TAMASHII

I remembered ages ago when first met Portia and Sastra. It was when I lived in Opening, just before I moved to the small homestead (I guess I could call it) near Phoenix. I was being bullied, as usual, for being a strange kid with creepy powers I couldn't control. Sastra was in the general area with her mother, and noticed that I had stopped getting picked on by little kids, and was started to get the torch and pitchfork treatment from grown adults. I couldn't really hide my powers then, so I was an easy target. I have no idea how Portia knew about my suffering, but she kinda teleported on the scene too. She always seemed to be there when I needed her.

Anyway, after seeing a seraphim and a half-demon arrive on the scene, this lynch mob quickly backed down. I spent the rest of the day with these two, just having fun and trying to forget about my stress. Aqorm gave them permission to spend time with me, and Portia said she would ask her parents for permission later and they would probably say yes. Sure enough, we became friends as we conducted our serious business of goofy pranks, exploring, and just generally having fun together. And when we moved to Phoenix, my friends agreed to visit me there, despite Aqorm living in the Ghobli area and Portia hailing from Heaven. Portia could just teleport over. Sastra was quarter-aquatic elf, quarter-wood elf, and half-demon, so she could just swim over with some effort. I still thought it was insane, since she could make it by boat. But these were my friends. Later, Yazim Jianne, a friend of my mom's, decided to construct a dimensional anchor using the stone steps outside my house, so a part of the walkway glowed blue during the day, and formed a portal that someone with the Return spell could use. He even made another one at Aqorm's house! This, combined with the homemade necklace that he made, greatly increased the frequency and duration of visits, since it was no longer a day trip, but a visit that could happen instantly. Sastra wore the necklace at all times.

SASTRA

Hey. So, Tamashii told all about the past, but she kinda never got to mention today. While it's fun to think of nostalgia and stuff, we kinda all were having a fun date, just the three of us girls. If it seems like we're too young to be thinking about boys and dating, well, we're hardly normal girls. I have a healthy demon's sex drive, meaning I'm already thinking about boys and girls, probably anything that moves, and some stuff that doesn't. Tamashii was intellectually in her teens but in terms of emotional development not quite ready for boys, but she was starting to become interested in clothing and makeup where before she had her nose in a book. Portia was born knowing about her body and being conscious of it as she discovered how to change her form, and angels tend to develop sexually then spiritually, becoming more like feelings and unfixed energy as they grew in years. And yet, all of us are too young to have serious relationships, because we're still about nine or ten. Hence the idea of a play date.

Things had changed around towns in the last nine years. You see, since people could now permanently enchant things and alchemy had become easier to use (what with Synthesis also becoming more lasting and effective), to say nothing of the rediscovery of underground technology, in a very short amount of time, the face of cities and towns changed entirely. In many cases such as Zuran, Ghobli, or Aquamundo, this meant incorporating new farming tech and new building materials for increased durability of buildings. In other towns, like Opening and Gruumi, the towns were mostly unchanged, but they began to have streetlights and other small adjustments. Still others like Goji and Hinata, chose to remain unchanged, because their character as a town was at stake, or tourism would be affected, or some other reason. And lastly, were the cities and towns that decided to use Blueprints to remake the entire town. Phoenix was one such town, with King Charis and Queen Victoria sheltering everyone in town while the alchemists literally rebuilt the entire town to their imagination in one night. It was amazing, there were buildings that touched the sky, there were town parks and nature trails cutting through the original terrain, and there were natural hot springs dug up. The small mountain town was now a resort! But despite all these grand developments, they avoided urban sprawl and kept their town divided into neat districts where people could get what they needed. They kept their town quaint, despite being the latest stuff.

We'd gone to a nearby malt shop to drink banana milk shakes and eat massive amounts of cherry pie and coconut cake. I could eat more than her on account of my half-demon body and never would gain weight, so I scarfed down most of the dessert. I was her friend and always had her back, so I couldn't let my cute friend become a fatty. These sacrifices must be made for the greater good. You know how it is.

After this, we visited the shops. I stood guard outside to make sure no creeps laid a hand on Tamashii. I'd been protecting her from thugs since childhood, and I imagine when she started dating I would be her wing-woman. Portia on the other hand went in to the dressing room and helped her change, and Tamashii showcased all kinds of outfits. Every now and then, we'd stop and I'd try on stuff. What? Just because I'm a tough girl doesn't mean I don't enjoy clothing too. Portia had to be excused to the restroom.

Minutes passed. Hmmm, I might want to go check on Portia, to make sure there's been no accidents and she's not having her period or something. I don't have to worry about that, but if she was developing early, that might be a possibility.

PORTIA

To answer Tamashii's earlier question, I knew she was in trouble because I had been watching her. I was always watching her. Yes, I know it seems like a creepy stalker thing, but the fact of the matter is when I was a child, I touched Ambrosia's belly. I noticed a kindred spirit in this unborn child, and I started watching her from before she was born up to the present. That our families were close meant I would meet her eventually anyway, but as she caught my interest, I began watching her with clairvoyance. I saw as she was bullied time after time. I watched with pity, then concern, and finally longing to see her and to cheer her up. But until that day, I couldn't think of a sensible pretext to be there. If a half-demon was there, however, I could claim it had been a misunderstanding. If I was asked why I was there, I could claim that I assumed this girl might attack her. I'd watched Sastra too, enough to know she wouldn't actually do that. I had told Tamashii that I'd asked my parents if I could visit her, but I hadn't actually gotten anyone's permission. Michael's stance on child-raising is that you could do anything you wanted just as long as you stayed in touch, and took responsibility for your decisions.

I had asked to be excused at one point during the play date. Just before then, as we were hanging out and shopping, and generally having fun, I needed some quiet time to take care of... some things. You see, Tamashii was starting to make me hot and bothered. And right now, when I thought about her, I touched myself.

I reached well inside until I touched that, and my pelvic muscles trembled in response. I was in a heap on the floor for a bit. “Are you alright in there?” Sastra called out, after I had obviously been gone awhile. I mumbled an affirmation, and cleaned myself up before heading outside.

Let's clarify something here. As a creature of Heaven, I did not think of random people when I masturbate. Sex must be an outpouring of love for the one I already admire, not as many believe, love as a means to an end for sex. Love is about faithfulness. That is, I had eyes for Tamashii because I admired who she was. I couldn't stop thinking about her, having grown up with her, and become a dear friend of hers.

We enjoyed the rest of the day, watched a movie on the Crystal Mirror called The Beauty Inside (the 2015 one), a story about a guy who changed forms from day to day. We went to a restaurant for some dinner with her before all of us went home to sleep.

I couldn't stop thinking about her all night. Tomorrow, Tamashii was going with her mother back on the quest, and there would be danger and I might not see her again for awhile, if ever. Given the danger of her quest, she might even die! I wanted to be with her always, and I vowed I would marry that girl one day. But I knew she wouldn't accept marrying another woman. If only... but nah.

ASMODEUS

Belial was weak. To have been defeated in such a way was a great disgrace to the likes of those who would call themselves demons. And Satan was not much better. Before the New Earth, Satan had been content to tempt a few billion humans, in order to perform his true role as an accusing angel. Yes, I knew all about God's sick plan to teach humans about good and evil: Allow Satan to tempt humans into gaining knowledge of good and evil, send Satan to accuse them of evil, so that they would know about suffering and in turn desire things like Grace or spiritual development or improvement of conditions on Earth, set up moral law yet make perfection impossible, and make human lives short so they find a sense of purpose. All of this was part of God's plan to bring entertainment to humans (and himself, presumably) and to help them grow through suffering. Now, Satan wouldn't even do his job, as humans were now immune to his powers, through widespread knowledge of the Tao. It was time that demons acted like proper demons. It was time for conquest.

Granted, I could probably have carried out my plans much earlier, but I had a feeling that other demons like Belial, Lilith, or Amy the Tainted would try to stop me. But since the last one had gone on a vacation to the tropics, Belial had been done away with, and Lilith had apparently become a chef the last I heard, the time was finally ripe. Normally, the Council would also try to stop this sort of thing, but with the addition of Jesus, the Council's official stance was to “promote national identities and to apply principles of non-intervention” as they put it. In other words, each town was now allowed to fully make its own decisions, so long as it did not interfere with others. All I had to do was make it look like the towns had chosen to be conquered by demons, and they would not interfere. At least, not until it was too late, and I had taken most of the continents over. By that point, our demons would conquer them too. It was time to put an end to such silly organizations, and restore true power to the towns. It was time to form empires again. If I had my way, the flag of Hell would fly everywhere.

Of course, my plan was not going to be easy. It had seven major steps and most of them, besides maybe the first, must be repeated in each town without anyone figuring out in time, or comparing notes with the previously conquered towns.

The first step was to make Hell a tourist destination. This had been managed without any action from me. As God remade the world over the last nine years, for some reason he had made this world overly safe. In short, it was not the sort of place that a being who existed since before anything should have made, but more like something that a housewife with a child would want for the Earth. I had little time to wonder about it, though, as I was busy carrying out stage two of my plan. Because of this unprecedented peace and prosperity, humans and other races actually began to flock to Hell in droves for the experience of suffering. As I say, thank you God, for helping me with my plans.

Since it was now a tourist town, I next sent letters to the Council and even to unaligned towns begging and pleading to allow immigration. We would claim we were being overcrowded, and then declare that work and resources were scarce. Normally, even a tourist town like Hinata had some measure of security, usually involving checking identification, and asking for fingerprints or at minimum a thumbprint. With the activity of runes, these prints could be used to track any immigrants who had committed crimes within town, and bounty hunters took care of those who skipped town. But emergency refugees were often given a pass. All sorts of reasons wound up being used such as lecturing people about mercy and decency, how it wasn't right to fingerprint refugees like common criminals (even though every other citizen did this), or my favorite tactic was claiming not every demon had identification and asking them to carry it would keep them from participating in stuff like voting. These bleeding hearts made my task very easy.

I couldn't always be guaranteed cooperation on the acceptance of refugees without any screening though, so I found it helpful to grease the wheels a bit. Which meant of course, massive amounts of bribery. Hell uses Lucre rather than Gold, which is made from dried blood, sweat, and tears and a small amount of sulfur. It is the only currency at this time that is at risk of falling apart when exposed to water, and probably would do so but for blood having a significant amount of iron in it. What is less known, except by the tax offices, is that something about its creation gives it a bizarre property, that of also being an addictive currency. Holding more than perhaps a thousand or so Lucre tends to alter the mind of mortal races, causing them to say or do anything in order to earn more of it. The governors and mayors and other leaders would usually accept the terms of this Lucre. Others (like Hinata) had no intention of taking our money but were softhearted enough to let us in, just because we seemed pathetic. They would invite us to stay without the normal immigration channels and the money would not only buy their silence about this exchange, but some of the upper-class citizens they also would support us as it was passed around. “Not all demons do acts of terror,” they would say, “stop being so daemonophobic!” Likewise, any acts of sex such as mass orgies, rape, and depraved fetishes would be announced as just part of our culture.

After that, the tougher sell of changing the minds of regular citizens came next. Money of the sort we offered typically didn't trickle down, since the public currency of these state was still Gold, so we needed another tactic besides bribery. We needed propaganda, and lots of it. The problem, of course, was that the art of constructing new television shows had been lost since a short time before 4000 AD. Instead of making new shows, we had to basically hack old ones, editing the name and footage while retaining the episodes. Such tampered crystals turned black, but people welcomed the addition of “new” series. And so, Friends became Fiends, Everybody Loves Raymond became Everybody Loves Demon, and Grace under Fire became Grace on Fire. They could not replace any lines or major actions, it was a simple swap or one character for a demon in the story. And yet, even though absolutely nothing had changed about the story, those watching saw demons as just normal people like the rest of us, despite the fact that normal people didn't breathe fire or throw darkness around. The citizens of each town began to sympathize with out plight and if one of us was arrested, people would refuse to behave during sporting events. If we killed people, they would sob about the persecution that we had to face. We even publicly called our allies hypocrites, and they still did it!

The next step required some creativity. Since demons had unclear gender, I proposed to other demons that we should make a push to demand custom bathrooms to meet our needs. But before that, we had to undo several millennia of unisex bathrooms and the all of the drama they had solved. We again bribed city planners, this time to make public restrooms within cities, and to declare private toilets as a mark of privilege. And so, such private toilets were taxed until those that had them typically gave them up. The remaining restrooms were divided by gender, and we were quick to protest pointing out that many demons had both tails and female sexual anatomy, so they needed special bathrooms that suited their needs.

Of course, part of the plan here was to manufacture an artificial crisis, so the first thing we did was tell city leaders privately that our special needs required open bathrooms with trough-style toilet, and then publicly declare that these bathrooms were proof of our second-class treatment. Likewise, we campaigned for a number of other rights and privileges, only to later declare them proof that the people of these countries were oppressing us. In fact, we sometimes disguised our own and had them call themselves Demon Exclusionary Radical People (DERPs for short), and such demons would act in a bigoted manner, forbidding demons from entering certain spaces. This in turn would discredit any remaining citizens who had misgivings of the sizable amount of demons who entered each town and bred with the males and females.

Finally, when a significant enough amount of demons were supposedly being given “second-class treatment” during false events, demons would begin openly attacking the citizens. We would take their houses and their crops, leaving them as homeless who sowed crops but were unable to harvest. Whenever anyone asked about this, they would be able to claim that they were acting in “self-defense” in response to hostility and oppression. In this way, demons would remake human towns as demon majority bases for new invasions. It was only a matter of time before other races were the majority, and our people would spread like a plague over the land. By that point, this world would be ours for the taking! It was time to occupy cities, in the name of all demons.