Also for The Crownless Queen. I'm pretty sure you'll love this one!

Word Count: 1,324

casually saving the world

Theodoriel and Basile—Theo and Blaise—had lived and also kind of worked together for two and a half decades when the first signs of The End had started to appear.

Neither of them could say that they liked this in any way, shape or form.

"But I like Earth," Blaise whined once they had figured out what the baby he had been handed meant.

The baby was the catalyst that would bring The End, the Antichrist.

No time had passed between the time the demon had been handed the kid by his superiors and the time he told Theodoriel about it.

"Why is this even my task anyways? It's not like my good...bad...argh, you know what I mean! It's not like it stood out in particular. It never did and it certainly moved even further away from what they want," he complained, violently throwing his hands in the air, as if the question was directed at Them.

And maybe it was, Theo supposed. It wasn't like it made any more or less sense than asking the ceiling itself.

"Perhaps that is why," he theorized—huh, theorized.

The demon frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe they want to test your loyalty," the angel replied, making more than one weird movement with his hands. He also stretched that sentence unnecessarily long for some reason.

"Well, if that's the case, then they made the worst-best choice they could have," Blaise smiled. The grin on his face suggested that he had a plan. "Say, how do you feel about adopting?"

Theo wasn't dumb. He caught onto the plan. "Can't say I mind it, really. I welcome the challenge."

"Then it's decided."

Neither of them wasted any time.

Theo quit his job, the lease of the apartment and erased any trace that they had ever been there while Blaise packed.

All of that only lasted a couple of seconds, of course, being an ethereal or a damned Being did have some benefits.

Once that was done, Blaise threw an illusion of a dart on a holographic image of a World Map that his partner had conjured.

This was the way they always picked their next destination.

Last time it had been Rotterdam in the Netherlands and now they would move on to Dharka in Bangladesh.

If nothing else, then this would most certainly be a very interesting experience for all the of them.

With some luck, they—and the rest of the world—might even survive. It all depended on their parenting abilities.

Yes. Because that inspired confidence like nothing else did!

Not.

"What are we calling him, anyway?" Basile questioned as they were putting in their new furniture—that is their old furniture with a glamour charm that would only affect humans. It would cause them to see whatever they expected of someone living here, in the slums.

They might be doing that, but that didn't mean that they had to do it without style.

Blaise had even shrunk his Pierce Silver Arrow so that it fit on his keychain.

He would not leave it alone for anything...that anyone had offered him so far. Best to keep his options open.

"What do you mean?" the angel questioned as he absently switched the colour of their walls for the seventy fifth time.

"The child needs a name," the demon pointed out. "We can't just keep calling him Antichrist!"

Theodoriel paused. The walls were a light purple. "Do we even know it's a him? Just because everyone assumes the kid to be a he does not mean that this is the case."

"My point exactly!" Basile exclaimed.

It turned out that the kid was not a he but a she after all. They didn't need to look, Theo simply ask her.

Because speaking all languages apparently included senseless babble of a newborn.

"How much of the things animals say are connected to either food or sex?" Basile questioned.

"Almost all of it," Theo replied, groaning. "But let us get back to naming the girl. Please."

Louise, Mary, Paula, Stefanie, Yuki, Akinyi, and many, many, many more names were rejected one of them or the girl herself. They had long since reached the point to start grasping straws.

"Anughaṭaka?"[1] Theo proposed eventually. "We could shorten it to Hata?"

Blaise nodded. "I'd be fine with that. Hell, I'd be fine with pretty much anything right now."

Since the baby was fine with that, that was her name from that point onwards.

Hata Thrall, because they really could not come up with a better last name and didn't particularly fancy trying.

Hata was a strange kid, but that was to be expected of her. She was the Antichrist, after all.

Theo and Blaise were doing their very best to keep her from accidentally-on-purpose destroying the world.

Because that kid was powerful and if Hata were to dislike humans or Earth, she might destroy them during a temper tantrum.

Sort-of-openly working against both Above and Down Below had something adventurous about it and they both agreed that Hata was worth it.

That did, however did not mean that it was easy to raise her in any sense of the word.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

But it was oddly rewarding, too. And not just in the sense that they were prolonging Earth's existence; this was something more personal.

They had to move several times before Hata turned one.

"It's almost a shame," Theodoriel commented absently as he looked out of their window one last time. "This city was starting to grow onto me."

Basile raised a single eyebrow. "Even with all the sssuffering?" He hadn't used the forked tongue in...such a long time that he could not remember when he did it last.

It fit perfectly, though.

Theo glared at him. "That's why I said 'almost', you dork."

Blaise chuckled loudly. "Uhh, getting really great with the insults here. By Hell's definition."

Hata clapped her tiny hands excitedly.

Theo threw their last remaining pillow in his direction. "Shut up. Or else…." He never finished that threat.

"I'm terrified," Blaise deadpanned.

School was an interesting experience for Hata and consequently Basile and Theodoriel.

That, however, didn't mean it wasn't fun.

Hata displayed no destructive tendencies, especially not on the scale they feared, oh no.

She was a prankster at heart.

Whenever she played a prank—changing colours of things, putting spelling errors in her teacher's works and such things—Blaise would simply shrug and say that it could have been way worse.

Theo couldn't exactly fault him for that, given that they could be dealing with her murdering everyone around them.

They still continued moving every couple of months, but they had managed to stretch the time to ten months the last time.

"Hata brought home a letter," Blaise informed Theo when he got home from his office work. They were in Australia and Hata was eight. "There's a parent-teacher conference and—as if that wasn't enough—one or both of us is supposed to come into the school and introduce their jobs!"

Theo frowned. "I get why the parent-teacher conference—really, they should think of a better name. Not every kid is raised by their parents, after all—would be a problem, but what is the issue with job day? And where is Hata, anyway?"

"She's with a friend. They want to have a sleepover or something. Didn't really listen," Blaise shrugged. "But let's get back to the point, shall we?"

"Yes, please," Theo requested. "Because I truly do not see the problem."

Blaise put his head in his right hand. He was sitting at their kitchen table and his elbow was placed on it. "Because you're an office worker that gets payed close to nothing, I don't officially work and yet we're living in a mansion, maybe?"

The frown stayed on the angel's face. "Don't you lead, like, three computer firms and five successful websites that make millions?"

Blaise buried his face in his hands and sighed. "I said officially!"

[1] Unless Google Translate is failing me, that means 'catalyst' in Bengali.

Please tell me what you think!

~Marvelgeek42