Helluva Time 2 (Patreon)

Where: Office of Immediate Murder Professionals, Imp City, Pride Ring, Hell

When: 346 days to next Purge

Who: Moxxie

Sir let go of us and turned his phone around to look at the picture, before recoiling and turning back. “Okay Jacques, never HOLY SHIT FUCK THAT’S TERRIFYING!”

Millie and I turned to look at Jacques behind us, and I… might have let out a scream. Jacques was still smiling, but that should not be called a smile, that was a tooth filled murder threat!

“What?” he asked, still threatening gruesome murder with his teeth.

“Jacques,” Loona said, her tone merely nervous, not rightfully terrified, “you can stop smiling.”

With that, the threat of imminent death disappeared, his face back in a soft frown. I was able to breath again and gave a big sigh of relief.

“Okay, new rule: Jacques is only to smile if it’s to scare off potential rivals,” Sir declared as he deleted the picture he took a moment ago.

“Why?” Jacques asked, his voice still that level tone, with a note of confusion, “I was smiling like my uncle when he meets with his business partners.”

“Your uncle sounds like a terrifying man,” Millie said, “Cause if I could die o’ old age that smile’d probably scared a decade or two off it.”

Jacques looked over us, his eyebrows furrowed slightly in that hint of confusion, before Loona spoke up, “Relax, it’s a good thing.”

“Thank… you?”

The room was quiet for a minute, before I spoke up, wanting to change the subject, “So Jacques, what’s your skillset?”

Oh great, now he was staring at me, I didn’t think this through, “I’m pretty good at sneaking up on people, though I don’t understand why.”

“Whaddya mean?” Millie asked.

“I walk up to people, ask them a question then they jump up. I’m not trying to be quiet, but no one seems to hear me.”

That… could be beneficial in the field. Even with his time limit on Earth, stealth kills could prevent a lot of problems. “What kind of weapon do you prefer?”

“Whatever’s on hand.”

… that didn’t explain very much. Jacques seemed to be worse at interacting with people than Sir was.

“Can you explain that? Maybe with a time you killed someone without your powers,” Loona prompted.

“Before I died I killed three men with a teacup, a playing card, and two dee-twenties. I threw the card and dee-twenties so that two of them tripped and broke their necks, while I broke the cup against the table and cut the third man’s carotid with the broken edge.”

That was certainly gruesome, maybe I should talk to Sir about reconsid… “HA! Good one J, I sure am glad I hired you!”

Never mind.

“Please don’t call me J,” Jacques requested with an… oddly polite note to his voice.

Whatever it was, Sir immediately threw up his hands in front of him and said, “Alright, message received, sorry.”

“Thank you,” Jacques said, his voice back to his flat tone.

“Sure, no problem… out of curiosity, not concern for my life over something that only just now occurred to me, but you wouldn’t happen to have made any enemies since you got down here? Have you?”

“No.”

Millie, Sir, and I all let out sighs of relief. No overlords coming after us because we were housing Jacques, no Radio Demon broadcasting their vivisection as a warning to his other enemies. They were safe… in that regard at least.

“What about your powers? How is it that an unknown has the amount of power you showed out there?” Loona asked, her gaze looking Jacques up and down.

“I have two kinds. My family have shadow based powers, with mine manifesting through some sort of body part suffusal that I either pick or it picks randomly.” Sir shuddered and muttered something about eyes under his breath. “My personal power is centered around dice games. I can force someone to participate in a game with agreed stakes. I force the start of the game state, we agree on the terms, and then play the game. Every game I win lets me steal some of the other player’s power. I only realized that part recently.”

“Dice games? That’s an odd power,” I couldn’t help but mutter.

“It’s far from the weirdest power I’ve heard of. There’s a guest at a hotel my uncle invested in that can grow another pair of arms.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to be offensive.”

“So… Jacques,” Sir began, a scheming gleam in his eye as he gave a smarmy grin, “what would you say if I could arrange a Duke to play a dice game with you?”

A Duke? Oh… oh no.

“Sir? Is that a good idea? We need Stolas’s book to get to Earth. If we do anything that makes him change his mind about loaning it to you, then we can’t bring Jacques on jobs, and what little money we’re currently making will have to be spent on fees, taxes, and bribes to get to Earth in the first place.”

Sir turned to me, a finger held up, before pausing as he took that into consideration. Then he slumped down in his chair, arms crossed with a frustrated grumble. Loona opened her mouth to ask another question, when there was a knock on the door to the office.

“I’ll get it,” I offered and made my way out of the meeting room. The waiting room looked spotless, having just been vacuumed by yours truly this morning. Satisfied that everything looked professional, I straightened my bowtie and approached the door.

Opening the door, I froze upon seeing the red suit, microphone head cane, fang filled grin, and red hair.

“Hel-”

I shut the door. I didn’t see that, there’s no way The Radio Demon was here in Imp City. But if it wasn’t The Radio Demon, who was it? I opened the door again.

“-lo.”

SLAM

I did see that. The Radio Demon was here in Imp City. Why was The Radio Demon in Imp City? Why was he at our office? Who is he angry at? Was he going to hurt Millie?!

“Yo, Moxxie, who is it?!” Sir called out from the meeting room. Right, Sir can deal with it. At the very least he’ll delay The Radio Demon while I get Millie out of here.

“Sir, The Radio Demon’s at the door.”

Then Jacques said something that was even more terrifying than the time Sir announced that he’d stolen a grimoire from Stolas: “Uncle Alastor?”