Chapter 19: Serious Business

RENA

I was currently about to take a nap, having given Alicia her regular training, but her current "training" was to do everyone's nails. "Focus!" I said, stifling a yawn, "I expect perfect accuracy. If your Oracle powers don't hit Belial, there's no point in this training."

Alicia asked, "So why am I choosing the colors for each of you?" Autumntwig explained, eager for a free manicure, "All of us have different preferences in taste and different personalities. For that matter, different colors go with different hair, skin, and eyes." She pointed to the nails I had already done, coating Autumntwig's with a bunch of cute animals as well as two nails in a plaid pattern. Marina had been sea green, while Arboria had alternating nails of blue and brown. Aellisa had elected to have clear nail polish, except for runes in the center of each nail. I suppose it was her ambition to have each of these enchanted, but none of us could do this. Autumntwig continued, "The Oracle of Tao must figure out the strengths and weaknesses of those they choose to fight."

Alicia pointed to my nails, "Then what about her?" I had already changed my nails no less than four times. I gave her my best half-truth, "Some creatures have the ability to change their weaknesses." This was true, but the reason was to waste time, and keep her feeling like she needed to train more. This way she would spend more time with me. As Alicia painted on my nails, a yawn crept in, and before I knew it, I had passed out. Alicia had done an entire nail set when I awoke. It was just a plain color of pink, but I was satisfied, as she had also done my feet. "Good, good!" I said, "you can often deal with creatures that change their weaknesses by attacking with a nonelemental attack."

After this, we trained at a hot tub. The others explained that Belial's Castle might have extremes in temperature, so it was important to get used to fierce temperatures. I asked them about cold temperatures, but they explained that they didn't have a Yuki-Onna handy. In any case, the hot tub felt comfortable, not extreme, and the five girls looked extremely relaxed rather than in pain. As for me, I was required to tuck my privates in a swimsuit and wear breast forms, so it was a bit of an adjustment, but overall nowhere near anything I would consider extreme.

I thought for a moment that maybe Rena and her friends might be trying to trick me, but no, that was impossible. It's not like foxes were known for being tricksters or anything. In any case, the fact remained that I wasn't gonna complain about being in a hot tub. And I was still getting martial arts training and plenty of exercise, so it was probably okay.

Every now and then, when I seemed particularly interested in completing my training or even when there Rena was just sitting off by herself, I noticed a sad look on her face. When I asked what was bothering her, she said, "I'm fine!" and she changed the subject. I caught her crying a few times, but as soon as she noticed me, her face rapidly shifted to perky and upbeat.

More importantly, I noticed a lot less intrusion of space. It was almost as though she was apologizing for her earlier behavior. She was so focused on making me happy that it didn't seem to matter to her how much she seemed to be suffering. I wish that I knew what I could do to cheer her up.

BELIAL

I had proceeded with my plan to corrupt this Earth. I had planted Statues of Darkness throughout the southern rim of the current Earth, near Earth's "South Pole" and I had signed several treaties with the leaders of each country in order to establish the Antarctic Treaty System. So that no pesky visitors might disrupt my plans, a permit was now required to visit the region, citing environmental concerns. This was considered an example of "common heritage of mankind" principle, ignoring the fact that a demon had enacted all of these rules.

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I could probably visited the outer layers of Earth and planted my Statues with impunity, for they were uninhabited, but I decided there was no point. I planted my own Castle on the North Pole, as a sort of satellite tower to pick up and transmit darkness thoughout the Earth.

But there was always a chance that Rena and her followers might stop me. I needed a useful idiot. Someone with drive to root out their location, yet no idea of my true plans. Someone like...

JAVERT

Chastity Javert here. I'm Ace Reporter for the local paper. Only, it was a slow news week. Actually, if we're being perfectly honest, it was a slow news year. While national news covered Biden's attempts to force the public to buy electric vehicles (as though they could afford them, speaking as one who still owns the same beat-up Chevy from ten years ago) and international news talking about panic-buying and shortages in China as COVID restrictions are eased, our local news had the occasional lost puppy or someone getting a speeding ticket.

I needed some hard-hitting news, and I needed it yesterday. And so, when a creepy looking man with a black hoodie came to my office and gave me a hot tip, I paid no attention to the apparent necrosis all over his face and arms, his glowing red eyes, or the fact that the room got visibly darker after he entered. Hey, a tip was a tip! The man introduced himself as B. Lyle and told me the following, "A man named Emett Smith apparently has not been seen in over six months. No missing persons report was filed, and no death certificate has been reported. I would have asked his parents, but they also seem to be missing. So there are three missing persons and none of this was covered." Had things been less slow, I might have dismissed this as an unsolved mystery, but things were how they were so it was time to be a good investigative reporter.

I started with the location of the house. Upon visiting it, it was as though the entire building had simply uprooted. Bare ground sat where once there had been a house with an attic and a basement, and behind that, a deck with what appeared to be a pool had also been pulled out. It was as though Emett's parents moved their entire place to some new address. Hmmm, this was a bit stranger than a typical vanishing. I checked Emett's criminal records, and for my trouble I found nothing but a few traffic tickets. A missing person report had apparently been filed, but it was dated 2011. I hit the streets asking random people in town about this Emett. Many of them had never actually met him. I asked local churches, showing the picture of him. "You know," a parishioner of one church said, "that looks an awful lot like Alicia. Though she only visited occasionally, and the last time was well over six months ago." I took down Alicia's full name, and cross-referenced it with this address. Apparently someone had been living at this address for a few years by that name. But further investigation turned up no birth certificate, no college degree, and a paper trail which seemed to turn up in a dead end. On a whim, I remembered how the church had said Emett looked like Alicia, and used the Freedom of Information Act to dig up some copies of driver's licenses. I quickly realized that Emett and Alicia were probably the same person, and my suspicions were confirmed when I found a legal paper requesting a change of name and gender. I further searched Alicia's work records, and saw an application mentioning an emergency contact not of Alicia's own parents but of someone named Katherine Fox Hillard. My suspicion was that maybe this Alicia had moved from their parents' home to that of a friend, so I decided to research Katherine Hillard.

Katherine Fox Hillard had no legal identity. Strangely, despite this, she has a fairly lengthy work record, though most of these jobs didn't explain this discrepancy. How was she able to be employed without real identification? I went home from the office, and decided to use the internet. Under Katherine Hillard, repeated mention of the pink ranger in Power Rangers kept cropping up. I decided this name was a pseudonym, so I asked the internet random combinations of words until I finally connected the name of our town with the word "Fox". As a result, I got local legends of a fox spirit, complete with a map of sightings. Virtually all of these were near a farmhouse off the main road. Having no better leads at this point, I searched down this street, knocking on doors and asking people if they had seen someone matching the description of either Kat Hillard or Emett/Alicia, showing photos of each. Unsurprisingly, none of them had ever seen Kat's face, but on the fifth try, one of them did mention seeing someone who looked like that from the back (maybe) enter a nearby forest near the farmhouse. As I was reluctant to go through a forest that said No Trespassing, I instead headed toward the farm. The land looked as though it had been abandoned, and nobody including the IRS had messed with it in years. However, I got about halfway towards it when suddenly I slammed hard against something and found myself on the ground. I saw some people rushing towards me. "She looks hurt! Get her some treatment," they said. One of these was surely Alicia.

MARINA

I knew I should have told Autumntwig to make the illusion closer to the actual proportions of our place. As far as I was concerned, things must be perfect or they were no good, but Autumntwig didn't share my concern. We saw her from the side window right as she rather embarrassingly bonked her head on the side wall, nearly knocking herself out on the spot. We shifted to human forms, and then dragged the girl indoors, aware that we were blowing our cover by doing this. But it had been our fault that she had gotten hurt, so the least we could do was pull her inside. But she became alarmed when we entered the inside of a house from apparent empty space. We had tried to look like regular humans, but unfortunately, "Wait a second," she said, "You over there there are Alicia, right? I've been looking for you. And you are their sister Willow. And you look like Ash, but why are you a girl? And you..." She faced Rena, who had changed her form perfectly. "Who are you?" she asked. Everyone was so alarmed at being discovered that they broke cover. Rena reverted to her fox girl form, and grabbed this woman only to bodily toss her outside. After checking that she was medically okay first, of course. Aellisa miniaturized the house, and we took a tree portal to another location in darkest Africa. She would surely never find us here.

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