Ah, Dione loved the smell of competence in the - She stopped the thought mid-track to check the time. Yep, still morning. All around the bookstore were Night Daemons in disguise, setting up Sigils in secret so they could drain away all the people who would come in for the book signing. Naturally, she'd be the author. To make sure nothing went wrong. Always best to keep a close eye on things personally for such a big, important scheme.
Ordinarily a Night Daemon themselves could just set up harvesting the needed magical power from these weak little humans. But since Dione needed to gather a large amount of energy at once to make a particular powerful Night Daemon for Operation Crush Cuties (as she called it, Pluto had sighed for some reason once the name had been brought up) the Sigils would, once activated, would quickly drain most of the magical power in a person lacking sufficient strength to resist the initial curse.
Getting booked at once of the larger bookstores in the city might seem a bit difficult for a brand new author, but Dione was <b>persuasive</b> to put it into simple terms. Why, they'd even managed to get a local publishing company to help out with the setup, to add a little extra professionalism to it. Nothing for those ridiculous yet adorable goody two shoes to latch onto if they investigated after the fact - or if they got in the way somehow in the middle of the event. Not that she expected them to poke their supposedly pretty heads in until the energy drain was obvious and by then they'd have drained... Well, she'd not been able to calculate that quite yet, been too busy setting up, but it would make the whole enterprise worth it in the end! There's no way they'd show up before that point!
Little did she know that there were three in the building already, but oh well. That's for us to know, dear reader, and for the villainous Dione to never figure out.
Anyway, she was perfectly content to go about incognito for the time being. Check things out, make sure the setup was all good without drawing undue attention to herself. Among the customers she heard several humans gushing about her work, how silly, how ridiculous, how fun it would be to suck them dry. Leave them as withering husks, still nattering on about how a work of fiction changed their life. Case in point -
"Wow, this new book is amazing!" one young woman said, holding onto a copy of the book with stars in her eyes. Little realising that soon, she'd never have that level of enthusiasm ever again! Brimming with energy! Bubbling over! "Don't you agree Miss Yumiko?"
The woman next to her sighed wearily, and pulled the book from the young woman's hand. "We're not here to gush, Take. I'm here as a favour, and you're here because you're supposed to shadow me for the next week to get a feeling for my schedule. I don't need you embarrassing me in public, understood?"
"Yes, boss..." Take muttered under her breath. Hehehe, so these were the fools who would unknowingly condemn their fellow humans to this fate? "Alright, I think she bought that... She doesn't know that I'm actually a big magical girl fan, eager to see truth and justice prevail over evil no matter what form it may take!"
Oh. She was an even bigger fool than Dione had imagined. Take, was it? Well, in English that name had a different meaning than it did in Japanese. Dione was going to take Take's energy away. How about that, you snivelling little worm! But oh no. Must maintain professionalism while on the job. Hahaha!
For now she'd follow that Yumiko a bit to get a feel for her. Maybe introduce herself. Facilitate setting things up, make it clear she's incognito for now but happy to chat about things in a more private area. Maybe brainwash her a little...? No, no, that shouldn't be necessary until later on. Where was she anyway?
"Pardon me, I was looking for a beefcake recipe, but you'll do in a pinch."
Ah. She was flirting. With one of the disguised Night Daemons. Who, judging by his body language, had not yet finished setting up the Sigil in his area before being interrupted. Yumiko flipped back her hair in what Dione supposed was intended as a seductive move, but it looked a bit too practised to her eyes. As if she'd done that for hours in the mirror over many, many years trying to get it just right.
The older woman was pretty, but clearly past prime dating age if Dione had anything to say about it. She leaned towards her cute Night Daemon with a practiced flirty smile.
"My name's Yumiko - " and then someone dropped a book in the next aisle over, making Dione jump a little at the sudden noise. "And I am free every night next week. How about you, Mister...?"
"Uh?" the Night Daemon gulped nervously. "C-Call me -"
"Oh don't worry, I intend to."
In all her years, Dione had seen some things. You have to do some wild stuff to become one of the Eternal Night Empire’s Moons. She had stared into the Abyss of Nightmares without blinking. She had descended into the Scarlet Pool of Madness and came out smiling. She'd played pool in the middle of a black hole, and arm wrestled an anthropomorphised Dwarf Star.
Yet this clumsy attempt at flirting was the most frightening thing she'd ever seen in her life. Look at her, practically hanging off him. She must make men run for the hills. Dione almost wanted to hire her to help train her newborn Night Daemons into 'how to be your most intimidating self.'
Nonetheless, she was interfering in the Sigils getting setup! Dione gave a warning look to the Night Daemon, and while he was clearly more scared of Yumiko in the immediate sense, he knew well enough to not piss her off.
"Next Friday!" the Night Daemon said. "I'm completely free next Friday!"
"Sounds like a date. I look forward to seeing you then."
Oh by the Night Queen’s Raven Hair, she was trying to do a seductive swagger away. Note to self, mimic that walk when leaving the interrogation room at the end of an especially intense round of special interrogation. If they're not broken after that, they'll never break.
"You there!" a girl yelled, pointing right at Dione. "I'm onto your game! I've seen you flitting around, watching everyone that's coming into the store!"
... Uh? Had she been figured out? Dione bit her lip and stared intensely at the fast approaching girl, who had a bit of intensity about her as well, come to think. Each step had a thunderous purpose to it, and even though Dione was a little taller than her it still felt like she was being looked down on.
"You're also looking for the secret passages, right? Have you found any yet? With all these bookcases there has to be at least one!"
"Secret... passages. In a bookcase. In a bookstore?"
That... just... What? That made so little sense that Dione had to wonder if she was being messed with. The girl immediately began inspecting books, tilting them out one at a time with remarkable efficiency and speed, clearing four shelves in the time it took her to recover from the logic of that statement. Or should that be anti-logic?
"Aha!" the girl said. "I knew it! Hitohi, you've done it again! Justice prevails, and the truth is revealed!"
That truth being a concealed Sigil. Dione had to strangle a scream in her throat. Those things shouldn't be discovered so easily! Ack! She had spent hours making each sigil just the right amount of cute and potent to be able to get the perfect amount of magical power from the people who came to see her new book!
"Hrm? Oh, that?" Dione asked, leaning over Hitohi's shoulder. "Why, I'm sure that's nothing to be concerned with."
"Looks magical," this Hitohi girl said, studying it quite intensely.
"No, no, not at all, not at all," Dione said. "Magical? It looks like…” Think, think , think, what weird things have humans cooked up since the 80s?! “A QR code! Yes, that! You've seen those around right? You know what, let's ask the store staff what that is."
She was gesturing to a Night Daemon to come over, while trying to think about an explanation for this that might work. "Excuse me, my friend here Hitohi was wondering what this was? Could you. Please. Explain it. To her?"
"Oh that?" the Night Daemon said. Dione stepped back, eyes wild with frustration, pulled out a slip of paper and scribbled the explanation on it. "It's... uh... one of those GR codes you see everywhere nowadays. Except... Specially modified for us to use?"
QR code! How was that a G?! No, wait, actually she could sort of see it now. Also that inflection at the end made it sound like a question, not an answer!
"Ohhhh, it's a security thing?" Hitohi said, suddenly seeming to lose all interest in it. "Never mind. My instincts were telling me that something big and magical was probably going to happen here today, but it's been off before."
And then she wandered off, leaving Dione feeling like she'd aged a millennium or ten.These people! These humans were- they were weirdos! Not as bad as those dumb, stupid, constantly interfering Sparkling Lovers who she couldn’t wait to get as some cute pets, but still!
And then. As if things couldn't get any worse. A guy at the checkout pulled a knife and a brown paper sack. Oh. Ohhhhh! She was not in the mood for this bullshit! Dione practically teleported right behind this dumbass, tapped him on the shoulder - and to her surprise found another weird girl right there tapping his other shoulder - then when he turned around the two of them suplexed his dumb criminal ass to the ground.
Now, Dione was more interested in punishing this would-be robber, so she whirled around and slapped on an arm bar to get the punishment going. His screams of pain as she almost-but-not-quite broke his arm were as a fine symphony to her ears, a fantastic stress relief after seeing things almost go wrong earlier. The other girl was apparently okay with kicking the knife away to keep it out of reach.
"Eh? Isn't that - "
"Isn't that her? The writer signing a book today?"
"Wow, she's even cooler than I thought."
"I wasn't originally going to, but maybe I should check out her work? That was kinda awesome."
"Akari! Don't suplex criminals like that, especially those with a knife."
"S-sorry!" the other girl, Akari whimpered a little. "I couldn't help it, he was right there and he desperately needed to be suplexed...Ah, but from how people are talking maybe doing that kind of thing would help my future manga career...?"
Huh? Ahaha, well isn't that great? Now she was going to have to give a police report, maybe delay the start of the book signing while she gave a statement... But on the other hand, this was bound to draw greater interest to the store. More people. More prey to feed upon. More dried withered husks for those future pets to stumble over, making despair fall upon them as they realised their folly, making them all the easier to pick off! Until the Eternal Night Empire finally gets to feed off this silly world and they can move on to the next!
With a few souvenirs of course.
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