Chapter 62 - Can't a man catch a break sometimes? (ver. 2.0)

Note:

This is Raziel speaking in Nero's head

"This is Nero talking to Raziel in his head"

I should also mention that if you haven't noticed already, I use the terms demon and devil interchangeably which technically isn't correct but oh well.

Important: In summary, my laptop is fucked so I can't write as fast or write as much I want to (I need to borrow my sister's laptop) so the number of uploads are gonna be reduced again.

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POV: Nero

"You have your bloody phone, and the first thing you do is call Aiden?" His voice sounded neutral but there was an undertone of annoyance.

Wow, clearly that was the wrong move since I made the man grumpier than before. At some point, my breathing was offending him. Also, I was surprised he didn't question my very questionable words first.

"I already told you that the police is here. They can't do anything. I also told you this."

My boss hissed out, "You could call them to let them know about the situation inside, so they could like I don't know, bloody take some sort of action."

"I already told you, they can't do anything. Informing them will just let them know how useless they actually are, so they'll just feed it to the news stations instead. It's a waste of effort." My tone turned monotonous and felt my cold persona coming out.

"At least their associates will know the status of their safety!"

"Why are you getting pissed at me? I didn't call Aiden for no reason, it's quite important."

"Because it's selfish keeping this kind of information from the people who need to know. You instead go telling your own person that you're alright without considering the others, like a selfish person." His voice raised in volumes out of exasperation, anger seeped out of each word. He shuffled away a bit but his hands tightened on mine till it turned into a death grip. The look had never been directed at me and now that it had, I was regretting every word I ever said. Selfish... The words were cold and sent shivers down my spine. I felt bad for being the cause of his negative emotions. I never meant to bother him like that.

This is why I avoid people. It's too much stress. You're too shattered to function normally. To understand empathy and sympathy. I was caving within myself but I managed myself from delving into the abyss by reminding myself that I had a task I needed to do. Hold back the breakdown for later.

All the warming and humane emotions were shut behind iron doors and instead, it was replaced with heartless ones. "telling them would mean nothing. They can't do anything but I can, so that's what I'll do."

"What the hell do you mean you'll do it?"

"I will get everyone out of here safely."

"Don't be a hypocrite. You just went off at me for suggesting the same idea." Leo was getting pissed by the minute.

"I'm not being a hypocrite. I said you shouldn't do it because you can't without fucking up."

"Oh, and now all of a sudden you can?"

"Yes, yes I can. And it's not all of a sudden. I could do it for a while now."

"What the fuck are you on ab–"

"Zip it." I was honestly done with the guy. He was wasting time and if we continued talking, I was going to break down. I felt myself crumbling bit by bit

"Excuse me? Wha–"

This man and his fucking superiority complex. I meant it when I said I'm not dealing with this ,so called forth some magic to plaster it over his mouth to shut him up temporarily. As expected, his eyes widened in disgrace and he let go of my hand to feel up the unexpected muzzle. If you thought he looked furious before, he now looked absolutely hysteric, like he wanted to strangle me into the afterlife. And I thought he was about to grab at me but I stopped him from doing anything by putting my hand up and facing the palms towards him.

With my other hand, I placed the palm on the carpet and let out black rope-like magic through the carpet. I let it slither through carpet subtly (which proved to be easy due to the patterns on the carpet) and wrapped it around the unattentive guards' calves, through their pants. The guards were either really into observing the hostages or were plain stupid because they clearly didn't notice the sensation of something wrapping around their legs. With that, the trap was set, leaving only two things to do.

Still ignoring Leo and his penetrative glares, I quietly hushed out, "Raziel, I need your assistance..." Leo's eyes raised in question, as if to ask who the hell Raziel was but I continued being a dick and not itching his curiosity.

"Well would you look at that, it didn't take you two years this time, was my presence actually missed this time?"

"I'm really not in the mood right now Raziel."

The devil scoffed at me "I know, I live in you. I literally see everything that happens and feel everything you feel. You're very heartbroken right now and it's very funny to see because it's not even a big deal."

"Stop being a dick, you fuck up of a gatekeeper. If you know what I'm feeling, stop rubbing salt in my wounds and just do what you're meant to do."

"Be your therapist?"

"No, you douchebag!"

"I'm the devil, it's my job to be a douchebag. But listen, your love–"

"Not my love"

"YOUR LOVE is just really stressed and freaked out right now. He's probably never been in a life-threatening situation like this, so he's snappish. He doesn't really think you're selfish. An awkward, introverted fuck, yes but not selfish."

"If I thought any better, I'd be thinking you're trying to comfort me."

"Then good thing you're a dumb blonde with black hair. Now let's get to business."

His attempts to cheer me up put a small smile on my face.

"Yeah, we will. I just need to do one more thing."

The demon vessel looked away from the crowd and brought his attention back onto Leo, who was very frustrated by the muzzle and lack of attention (he was kicking at me when I was talking to Raziel). Time to relieve him from his misery and garner some more misery on my part.

I wished away the makeshift duct tape and before he could go off at me, I quickly put my hand over his mouth. I looked at him with blankness initially before letting sorrow and remorse take over my dark brown eyes. "I'm sorry."

I pulled away from my hand from his mouth and he replied with as much spite as he could muster. "You better you sorry, you twat. Not only do you shush me with words, you then resort to physically shutting me up by–"

I quickly cut into his rant. "I don't just mean muting. I meant for everything else. For lying to you."

Leo was visibly puzzled as he mulled over my words. "Lying to me?"

The only response I gave him was an apologetic smile before standing up against the pillar, taking off my blazer and initiating the transformation sequence with a couple of words of the devil's mother tongue. "πενήντα τοις εκατό μαγεία του δαίμονα, απελευθέρωση (fifty percent magic of the demon, release)"

I ripped off the Band-Aid that was present 90% of the time to reveal the  hidden curse mark or tattoo as I liked to call it. The mark did its thing and grew, spreading down my shoulders to my arms, up to my face, creating spirals on the edge of my cheeks. The darkness overwhelmed my pale arms but the sight was blocked by the sleeves of my shirt. I covered the bottom half my face, morphing the magic to mimic the shape of a surgical mask and called forth my wings, the familial feeling settling in after a month or so. I knew I've finished remodelling when I felt the sensation of my left eye shifting from brown to red.

I didn't realise my eyes were closed the entire time, so when I opened them, I was facing a paralysed and very shook Leo. Realisation and recognition settled upon his handsome features. No happiness. No anger. Nothing else but recognition. It was unsettling and I looked away immediately and pretended he didn't exist anymore.

Obviously, at that point, everyone noticed a random and abrupt presence of evil aura coming out of the corner of everyone's blind spot (my wingspan refused to be hidden behind a mere pillar) but before anyone could come closer to investigate, I introduced myself to everyone by flying up so I was under the semi-broken glass dome. The sudden appearance of a somewhat non-human being got everyone nearly fainting, including the perpetrators so I used the opportunity to simply call out, "clutch" while gesturing a clutch motion with my right hand for some flare.

The makeshift ropes gripped around their targets with as much strength as possible, causing cries of pain to generate from different corners of the building. Spectators were looking around left and right in panic, observing what was going but their confusion was met with more questions as they couldn't find the cause of the cries.

The victims dropped to their knees and clutched at their calves, all without letting go of their weapons. Time to fix that.

"You're going to use hell's fire again, aren't you?"

"I feel judgement. You're judging me, aren't you? Stop judging me."

"Well, no shit I'm judging you. You're so lazy, why can't you make it interesting and I don't know, have an awesome fighting sequence? Stop taking the easy way out."

"Excuse me, I am NOT lazy. I'm just efficient and really want to get away from here as fast as I can."

"Does it have to do with a certain boss of yours?"

"W-What, n-no! Kind of. I just... really want to save these people ASAP."

"... right."

"Just shut up and lend me your powers."

"Oi, don't tell ME what to do you ungrateful–"

I blocked him out.

Along with the screams of pain, there were screams of fear coming from the hostages and I couldn't help but roll my eyes at them because how fucking blind could they be. I was helping them, not fucking eating them.

"η φωτιά της κόλασης (hell's fire)."

Black flames formed on the palms of my hands out of thin air and without a second of hesitation, I threw it in the direction of every single gun I could see. All the flames hit their target and continuously burned the guns (which had all been dropped by the terrified robbers) until the firearm melted into a puddle of a mix of metals.

Surprisingly, the hostages had become silent and were watching the show with newfound interest. On the other hand, however, two of the robbers had snapped out of their stupor and began arguing with each other.

"YOU FORGOT ABOUT THE FUCKING ODDITY USERS?!" roared out faceless number 1.

"HOW IS THAT MY FAULT?! I'M NOT IN CHARGE OF THE OPERATION!" yelled back faceless number 2.

"YOU WERE IN CHARGE OF THE WEAPONS AND THE SHIT TO KEEP THE HOSTAGES UNDER CONTROL! DID IT NOT COME TO MIND THAT THERE MIGHT BE ODDITY USERS HERE TOO?!"

"BUT THEY'RE RARE AS FUCK! THE LANTHANUM (A/N I should mention this but lanthanum actually decades away when exposed to air so we're going to pretend for this story that they're coated in something that avoids contact with the air) ROPES AND HANDCUFFS ARE ALSO REALLY EXPENSIVE!"

"WE'RE ROBBING A BANK, YOU DOOFUS! WE COULD'VE PAID IT BACK WHEN WE SUCCEEDED."

"Oh yeah... whoops?"

"WHOOPS MY ASS, YOU USELESS PIECE OF–"

"As much as I hate to interrupt your lover's quarrel, I'm slightly offended that I'm being ignored. So I'm going to bring the attention back to me now." This came from me of all people. As much as I was an awkward fuck that avoids people's gazes as much as possible, when I was in this form, no one knew who I was so I felt perfectly fine with the attention (when I'm in the destroy-bad-guys mood). In fact, I wanted people to be in awe because having the devil's power was something that was cool and it should be appreciated by all people. Or feared. Regardless, I was a bit of an Aiden when I got Raziel by my side. Actually, now that I think about it, I felt like Raziel might have brainwashed me or something at one point. This guy was one hell of an attention whore.

Anyway, the other two snapped their heads in my direction, alertness in their eyes to which I responded back with a fake, innocent smile and creating more magic ropes to bind around their torsos. I then flew at right up to the robbers' faces and knocked them unconscious with a single punch to the face.

I got a five-hit combo in total.