her as she disappears into the hallways. I feel my jaw. Still attached to my head, it is. I smile, wiping the back of my hand across my jawline. Playing with my prey always makes me more appreciative of the game. "I like you even more," I respond to Sam's receding figure.
"And I will have your soul."
To be continued…?
