Chapter 2: Corrupted Slave of Love
They regrouped in the cafeteria. Since they couldn’t teach today, and now they needed to plan a fundraiser, it was important to get some proper nutrition.
Beryl had of course gone with the brain’s greatest food—-meat, again. And lots of it. She was hungry, she was irritated, and she was plagued by a weird feeling in the pit of her stomach when she thought of that close encounter with Mao earlier.
She huffed as she nibbled her way through a steak, well aware of the way her wings drooped in concentration. “Geeze…”
“You look troubled, my lady,” Asuka murmured from across the table.
Kyoko, who had a meat pile similar to Beryl’s, nodded. “You can unload on us, you know. That’s what we’re for.”
Beryl gave them each a warm smile.
“Don’t worry girls, I know I can trust you! I’m just…I dunno. Do you think that argument with Mao went well?” She pushed her steak around on her plate thoughtfully. “He seems pretty determined to make me ‘act like a demon’, still.”
“Certainly he is,” Asuka agreed. “He wouldn’t be a worthy rival if he did not. I would say the volley went quite well. As usual, you did not allow him to make you waver in your principles.”
“Yeah!” Kyoko grinned. “He thought he could get your goat, but he was the goat who got getted!”
“He sure seemed pretty pissed off when I mentioned the bake sale!” She laughed with a brightening of her spirits. “Like it took him a minute to get his footing again!”
Kyoko laughed with her. “He did! I think he just expected you to fight him over it!”
“It’s like he has no respect for me as a delinquent! He still thinks I can be taken in by bait like that??” She felt herself riling up again, her tail thumping against the back of her chair as she leaned on the table. “I mean—’I Stole your classroom, fistfight me over it and fall to honor student behavior’??? That’s basic stuff!”
Asuka smiled wryly. “Clearly your staunch resilience has impressed upon him a need for a more complex gambit.”
“You mean his whole ‘just wait to see what I have in store’ threat?” Beryl drawled with her jaw set. This was going to turn into a whole stupid thing. Just like all schemes between rivals did. He’d come out of the shadows with a new plan to throw her off her delinquent behavior—she’d counter him—and so on.
At least it meant she’d actually see him.
“I’m hardly scared of that, Asuka.”
“Nor I of course, my lady,” she nodded. “But we should try to predict some of his schemes so that we can counter them in advance.”
Kyoko wagged a finger. “He’ll hire some thugs to bust up our operation. Like, for sure.”
…it couldn’t possibly be that simple, could it? No, wait. This was Mao.
It absolutely could be that simple.
He talked a big game but nine times out of ten he chose the brute force option.
“Well, we’ll just have to set up defenses—and protect our stand, won’t we? Fighting to protect a bake sale’s not demonic at all!”
Asuka nodded. “Without a doubt. Though of course he may have something more underhanded planned in addition to that.”
“Whatever it is, it can’t shake us from our lifelong delinquency, girls.” She nodded her head firmly “anything he throws at us, we can meet with kindness! Respect! Community service!!!”
Mao had given Almaz some kind of communicator in order to keep him on a leash, it seemed like. He’d called it a ‘Hell Phone’.
It was currently buzzing over and over again with text messages.
He didn’t answer it right away—no, instead he stared blearily at it as it vibrated enough times to nearly fall off the kitchen table he had it set on. He’d just finished cooking breakfast for him and Sapphire—settling down to eat with the woman who he was still so damn overjoyed to have the fortune to marry????
Sure, they didn’t stick around the human world much longer than it took to finish the wedding and the last of Sapphire’s preparations to delegate her duties to anyone who wasn’t her before she’d insisted they go back to the Netherworld as they ‘were practically demons themselves anyways!’.
Sure, he was happy to have come back. He cared about Mao, weird heavy breathing and all, and he’d missed the guy a whole lot. Sure, he was even happy to have been given a pretty nice dorm on campus (for Mao to keep him at grabbing range) with Sapphire, a ‘hell phone’ and a bunch of other incentives— including Mao’s…rather invasive attempts to turn him into a demon again.
But the guy sure liked to double text early in the morning, didn’t he? The pancakes were cooling on his plate when the hell phone finally vibrated enough to start teetering on the edge of the table.
“Is it supposed to do that?” Sapphire asked innocently, cocking her head as she watched the thing go off the edge of the table between her sips of coffee.
It hit Almaz’s lap sending a rather uncomfortable jolt of vibration through him as Mao texted AGAIN.
“I…Ghhhlkggg!!!!” He snatched it up with a flush and opened it with a slight twitching of his eyelid “not usually I don’t think, princess! It’s…Mao’s…Mao! It’s Mao!”
“Oh! What does Sir Mao want this morning?”
Almaz thumbed through the texts.
Slave!
Almaz. Come to my office!!
Come to my office immediately, slave!!!
Your presence is required!!!!
Almaz, your demonic master commands you!!!!!
Get your ass to my office! (╬▔皿▔)╯
“My demonic master,” Almaz drawled with quiet exhaustion. “Commands me to get my ass to his office immediately. And then he sent some….”
He squinted at the text… “Ancient runes or something that look like an angry face.”
Sapphire peered over his shoulder to squint at it as well. As she did, another message arrived.
Bring your annoying wife, too!!“MAO!” He howled at the phone as he hastily shot off a reply.
I’m on my way! And she’s not annoying, Master Mao! Geeze!!!!!!!He wasn’t sure how to get rid of the disconnected exclamation point, but he sent it anyway. “…sounds like he wants to see you too, princess.”
“He called me your wife!” Sapphire cooed.
Almaz’s fingers twitched around the Hell Phone as that sunk in, and he felt his face flushing deeper and deeper red as he sputtered and dropped his phone. Several moments of sputtering and trying to catch it later, he held it to his chest and his rapid heartbeat with a lopsided and embarrassed smile.
“H-he did, huh? Wow…maybe he’s fin-finally accepted it.” Married—him and Princess Sapphire, even though he was just some failure of a guard and she was absolutely strong and amazing. He still couldn’t believe it, but it wasn’t that long ago that they were smiling and framed under the arch to the sound of wedding bells together.
He squirmed, leaning back against her with a smile. “We are married, a-after all.”
“We are! I hope you don’t forget that, even if you still call me princess!”
He felt himself flushing deeper, squirming in his seat with a lopsided grin.
“Well, I promise I can’t forget it, Sapphire, I mean..Princess, I mean—”
It was like a pet name at this point, wasn’t it? A fun way to remember where they’d started—as the princess and the…well almost knight.
Sapphire leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Come on, let’s finish breakfast so we don’t keep Sir Mao waiting. I’m so curious what he’s got in store!”
“Probably some new scheme to make the school even weirder,” Almaz laughed. “Which I know’ll get you all kinds of excited. I just hope it doesn’t explode on me again!”
He’d barely survived last time. But that was part of the fun with Mao, you never knew what to expect.
Mao’s office, high up in the towers of the school, was a mess. Mao had barked for them to enter, and once Almaz opened the door, he saw the area around the desk littered with balled up pieces of paper.
“You’re late!” Mao snapped, without looking up.
Clearly things with his 1.3 trillion or whatever EQ weren’t going so hot. Almaz immediately dipped into good servant mode to try and save a little face and rectify the situation.
He saluted quickly. “Sorry Master Mao, sir! We were finishing breakfast, you needed us, right?”
His head jerked up, pale hair bouncing around his face.
“That’s right! I did summon you! You and your…. wife.” His gaze leveled at Sapphire. Mao could be pretty creepy when he looked at someone that intensely.
“Well…me and my wife are both here, sir!” He looped his arm around her with a grin, and maybe a little bit of protectiveness as he eased closer to Sapphire. Mao usually had like…three things in mind when he stared like that. And they usually weren’t super great for you.
Usually.
“Good! I have a problem that your inferior brains may be more suitable for solving than my own wicked genius.” Mao stood up and he strolled over to a suspiciously clean whiteboard.
“Oh!” Sapphire perked up. “Sir Mao needs our help!”
Almaz perked up as well despite himself, a smile forming on his face. “He does??? He does! Well, if our uh—inferior—brains can help then you know you’ve got it, boss!”
Mao grinned under his fogged glasses. “I’m glad to see that you’re enthusiastic for once!”
With a dramatic motion, Mao turned over the whiteboard.
There was one word written on it.
LOVE.
“……” Almaz felt himself starting to flush again and he looked at Sapphire with a kind of feral desperation. “He wants us to teach him about love, dear…Princess.”
“Oh!” Sapphire hopped excitedly, pumping her fists. “That will be fun!”
Mao, meanwhile grimaced and slapped his hand on the table.
“I do not need you to teach me about love!! Not… exactly. I merely require your perspective about how to fine-tune my experiments.”
Which meant EXACTLY that he needed them to teach him about love.
Almaz leaned forward with a sheepish smile.
“Mao…? Is there someone that you’re trying to learn love…for?” He tilted his head to the side. “I m-mean, no offense, I know it’s probably to satisfy your genius intellect but—”
He didn’t exactly need it to unlock the title of hero anymore.
“Oh so you want to know that, do you?” Mao leered, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a small device. “Look here, both of you.”
“Oh, what is it?” Sapphire leaned in, peering at it immediately.
Almaz winced. He loved Sapphire with all his heart, but he sure wished she’d be at least a LITTLE cautious with Mao’s experiments and gadgets.
Still, he was nothing if not kind of a pushover—he looked at it too.
“You got it, Mao! Eheheh…it’s not going to brainwash us or something, is it?”
There was a bright flash and Almaz felt momentarily dizzy. Sapphire made a soft ‘oh’ sound and half collapsed into his arms.
Mao was cackling.
“H-h-hey!!”
And THIS!! THIS RIGHT HERE!!! Was why he begged her not to be so carefree with Mao! He cared about Mao, a bunch!! But this sort of thing got his anxiety going like nothing else!
He swooned on his feet , but held tight to Sapphire as her weight flopped into his arms, managing to stay on his feet as he hugged her to his chest as he desperately asked. “Mao. Mao. What did you do to her, Mao?”
Despite the cackle, Mao waved his hand dismissively. “It was only a little bit of brainwashing! Just so the two of you can’t go repeating anything that we discuss in this room to anyone! If you try, you’ll get the world’s worst migraine!”
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME, MAO! You coulda just asked!” Almaz wailed “you made my wife faint! You put a …another! How many? How many weird triggers did you put in my head already?”
“Several,” Mao murmured. “I had to be sure! You humans are almost as untrustworthy as demons, and I mean that as a complement!”
Sapphire looped her arm around Almaz’s shoulders. “It’s alright, Almaz. I suppose that’s just how Sir Mao is…”
“Several!!!” Almaz wailed , as a thousand embarrassing possibilities flashed through his mind. A compulsion to strip, perhaps, or a death trigger, or something that makes it so he has to always tell the truth no matter how humiliating, or….
He shook himself out of it with a wince, leaning into Sapphire with a soft sigh.
“No, you’re right. It’s just how Mao is—I’m sure he wouldn’t…r-really hurt us. He likes us, and I like him. So…yeah. Maybe we’re more like demons like you say. Now you can trust us, right?”
“Now I can trust you with my ultra secret plan! As you can see, it’s been… going through some revisions.” Mao glanced at the crumpled papers on the floor and then away, coughing.
Almaz gently stroked Sapphire’s hair, mostly to calm himself. Nothing in the Netherworld seemed to rattle her. He kind of wished he could be as chill with it all as she was.
His eyes fell on the papers before they flicked back up to Mao. He’d been pouring over plans all day, probably —obsessing over it, and it came back to love?
“Geeze…Yeah I can see that, Mao. But I wanna help you! You know I do!”
“Good! then listen up!” Mao hopped up to sit on his desk, staring at the both of them as he launched into a monologue.
Mao had been ‘studying love’, it turned out. And since it was Mao, he had been ‘studying love’ the same way that he had ‘studied heroes’, which was to say by reading comic books and playing video games. A lot of visual novels, apparently.
Almaz listened with the sort of rictus little smile that he’d grown accustomed to with Mao’s rambles. Yep…of course he was obsessing over love again and playing a bunch of visual novels. Like a lovesick teenager trying to get the perfect route for his favorite fictional girlfriend in order to pick up lines to use on his real crush.
Geeze. It wasn’t like he was much better. He’d pretty much done the same while thinking of Sapphire before the Netherworld—and probably woulda still been doing the same if Mao hadn’t dumped him headfirst into the life of a demon.
“W-wow, Mao.” he said by way of leading him to continue. He wouldn’t stop until he was done, after all!
Mao claimed that now he knew everything about love ‘in theory’, but it didn’t make sense from a practical viewpoint. He knew it, but he didn’t understand it. So he needed Almaz and Sapphire to listen to his plans and tell him which ones sounded the most effective.
“I’m going use my sinister knowledge of love to make Raspberyl fall in love with me,” Mao announced, lifting his chin. “It’s the perfect move to crush her in our game of rivalry!”
Sapphire covered her mouth with her hand, and Almaz heard her suck in a breath.
Almaz sucked in a soft breath through his teeth right alongside her.
“You…” He hesitated before he leaned in a little towards him “you want to make Miss Beryl fall in love with you…so you can break her heart just to win your rivalry?”
“Are you joking!” Mao snapped, apparently actually angry as he leaned forward. “I didn’t say I was going to break her heart! According to my research when a woman falls in love with a demon Overlord they become that overlord’s corrupted slave of love! If I pull this off, I could have that delinquent Raspberyl wasting her centuries eating sweets and playing video games on my lap like a real demon!”
“Oh Sir Mao,” Sapphire cooed, her hands still over her face. Almaz could tell she was bright red, and smiling. “That’s… um…”
Well uh. At least he wasn’t trying to use them to hurt Raspberyl? Like…Almaz had been terrified for a second that Mao was going to break poor Miss Beryl’s heart. She was so nice, maybe the nicest person in the entire Netherworld? And shattering her like that would be too evil, even for Mao!
But this… he felt himself turning just as red as Sapphire as the edge of his lips quirked into a shaky smile. It was buried in like…mountains of unexamined ‘weird demon shit’, like ‘corrupted slave of love’ and ‘making a delinquent waste centuries eating sweets and playing games on his lap’ and all that—-but it was kinda familiar.
Obvious even.
“You want MIss Beryl to fall in love with you, so she’ll spend time with you as your erm…corrupted slave of love…and play video games and cuddle with you? Mao, I-I mean, Master Mao. That’s…kinda cute?”
“Ha! Cute!” Mao slapped the surface of the desk. “Your feeble human minds simply can’t contemplate how sinister and twisted my plan is!”
Sapphire was holding back giggles as she nodded. “Of course, you’re right, Sir Mao! S-so how can we help you?”
Mao cracked his knuckles. “I need a plan. The most romantic plan in the history of the netherworld. In the history of ANY netherworld! I already came up with so many schemes, but they’re useless! I was going to pose as a mysterious transfer student while my robot doppelganger ran the school. Beautiful young girls ALWAYS fall in love with the mysterious transfer student! But then I remember that Beryl isn’t a student any more!”
“Uh, yeah, that’s a good way to get some random student following you around, sir.” Almaz tried not to smile too much—or he was going to break down in giggles like Sapphire was barely holding back from doing.
“And the teachers don’t tend to fall for the mysterious transfer student. Did uh…did you try looking at any visual novels about office ladies? S-sir?”
“I saw a few about so called ‘office ladies’,” Mao growled. “But the problem is they always get transported to magical, and strange lands and we’re already in the most magical and strange place possible! This is all the fault of you boring humans!”
“Well…” Sapphire bit her lip.
There was a soft noise as Geoffrey appeared. “Young Master, I couldn’t help overhearing…”
“EEEUGHGAHHH!!” Almaz jolted, his hands finally leaving Sapphire long enough to hold out like he was gonna fucking judo chop the guy. How would that work?? No matter how he looked now, that guy was a former hero!!! Like, a SUPER hero who was also SUPER FUCKING CRAZY.
He felt his heart go a mile a minute as he fell back against Sapphire. “don’t sneak up on me like that!”
Mao hopped down from the desk, grinning from behind his fogged glasses. “Geoffrey. Just as I would expect of you. I imagine you have some kind of input?”
“That I do, young master.”
Sapphire glanced dubiously at Almaz.
Even if he was kinda uh…super brainwashed now (the fears of just what Mao might have done to his own brain over the last couple months played in his mind again before he shut it down), the last time Mao took advice from that guy he nearly genocided the entire human race.
“uhm…Mao? Are you sure you should be taking advice from him? He uh…..uhm…” he thought of a nice way to put ‘I don’t trust him one bit’ before he murmured, “doesn’t look experienced in love?”
Geoffrey lifted his hands defensively. “Love? Oh, perish the thought! My advice is on another matter entirely.”
In the end, Mao was delighted by the idea, and neither Almaz nor Sapphire could talk him out of it.
Admittedly, Sapphire didn’t try very hard to do so. Especially after Mao appointed both of them his ‘special tactical romantic advisors’ for the ‘mission’.
“I think it’s very romantic,” Sapphire said, grabbing Almaz’ hand as they headed back down to their dormitory after a lengthy planning session.
Almaz squeezed her hand to ground himself as he gave her a lopsided smile. “Well…that was as Lord Mao as ever, wasn’t it? Special Tactical Romantic Advisors, huh?”
His head was still spinning from the whole meeting. It was like a war room—but for a very unique battlefield.
“Romantic tactical advisors! Sir Mao is really determined to win Miss Raspberyl’s heart, isn’t he? It’s absolutely precious! I’m so excited that we get to help!”
Almaz laughed as he bumped his shoulder against hers. “He really is. You think she’ll make him nicer? Or at the very least cuter by proximity—I like the way Mao is now, but it might be nice to see him a little…I dunno, calmer?”
He shook his head with a grin. “Precious, yeah…if he wants to win the girl of his dreams, we’re gonna help him, right? Even if I don’t think he knows exactly what he’s getting into here.”