Life: 3. Contracting for Fun and Life Lessons (Patreon)

Chapter 3: Contracting for Fun and Life Lessons

Max “Phenex”
Gotham, NJ, USA

“This is bullshit,” I muttered for the fifth time.

I stood in front of a school, Gotham University according to the sign, with a thick binder full of Rigal’s stupid bookmarks. Seriously, if it was anyone else who asked me to do menial shit like this, they’d be picking their teeth off the floor, not that that’d keep the chicken bastard down. Then again, Rigal was pretty cool, even if I’d never tell him that.

On the plus side, no one’s tried to melt me with holy water or something. And why would they? What kind of devil stands outside in front of the school fountain handing out free bookmarks to random passersby?

This was my third day in a row handing these out. I first started downtown before slowly moving my way through the neighborhoods. Rigal said it was important to cover my bases, but I was pretty sure he just wanted me out of the hotel so I could be in direct sunlight for as long as possible. Or maybe he just wanted to read his grimoire and practice magic in peace. Probably a bit of both, honestly.

“Hey, handsome. Nice shades,” a girl called as she passed with her friends. “What? Are you one of those Satanists?”

“No,” I grunted. She was pretty, blonde with blue eyes. She looked exactly like one of those cheerleaders I saw in movies. I held out a bookmark. “You want one? It grants wishes.”

“Hmm… Hot, broody stud hands me a bookmark with some Satanist seal saying I can have my wishes granted? That doesn’t sound suspicious at all. What do you think, girls?”

“Take it, Stella,” one of her friends said.

“Yeah, what’s the harm?” another chimed.

“Tell you what, stud? You come hang out with us at the mall and I’ll take one.”

I shook her hand off my arm and walked away. Rigal did say these things had a way of finding their way to the ones who needed them most. “Pass. If you don’t want one, that’s cool.”

I unleashed my wings and floated into the air before dashing off. If Rigal didn’t need to hide, then neither did I. Who gave a fuck that I was Superman’s clone? I was Max, Rook of Phenex.

Well, I said that, but I apparently didn’t have much in the way of magic. I could barely make a ball of light in my hand, never mind that hellfire shit Rigal threw around like candy. One more reason to put up with this. If these contracts could help me get magic, get something even Superman didn’t have, then I’d complete a thousand of them.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Big Blue. Rigal was right; I knew he was. I shouldn’t let Superman define me. He wasn’t who I wanted to be, and I didn’t see any reason to try to murder him, but things weren’t that simple. Superman was… He was my fixation. It was like there was a nagging voice in the back of my head that always reminded me of my original purpose, reminded me that my sole reason for existence was to be his match.

X

That evening, Rigal took us out, far across the Atlantic, until there was nothing for miles. He then told me to do my absolute best to kill him. If it was anyone else, I would have called them crazy. What kind of lunatic told a kryptonian to hold nothing back?

Rigal. This Tweety motherfucker did. And apparently, so could almost everyone else in my new extended family, so I happily spent an hour wailing on him. I broke his spine and snapped his neck. At one point, I even crushed his head in my hands and punched a hole through his heart. And all I had to show for it was that same, infuriating smirk.

I noticed that heat vision didn’t work on him at all. He said something about hellfire being so hot that nothing in the mortal world compared. The worst I could do with my vision was to shove him back a few feet. That bastard was unbelievably frustrating to fight.

One of these days, I was going to lace his tea with holy water. That was what little brothers did, right? Right. I doubted it’d kill him, probably just give him diarrhea, if that, but damnit, it’d be cathartic.

After testing my limits, he had me tone things down as much as possible. He made a beard construct out of fire, stroked it, and said, “Power without control can only lead to ruin, young grasshopper.”

I kicked his stupid head off his shoulders, but that didn’t get me out of doing control exercises. Until I built up my magical reserves to start learning some spells independently, he said I’d be best off working out my natural abilities. Then the bastard threw eggs and told me to go catch them before they hit the water, and without the shells cracking. I didn’t know where, but he probably got the idea from a movie.

We fought and practiced until he held out a hand. “Hoh? I do believe my kid bro’s about to go on his first contract.”

“What? How can you tell?”

“Those magic circles you passed out were made with my demonic energy. I can tell when they’re being used. Remind me to teach you to do that–”

“Once I have more magic. Yeah, yeah. So what now?” I grumbled, more for the sake of it than anything. Truthfully, I was a little excited to learn that kind of thing.

He placed a hand on my shoulder. The next thing I knew, we were back in the penthouse. He gestured to one of the rooms we weren’t using. “Now? Now I teach you to teleport.”

“Isn’t that advanced magic or something? It sounds like advanced magic.”

“It is, relatively speaking anyway. But don’t worry, I built a permanent magic circle in that room that’ll do most of the heavy lifting. You barely need any magic to activate it.”

“And it’ll take me to the guy who’s summoning me?”

“Yup. Neat, huh?”

“Yeah, neat.”

“Great, now stand inside the circle.” He coughed lightly. When he next spoke, he sounded like a woman, like that news lady on TV. “Thank you for choosing House Phenex. We endeavor to meet all your dimension-warping needs with a minimum of misplaced limbs or missing organs. For best results, we advise that all passengers keep their hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times.”

“Wait what? Go back to the misplaced limbs!”

The spell circle began to shine an ominous orange. “Have a safe trip, dearest customer!”

“No! Fuck you, you Tweety bastard!”

Then, my vision was filled with a flash of light.

The next thing I knew, I stood inside a small room. There was a bed, desk, hotplate, microwave, and minifridge. It was like a person’s entire life could be contained in this sad, cramped space.

I looked around and found a man standing awkwardly. He was scrawny and weak, with pasty, white skin that made me wonder if he’d ever heard of the sun. No matter how pathetic he looked though, he was my summoner. The torn bookmark in his hands was proof enough of that.

“Well?” I crossed my arms over my chest. My wings unfurled behind me, filling up the cramped living space. Rigal did say the presentation was important. “You have summoned a devil. What the fuck do you want?”

“Ah-I-Uhh… That worked…” he whispered, as if couldn’t believe his eyes.

“It did. Again. What do you want?”

“This… This isn’t going to cost me my soul, is it?”

“No. My bro says you taste like shit anyway,” I said, gesturing to Rigal’s ridiculous poem.

“Oh, that’s… good.”

“Well?”

“I… Okay, so it’s like this…”

He then proceeded to tell me some sob story I probably wouldn’t remember tomorrow.

He was brilliant, a real genius who was going for his postgraduate degree in biochemistry. Earlier this year, he started writing this paper on the uses of slime mold. The discovery was big enough that scientists at STAR Labs were interested. I didn’t know who they were or why they mattered, but he insisted that they did.

Everything went swimmingly until his professor stole the paper and published it under his own name. Now, he wanted me to break into the lab and destroy the slime mold samples and database, which would render all of the findings in the paper without supporting evidence. If he couldn’t get the recognition he deserved, no one should.

“Wait, you just spent fifteen minutes telling me how important the slime mold cell cultures could be for medical advancements.”

“They are!”

“So your paper might save lives?”

“Well… Yes…”

“And you’re okay with people potentially dying because you didn’t get the credit you think you deserve?”

“That won’t happen! The findings need to be peer-reviewed and go through several stages of trials before proper medical applications can be decided upon. And why do you care? Aren’t you a devil?”

He had a point. I… My memories didn’t exactly come with moral guidelines. He’d been wronged by his professor, but destroying the university lab was definitely the wrong thing to do.

“Have you… tried reporting him? There’s gotta be some kinda procedure for this kind of thing, right?” I tried.

“I did! He’s the dean though! My word is fucking mud!”

I sighed. What would I do if someone did something like this to me?

I’d crush them. I’d turn them into a pretzel. Which was something this scrawny loser definitely couldn’t do. So maybe I wasn’t a good example.

What would Rigal do?

I shuddered at the thought. The smug bastard was frustrating enough as it was. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what a motivated Rigal looked like. He knew things. When the heroes would raid Project Cadmus headquarters. Where I was being kept. How to stabilize me.

If anyone fucked with Rigal like this, the best possible outcome would be that they’d drown in hellfire. More realistically, he seemed like the kind of person who’d leave them alive so he could fuck with them longer.

Maybe devils weren’t good examples of moral discourse.

“So, are you going to blow up the lab or not?” came a voice from the window. The two of us looked outside, only to find a bird pecking insistently at the glass. “Well? Wanna let me in?”

The voice carried through the glass, which meant it was probably magic. Which meant this was Rigal.

Sighing, I opened the window.

“Since when can you transform?”

“I can’t. This here is your everyday robin that I formed a familiar contract with. I can see and hear through him as well as cast a few minor spells, like the one projecting my voice.”

“Huh, neat.”

“Right? His name is Rick Grayson. Cute, huh?”

“Sure. Why are you here, anyway?”

“I’m not here, silly. I’m back home. As for why Rick’s here, I thought I’d make sure my bro’s first contract went smoothly.”

“Cool. So what else does that thing do?”

“Rick’s great. He passes out my share of the bookmarks for me.”

I felt my eyebrow twitch unhealthily. “Wait, I didn’t need to stand outside the university for hours?”

“Of course you did. You lack a familiar of your own to do menial chores for you,” he said. Beaks couldn’t smile, but I just knew the bastard was grinning ear-to-ear back home.

“D-Devils… haze each other?” my summoner muttered in wonder.

“Just think of it as motivation to improve, Max. Now, what do you want to do? Just because you’ve been summoned doesn’t mean you need to do what he says. You’re free to reject, though you obviously won’t be paid.”

“I don’t know. He’s a moron. And he’s pathetic for not having contingencies to prevent people from stealing his work.”

“He is.”

The scrawny man squawked, sounding more like a bird than Rigal ever did. “Hey! I’m right here!”

“What would I even get out of this?” I asked.

The bird shrugged its little wings. “Up to you. You can demand a lot of money, probably more than he could afford, honestly. Or you could demand a copy of his research if it interests you. You can even renegotiate the task, maybe just steal the data instead of trashing the lab completely. Point is, you’re free to set the price or get creative, just keep in mind that the goal is to make a mutually beneficial contract, not to scalp your clients unreasonably.”

“I get it. And what if there are consequences for this?”

“Again, up to you. I told you, didn’t I? ‘Live a life worth living.’ If you think this guy’s worth helping, then that’s all the justification I need to hear. If you don’t, walk away.”

“Yeah, you’re… You’re right. Thanks, Rigal.”

“No problem, kid.”

X

Rigal Phenex

Max was adorable. I didn’t know what he did in the end, but he came back with a collector’s set of every Dr. Who episode.

Was it worth it? I genuinely had no clue what a collector’s set was worth, but probably not enough for a job that might have involved multiple felonies.

No matter. Max was happy and that was good enough for me. The goal was for him to build up his magical reserves while getting him some real-world experience at the same time. Really, the interactions were just as important in my opinion as the material exchange.

It’d been a week since his first job. He’d received several more requests, though none with the moral complexity of the first. One was a fashion student who wanted a male model to try on her clothes. I had to explain to him that she was definitely flirting with him. Another was a single mother who worked as a chef. She couldn’t afford time off to take care of her son when he got sick.

Max got all sulky about that so I allowed him to barter away a phoenix tear for basically nothing. She threw a fit when I fed her son from a bottle of antifreeze, but a man had to get his jollies somehow. She was a decent enough chef so in exchange for healing her son, she would present Max with a new dish each night until she ran out of recipes.

My little brother was starting to turn into a foodie. Really, trading something as valuable as a phoenix tear for mundane food of all things; Uncle Riser would have an aneurism if he ever heard. Then again, there were worse habits a boy looking for “new experiences” could develop.

Another contractor wanted Max to murder his ex-wife. She received custody of their kids after the divorce and he wasn’t happy.

Whatever else happened in the divorce, his willingness to resort to murder made Max decide that he wasn’t a good father figure. My bro promptly broke the dumbass’ legs and came back.

I smiled as I pet Rick Grayson. I fed him an unsalted sunflower seed and allowed his trilling song to sooth me. This was something Cadmus could not teach him, the shades of gray that made up humanity. I could saddle him with tomes upon tomes of philosophical dissertations, but in the end, there was no making up for personal experience.

Even now, I could see that he leaned towards doing the morally good thing. He didn’t hesitate to lash out, like when he broke the moron’s legs, but he had a lot of sympathy for people who could not help themselves, though he’d usually act all surly about helping.

Hell, he’d once helped a young girl find her lost cat. In return, he’d only taken a small keychain, a chibi black cat hanging from the end. He’d looked inordinately pleased with it despite its lack of worth.

Was this the Clark Kent in him? Did he feel some subconscious need to make up for the help I’d given him by paying it forward?

“Yo, I picked up dinner,” Max called as he teleported to our spell circle. He held out a big, tupperware dish. “What’s jerk chicken?”

“Jamaican dish. It’s spicy, peppery, and savory,” I told him. I closed the tome I’d been studying and made my way to the dining room. “It’s good.”

“It’s not going to be like that curry, right?”

“You ordered the spiciest version possible, that one was all you. But, no. It shouldn’t be that spicy.”

“Awesome. Sarah also made something called dirty rice. She promised it’s edible but why is it called ‘dirty rice?’”

“The jerk spices look like dirt, that’s why.”

“Still a stupid name.”

“Mhmm.”

“What do you do all day when I’m out anyway?” he asked through a mouthful of chicken.

“Lots of things. Like I said, Rick Grayson passes out summoning circles for me so I do get summoned too.”

“Wait, for real? What do you get paid in? I haven’t seen you bring anything back.”

I savored my chicken. Sarah really was a great chef. Upon reflection, perhaps the phoenix tear wasn’t a gross overpayment. “For starters, legal identification. I’m from a different world and you’re a clone. We don’t exist according to the government. Hypnosis is well and good, but it shouldn’t be a permanent solution.”

“So you got someone to make us IDs?”

“Yup. I met a hacker and fixed his wife’s cancer for him.”

“Nice, what else?”

“Connections. Stock options. Information.”

“Sounds boring.”

“Really? Because I had lunch with the chairman of the board for the Gotham Museum of History.”

“Again. Boring.”

“You say that, but you’d be surprised how many artifacts museums find. Not all of them are valuable, or magical, but there’s bound to be a few hints eventually.”

“If you say so, man.”

“I’ve also been learning how to make different air bubbles,” I said. I held my hands out and two, identical spheres of wind formed.

“Couldn’t you already do that?”

“I could, but the neat part is that the one on the right is pure oxygen while the one on the left is pure nitrogen. Sorting out individual molecules in the atmosphere takes a ton of fine control.”

“Which is important because…?”

“Because, my little brother, I like to study magic artifacts and those can be extremely delicate. Having absolute control of my own magic is the minimum requirement for someone with my interests.”

“Huh. So you’re not just dicking around?”

“Would you like your ass kicked again?”

“Bring it. I’ve been getting stronger. More sunlight, more strength,” he said, flexing his arm with a cocky grin.

“Fine. Eat up. We’ll head out over the sea again.”

That night, I taught the poor, flying brick some remedial lessons on humility. Kryptonians couldn’t be poisoned by an overabundance of oxygen, but the look on his face when his own heat vision caused a massive fireball that sent his head slamming into the sea would be one I’d cherish for years to come.

Max was growing. He was also a wonderful target for anything and everything that came to mind. I once froze his tongue to the roof of his mouth by robbing his head of heat. The tongue, being one of the most sensitive organs in the body, caused even his kryptonian body a great deal of discomfort.

I also learned how to lock his entire body by using the sky. He could use his tremendous strength to overpower my hold, but just knowing I could simulate telekinesis was nice.

The only thing I didn’t resort to was hellfire, something I knew would genuinely burn him. I did have an abundance of phoenix tears, but I didn’t want to put Max through that harsh a training regimen right off the bat. 

X

I made a point to keep an eye on the news. This being Gotham, it seemed unwise to ignore the general happenings. For example, a prison break from Arkham.

Max had gotten to the point where he could keep tabs on past clients. Now that he was slowly learning to sense demonic energy, he could at least tell when it was a past client that was calling as opposed to someone brand new. He could even sense its general urgency so when he burst into the living room with a look of panic and that black cat keychain in hand, I decided to tag along.

We appeared in an absolutely trashed dining room. The wooden dining table had been tilted to one side, with a woman and a little girl huddled behind it. In the little girl’s hands was a torn slip of paper.

Two men were wrestling on the ground, one in a business-casual shirt and slacks and the other shirtless. The shirtless man was bald, with countless scars marring his head and torso. Tallies, I realized, which made his identity obvious: Max’s client had been unlucky enough to be visited by Victor Zsasz.

Our arrival had not gone unnoticed. That’d be rather impossible given the flurry of blazing feathers that I used to announce myself. The moment the two men looked at us, Max acted.

He blurred from mortal sight and caught Zsasz by the throat, lifting him into the air.

To his credit, the lunatic didn’t stop trying to stab anything in reach. His knife work was unexpectedly decent, going for the veins in Max’s wrist. A normal person would bleed out in minutes if the cut was deep enough. The knife merely broke against my brother’s skin though.

“Mr. Devil!” the little girl yelled. The sheer, raw hope in her voice hit us like a physical force.

“Devil? Mimi, what did you do?” the woman asked, worried sick.

“Mr. Devil is going to make the bad man go away.”

“Who are you?”

“She summoned my kid bro and I decided to tag along this time,” I explained. “Long story short, you tear that slip your daughter’s carrying and one of us shows up to grant a wish in exchange for payment. You know, a devil contract.”

“No, not Mimi,” the father groaned. He tried to stand but only managed to rise to his knees. His shirt had been stained red with multiple stab wounds. It was probably only adrenaline that kept him going. “Not Mimi. Take me.”

“Take you for what?” I asked. Then I remembered that the kid’s parents probably hadn’t read the bookmark. “Oh, you think I’m here for your souls, don’t you? Well, you can stop worrying about that. I have it on good authority that your souls taste revolting.”

Max, for his part, looked like a dog that caught the mail truck. He still had Zsasz by the throat but wasn’t sure how he wanted to proceed.

“Who is this?” he asked. Logically, he had no reason to believe I’d know some rando murderer. That he asked with full expectation of an answer gave me the warm and fuzzies.

“Victor Zsasz, an Arkham inmate. There was a minor breakout a few days ago,” I informed him with a carefree shrug. “I didn’t think we’d run into him though.”

“And? What’s with the scars?”

“He carves himself a new tally each time he kills someone. He’s a lunatic psychopath who’s probably earned a dozen death penalties but somehow always manages to get off on a technicality. What do you want to do?”

“I can choose?”

“They’re your clients. I just came along to make sure nothing went wrong, not to boss you around.”

“I…” I could see the uncertainty in his eyes. Then his gaze flickered to the little girl. When he turned back to Zsasz, there was no mercy to be found. “I’ll be right back.”

So saying, he flickered away, far from the little girl. If Rick Grayson saw him chuck a body with a skewed neck over a mile into the bay, I opted not to comment on it.

Just as he returned, the father slumped forward as blood loss caught up to him.

“John!” his wife yelled.

“Rigal, tear!” Max shouted.

I looked at my brother with an arched eyebrow. On one hand, I hated being told what to do. It was a devil thing. And whatever else we were, I was his king.

On the other hand, this was exactly what I wanted from Max: growth. A sense of self that could not be acquired in any other way. Finally, I waved him off.

“Ugh, you are such a bleeding heart, little brother,” I drawled, eyes rolling. Inwardly, I was quite proud of him. I turned to the half-dead father and conjured my new favorite bottle. “John, was it? My name is Rigal Phenex, of the Seventy-Two Pillar Houses. We’ll settle your debt to my brother and I one way or another, but until then, may I interest you in some antifreeze?”

Author’s Note

Apparently, devil contracts were touched upon in DxD for like the first arc but never fully fleshed out. I’ve decided to go with the fanon that devils improve through the enabling of desires, slowly accumulating magical energy.

Animal Fact: The goliath frog is the biggest frog in the world and grows to 7 inches. Legs spread, they can grow as long as 2.5 feet. Unfortunately, they’re endangered, partially because tadpoles only eat a specific aquatic plant. The adults are much less discerning and eat insects, small mammals, other frogs, and occasionally even bats.