“You know, I think I might have been right earlier about having high wax build-up in my ears,” Justice said from the passenger’s seat of Aria’s car as she used her left pinkie finger to dig at her ear. “I’m feeling a lot of ceraceous stuff in there.”
“Uh-huh,” Aria replied half-heartedly from the driver’s seat.
“You wouldn’t happen to know any home remedies or anything for excessive ear wax, would ya?” The sunglasses-clad girl then inquired.
“Afraid not,” The Dazzling simply answered.
“Damn,” Justice uttered as she continued to excavate her ear canal.
Justice continued to dig around in her ear for a few more seconds before eventually removing her finger from the small orifice, along with a fairly good-sized chunk of earwax.
“Woof. Feels like I got a lot outta there,” The blind girl said before practically shoving her left pinkie finger in Aria’s face. “This look like a lotta earwax to you?”
“For fuck’s sake, I’m trying to drive here!” The Dazzling hollered as she forcibly removed Justice’s finger from right in front of her.
“Yeah, I think my recent hearing problem has been because of excessive earwax,” Justice then said as she flicked the waxy substance on her finger out the window.
“You don’t have much of a social filter, do you?” Aria abruptly asked her companion.
“What’s a social filter?” Justice replied, giving the Dazzling her answer.
“Ugh,” The pig-tailed girl muttered under her breath.
It had only been a few minutes since the Dazzling and Justice had left Chaus together to go on their pick-up for Lucy, but already Aria was finding the girl to be a tad irritating. It wasn’t just the fact that Justice felt an apparent need to excavate her ear canal in front of her that bothered the pig-tailed girl though, it was also the fact that the sunglasses-clad girl apparently felt the need for constant conversation. Ever since the two of them had left Lucy’s office Justice had been blathering on almost incessantly about whatever random thought popped into her head, including but not limited to how nice she’d found the weather to be lately and how much she loved the 1976 Fillydelphia hockey team. Unfortunately for Aria, she hadn’t found any of these random thoughts to be even remotely interesting, and she resolved herself to just giving as many short, close-ended responses to the girl’s ramblings as possible in the hopes that she’d eventually just shut up.
“So, what’s your deal, Aria?” Justice abruptly asked her, much to the Dazzling’s bewilderment.
“My deal?” She asked back.
“Yeah, you know, how come you’re doing this?” Justice clarified. “Most people don’t agree to work for Lucy unless they’re either greedy or desperate. So what’s your deal; are ya greedy or are ya desperate?”
At this rather intrusive question, Aria really wished that Justice had stuck to simply talking about the weather or her favorite hockey team.
“Well if it’s gotta be one of those two options, then I suppose I’m desperate,” She answered. “What about you? How come you’re working for Lucy?”
“Oh, that’s a long and complicated story you’d probably regret hearing,” Her companion replied as she put her feet up on the dash, much to the Dazzling’s annoyance. “But I’d really like hear to your story.”
“And why’s that?” Aria then inquired, making little-to-no attempt to hide her irritability.
“I like stories,” Justice answered in a fatuously gleeful manner.
Needless to say, Aria wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to share the story of her financial hardships with a girl she’d met just a little under an hour ago. However, the jocund manner in which Justice had expressed her fondness for stories left her feeling unable to avoid doing so. Though, much like she’d been doing for the most part up until this point, she wasn’t going to say much.
“Not much of a story to tell,” She confessed. “I just need the money to help ensure that my sisters and I don’t lose our emu farm. That’s pretty much it.”
“Emu, huh? Smart,” Justice replied. “A lot of people choose to raise ostriches over emus because they think ostriches will bring in more money, which they usually do, but those people rarely understand what it is they’re getting themselves into.”
“How do you mean?” Aria then inquired, finding herself intrigued by her companion’s apparent knowledge of ostrich farming.
“Ostriches are big into conspiracy theories,” Justice clarified. “Seriously, they’re always going on and on about the weirdest stuff, like the moon landing being filmed by Stanley Kubrick or the pyramids being built by Sears. In fact, I think the last time I spoke to an ostrich he told me something along the lines of the world being fake.”
Aria had no idea how to respond to this, mostly because she wasn’t sure whether Justice was trying to be funny or if she was being one hundred percent serious. The fact that the girl had stated such an outlandish claim about ostriches being conspiracy theorists made it difficult for the Dazzling to take it as anything other than a joke, but the earnestness with which she’d spoken said claim strongly led her to believe that she’d meant it most seriously. It was a conundrum that Aria didn’t want to spend much time or mental energy on, so before her mind became too enveloped in it she just assumed that Justice was simply joshing her.
“Trust me, ostriches might be more profitable than emu but they’re not worth all the headaches they cause,” Justice continued, instantly evanescing the Dazzling’s assumption. “So if you ever start thinking about switching from emus to ostriches, just…don’t do it.”
“O-Okay. I won’t,” Aria replied tentatively, finding herself unable to think of any other response.
“Good, good,” Justice said. “Now if you ever want to start raising rheas, they’re not so bad. The only thing about them is -”
The Dazzling decided to tune out her companion’s seemingly interminable rambling, mostly out of a need to maintain her sanity. Her mental stability had already been pushed to its limits when Justice had just been spouting random thoughts and opinions, but now that the girl was spouting sheer absurdities it was teetering on the razors edge.
To help her ignore Justice’s discursive chitchat, Aria tried to focus on Sonata attempting to play a game of chess against Su-Z. The sight of her sister endeavoring to learn the complex and strategy-based board game before she’d left the house had been humorous to her, and she could only imagine how much more humorous it would have been to see her actually playing it. The image of Sonata making all sorts of incorrect moves with the pieces and missing key opportunities to advance on Su-Z’s king quickly entered the forefront of her mind, effectively drowning out Justice’s verbiage and causing a small smile to cross her face. Though unfortunately for the Dazzling, this respite did not last long.
“And then there’s cassowaries, which are even worse than ostriches,” Justice continued to ramble on. “Those guys are all just straight up jerks. Make no mistake, you ever let your guard down around a cassowary for even a second and the next thing you know it’ll steal both your car and your collection of Elizabeth Gaskell novels.”
Despite Aria’s best efforts to ignore the ever-growing drivel spewing from Justice’s mouth, her sanity continued to be chiseled away at like a slab of marble. She knew that if she didn’t do something to stop her companion from talking soon then she was going to have no choice but to pull the car over, get out, and forsake completing the pick-up to keep herself from losing it. But what could she do? Short of sowing the girl’s mouth shut there wasn’t much she could do to cease her harangue.
Then again, maybe she didn’t need to get Justice to stop talking.
All the Dazzling really needed was for her companion to cease her nonsensical ramblings. She’d been fine when Justice had simply been rambling on about hockey teams and earwax. Annoyed, but fine. If she could get the girl back to talking about any of those things – or anything that made the tiniest bit of sense – then perhaps she could complete her job without going crazy in the process. The question, though, was how exactly was she going to get the topic of conversation changed?
“And consider yourself lucky that elephant birds went extinct,” Justice continued. “Believe me, you don’t even want to know how bad those guys wer -”
“Hey, so, uh, I gotta ask you something,” Aria interjected, before actually coming up with a question to ask the girl. “Um, uh…what’s up with that cosplay you got on?”
“Cosplay?” Justice confusedly replied as the car pulled up to a red light.
“Yeah, you know, the demon horns and tail,” The Dazzling clarified. “How come you’re wearin’ them?”
“Uh, because I was born with them? Like all demons are?” Justice answered, sounding even more confused than she had a second ago.
Almost as soon as Justice gave her reply, Aria became fearful that her plan to shift the conversation betwixt herself and the girl away from the absurd was backfiring on her. When she’d decided to ask her companion about her cosplay she hadn’t expected the girl to imply that she believed herself to be an actual demon, a claim that one could argue was more absurd than believing ostriches were conspiracy theorists. Though unlike Justice’s belief regarding ostriches, the Dazzling knew that she had a way of disproving the girl’s belief she was a demon right here and now.
“Aw come on, you weren’t born with those,” She said as she reached for one of Justice’s horns. “I know they’re just -”
Aria cut herself off as soon as she took ahold of one of Justice’s horns and felt that it was as hard as bone.
“N-no way,” She uttered in disbelief as she gave the appendage in her hand a little tug.
“Ow,” Justice softly articulated as her whole head was slightly jerked to the side along with her horn.
The Dazzling immediately released Justice’s horn from her grip when it became clear to her that the protrusions popping out of the girl’s head were genuine. She then quickly directed her attention down to the girl’s tail in the hopes of spotting some aspect of it that would prove it to be fake, but when she saw the tail wave at her she knew that it too had to be a genuine part of Justice’s body.
“Holy shit,” She then said in placid awe as she realized that her companion was, in fact, a bona fide demon.
“More like unholy shit! Huh? Huh?” Justice replied amusedly. “Sorry, I know that was terrible but I couldn’t help myself.”
Aria found herself frozen in stupefaction with no idea what to do or say. In all her years she’d come across no small number of unusual beings, both in Equestria and in the world she now called home, but never before had she ever come across an actual demon. Heck, up until now she hadn’t even believed demons to be real beings. Given that she and her sisters had been referred to as demons on more than one occasion back in Equestria she’d always just been under the impression that ‘demon’ was simply a term used to describe someone who was believed to be evil and amoral. But Justice was living proof that demons existed as an actual race of beings, and the Dazzling wasn’t exactly sure how to internalize this new discovery.
“Um…s-sorry for grabbing your horn like that,” She apologized to the girl, suddenly feeling fearful of possibly aggravating her.
“It’s cool, no biggie,” Justice assured Aria. “Though a bit of friendly advice, you probably don’t want to make grabbing demon horns a habit. There are some demons out there who take horn-grabbing as a sign of sexual avidity, and no offense but you don’t seem like the kind of person who would survive a night with a lascivious demon.”
“N-no offense taken,” Aria replied.
For a few seconds, the pig-tailed girl’s attention remained silently fixated on Justice as she continued to fully process that her companion was a real-life demon. Though it wasn’t so much the fact that Justice was a demon that plagued her cerebration, but rather why it was that a demon was working for Lucy Beel. Lucy was a powerful and intimidating woman, sure, but powerful and intimidating enough to get a demon to work for her? The very thought was almost laughable, that is until Aria managed to put all the pieces of the metaphorical puzzle together.
“Wait a minute,” She said with a sense of adumbration. “If you’re a demon and you work for Lucy, then that means Lucy is…is -”
The Dazzling cut herself off when she heard the unmistakable sound of a car horn coming from behind her.
“Move it!” An angry voice then called out to her.
Aria quickly returned her focus to the road to see that the red light in front of her had changed to green, prompting her to put the pedal to the metal.
“Whoa! We drag racing with that guy?!” Justice inquired gaily as she felt her body lurch from the sudden movement.
“Oh, uh, n-no,” The Dazzling replied, realizing that she might have accelerated a bit too harshly.
“Aww, that’s a shame,” The demon girl said disappointingly as Aria slowed the car down.
As she decelerated, Aria took a brief glance at an upcoming street sign in an effort to gauge how much further it was to their destination. Thankfully she was now going slow enough to read it, and when she did she was able to deduce that they only had about another three blocks to go.
As the Dazzling drove those last three blocks, she began to think about the new bits of information she’d just learned over the last minute or so. More specifically, she began to think about how Lucy Beel was the Devil herself.
The fact that Lucy was the Devil though didn’t surprise Aria very much. It was still a shock, to be sure, but given the woman’s notoriously shady and unscrupulous ways it wasn’t entirely unbelievable. No, what garnered the full assiduity of the Dazzling’s thoughts was that she was working for the Devil. The theological implications of such a thing alone were enough to warrant a few drops of cold sweat, but what truly gave Aria worry was what was going to happen to her after this pick-up was complete. Was Lucy going to keep her word and pay her the rest of their agreed-upon amount, or would she renege? Heck, would the woman even let her live? Did Lucy see her as nothing more than a pawn in whatever game she was playing, one to be disposed of once her perceived purpose was fulfilled? These thoughts and more cycled through her mind, causing her cold sweat to intensify.
However, amongst these many thoughts was one that brought some calm to the Dazzling’s mind: Justice. Justice was overly chatty, ribald, and had zero respect for personal space, but those things appeared to be the fullest extent of her faults. She wasn’t hateful or cruel or any number of the other things one would typically think a demon would be. So if Justice was no more egregious than most people were, then it stood to reason that her boss wasn’t either. Right?
“We’re here,” Justice suddenly piped up.
“Huh?” The Dazzling uttered as she broke out of her train of thought.
“I said we’re here,” Justice reiterated as she pointed out the window.
Aria quickly pulled the car over to the curb and looked out the window to see that Justice was indeed correct; they’d arrived at their destination.
“Uh, how’d you know we were here?” She asked her companion as she turned the car off. “I thought you were blind.”
“I am blind,” Justice replied as Aria grabbed the case Lucy had given her and they both got out of the car. “But it’s like Lucy said, I’ve been to this place before. I know how long it takes to get here from Chaus.”
The Dazzling found this hard to believe given how many variables could have - and most likely had - affected their travel time compared to the last time Justice had visited the office building, but she didn’t really care. She was just glad that they’d arrived at the pick-up spot and that soon this whole thing would be over with.
As Aria followed Justice up to the entrance of the building, she took note of how plain and unassuming it looked. She wasn’t sure why, but when Lucy had mentioned that it was an office building she’d expected something with more of an elliptical massing like what you tend to see in movies. However, the exterior looked more like that of Chaus; a large brick wall, though with a few windows scattered throughout. Instinctively, this less-than-impressive facade led the Dazzling to believe that the inside would likewise be unremarkable. But as she’d learned from Chaus’ extravagant interior, things weren’t always as they appeared from the outside. And as she and Justice stepped through the front doors she discovered this to be the case once again.
While the exterior of the building was nothing like the office buildings one saw in movies, the interior looked like something straight out of a Hollywood financial thriller. The furniture spread throughout the lobby was all very regal and contemporary, numerous pieces of expensive looking au courant artwork were hanging from the walls and ceiling, and the floor appeared to be made of marble so pristine that it was practically sparkling. Overall, the room didn’t look too unlike Lucy’s office in terms of extravagance, and for the second time today Aria found herself in awe of such lavishness.
“Hey, Justice,” A young man, presumably the building’s nightwatchman, greeted Justice from behind a large reception desk as she and the Dazzling approached it.
“Hey, Gio,” Justice greeted the man back.
“Lucy’s waiting for you upstairs,” Gio then said as he succinctly pointed his thumb over to a nearby corridor filled with elevators.
“Thanks,” The demon girl replied as she headed for the corridor, followed closely behind by Aria.
“Hey,” Gio greeted the Dazzling as she walked by the desk.
“Hey,” Aria simply replied.
Once within the corridor, Justice stopped at the first elevator on her right and hit the button beside it to go up.
“So, the person we’re meeting with is also named Lucy?” The Dazzling asked Justice as the elevator doors opened.
“Lucrezia actually,” Justice replied as the two of them entered the lift. “Lucy’s just what her brothers call her, so whatever you do don’t call her that. In fact, it’s probably best if you don’t even address her unless she addresses you first…or look directly at her either.”
“So she’s pretty pompous, huh?” Aria then rhetorically asked.
“You have no idea,” The demon girl said as the doors closed.
As the elevator began its slow ascent, Aria found her mind once again wandering to the fact that she was working for the Devil. Strangely enough though, this time she didn’t find herself thinking about the possibility of Lucy getting rid of her after the pick-up, but rather the opposite. What if Lucy had been sincere earlier and truly did want her to continue working as her courier? What would she do then? The Dazzling couldn’t deny that continuing to work for the woman would likely prove to be very financially lucrative for her and her emu farm, but what would the cost be for that remuneration? Lucy was the Devil, a.k.a. the Prince – or rather Princess – of Darkness, there was no way she could work for the most well-known evildoer in recorded history.
Then again, was Lucy really as bad as all those stories throughout history made her out to be?
The more Aria thought about Lucy and everything she’d read and been told about her, the more she started to question how much of it was accurate. There was no question as to whether Lucy was unscrupulous and Machiavellian – she was – but the Dazzling wasn’t so sure the woman was the embodiment of evil she’d been led to believe. After all, when she and her sisters had turned down the club owner’s offer to perform at Chaus Lucy hadn’t taken any retaliatory action against them. She continued to offer the opportunity to them to the point of being pushy, sure, but that was it. She never tried to do anything like blackmail them or threaten them into performing for her. Not only that, but Aria knew from personal experience that not all stories about evil were true.
Over the course of her life in Equestria, the Dazzling had heard numerous stories about sirens and how evil they were. Some of those stories she couldn’t refute were true, like how they used their magic to sow discontent amongst beings in order to feed off their negative energy, but a good number of them she could abnegate as nothing but complete and utter bull. Never in her life had she ever met a siren who feasted on the entrails of their enemies or offered sacrifices to ancient deities in exchange for power like some tales suggested, and she knew for certain that there was no credibility to the myth that sirens were descendants of Dagon the Deep One. So if so many stories about sirens were wrong, didn’t it stand to reason that at least a few of them about the Devil could be wrong as well?
For the remainder of the elevator ride, Aria contemplated whether or not she should continue to work for Lucy after this pick-up was done. Unfortunately though, she failed to come to a decision by the time she and Justice reached the seventeenth floor.
“Ahhhh,” Justice uttered as she stepped out of the elevator. “I love the smell of this place.”
As soon as Aria stepped out of the elevator her nostrils were assaulted by a powerful flower-like aroma that made her wince. The scent itself wasn’t unpleasant, something akin to lilac, but the air was so thick with it that it was practically causing the Dazzling’s brain to go into sensory overload.
“Geez. Do they have a hundred of those air freshener things plugged in up here?” She wondered aloud.
“No idea,” Justice replied. “All I know is that it smells a lot better than Hell.”
The Dazzling said nothing in response.
As she and Justice walked, Aria couldn’t help but look around at the office she now found herself in. The room was large and fairly open with several cubicles spread throughout and enclosed offices lining the walls, all of which appeared to have been constructed using high-priced materials. It was a pretty nice set-up overall, and the more the Dazzling looked around at it the more she started to wonder just what kind of business was being run out of this office.
Before long, the two girls finished crossing the large office space and arrived in front of a room with a glass door and glass walls, the former being covered from the inside by blinds.
“Here we go,” Justice said as she reached for the door.
Not knowing exactly what to expect next, Aria hastily steeled herself for whatever was about to await her and her companion.
“Yo, Lucrezia!” Justice hollered as she opened the door and stepped through the threshold. “How’s it hangin’?!”
“Hello again, Justice,” A female voice said haughtily back just as Aria entered the room. “Things are ‘hangin’’ just fine, thank you for asking.”
Despite Justice’s earlier warning for her not to look directly at Lucrezia unless addressed by her first, the Dazzling couldn’t help but look in the direction where she’d heard the voice come from. When she did, she saw a beautiful, blond-haired woman no older than twenty-five dressed in a pantsuit sitting at the far end of a conference table located in the center of the room.
At first, Aria found it difficult to believe that this was the person she and Justice were supposed to meet. She didn’t really know what it was she’d been expecting their contact to look like, but she knew that she hadn’t been expecting someone so young. But the longer the Dazzling looked at Lucrezia there was one aspect about her that both met her expectations and convinced her that this was who they were meant to do business with: her eyes. Lucrezia had the same kind of eyes as Lucy, ones that radiated a sense of supreme confidence, an icy resolve, and a hunger for hegemony within their bearer. They were the kind of eyes that suggested this was someone who would do anything and everything necessary to get what they wanted.
“And who’s this you’ve brought along with you?” Lucrezia then asked Justice as she shifted her attention over towards Aria, causing the Dazzling to quickly avert her gaze.
“This is Aria. She’s here to help me verify the item,” Justice explained as she took a seat at the table directly opposite Lucrezia.
For a few seconds, Lucrezia stared silently at the Dazzling as if she were sizing the pig-tailed girl up, much to Aria’s displeasure. Aria tried to make sure she didn’t accidently shoot the woman the usual nasty look she shot at people who looked at her funny, but with each passing second that Lucrezia continued to stare at her she found it increasingly difficult to hide her irritation.
“Very well,” Lucrezia said reluctantly as she returned her attention to Justice, with nigh a second to spare before Aria’s self-restraint would’ve collapsed. “Let’s just get this over with already.”
Feeling the same as Lucrezia, Aria quickly took a seat to Justice’s right and placed the case she’d been carrying on the table.
“You have my payment?” Lucrezia asked.
“Right here,” Justice confirmed as she lightly tapped the case a couple of times. “You have the item?”
“Right here,” Lucrezia said as she removed a small case from her lap and placed it on the table.
“Ready?” Justice then asked, right before placing her hand firmly on her case.
“Ready,” Lucrezia corroborated as she likewise placed a hand firmly on her case.
“Okay, one,” Justice began to count. “…two…three!”
As soon as Justice finished her count, both her and Lucrezia slid their cases across the table as though they were a couple of curling stones. As Aria watched the scene swiftly unfold, she couldn’t help but respect and admire how both parties glided their case along the table with expert ease. Neither one of them shoved with either too much or too little force, and when the cases passed each other they never once came into contact. It was a truly impressive display, and one that told the Dazzling that this wasn’t the first time Justice and Lucrezia had engaged in such an exchange.
“Let’s see now,” Lucrezia said as she opened her new case.
The room fell silent for a moment as Lucrezia examined her payment. Curious as to what it was she’d been carrying up until now, Aria discreetly shifted herself in her seat to see if she could catch a glimpse of what exactly the payment was. Though unfortunately, Lucrezia closed the case just before she was able to see its contents.
“Excellent,” The woman declared as she removed the case from the table and placed it down on the floor beside her chair.
“Okie dokie, let’s see what we’ve got here,” Justice then said right before opening her new case.
Without hesitation, Aria once again shifted in her seat, this time to try and get a look inside Justice’s case. Naturally it was easier for her to see what was inside this case than the other one, and what she saw filled her with no small amount of incredulity.
“That’s it?” She asked Justice as she continued to stare at the case’s contents. “Just a lousy wooden cross?”
“Yep, this is it,” Justice confirmed as she removed the ligneous crucifix from its confines, revealing a looped strand of thin rope attached to the top of it. “Or at least it appears to be. We won’t know for sure until you verify it.”
Justice’s response only compounded Aria’s confusion. The Dazzling couldn’t understand what was so special about this very ordinary looking cross that was only slightly larger than her hand or why Lucy would possibly want it, let alone how she was supposed to verify it as the item she and Justice had been sent to retrieve.
“Let’s just get this around your neck real quick,” Justice then said as she did as she stated and placed the cross around Aria’s neck, much to the continued bewilderment of the pig-tailed girl.
“What the hell are you doing?” She testily asked her companion, though making no attempt to stop her.
“What? Lucy said you need to be wearing the item in order to verify it,” The demon girl explained, right before removing the small, pencil box-sized case Lucy had given her earlier from her pocket.
By this point the Dazzling’s confusion got the better of her and she turned to face Lucrezia, forgetting what Justice had told her earlier about neither looking at nor speaking to the woman unless addressed by her first.
“Hey, Lucrezia,” She started to say. “Do you have any idea what the hell is going on he - OW!”
Aria abruptly cut herself off when she felt a very sharp, very painful prick coming from her upper left arm. The Dazzling immediately turned her head to see what had caused this sudden puncture in her bicep, and when she saw what that cause was she could feel her heart skip a beat.
“Wha…What the fuck?” She uttered as she stared at an empty syringe protruding from her arm that was being held by Justice.
“One…two…three…” Justice started muttering to herself as she removed the syringe from the Dazzling’s arm.
Several thoughts and feelings rushed through Aria’s mind in that moment, far more than the girl was able to consciously process, but the strongest and loudest of those thoughts and feelings was an extreme desire for her to beat the ever-loving hell out of Justice.
“WHAT THE FUCK?!” She hollered as she vehemently got up from her seat and grabbed Justice by her shirt collar. “WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?! WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST INJECT ME WITH?!”
“Six…seven…eight…” Justice continued to mutter, seemingly unperturbed by the Dazzling’s intimidating actions.
“ANSWER ME, DAMMIT!” Aria then shouted right in the demon girl’s face. “ANSWER ME OR I SWEAR I’M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS!”
“Aw, it’s cute that you think you could actually do that,” Justice replied in a non-derisively playful manner. “But to answer your question, I injected you with 300 milligrams of black mamba venom, give or take.”
“B-Black mamba venom?” The Dazzling timorously said as she released her hold on the demon girl.
For the second time in less than a minute, Aria could feel her heart skip a beat. The pig-tailed girl was by no means a herpetologist, but she knew enough about snakes to know that the black mamba was one of the most dangerous kinds on the planet due to its highly toxic venom. Panic quickly began to set in as the Dazzling feared that soon she would be convulsing on the floor as a result of the toxin and then, not long after, become paralyzed and die there.
“No,” She uttered in sheer terror. “No, no, no!”
“Well now, I wasn’t expecting a show with my payment,” Lucrezia said wickedly as she watched the Dazzling hysterically fret about.
What little part of Aria’s mind that hadn’t been consumed by fear screamed at her to pull her phone out of her pocket and dial 911 before it was too late, but that part was far too small for her to listen to it. She was all but convinced that this was the end for her, that there was no hope she was going to survive this. Eventually the Dazzling’s initial panic began to subside, and when it did she couldn’t help but ask herself a plethora of questions; Why had Justice injected her with black mamba venom? How was doing so supposed to help her verify the item they were picking up? Where was she going to go after she died? Had she lived a good enough life to make up for all the bad things she’d done? Were her sisters going to miss her once she was gone? Was Kiwi going to be okay back at Chaus with Lucy?
Kiwi.
The instant Aria remembered that Kiwi was still back at Chaus alone with the woman who’d essentially sentenced her to death her fear for her own life became replaced with fear for the PostCrush girl’s. She wasn’t sure why, but the thought of Lucy harming Kiwi filled her with more anger than she’d been filled with when she realized Lucy had just indirectly harmed her. The Dazzling could feel the blood in her veins begin to boil as she imagined her friend doubled over in pain before Lucy’s feet, though she knew that in all likelihood this was simply because of the black mamba venom working its way through her system. But even so, she swore that if Lucy had or was planning to harm Kiwi then she’d find some way to escape Heaven or Hell or wherever she was about to go and make the woman pay dearly.
“Aaaaand…time!” Justice suddenly vociferated as she got up from her seat, garnering Aria’s attention. “Looks like the item is legit. Nice work, Aria.”
“What?!” The Dazzling hollered at the demon girl. “What the fuck are you talking about?!”
“The cross, it’s the real deal. If it wasn’t you’d be dead by paralysis by now,” Justice explained.
Aria had no response to this. On the one hand, she was glad to hear Justice’s implication that she wasn’t going to die on account of the crucifix around her neck, but on the other she still had no idea what the demon girl was talking about.
“Okay, just…what is this?” The Dazzling asked as she held the item around her neck up. “How is it that because of this I’m not dead?”
“Beats me,” Justice confessed. “All I know about that cross is what Lucy told me, and the only thing she told me was that it makes its wielder virtually immortal.”
“It’s the cross of Grigori Rasputin,” Lucrezia chimed in. “It’s an incredibly powerful protective item, and the reason the man was able to survive so many assassination attempts.”
“The cross of…Grigori Rasputin?” Aria said as she looked down at the crucifix in her hand.
The name Grigori Rasputin didn’t mean much to the Dazzling, but she had heard of the man before. From what she remembered, he was some sort of Russian monk who lived about a hundred years ago and was infamous for being hard to kill but eventually died after being shot in the head.
“So, this is Rasputin’s famous cross, huh?” Justice said as she approached Aria for a closer look at the crucifix, which baffled the Dazzling since the girl was blind. “Hard to believe that a guy who could barely read managed to manipulate dark magic masterfully enough to create something as impressive as this. Kinda makes me wish I’d still been High Prosecutor of Hell when he died to be honest.”
“Oh don’t speak so highly of the man, Justice. He was an idiot,” Lucrezia told the demon girl. “Though he was pretty proficient with dark magic, I’ll give him that at least.”
The Dazzling found it strange how Lucrezia spoke as if she’d personally known a man who had died over a hundred years ago, though given the fact that there was a bona fide demon in the room she wouldn’t have been surprised if the woman had been around since the time of Rasputin.
“Hold on,” Aria addressed Lucrezia as a sudden realization struck her. “You said this thing was the reason Rasputin was able to survive so many assassination attempts. If that’s true, then how come he died by assassination?”
“Because he wasn’t wearing it at the time,” Lucrezia explained. “I did just say the man was an idiot, didn’t I?”
This wasn’t too difficult for the Dazzling to accept. After all, how many times back in the day had her and her sisters’ plans been undone by simple user error – usually on the part of Sonata.
“And even if he had been wearing it at that time it probably wouldn’t have protected him forever,” Lucrezia explained. “As impressive as that item is, it does have its limits. It can protect against things like poisons, knives, and bullets but against things like bombs or incendiary devices it’s pretty much useless, and given how much Rasputin’s enemies wanted him gone I have no doubt they would have resorted to such extreme measures eventually.”
Just then, Lucrezia got up from her seat.
“But enough of all this exposition,” The woman said as she extended her hand out at the Dazzling. “It’s time for you to give me the crucifix back now.”
“Huh?” Aria uttered right before looking over at Justice to see if she knew what Lucrezia was talking about, to which Justice simply gave a shoulder shrug in response.
“I’m double-crossing you, nitwits,” Lucrezia replied as she moved her fingers towards herself a couple of times in a ‘bring it’ gesture. “Now hand over the cross. I really don’t want to have to make a mess in here.”
A few chortles could be heard emanating from Justice immediately after Lucrezia issued her vaguely threatening remark.
“Oh Lucrezia, you’re such a crack-up,” The demon girl stated as her laughter started to die down and she began to move towards the door. “Thanks for the laughs, but we gotta get going now. Come on, Aria.”
Despite Justice’s belief that Lucrezia was being facetious in her demands for Rasputin’s cross back, Aria got the distinct impression that the woman was being anything but comical right now. Regardless though, she quickly followed the demon girl’s lead and headed for the door, but just as Justice reached for the door’s handle the sound of a couple hands slamming down on the table made both her and her companion freeze in their tracks.
“You think I’m joking around here?!” Lucrezia hollered, causing both girls to involuntarily wince. “I want my damn cross back and I want it now!”
“Okay then,” Justice replied, much to Aria’s surprise. “Just give us the payment back first and then you can have the cross back in about half an hour or so.”
“Half an hour or so?” Aria asked the demon girl in manner that simultaneously seemed to ask her if she was crazy. “Why can’t we just give it to her now and end this?”
“Because then you’d die,” Justice told the Dazzling, as though she were stating the obvious. “The cross may have kept the venom from affecting you but that stuff’s still in your system. If you take it off before it finishes eliminating the venom you’ll still end up dying of paralysis.”
“Oh come fucking on!” The Dazzling shouted in response.
Although Aria was aggravated by yet another piece of bullshit she had to put up with, a small part of her felt a sense of warmth at the fact that Justice wanted to wait until she no longer needed Rasputin’s cross to stay alive before handing it back over to Lucrezia.
“I’m not giving you the payment back and I’m not waiting a half hour to get my cross back either,” Lucrezia said as she removed what appeared to be a lighter from one of her suit pockets. “Now hand it over or I’ll activate the fire sprinklers and cover this room in holy water.”
Initially, Aria didn’t quite understand how Lucrezia’s ultimatum was much of a threat, but as soon as she looked over at Justice and saw the look of mild anxiety on the girl’s face she began to comprehend just how serious of a threat it was. Justice was a demon, an unholy being, so it stood to reason that something like holy water would be a potentially hazardous substance to her.
“N-Nice bluff, Lucrezia, but I know you don’t have any holy water in those sprinklers,” Justice told the woman, a hint of trepidation easily evident within her voice. “If you did I would have smelled it as soon as I walked into the room.”
“You can smell holy water?” Aria inquired dubiously.
“Of course. All demons can,” Justice replied.
“Right, of course. Silly me,” The Dazzling replied sarcastically.
“Are you sure about that, Justice?” Lucrezia asked the demon girl haughtily. “Are you so sure you’d still be able to smell holy water over all the Essence of Lilac I’ve had pumped throughout this floor?”
“Well I…I-I would think…I mean, i-it’s possible that I…” Justice stammered.
As Aria listened to Justice struggle to come up with an answer to Lucrezia’s question she realized Lucrezia’s threat was even more serious than she’d thought. Ever since she and Justice had partnered up, the demon girl had been buoyant, calm, and garrulous, but now she was weighted, agitated, and practically speechless, all things that the Dazzling took as signs that the situation they now found themselves in was about as virulently severe as it could be.
“What, no snappy retort, Justice? No amusing little comeback?” Lucrezia devilishly asked the girl.
“No, not really,” Justice confessed. “Well, not unless you consider ‘sorry about the door’ a snappy retort.”
“Sorry about the door?” Lucrezia asked confusedly.
“Yep,” Justice replied as she clenched her left hand into a fist. “Sorry about the door!”
Within the blink of an eye, Justice hurled her fist at the glass door and made contact with it, causing a loud and resounding thud to echo across the room. Though much to the shock of both the demon girl and the Dazzling, the door didn’t shatter. In fact, by all accounts it appeared that Justice’s punch hadn’t caused any damage whatsoever to the noncrystalline substance.
“W-Well damn,” Justice said, trying to sound confident but sounding more apprehensive instead. “You really thought of everything, huh, Lucrezia?”
“Indeed I have,” Lucrezia replied arrogantly before turning her attention to Aria. “Now give me the cross.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” The Dazzling resolutely declared as she took hold of the crucifix around her neck and clutched it tightly.
“Give me the cross or I kill Justice and then take it from you by force!” Lucrezia tempestuously declared as she opened the top of her supposed lighter, revealing a button underneath that Aria assumed would activate the fire sprinklers if pressed.
“Don’t give her the cross, Aria,” Justice told the Dazzling.
“Give it to me!” Lucrezia once more demanded.
Aria knew fully well that no matter who she listened to she wasn’t going to live long enough to see another sunrise. She knew that one way or another the cross around her neck that was protecting her from the deadly venom coursing through her veins was coming off, either by her own hand or Lucrezia’s. Oddly enough though, this awareness of her waning mortality didn’t agitate her. Perhaps it was because she’d gotten all the agitation out of her system a few minutes earlier, but the Dazzling now found herself at peace with her fate.
“Final warning!” Lucrezia shouted as she placed her thumb directly above the button in her hand. “Give me the cross or else Justice dies!”
In truth, Aria didn’t care all that much about Justice’s well-being at the moment. After all, Justice was the one who’d injected her with the black mamba venom and put her in this perilous predicament. The fact that the demon girl’s fate now rested in her hands felt almost poetic to her.
As the Dazzling contemplated what her next and possibly final action would be, she realized that there was really only one factor that was going to sway her one way or the other; did she want her companion to die alongside her? Under normal circumstances, such a question would be difficult for anyone to answer. However, given everything that had transpired between her and the demon girl today, Aria knew exactly what the answer to that question was.