Chapter 54: The Gathering Storm Part 2
Warsaw, Poland
Druella was having some trouble with where she decided to begin her conquest.
Simply put, there was just a lack of interest within the mamono population. Luxure had seemed to try and keep Druella's followers and potential allies away from Earth when she sent these mamono over. Many had already found love, even with reciprocating humans! They felt they had no reason to try and upset their new lives on Earth in favor of Druella's Radical cause. At least not without some sort of incentive.
There were opportunities however for the lilim. Certain groups of people on Earth were surprisingly receptive to radical mamono thought. The weak and ill flocked to the idea of becoming mamono to overcome their physical troubles as humans, human feminist groups saw the mamono as the chance to become more powerful than their male counterparts. And it wasn't just social, but political opportunities arose that Druella began to study potential options to insure total mamono dominance on Earth.
To that end one night as she used a television her minions had brought into their base for the first time, she encountered something that truly surprised her. As she switched to the news channel known as "CNN."
On the TV the newscaster talked about a huge protest that had occurred the previous day in America. Religious and social conservatives marching alongside mamono. Two groups that, even on Earth, had more than a little trouble getting along. However, in this case, what they were marching for made them allies.
"No more killing babies!" one papillon cried out as she held up a sign. On which the same declaration appeared.
"End Roe now!" an elderly human man said as he shook his hand in anger.
"For mamono the struggle to conceive is a very real thing. Every year hundreds of thousands of our kind have to suffer the tragedy of barren wombs. And the fact that on Earth many women would prefer to deprive themselves of the life they create using murder is beyond horrific! All life is precious, no more abortions, no more birth control and no more condoms! People must learn to cherish and bring forth life whenever possible!" The spokesperson for the march, an echidna, said into the microphone as dozens of humans and monsters marched their way to a nearby Planned Parenthood, where the march was supposed to end.
Druella later learned that from the moment they had achieved citizenship in nations like America, mamono had fought against many of the policies that fell under the "planned parenthood" umbrella. She could use this, perhaps pushing the mamono in a way that would bring them to try and eliminate these policies by force. And maybe take over as part of ensuring that these so called "freedoms" will never be allowed to take root again on Earth.
There was another group that Druella and the mamono found themselves unwilling to involve themselves with, the LGBTQ+. Most gay males back in their world became alps, or said gayness was raped out of their systems by mamono. Lesbianism wasn't common but wasn't disliked like human male gayness was. In fact some mamono even liked lesbianism, provided there wasn't a male nearby to fulfill their more traditional desires.
As for trans people, well the mamono had mixed feelings on them as well. For one, males thinking they were female were better off just being alps then whatever in the Demon Lord's name they were doing already.
The opposite was true for trans men however. Females pretending to be males was wholly unacceptable for mamono and that line of thought needed to be "purged." Preferably through intense sessions of lesbian sex and proper mamono transformations.
Druella looked at these new political developments in America and Western Europe as possible tools to push her radical agenda, at least in those regions. However, a "one strategy fits all" approach wouldn't be possible like against the Order. Earth was home to nearly 200 countries, some were more than a little acceptable of mamono, others killed them on sight.
Violence against mamono would be a certainty if Druella were to go and try to conquer the world. From guns, all the way up to humanity's great "peacemakers," nuclear weapons.
Almost all of these countries had guns and the more powerful nations like America or China possessed nuclear weapons. Those were something she had to try and overcome. Either with magic, subterfuge, or perhaps acquiring some guns for her followers.
Perhaps I can get Svetlana to take a look making these guns more mamono friendly, The 4th born thought to herself as she walked over to the cells still housing her imperfect human men. The lilim frowned at her continued failures to try and bestow the gift of incubization upon these poor souls.
Try as she might, the ability to incubize these men was still out of her reach. Magic was, unfortunately, not cutting it. Something else had to be done in order to change them without harming or killing them.
Druella would never forgive herself if she caused even one human death. A dead human, a dead human male, would be a tragedy. So for now they would have to remain within the cells.
As Druella pondered this, Svetlana waddled up to her mistress holding some papers. The gremlin looked at the men inside the cells with pity as she looked up to the lilim.
"Mistress, I've been thinking about solutions to our problems. And I think I've come up with one."
"Oh?"
"Yes, so the problem we face is the blood type, how it won't conform to demonic energy. But what if the problem isn't the blood, but the demonic energy?"
Druella turned to look down at her little subordinate with a mixture of curiosity and a little irritation. What is she saying? That WE are somehow the problem!? Svetlana didn't seem to notice as she continued.
"While I'd need to go to the Sabbath's for confirmation, perhaps the problem is that the demonic energy just doesn't want to tie itself to what it may 'see' as foreign blood."
"So how do we fix that?"
"Well if we can't change the blood, why not change the demonic energy to respond well to the blood! After all, demonic energy just isn't something we can blast out as energy. It's a liquid, miasma, jelly, magic and more! We just need to change it enough to bypass the blood problem!"
That was, not a bad idea. However, the Demon Lord had changed the nature of demonic energy for a reason. So that mamono wouldn't have to fear suddenly changing back into a horrible monster and gobbling up their husbands! Tampering with it would likely be more trouble than it's worth.
But think of the possibilities a voice in the back of Druella's head said. What if this is the solution? You have to at least try.
"Say we went through with this, how would we go about trying to change the demonic energy?" Druella asked.
"Well the good news is that we don't have to change all of it, just some of it. Just enough to change the imperfect humans. It would kind of be like a middle woman between the man and the mamono. The demonic energy transfer between the two likely wouldn't be efficient, but it would prevent the man from getting hurt."
The gremlin rushed back to her lab, beckoning the lilim to follow her. Svetlana grabbed a small glass vial and held it before Druella.
"We put a liquid version of the energy in here, then we can inject it into the man. Then once the energy has changed him, he and his future wife would be able to make love without fear of harm! We could even take it directly from the prospective mamono themselves. Once we've conquered this world, we could gather up all the imperfect humans and hand them out to mamono. With the modified demonic energy in their hands!"
"But about the women? Are you sure that the energy wouldn't harm them, or change them in negative ways? They would be generating this new energy would they not?"
Svetlana seemed to ponder this for a moment.
"Honestly mistress, I don't know. If we gave a woman the modified demonic energy, it could have unintended effects. Since she would be generating that energy, instead of just using it as a transfer between two parties like it would for a male."
"But as for seeing how it would work, I only have the hypothesis. But we would need a combination of both magical and technological materials to try it out. We should get in contact with the Sabbaths, they could help with the magical stuff. As for the technology, I don't have the material on hand to try and work with demonic energy here. We'd need to sneak into some Earth buildings and take it."
"...If that's the case, then we'll need to plan this through. Do you know where we need to go to get the stuff you'll need?"
"Of course mistress, that's what these lists are for!" Svetlana says as she hands them off to Druella. The lilim looks them over for a moment, to say that the gremlin needs a lot of stuff for her experiments would be an understatement. Thankfully, the universities and labs across the city had everything they'd need.
Including the technology that infuriated Druella the most, CRISPR.
"Svetlana, what in my mother's name do we need this CRISPR blasphemy for!"
The shot made the little gremlin up before turning around to face her leader, a sheepish look on her face. "W-well mistress, it could prove invaluable to our work. A new temporary CRISPR clinic just opened up in Warsaw for mamono families. If it can fix the birth problem then maybe it can fix the blood problem too."
The lilim stared hard at her minion for a moment, breathed deeply out of her nose, and nodded to Svetlana.
"Alright Svetlana, fine, we can get the CRISPR stuff too if you think it's worthwhile to our mission. When Hannah and Tara get back, we'll see about getting started."
The Gremlin quickly nodded and left the lilim to her own devices.
Druella turned back to face the men in the cages. For their sake Druella and company would need to pull off a heist of sorts. It wouldn't be easy however and couldn't be done in one night. It would be a risk for sure, but a necessary one for the sake of the Radical Faction.
Druella sighed. I need more women.
Yeah this chapter was written before the current talk about Roe v Wade. As well as the opinions of the characters regarding the LGBTQ+ community do not necessarily reflect the author's opinions. These are, in said author's opinion, how the mamono as a whole would think of these groups given the general ideals and beliefs we've seen them have within the canon. As well as the multitude of stories, captions and fanfictions regarding mamono across multiple sites.
I know I probably didn't need this, but in today's social climate, better safe than sorry.