It's a little short, but I felt it didn't need to go anywhere else at the moment. A little at a time…
Chapter 7: The General Begins to Experience Human Emotion!
Suddenly, Lilith lost the twinkle in her eye, keeping her siren call in check.
"Long version, or short version?" she questioned, a faint smile at her lips.
"True version," Alsiel answered quickly, his brow furrowed. "If omitting pertinent information is required to get the short version, then I'll endure the long one, no matter how long it takes."
"It won't take that long, but... We are old friends, Alsiel, is it really so terrible for you to show some...happier surprise?"
He crossed his arms defiantly. Maybe he looked childish; maybe he looked immature. But he wasn't about to be 'surprised' at anything, especially not the fact the woman had essentially used them for whatever end she wound up achieving. Now, he was determined to know the truth.
"You mean we 'were' old friends," Alsiel said more gruffly than he originally intended; while he felt a certain amount of joy that there was a fellow (and familiar) demon in this putrid world, he also couldn't ignore the sting of hurt and anger coursing through his mind, given the circumstances. "And if we were friends, as you say, the last time I checked, friends don't disappear without telling their friends why. Unless something unexpectedly bad happened to them. And since it doesn't appear to be the case, these friends certainly don't pop back up and expect a fanfare reunion."
"Fanfare reunion!" she laughed, slapping her palms against the piano bench. "I'm pretty sure I didn't expect that. After all, I didn't expect to find you here of all places anyway!" Her lips formed a delicate, subtle smile as she shook her head in disbelief at such a comment.
Alsiel, despite all his efforts, couldn't help but feel slightly pleasant as he watched her gentle curls roll off her shoulders and bounce around her china-like face. Perhaps it was more than 'slightly pleasant'. It was a dangerous game, conversing with this sort of demon, and while he knew she didn't lure him purposefully, it was completely apparent that her very nature was quite good at doing the job all on its own.
He cracked a small grin, compelled by whatever force was driving him to feel like he was delving into the first stages of becoming a flirtatious lunatic. "I suppose I didn't expect to ever find you either. And...well, I apologize for taking off so quickly when you were at the store... I was…well, it was a bit…"
"You're new to the human thing, I can tell," the succubus noted, stretching as she stood. "You don't have a very good control over your emotions. Not that most humans know how to practice self-control, but…"
"I'm taking it well, as I see it." Glaring, he wasn't going to let himself be insulted so soon either. "By the way, if you work there at the grocery, why are you—"
"Here? I own this entire building," she explained, pointing down at the floor and back up to signify the ground floor and the space they were in now. "I manage the store and the restaurant. When one of my dumb employees from below doesn't show, I fill in. But mostly I stay up here and help on-stage. We're relatively new, but it's still very busy."
Impressed with notes of jealousy, the general's eyes widened. "That's rather impressive. On-stage?"
"As in, I play piano."
Then he really smiled, instantly recalling old days, the mental film fuzzy and yellowed as his memory soared like old photographs in his mind's eye. "You became quite good at that thing back in Ente Isla. I don't know how, and I really didn't like it but—"
"You didn't like it because you didn't understand it and you didn't want to go against the Devil," she interrupted him, somewhat dejectedly. "It was something foreign, something human. And yet…you'd watch me, and listen, so… It must not have been too bad."
Flustered, Alsiel shook his head and rejected the notion by waving his hands around, as if he could shoo the prosecution away. "That's not true! That was human waste, and—"
"I'm not stupid, Alsiel. And Satan's not around. It's okay to admit it."
The witness had spoken, the jury decided. His arms hung limp at his sides. "Are we here to discuss my taste in human artifacts? I want to know where you've been, and why you abandoned our cause, and then I'll act accordingly."
Stepping down from the stage, Lilith threw her hands up. "Does it really matter? It's been decades…"
"It does matter, because I don't like defeatists, and if you're now an enemy…"
The wrong words, he knew instantly. Her eyes burned, her nostrils flared.
"I no longer take a side, but to assume I'm an enemy? Just because I left…"
"What else am I supposed to assume?"
"Do you recall the discussion I had with you, the last time we talked? The night before I left?" She gave him a few seconds to recall, and waited for a nod to continue. "I was looking for confirmation of something: I wanted to know what you honestly thought about the cause, as you call it. As it turned out, you didn't think much about it at all."
"How dare you," the general snarled, forgetting himself temporarily. "How could you state such a thing about—"
"I'm not trying to insult; I'm merely pointing out what you answered me. You hadn't even thought about what would happen should Hell manage to take over. Not even you—Satan's most powerful general and closest confidant—had a plan for what would happen after. You had no thoughts on what the purpose of any of it was! I asked you if it was all worth it, and you had no answer. Don't you remember that?"
Unfortunately, he did, and he didn't like where the conversation was going. "Yes, I remember," Alsiel muttered dismally.
"So you confirmed for me what I already knew: it was pointless. So—"
"So you left," he finished, his brow furrowing in augmenting rage. "You just left."
"I'm not proud of it, as I don't consider myself a defeatist, but yes, I left. I didn't feel a connection, and you said it yourself: 'if I didn't support my lord's cause, I wouldn't assist him. I'd find something else to devote my whole being towards'."
The woman stood there in silence for a time, staring at the floor. Suddenly, the room felt oppressively cold, strangulating and heavy. Alsiel felt it change from a sunny place to a dull, lifeless zone full of contempt and sorrow. The metallic tables and chairs looked matte and tarnished.
'Surely, succubi don't have this power, too?' he thought, glancing around. 'Is it all in my head?'
"It killed me, deciding to leave," Lilith began again, fighting tears and the heat in the bridge of her nose. "I didn't want to, but I had to. It wasn't... It wasn't something I could ignore anymore. I wanted more than mindless fighting, more than mindless fighting without a purpose, a point. You might have trouble admitting it about yourself, but I know I'm different than my fellow demons, even those who are succubi. I wanted to learn and experience, engage in improving a skill, establishing something as my own.
"And I did. I escaped through a portal; I'd done it before, so it wasn't anything new to me. There are demons that do a lot of illegal things by Hell's standards as you know, and traveling through unlawful portals that go between this dimension—between Earth and Hell—isn't beneath them. So I persuaded one to let me pass through. I used my…assets to convince humans to give me jobs, places to stay. I read books and entire libraries, both private and communal. In addition to city libraries, I met a lot of rich people who had books in several hundred languages, and I learned half of them to read the pages. I learned to paint, to cook, to design; I've probably gotten over 25 degrees at several different colleges and institutions, at several levels. I got free piano lessons too. It wasn't long before I opened my own business, started the restaurant. I didn't want to pay for advertising, but appealing to grocery customers didn't drive enough business upstairs, so I spent more in advertising.
"I guess it worked, since you came up here," she shrugged. "It's a new venture, but we'll see how it holds up. It's my newest project."
At this point, Alsiel wanted to cry. His emotions were scattered all over the place, like torn viscera, splattered carnage on a busy highway, left to rot, left for all to see. It was an uncomfortable sensation, whatever it was that kept screaming through his mind. She'd abandoned them—abandoned him—and came to this place, done so much in all her time away! How could she?! He thought of himself, and tried to measure up: What had he done in all those years?
'I…I helped Maou-sama…I helped further our cause! The fight for Ente Isla! We're that much closer, fighting all those little insignificant humans and backing them up to their paltry rural areas, behind their feeble walls! That's…
'That's enough…isn't it?'
"Alsiel?" she asked meakly, crossing her arms across her chest self-consciously. "Are you listening?"
"Yes. Yeah, I did," he mumbled quietly, rubbing his eyes. "I just… I don't know what to say. I don't know…how to feel. This…this human business, whatever I'm feeling, you know, I'm… You just up and left! Without a word. For no reason. And came and made…quite a life for yourself. I don't know if I should be insulted—after being betrayed and lied to—or be proud."
At that last point, she smiled. "I'd prefer the latter, but that's not for me to decide. And I didn't leave 'for no reason'; my reason was that I needed more than what Hell was giving. Really, Alsiel. What good's come from it? After all you're here now." She gave him a knowing look, but he shuffled awkwardly to avoid it.
"That's not your business," he replied coolly. "I'm still not certain how to take all of this."
As expected. She sighed. "Anyway, you have your info now. Are you going to go telling on me now? Give a thorough report to Satan?" she taunted, smirking craftily.
'What a brat…' he mumbled under his breath, but his frustration melted into embarrassed admiration. 'She still knows how to play games. Even after decades, she's still the same as if nothing's happened!'
"No, I'm not going to do that," the general insisted. "I'll…decide later how to use the information."
Lilith turned back towards the piano, the conversation over. "Well, if you're interested, we're open for dinner, 5 to midnight, Wednesday through Saturday. You know the way out.
"Unless there was something else you wanted to talk about…"
Despite the rain, Emi's spirit rose greatly, higher than the umbrella roof.
'Perfect,' she mused internally, leering next to the unawares general. She glanced at him as he held fast onto the umbrella's handle, holding it high enough to cover his head. 'I got him in my snare, and he's already complying. The more I pull him away from his post…'
"So you got food, we walked for a few minutes," Alsiel stated matter of factly, glancing around. He ran out of things to say. Actually, he never had any things to say. Now that the actions were done, he was ready to get home and begin his real dinner, which was already half an hour behind schedule. He already had them walking towards the train. "Does that count as a date?"
'Apparently not…' He cringed when he saw her grimace out of the corner of his eye, her lips contorting her facial muscles into something gargoyle-ish. It reminded him of some statue back in Maou's real stronghold, albeit with a head full of red hair.
"A date is not convenience food and the two minute walk it took to get there!" she screeched. "And I gave you the onigiri coupon, so you didn't even put anything into this! Don't you have any sense?"
"I suppose you'd say 'no' anyway, so do you even want me to answer?"
A silence of words, but the rain played diligently atop the umbrella like a weak drum. The Hero held in her want to scream, and then sighed.
'Well, if he isn't going to buy it and take the bait…'
"You know, people go do things like see a movie. Go to dinner. Make dinner for each other…that sort of date. But, considering the fleas in Ente Isla are richer than you…"
"What are you implying?" he huffed. "I'm plenty richer than any fleas I've ever had. If…I ever had fleas." In a flash of embarrassment, he glimpsed at her quickly. "I've never had fleas, I swear."
"Parasites aside, you creep, I'm saying we should do something else other than this sort of thing. So next time, you need to plan something better. Got it? Let's make a schedule."
"I have duties you know…"
"As do I, but if we're going to be spending more time together, we have to figure out fun things so we can get to know each other better."
The words usually would have flown in, flown out, but they settled in his cranium and sent a nauseous bolt straight to his stomach. The heft of those words…
'This is going to cost me back at home! Maybe it's a good thing Lucifer's taking cooking lessons from Shizuno…'
"So what do you want to do?" She spun in front of him suddenly, looking up into his face with a strange look. Eyes wide, her mouth stretched into some sort of…tight lipped smile.
Alsiel's nostrils flared. "What are you doing?"
"Asking you a question!"
"What's with that face?"
"W…What face?"
"Your weird expression. It looks like you just farted or something."
It took a moment to process the sharp snap as pain, but he felt his cheek burn against the moist air after Emi's hand flew across his face.
"Ow! What the hell was that for?!"
"I didn't fart! I was…I was trying to ask you something and you just ridiculed me!"
"But you looked relieved, so I thought—"
"You know what, this date is good enough!" Snatching her umbrella, she wrenched his arm painfully and turned on her heels. "If you won't even listen to me properly—"
"Okay, okay, Emi, I'm sorry! I was just…talking honestly, I didn't mean…" He ran back under the umbrella as she slowed her pace. "I really wasn't trying to insult you. I wasn't sure what you were doing, but I'll think of some fun things…"
He'd been collecting her negativity the entire time, but suddenly a burst of frustration and fear coursed into him, and while exhilarating, it was quite unexpected.
"I didn't fart, I was…I was trying to…" She mumbled something under her breath, and her face turned brick red.
"Trying to what?"
After a climax of furious energy, she shouted.
"I was trying to look cute, okay?! But…I guess it backfired. There. But I certainly didn't fart. Definitely didn't do that. I'm not like that."
He stalled for a moment and looked at her curiously. "Oh. I… Oh, now I understand." Laughing, he handed her the umbrella as he hunched over, hands on his knees.
"What's so funny?!" she cried, tears of fury starting at the corners of her eyes. "Why are you laughing at me?!"
"You were so afraid over telling me that simple thing?"
"I…what? Afraid? No! I… No that's not—"
"Yes, you were, I could feel—" He stopped himself short, careful not to reveal how he knew such a thing. "Well, I could just tell."
"Well, girls aren't supposed to come out and say, 'Hey, I'm trying to look cute!' but I couldn't have you thinking I farted of all things, so I had to tell you! You sick demon types…"
In a flustered, nervous sort of gesture, the Hero wrung her hands around the umbrella, her eyes darting everywhere except at Alsiel. It was a strange instance. Something about her seemed exposed, vulnerable. He wasn't sure what it was, but the general felt some sort of synapse in his mind, something foreign and obtrusive. Truthfully, it was both pleasant—like being rewarded for something he didn't have to put effort into—and simultaneously revolting—like admitting that he was feeling something that was taboo and naturally wrong.
"You don't really have to try that hard," he grumbled moodily, unsure of what was going on inside himself.
Emi flinched at the sentence and gaped at him. "What?! What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means exactly what you think: you're so damn ugly you might as well not try at all!"
And without further examination of why he said what he said—and more importantly, why he lied about it—Alsiel tore down the sidewalk and left a fuming Emi with her dripping umbrella.
If you're confused, let me know an I'll rewrite. Anyway, reviews are APPRECIATED TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE.
