It didn't take long for the Devil King to grow accustomed to his life as Marcus Evergreen, he mused as he looked around himself. He was currently sat in Number 10's living room, where he'd allowed himself to be entrapped in order to escape the men's boisterous presence outside. Loathe as he was to admit to such a failing in his personality, the Devil King did believe in lying to everyone but himself, which compelled him to acknowledge that he was starting to miss his kingdom (just a little bit). In fact, the closest he'd come to the cutthroat world of The Underside had been in situations very similar to his current one: daintily sipping tea with the bitter biddies of the neighbourhood.

"I trust you've found yourself liking our calm neighbourhood then."

Ah. There it was. The Designated Spokesperson, the Devil King though mildly. She'd been introduced as Earhart, a scant weeks ago. Marcus had already forgotten her name, but her function had remained loud and clear in his mind. Always the one to speak first, usually with some inane comment about his adaptation to their community.

"It has been a welcome change from my previous place of residence," he answered, fiddling with his teacup in a show of nervosity. It was the most honest answer he could give at the moment, for he couldn't say he liked it just yet.

The women smiled politely at his answer, even though Mrs Number 4 seemed to positively preen as though she had been the one to make him like the neighbourhood. On the other hand, Mrs Number 12 seemed to eye him with a positively predatory grin, as though she knew something he didn't…

What a perplexing possibility, Marcus thought as he simply ducked his nose into his tea to hide his frown. It seems I may have been hasty in my judgement of my neighbours.

Letting the conversation flow around him, he threw a quick glance to the wall clock nearby. About 50 minutes left before it could be considered polite to leave.

On the other hand, the Devil King absolutely loathed the pubs. He detested them with an intensity that nearly surpassed his disdain for compassion. However, much as he abhorred that sweaty, smelly, noisy environment, it was expected for a man of his age to lose himself there every once in a while. Those sorry excuses for sentient beings are surpassing my underlings, as far as incompetent depravity goes, he realised as he observed a specific group of individuals.

Wrinkling his nose, the Devil King silently wished he'd chosen to incarnate as a creature with a an average sense of smell as his nose was assaulted by the acrid scent of alcohol and sweat. That situation certainly wasn't helped by the previously mentioned group who seemed to be attempting to out drink each other and see who could spill the most alcohol around them. The only non-human being in the room was dismayed to find that he recognised one of the bawdy drunkards as a neighbour of his. He once again pondered upon the possibility of a discrete camera that could enable him to have a permanent proof of misbehaviour for blackmail possibilities. Unfortunately, the current technology for that purpose was too bulky to be of any use to him at the moment: short of a notice-me-not or a tremendous technological advancement, he'd need to another way to fulfill that purpose.

With a heavy sigh and a still mostly full bottle of beer, the Devil King stood up to make his way to the door. As he passed by the group of drunkards on his way to the exit, he waved a goodbye to a few faces he was expected to be familiar with, hiding his dropping of the bottle in that same movement. He didn't pay attention to the brawl that started after one of the drinking men tripped on the discarded bottle, thus spilling his own on someone else. Instead, the newly arrived being thought about the vast superiority of demons over this human race. His underlings at least recognised their limits, and usually tended to not let down their guards. Granted, it was most probably because those who did were often captured by less scrupulous ones, then sent to be tortured in the dungeons or mysteriously disappeared, but still… one would expect humans to have more decorum than the damned.

After all of those encounters, the Devil King could only reach one conclusion: he was surrounded by delusional, meaningless parasites filled with self-importance. He could barely even remember why he'd chosen to pretend to be one of them for the duration of this vacation! Why was he continuing this charade anyways? Because this has become a challenge, he reminded himself. For it was all too true. What had started as a simple vacation had become a challenge, a way to surpass himself and prove that he could very well be something other than the amorphous entity most thought about when they knew his title.

Still… As he relaxed fists he hadn't even realised had been clenched, the Devil King remembered urges he'd felt all too often since he'd arrived. Much as he appreciated tearing people filled with self-importance apart with an acerbic wit hidden behind a thin veneer of obliviousness, he couldn't properly destroy them yet. Similarly, as enjoyable as gearing people up to fight one another was (with or without the use of alcohol as a catalyst), it was all too easy and indirect for the act to offer him more than a fleeting amount of satisfaction.

He clenched his teeth and paced wildly around his living room, silently bemoaning the fact that he couldn't afford to do more than that due to the presence of noisy parasitic neighbours who were probably spying his every action from their windows. The Devil King hissed as he was reminded of the main source of his dissatisfaction: it was exacerbated by the extended company of those damnable little brats! Now, as the ruler of Hell, he was rather disinclined to use damnable as an insult: it was a correct qualifier for about every soul that could be found in his kingdom, after all. Furthermore, for all that he tortured them, the Devil King did in fact appreciate his subjects. Those brats however… He stopped stomping around, twisting his body to enable it to fall onto the nearby couch. They were not only annoying; they were also stupid as an angel!

Because of that, they seriously tested his test-control as his usual method of anger management (annihilating the problem) could not be applied at the moment. That left him with the mediocre option of focusing his destructive urges onto his environment. As a matter of fact, he was starting to run out of excuses to explain why his classes were so overturned at the end of the day.

"My apologies ma'am, I tripped again," was an excuse he'd used at least thrice so far on a few people who'd been curious of the amount of noise that could be heard coming from his classroom. Not one of his best, he had to admit, but Marcus Evergreen was quickly becoming known for his clumsiness, which now reduced the amount of visits he got due to strange noise in his class.

"Sorry miss, I had to break up a fight," was one he seldom used, as he could never remember the children's names in order to get them to the principal. As such, he only used it when children had actually gotten into brawl, and generally managed to shift the blame onto the children's parents and managed to make whoever he was talking to forget about the event.

Any and all variations of multiple excuses had already been used to explain the increasing damage. None of them were entirely truthful, of course, as all of it had been done by him, but the Devil King did pride himself in not needing to lie in order to mislead others. And the slow escalation of his loss of temper was how he knew that heads would roll (literally), unless he managed to find a way to release his pent up anger.

Raising his eyes to watch the sky through his window, the Devil King realised that the moon was close to whole. He'd been caught unaware by the first full moon after his arrival, and had to lock himself in the basement in order to go through his transformation alone. Only his pride and general dislike of lack of control kept him from making a racket loud enough to wake the neighbours. The Devil King prided himself on his perfect track record: he was not about to relocate because he behaved like a common mutt. Judging by the lunar calendar he'd bought after the incident, the next full moon would be the following Thursday. And he definitely wouldn't be around for that one.

So, it seems like I'm finally back? After something of a 10-months break, yikes! I seem to have improved my word count though, so that might make up for some of it...

And here we've got the Devil King's thoughts about his new neighbourhood. We'll probably get the full moon in the next chapter or two, so I'll keep my fingers crossed for that.

-Yoshishisha