"Llliiiiiiiissssssaaaaaaaa."

I heard her groan from her room.

"It's breakfast tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime~" I sang out, flipping the chunks of potato cooking in a cast iron skillet that I magically restored. It had been left behind to rust by the apartment's previous renters, but was easy to restore with a little science, though I achieved mine technically with magic.

"It's nine am, let me sleeeep." I heard her groan from the master bedroom. I had insisted she take the larger space.

Having a smaller, cozier room was novel to me. Even if it was only big enough to really fit a small desk, twin sized bed, and dresser.

Currently all I owned to fit into it was a sleeping bag. I didn't even own any spare clothes, I just mended my shirt and cleansed my current garments magically.

Plenty of space for now for new exciting experiences!

"If I get up and eat breakfast, I have to figure out how to get us enrolled into a school without tripping any red flags! I'd rather lay in bed and starve."

I shook my head, chuckling.

"Look, I don't care if you don't go to college, but at least you need to walk away with a high school diploma."

"I can get a G.E.D.!"

"And we'll know the difference between you learning the information to solve it versus your power feeding you answers how?"

"We couldn't know that about taking regular tests in school either! I can't exactly turn this off!"

"But there would at least be the fullness of a proper attempt." I replied easily as I plated up breakfast, a simple affair of a hammered, tenderized slice of pork shoulder in lieu of bacon or ham, scrambled eggs, potato hash cubes, the contents of a pre-packed snack baggie of baby carrots, and toasted bagels with cream cheese served on a large disposable paper plate and brought it over to Lisa's door, opening it up.

"Breakfast in bed it is, young lady. PS: No daddy jokes allowed."

"But daaaaad." She whined.

"Dad is allowed." I nodded, pretending to take the joke seriously.

"...You suck." She buried herself deeper into her sleeping bag before wiggling, her nose betraying her as it peeking from the top of the bag's opening. "...Man that smells good though."

I brought over the breakfast food and placed it on the ground next to her with a plastic fork and knife, causing her to roll over and pop out her head and arms to consume the food like a little hermit crab.

I desperately and truly desired a camera in this exact moment.

So I did the second best thing of attempting to burn the scene into my retinas.

"...Why are you pulling your eyelids open with your fingers?"

"You look like a cute hermit crab eating your food like that and I don't have a camera to immortalize this moment forever, thus I'm making due."

Why lie? I thought as a pillow was flung at me with an embarrassed order of "GET OUT!" and I ducked for cover through the doorway-

-Frowning as she locked the door behind me.

That… stung a little. She hadn't ever actually physically locked any barriers between us before. I supposed the motel rooms were a reasonable exception, as we had separate rooms and weren't exactly the safest area in Boston. I wasn't slighted, but I wouldn't lie that the physical act of her locking herself from me… hurt even though I knew the action didn't mean to her what it did to me.

I didn't try the door, but I sat down slowly in front of it, leaning against the doorframe to respect her space. It must have been the fact that this was the first time I had leveraged our position as King and Bishop and made a real, true demand of her, which would also limit some of her freedom, that really did actually make her mad at me.

I know I spoiled her, that she had become used to the fact that my love for her had been unconditional and I worked to accept her for all she was even when I didn't understand certain things.

I wondered if it was the reason she ran away from home. All the expectations and pressure she must have felt with parental love held ransom as a reward for good behavior…

The urge to squash her parents like maggots under my boot rose heavily, but I didn't let the urge of bloodlust exude from my body. The reason could be different. Being rash and impulsive served no-one.

I let out a breath, to release the bitterness from my system, before I knocked twice with the knuckle of my index finger to no response.

If only I could just tear down this door…

"I'm not saying it has to be immediate," I coaxed softly, letting my voice reverberate through the wood, "but ideally we'd start school relatively soon. January, after winter break. It'd be much easier to start at the beginning of a semester or quarter, isn't it? Please don't be mad, Lisa… You've got a few more months of freedom."

A mouthful of eggs mumbled from within, with no amount of Devil hearing able to translate.

I sighed as my head bumped with a soft *thunk* against the door frame as I continued to attempt to coax out my precious Bishop.

"As long as you try and don't skip too many classes it's alright. Cs are ok too. If you want to merely coast along, that's also fine. I… I just want to make sure you get the opportunities you deserve." She was family. She was Gremory. She deserved nothing but the absolute best. "You'll have your whole life ahead to be a superhero, villain, or rogue. But you'll never know any other life, if there is anything that inspires you, or fills you with passion, that would even make you happier, if you don't at least keep a light on for opportunity… and we're only going to be high schoolers once."

Plastic scraped at the paper plate within for a few seconds with no response.

The click of the door unlocking let my heart beat comfortably again. All was right with the world again.

Lisa's bottle green eye peered through the open crack in the doorway.

"...fine. But I'm still mad at you."

That was fine. As long as she didn't distance herself from me, I didn't care. Even if she came to hate me, as long as I could be beside her it would be ok.

I replied with a gentle smile.

"...May I apologize in headpats?"

Lisa snorted a soft huff of hair out as she rolled her eyes.

"What am I a cat?! No. We are going to go and pawn off the watch and the weed, then we take that money and go shopping for clothes for you! You can't keep wearing that same outfit day in and day out!"

I opened my mouth to complain but she cut me off before the words could form.

"Even. With. Magic! And you will try on every outfit I give you without hesitation or complaint!"

I laughed, closing my eyes as I nodded softly.

"Yes, alright. Whatever you want."

"...p-plus the headpats."

I laughed some more.

"Done and done."

Crisis averted, resisting the urge to throw the door open and tackle her with a hug, I stepped up to re-enter the kitchen and plate up my own meal.

It had cooled, but it was still warm.

I sprinkled an extra pinch of coarse salt over my dish, preferring slightly stronger flavors personally, and quickly but quietly chowed down.

It was good, hearty fare. And the weight of it in my stomach filled me with more spirit.

After leaving the apartment, we stopped by some pawnshops.

A less scrupulous location hungrily snatched up our baggie of weed for a hundred dollars and a heavily torn up leather jacket in a box labeled 'scraps'. A simple mending and restoration spell and the next pawnshop bartered it for eighty plus an old board game buried in a corner that, in a small miracle, had all of its original constituent parts. A little polish and magical shine and a collector item worth two hundred twenty appeared.

Then Theo's beautiful, barely used Tudor watch landed us a cool six hundred with skillful negotiations from Lisa.

Suddenly a full grand was burning a hole in our pockets and I understood the danger I was in.

However I had made a promise. I would uphold it. However, there was one fundamental issue that did need to be addressed.

"I do wish to say going into this, that we still need at minimum, mattresses and sheets." I murmured softly as I held onto seven or eight clothes hangers with a variety of colors that Lisa had picked out for me. "At least one set. I don't want to keep you sleeping on the floor."

"What, no futon?" She jokingly mocked, holding a hoodie up to my chest and eying it in correlation to me.

"If we're talking about the real Japanese or Korean stuff, sure. But I've seen what passes as futons in the West and those? They confuse me."

"Alright. I'd be happier not sleeping on the floor as well, so that is an acceptable amendment." Lisa nodded seemingly satisfied with the sweater, handing the hoodie to me. "Let's go over to the changing rooms, Devil boy. Give mama a twirl."

"You could just come in with me and watch me change." I shrugged, "It'd be faster."

Lisa shook her head with a hint of mirth.

"As entertaining as that'd be, I'm not looking to get kicked out of the store. And sometimes waiting is half the fun. Go."

I stepped into a changing room stall, tried on shirts, sweaters, jackets, pants.

It was a novel experience, and I'm certain I would have been bored if I didn't get to enjoy the looks of contemplation, appreciation, as well as the adorable look of mild frustration on her face.

"How in hell do you look good in tie-dye? Nobody looks good in tie-dye!At best people just don't look bad in it!"

I made to respond, but she cut me off "If you open your mouth to say Devil right now, I'll hit you!"

I shrugged helplessly.

"What am I to do? I won't just lie straight to your face."

"Ugh." Lisa groaned as she shoved me back into the dressing room. "Come out with all of it. We'll just take the lot and do some mattress shopping."

We rang up a small mountain of clothes. Mostly clearance, all cheap, as I was able to make any of the garments look good as long as it was of the right size. Four hundred dollars cash in various bill denominations were doled out, much to the suspicious side eye from the cashier.

We left the store and walked straight over to a large shipping container built for freight trucks in the corner of the lot, painted with the words GOODWILL on its side.

Around the backside, away from prying eyes, was a currently unmanned drop off box in the form of a large plastic crate with tied up plastic bags with old, threadbare clothes inside.

I formed a small teleport gate and dumped the clothes into it, faily confident that to any potential outside observer we were just performing a bit of an act of charity. It wouldn't pass any REAL scrutiny, as we didn't leave any of my new wardrobe behind, but we weren't looking to carry all of this baggage with us when we would have to move a mattress as well.

One of those suddenly disappearing was a harder sell.

Most of the salesmen on the floor of the mattress warehouse weren't exactly too happy to see a pair of teens testing their products, but we weren't being an actual hassle or jumping on the beds. Just laying down for a few minutes at a time, chatting about inane nonsense about how the mattress felt and Lisa trash talking about the salesman giving us bad looks.

And while we were young, we were also a pair of good looking Devils, and people drifted around us, trying some of the mattresses around us or the ones that we had just tried, getting the more senior floor salesmen smelling money as they began to encroach upon the other shoppers.

I insisted that we prioritize a good mattress for Lisa first, she argued that we could both deal with some more thrifty twin-sizes, I argued back that it was important for her to get a good night's sleep and we aimlessly performed a bit of back and forth verbal jousting as we went from mattress to mattress in our small affordable range.

After finding a very comfortable full size that was currently on sale for five hundred instead of its listed pricing of 899.99, Lisa caved and we were approached by one of the nicer looking, younger salesmen, and started talking price.

The japanese man was in his mid twenties and was actually being genuinely helpful. Spilling all sorts of information such as how the mattresses came with 10 year manufacturer warranties, but that any stains could violate that warranty and that it was better to spend the little extra for an in-store warranty upgrade. But it came with the unfortunate corporate caveat that not taking the box-spring set and using our own would technically void the warranty for the in-store warranty and so on, but we only had so much cash remaining.

Plus some magic to take care of any stains and minor damage and we'd be fine. Not that he could know that.

Lisa was actually being super polite (and dare I say gentle) as she turned down his suggestions and insisted that just the mattress would do. She had a bit of a bad habit of being snarky to just about anyone and rarely had patience for most people's opinions, especially when it came to situations that involved monetary gain. Her sharp tongue cutting down the pawn shop owners had been proof of that.

This man must have been genuinely trying to look out for us.

Hmmm. Well what do you know?

I discreetly charmed a folded up wish flier into his back pocket.

Lisa, detecting my small use of Demonic Energy, turned slightly to me with a raised, well-trimmed eyebrow, receiving just a smile and a shrug from me.

A few minutes later, we walked out of the warehouse store with a long, rectangular cardboard tube, our rolled up mattress within.

"That man was nice." I hefted the tube by gripping the plastic harness strapped over it, bearing its weight slightly across my back.

Lisa gave a distracted humm in agreement.

"Lisa?"

"...I. He… he was definitely projecting, seeing a bit of his sister in me. I think he must have been seeing something in every female customer he's had in a while. Which is a bit rude, I'm not even remotely asian, but… I think she went missing a few weeks back, probably ABB territory. His heart rate skyrocketed when seeing someone step into the place with a shirt that was barely even reminiscent of their gang colors. He was projecting like… like… also, y'know, he thought we were on the run eloping." She grinned, covering up whatever place her thoughts were taking her to.

And I didn't ask questions, baby steps were perfectly valid, but it was now clear to me that Lisa also found herself seeing a bit of herself in him and it led to her baring the smallest fraction of her heart to me.

The attempt at beginning to confide in me made my heart sing.

"...He was just being nice to me for himself, just doing it to make himself feel better, and I didn't enjoy it. It made me feel gross somehow, but… I didn't feel like making him feel worse."

She looked up at the sky, stretching as her fingers laced behind her back, arms straightening.

"All that mental gymnastics just to feel a little bit better about himself…"

I placed my free hand on her head, smiling at her.

"There's nothing wrong with that." I replied softly, rubbing my fingers into her soft, silky strands. "It's a hard world. Whatever you have to do to get through it is just what you have to do."

Her eyes were faintly wet. Not crying, but wet.

"Yeah." Her voice was faintly watery. "Nothing wrong with that at all."

Despite the fact nothing had been explained to me, no context given for her swirling emotions, this was the most Lisa had opened up to me. It was terribly exciting. I wanted to pressure her to spill and bare everything to me, but I held back. She'd do it at her own pace. I had time. I had so much time. I should be patient.

But I couldn't stop the quickening of my heart.

In the end we made a quick stop by a place called the Big Bay Superstore for some clean sheets and set up the mattress on the floor of Lisa's room, utilizing a light bit of atmospheric manipulation to make it rise and set faster. Still, it wouldn't be usable until much later tonight, which gave us plenty of time for our night job.

Tonight Lisa would try flying solo with Contract work. I handed her a small stack of cut out stock paper in the style of business cards that I imprinted her personalized Gremory seal upon to distribute to those she felt would be repeat customers that were suited for her abilities. The current fliers weren't attuned to me specifically, so any member of any Gremory peerage on this material plane could technically answer the call. Perfect for our current predicament.

She brushed off my mother henning as I crafted a purple domino mask for her facial contours. She still insisted that yoga pants, purple top, and thin full finger gloves (originally meant for golf, I believe) would be enough for now until she could get a real costume. Or get good enough at spellcraft to make her own.

She did dig out from her traveler's duffle bag a cute women's blazer to don to give her pockets to hold her new business cards, however.

It was adorable, though sort of made her look more like a magician or a magician's apprentice than a Devil. I supposed it was fine either way though.

I sent her off while reminding her that she was free and able to call me for emergencies using the tattoo ring. Which reminded me that it would only be good for another two days.

Perhaps I should inquire if we should make it more permanent?

Either way, I felt a tug from the flier I personally handed out today.

Ah, delightful. I'd get to repay a favor. My heart still beat in glowing excitement.

And I was fairly sure I knew what his wish would be.

I appeared in a column of energy rising from a magic circle that glowed from the carpeted ground. I'm sure that as I was in my full costume I must have been quite a spectacle.

"Greetings, Contractor. I am Maou! A Contract Devil here to grant you a wish, be it mundane or grand. All things can come, for a price." I smiled as I threw my arms out wide.

It was a decently small apartment. A bit cramped, honestly. The door in the living room that must have led outside had been replaced recently, if the splintering in the doorframe were to be believed, somebody had to have taken the whole hinges off.

A couch was propped up by some books and magazines where one of the legs had been shattered, and sitting on it with crushed up cans of cheap beer was the nice salesman from the mattress warehouse, looking decidedly less nice, and considerably more unkempt.

"...ha ha ha. A real Cape…. Y-you! Please. I'll give you anything you want. Find my sister! I thought I was over it but today I-I-please… I'm going crazy. I see her everywhere! Help me!"

Tears streamed from his eyes as he crushed the can in his hand, not wincing as the aluminum tore into his skin and causing him to bleed.

"Well, I have some good news for you then." I pulled the can from his grip, and mended the skin. It was still bleeding beneath the surface and would look like a bruise, but it'd heal over without risk of infection. "Today, your price has been paid for, fully in advance."

I smiled with the full force of the depths of my joy as I spun around, lifting up my open arms.

"My cute little Bishop was able to open up a little more today. Just a teeny, tiny fraction mind you, but though it was out of pity for you, it led to just a bit of growth, a bit of progress. I shall consider that the favor for today's wish, paid in full ahead of schedule. I shall find your sibling or whatever remains of her and bring it to you."

Even through his drunken tears he looked a bit stunned, not quite understanding what I was saying, but seeming to sober up slightly in the face of my pure joy.

"Please…just…" He pleaded, "Bring her back."

"I will, I will." I assured. "I'll need something of hers, something that she held often, something of emotional weight and connection to use if I wish to track her down."

He turned to a photo on a bookshelf and I stepped over.

A small picture filled with love, affection, and loss. Of delicious human emotions, brimming on the surface. Two parents in front of a shrine, fireworks in the distant sky. A new years photo of a family in simple kimonos.

"She… she'd clean it every day since our parents died. Every night. Before bed."

"...You were a beautiful family." I gazed at the photo, almost, so briefly, seeing my own reflected in it. "This will do. Is there anything else you want, Contractor? The retrieval of your sibling?"

"I… I want them to pay but… but then they'd just come back. I need… I need them to just not come back and take her again… I want revenge but it'll put her at risk again."

"...a brother that loves his sister." I whispered listlessly, "Is there anything more beautiful?..."

Jealousy flashed through me and I shoved it down.

It wasn't the time for such.

"Then the following: rescue or retrieval of remains of your sister, then ensure your prolonged safety. That is your wish?"

"I… yes. If that's possible, I don't know how the latter-"

"Contractor. That is my job to figure out. I shall handle this and will be back as soon as I am able." I smiled reassuringly, "And I am nothing if not able. The only pertinent info is if this was someone's personal vendetta against you or their specific coveting of your sister."

"I… it- it shouldn't be because of me? I don't-"

Then I'd have to question the sister, should she still be living.

The photo spun in my hands, a series of concentric magic circles forming and laying over each other as it made a 3D runic structure called the heartseeking harrower. Normally the human version of the spell would then consume the material component as it fired the harrower missile at its intended target, but if I concentrated I could simply hold the magic missile within to use as a compass, though the material would begin to degrade if I wasn't careful. A Heartseeking Compass if you will.

"Thank you… her name is-"

I didn't need a name. I was more concerned about returning this favor and moving on with my night.

I blinked in a flash of crimson, appearing in the air above Brockton Bay, over a hundred feet in the air and a half mile closer to the direction of the target as wings unfurled to keep me afloat. Not by catching the breeze or a draft, but simply because Devils had wings because they could fly.

It would be an issue of guesswork as I triangulated the position of her corpus.

One blink. Two. Three. Four, slightly too far.

I descended and scanned various red-brick buildings from an older era of American architecture, ignoring the sounds of people on the street pointing up at me and shouting, not knowing that as a polyglot entity I could understand every dialect and word that was being spoken.

Including someone's orders to contact ABB leadership.

I supposed it was now better to move quickly.

I lowered myself a bit further, lining up with the second story window of the building I had managed to narrow the search down to, the 3D heartseeker spell compass now level, it'd be a quick enter and grab and warp back.

A snap of my fingers and the shaded window unlocked and flung itself open, letting me inside.

A lead pipe swung at me, easily blocked by my wrist, and with a light shove the assailant's body flew into a wall, falling limp as they left behind a human sized dent in the plaster. Conveniently he had ambushed me from my freehand side, otherwise it might have been a minor inconvenience to maintain the spell matrix.

"Aniki!" Ah, fluent Japanese! "Shit! Take out the fucking Cape!" A shirtless man with wave tattoos called out, his muscles bulging against his skin. "Put a hole in his gajin ass!"

Three men, the shirtless one included, roared with the sound of submachine guns. I couldn't tell the make or model because I had never had much interest in human firearms, but it resembled a black brick of a gun shaped like a T with a muzzle on one end.

"Oh now that's just rude." I replied, waving my free hand, putting up a barrier of condensed atmospheric pressure to hold the bullets in place mid air. "I'm here for a single person on the wishes of my Contractor. If you're wise, you'd give her up. I have no interest in anything else. Oh, I do suppose I need to know why she was kidnapped in the first place exactly. My apologies, I am here for twothings."

"Fuck you, we don't need to give you shit, gaijin! We're the ABB!" He spat as he jumped for cover and reloaded, "Once Oni-"

"Then you're useless to me." I cut him off, magical tendrils leaping forward as they turned into seal serpents made of Demonic Energy in runic form, slithering between bullet fire and tying them all up, gagging them by extending their fanged mouths over that of the gang members, piercing the flesh of their cheeks as they gagged them.

I kicked open the door of the room I was in to see a dusty hallway lit with dim light, the scent of smoke and incense filling the air.

"Ah that's right. The ABB are known human traffickers." I recalled, "Hmm. I suppose the law enforcement in this town truly is inept."

I walked down the hallway in the direction of the compass, noting my objective should be on the left. A sweating, balding man with a ruddy complexion like a boiled red potato with most of the skin missing stepped out of a room dressed in nothing more than a towel on the right looking as if to complain about the sound. I bound him with a seal serpent as well, seeing him fall backwards with a dull thump unto the carpeted floor and saw a petite young Vietnamese woman in her twenties putting on a fluffy robe looking terrified.

I put a finger to my lips as I passed by her room.

The third to last door on the left of my hallway was where the compass began shuddering.

The harrower missiles were technically explosive. I'd have to disperse the spell once I had them in my grasp.

However, being able to cut a little loose like this and not worry about all the paperwork of signing each and every hypnosis clean up waiver was kind of liberating. No wonder so many Capes went Villain on Earth Bet.

Also apparently it wasn't grecian abbreviation for Beta but the Hebrew alphabet.

Made the E88 look positively silly when their whole world was defined by a Jewish alphabet.

I opened the door to the flash of steel as a short dao sword was plunged toward my breast.

I was fairly confident that it wouldn't even break my skin, but I smacked it to the side hard enough to leave a permanent bend to the blade, the weapon spinning into the ceiling and getting stuck in the upper corner of the room.

Another seal serpent locked him down.

Crouching behind a massage table was a gir with intense eyes, a black bobcut and dyed blue highlights dressed in what looked like a black string micro bikini. She had smeared black lipstick on and her nails were painted, but they looked a bit blotchy, as if both of these products had been painted recently and hadn't had the time to dry fully.

Glancing at the man that tried to stab me and wait… was he a stylist? He was fully dressed and had a fanny pack that was spilling out with various bottles of nail polish, tubes of lipstick, and had hair clippers latched onto the sides of the waist and a stylist tried to stab me?! Why was this stylist ride or die ABB? He could have just pretended he was being forced to- never mind.

My curiosity was peaked enough I put a trace on him, but left him to address the actually pertinent issue.

The girl's appearance, scanty it might be, didn't bother my sensibilities one bit, but I couldn't exactly bring her to her human brother looking like that.

I dispersed the heartseeking compass, pulled out the photo that had started to singe at the edges, and flicked it over to her.

"Do you recognize this photo?"

She tore off the wax paper from the massage table and used it like a sheer curtain to hide her body as she held it in place with her armpits as she picked up the photograph.

"That's- who are you? You were at my house?! What did you do to my-"

"I assume then," I cut her off, tossing her my cape to cover herself with, "that you are my Contractor's sister. Went missing a few weeks back. I'm simply here to retrieve you, then convince these not-so-good men here to never bother the two of you again."

"Oh thank god." She sighed in relief as she wrapped herself in the cape, treating it like a bath towel around her torso and waist, restoring her modesty. "You gotta do something about this place, it's-"

"I have one job here." I cut her off again, "And that is to get you home. I'm not a Hero come to rescue the people in this building, that is the job of the law. If I was a lawman, I wouldn't be here and instead be stuck in bureaucratic tape. I made a Contract with one man for one girl."

I reached over to grab her by the arm and take us back but she twisted away.

"You can't just leave the other girls here! This place is awful!"

"Human vice is rarely a pleasant affair for anyone but the indulger. And the wish I am here to grant is to bring you home. Nothing you can say will convince me to do otherwise."

"I mean I'm thankful. Really I am. But you have to help these girls. I, we, we're all- I can't leave them behind! I would have been dead if it wasn't for-"

"That is irrelevant to our situation. If you were dead, I would have simply retrieved your corpus and been done with it. But you are alive and needlessly willful about being taken to reunite with your famil-"

"They're my family now too! I'm not leaving without them!"

"...Where on that body of yours did you manage to hide that razorblade?" I sighed, both amazed at her ingenuity, guts, and loyalty, but irritated by her wasting my time.

She pressed the single-edge razor into the flesh of her pale, slim neck, drawing blood and I could tell by the steel in her eyes that she was completely serious.

This human girl was willing to threaten a Cape that had come to rescue her and her alone and then blackmail them with her own life as collateral to save the other girls that she was forced to work alongside at a brothel.

"Bit of gum behind the ear. Customers can do anything to us as long as they don't grab us by the head or hair. They've got real fucked up values on what constitutes as damaging their products. And I've got bruises covered in foundation to prove it." She took a deep breath, eyes wide, scared but absolutely batshit serious. "Gimme your answer now. You said if I was dead. Did you promise to bring me back safe if I was alive? Cuz I'm going to make that REAL hard for you in a minute."

I laughed. A genuine, hard, what on earth was going on laugh.

"This is actually the most convoluted situation I could have possibly conceived! For what should I have expected but yet a casual smash and grab? I was here to repay a favor, girl. I didn't care to even note your brother's name or even get YOURS the name of the girl I was here to save! This was supposed to be a quick thing. Like a sidequest in one of Rias's DragonQuest RPGs!"

I had to give it to the girl.

She had guts.

"Alright then. Fine. This isn't how it normally works, as wishes on wishes isn't normally allowed, but you're two separate people, the loophole is there. We can work this all out." I pulled out a sheet of paper with a magic seal on it. A spare flier. "You take this, and make a wish. I will grant that wish. The payment shall be that you do not harm yourself further, you are to no longer threaten to harm yourself, and to swear to perform a Geas with me to not attempt to harm OR threaten yourself to harm yourself in such a way ever again while you live under your brother's roof OR SO HELP ME I will turn you into a dog and leash you to your brother's side permanently. Do we have a deal, crazy human?"

She read the flier as it floated in front of her vision.

"...s'yer name?"

"Sorry?"

"What'm I supposed to call you? Devil?"

"You may address me as Maou."

"Like a Demon Lord? Uh ok, Devil Maou or whatever kind of crazy Cape you are." She slapped her hand on the paper, jerking slightly in surprise when it didn't move from its position in the air, "Uh, I wish for you to save the girls here and then you can take me home to my bro."

"...You really wish to make every moment of this difficult, don't you, girl?"

"It's honest work."

I threw up a protective field around her, warning her to stay in the magic circle beneath her, creating a pair of seal beasts in the form of large wolves that took up most of the room to act as guardians.

"Stay here. I'll be but a moment." I stepped out the door-

"Kuki Mizuhara"

"...what?" I turned back to my second Contractor of the night.

"If you're gonna do a job, do it right. My name is Kuki Mizuhara. The name of the girl you were sent to save."

"...Stay put, Kuki-sa-"

Someone in an Oni mask blinked into existence next to me and pulled the pin of every grenade on his bandoleer as he lunged to grapple me.

"I swear to the nine hells this was supposed to be an easy job!"