Lillene

Enjoy!

“No. No no no no no!” The words started off soft but quickly rose in both pitch and volume as the apparent spellcaster dropped to her knees on the ground in front of the dead demon. 

That wasn’t the reaction Serenity expected. He certainly hadn’t expected them to be happy about him killing their demons, but collapsing to the ground crying and screaming the word “no” wasn’t the reaction he’d expected, either. Shouting at him for ruining their plans or for getting in the way or something he’d understand. Running away or even attacking him were also within reason. Collapsing to the ground wasn’t expected.

Serenity kept an eye on the crying girl as he turned towards the other real threat, the unknown demon. It stood still with its eyes on Serenity. A moment after he turned his attention to it, it nodded at him, then leaned its head to one side and a little back. 

It was not a gesture Serenity saw very often; most cultures seemed to lower themselves in some manner instead of baring the throat. Serenity still knew what it was; the demon was yielding to him, saying that it wouldn’t attack him. It might also be offering to do his bidding; Serenity couldn’t tell that from the gesture. He also couldn’t tell how smart the demon was; a gesture of submission wasn’t unique to the sapient species.

There was one thing that the gesture told him that was specific to demons: the demon wasn’t bound to its summoner or creator, whichever was more accurate here. It completely ignored both of the girls to pay attention to Serenity. If it were bound, that wouldn’t be possible. He didn’t think he’d interrupted the binding, either; it looked like the girl with the burning paper was just going to let the two demons go free. Serenity wasn’t happy about the idea of a free assassination demon, even if that meant it didn’t have a specified target. They were sneaky and they killed people; that wasn’t a good combination to have running around loose.

“W-what are you?” The voice of the girl who wasn’t shouting “no” at the top of her lungs shook.

Serenity sighed as he dismissed the blade of his manablade and hooked it back into its carrying case. He felt a little like he was the bad guy now, but they were summoning demons; that wasn’t exactly something he could ignore. Maybe he could have been slower, but he really didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. In fact, he still thought he’d done the best he could. If he’d gotten here earlier, maybe he could have done something different. He wasn’t sure what, but something. “Someone who doesn’t approve of randomly summoning demons, especially not without knowing what you’re doing.”

“I followed the instructions!” The girl sounded positively indignant. 

Her reaction made Serenity chuckle. “And exactly how were you going to bind the demons?”

“It was part of the summoning spell. We … already did?” She sounded a bit tentative. It was obvious, even to Serenity, that she wasn’t certain they’d actually bound the demons.

Serenity sighed again. Questioning someone who clearly didn’t know what they were doing wasn’t useful. The fact that her reactions made him feel like he was bullying her definitely weren’t why he stopped.

Even if he knew he was lying to himself about the last point, it was true that he couldn’t think of any reason to push her on that question. Another question, however, was important and it was one she could probably answer. “Where did you find the summoning ritual?”

“Uh, I … Nat … I mean, Raven brought it. I’m not sure where she found it. Online?” The relatively calm girl waved at her crying friend. “She’s good at finding stuff. It’s almost always legit too.”

Serenity wondered if “legit” meant “above-board” or if it just meant that it worked. Given that he’d interrupted a somewhat successful demon summoning, his guess was that “it worked” was the right answer. They did have demons, even if they weren’t under control, which Serenity was certain was supposed to be part of the spell.

Unfortunately, that meant he was going to have to get answers from a teenage girl that had collapsed into tears. Serenity wasn’t even sure where to start with that; he was mostly hopeless with teenagers when he was one and he really hadn’t dealt with many since then. 

“Why don’t you comfort your friend?” Serenity didn’t think that had come out quite right, but it was the best he could come up with right now. Maybe Russ would have an idea what to do once he got here, but he was still a ways away. “Maybe find out why she’s so upset? I assume she doesn’t normally fall apart like that?”

While the girl was willing to comfort her friend, Serenity really didn’t learn anything more before Russ, Quincy, and Brown arrived nearly half an hour later. The two girls didn’t even seem to notice the wait, but Serenity certainly did.

The first sign of their arrival was headlights. The spot the girls picked wasn’t all that close to the parking lot, but that didn’t matter to the approaching vehicle. Serenity wasn’t worried; he knew Russ and his liaisons were almost there from Russ’s latest message. That had to be them.

The car stopped with the headlights illuminating the two girls, Serenity, and the demon. The passenger door opened and a figure stepped out into the darkness. With the lights between him and the passenger, Serenity couldn’t make out his features, but Eyeless Sight gave him enough detail to know that this was Russ, not either of the liaisons.

“Are you kids okay there?” Russ sounded a little amused, which made Serenity look at the scene with fresh eyes. 

There were two teenage girls; the one on a giant pillow was silently sobbing while the other sat next to her, half on and half off the pillow, with one hand on her shoulder. He stood about a third of the way around the circle, closer to the girls than the other pillow, while the demon remained standing a bit off-center in the circle, where he started. He’d straightened when Serenity nodded at him but hadn’t tried to leave his spot or even sit down.

“Y-yeah.” The first girl, the one who was comforting her friend, stood up and tugged on her friend to get her to stand, as well. It was quite a contrast. The first girl was dressed in what Serenity considered normal clothes, jeans and a T-shirt with a jacket for the cool night air, while the second one was in all black. Serenity didn’t think it was really a goth look; she didn’t have any makeup on or anything. It was simply her clothing that was entirely black. “We were just leaving.”

Russ chuckled. “Don’t hurry away; you won’t get in any more trouble for staying. I’d normally say it’s my job to get you out of trouble, but I see Serenity’s already taken care of it.”

Serenity was amused when the first girl’s mouth dropped open. She looked starstruck as she turned to look at him; she clearly hadn’t gotten a good look earlier. It would have been funnier if the expression were pointed at someone else, but it was still funny.

“Fixed things? He ruined everything!” The second girl still had tears on her face, but she wasn’t crying anymore. She seemed to have gone from devastated to furious with no stops in between. “He killed my demon!”

Serenity wasn’t certain if that was normal for a teenager or not, but it worried him. He had a daughter; she wasn’t very old yet, but her tantrums were already epic. He didn’t want to think about how mad she’d get as a teenager.

He had no idea how to deal with it.

“What did you need a demon to handle?” Russ sounded genuinely interested. It definitely wasn’t the tack Serenity would have taken, but he trusted Russ to have a better handle on how to deal with a teenage girl than Serenity did. “Demons are usually not precision instruments; I’m surprised the one over there hasn’t escaped already.”

“It’s under control!” The girl in black wasn’t quite shouting, but it was close. “That’s what the spell is for. Dumbass.” 

Serenity raised his eyebrows at that. Insulting an expert in their own field was usually not a good idea. Of course, she didn’t know Russ was an expert, but what did that have to do with anything? She didn’t know he wasn’t, and the fact that he arrived after a demon summoning should have implied …

“Teenagers,” Serenity muttered to himself. He was obviously assuming the girl knew too much; he could remember being a teenager. It wasn’t until he was older that he’d realized that maybe some of the things his parents told him weren’t just them being lost in the past; a lot of it actually had something behind it. If she was as rebellious as she looked, she was probably even less likely to assume people knew what they were talking about than he had been.

“Is it?” Russ stepped forward into the light. He was backlit, but Serenity could still see the gentle smile on his face. “Can you show me the spell? I haven’t seen one that did that well; all of the demon summoning spells I’ve seen, the ones that actually summon demons, tend to have issues with controlling them.”

When had Russ actually seen a real demon summoning spell? Was he just saying that to get the girl to talk to him?

Whether he was overstating his experience or not, it worked. The girl in black actually relaxed a bit. She turned around and seemed to hunt for a minute before she found the right stack of paper. It was thin, probably only about a half-dozen pages, but even from his position Serenity could see that there were both diagrams and text. He wanted to get a better look at it, but he wasn’t sure if that would interfere in Russ’s plans or not. He seemed to have gotten the girl to talk; maybe Serenity would be better off hanging back and letting Russ handle it.

“You’re Serenity?” The question was soft, even timid, and it came from the blonde girl who’d comforted her friend. “What’s … what’s it like?”

Serenity blinked, completely lost. “What’s what like?”

The girl bit her lip, then took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. “Being you. I mean, you can shapeshift! That’s so cool! Can you fly?”

That put him back on slightly more familiar ground; he’d been asked that exact question a number of times. The answer had even changed a little as he grew bigger. He might still be a wyrmling, but he was now a strong wyrmling with practiced wings. “Not very well. It’s really more of a glide. If I reduce my weight enough with the right spells, I can get close to actual flight but it’s not quite the same thing.”

Lillene

Serenity is not equipped well for fangirls. He didn’t really think through that part of his publicity stunts.