[LNHY/ACRA] The Daily Super Short-Short Story #57

[Saxon Brenton]

The Daily Super Short-Short Story #57
 
A Devil Came Down To Georgia 39
 
[Labelling Note: Sorry, last issue (with the evacuation of the burning 
building) was posted as a second #55 rather than #56.]
 
     Once again Martin found his attention curiously detached from the 
current crisis as he stared across at Lisa, his fellow Teenaged Giant 
Halfbreed Fallen Angel. She wanted him, although it had only been while 
talking over dinner last night with TJ... no, with Tim... that he had 
begun to see that her plans involved more than just mating with him. The 
implications of that were disturbing in more ways than one; the most 
angering was that she thought she could win him over simply by offering 
him sex, but the notion that she might want to use him as an item of 
barter in turf wars with other demon gangs was fairly creepy as well.
     And now she was attacking his companions, again; holding them up by 
the throat with her taloned claws. Delroy, who she and her group had 
already kidnapped and abused by stealing his face for use in laying an 
earlier trap for Martin. Looking at him now, it seemed that he was putting 
in a lot of effort to keep from freaking out. Del was tense and had a 
strained expression on his face. By comparison Tim seemed to be quite 
calm, but that was because he tended to keep his feelings inside. Knowing 
the young mutant, he wasn't in shock, but was watching and waiting.
     Behind him Martin could hear cries of consternation from the fire 
crews at Lisa's arrival and taking of hostages. Some of them were calling 
for help even now, but unless they were specifically calling in super-
heroes - with their amazingly fast reaction time to emergencies - then 
any other help would most likely by at least several minutes away. It was 
all up to him.  .oO( Well, God helps those who help themselves, ) he thought.
     Martin used spirit sight to find where Kien, the remaining member of 
the demonic gang had gotten off to, while at the same time calling out, 
"What do you want, Lisa?"
     "You know the answer to that."
     "Fine. You want me, then as long as you put down those two and let 
them go free, then you can have me," he said. If nothing else it would 
give him opportunity enough to see if he could slice her into little bitty 
bits with monofilament wires. It was one of a few possibilities for 
defeating her that he'd been running over in his mind, and was the one 
that he thought he had the most realistic chance of pulling off.
     "I have you anyway," she said coldly. She was probably ticked off at 
the loss of both Damian the wondersock and Tsurlich the @lantean-made 
succubus, Martin noted. "These boys now have some very nasty slow acting 
venoms in them," she continued, as Delroy and TJ began to writhe in pain. 
"If you want to save them, you'll surrender now, and no tricks."
     Martin scowled. No doubt she would try and break him to her way of 
thinking, and when he was thoroughly corrupted she'd tell Martin to kill 
them anyway. You didn't need to be a pessimist like Tim to see that one 
coming.
     How fast acting a poison? If he were to attack and overwhelm her 
with a slice-and-dice assault, would he have time to get the others to 
medical help, even by flying? For that matter, was she even telling the 
truth at all?
     Well, maybe. Saint Christopher had said that they way Martin had 
thought had influenced they way his Nephalim powers had developed, so that 
as a technophile of the 21st century he had gained mechano-morphic powers. 
Tim had reported that Lisa had claimed to be several hundred years old, 
which would mean that she would have gained her powers towards the end of 
the Enlightenment but before the Industrial Revolution proper. If her 
formative years had been influenced by the new discoveries in biology and 
zoology, then it made sense that her shapeshifting powers related more to 
the organic forms that he had seen so far. In such a case, it would be 
quite likely that she might be holding a number of tricks up her sleeve 
regarding poisons - and a lot of other things - copied from nature.
     "Now now youngsters, that's no way to behave," interrupted a new 
voice. A figure that looked like a man in a trenchcoat approached from 
the direction of the fire."
     "Go away," said Lisa shortly, and spat something venomous at the 
newcomer. He abjured it with a wave of his hand, and the spittle fell 
short about halfway between them. Another wave of his hand and a surprised 
looking Kien suddenly appeared. "I will be adjudicating this issue," he 
told Kien, "So there will be no need for you to be lurking around 
invisibly for a counterstrike if Mr Wryce gets up to anything."
     "Who are you!?" demanded Lisa.
     "A good question, and one that will get you a direct answer, 
considering that you weren't even able to establish exactly what Mr Wryce 
here is."
     "He is a Nephalim," said Kien.
     "He is both Nephalim *and* Benandanti," countered the newcomer.
     That revelation hit Lisa like a thunderbolt. "Then you're a direct 
pawn of the Powers of Light," she said, staring angrily at Martin. Then 
she turned to the trenchcoated figure, and said with more deference, 
"Which means you're one of the Lords of Darkness."
      The figure nodded. Then the fire flared up, spitting out a burst 
of plasma which seemed to engulf him. The fire rose and expanded, and then 
congealed into an enormous fiery with horns. "Beel.gzip.bub, the Lord of 
the Files, at your service."
 
Tomorrow: The situation escalates some more.
 
Author's notes: Okay, in the final stretch now. Hopefully. If things go 
the way I have them plotted out in my head, this story should be finished 
of somewhere in four to six posts time. Keep fingers crossed.
 
The Daily Super Short-Short Story series created by Arthur Spitzer, and 
used with belated permission. 
 
The Teenage Giant Halfbreed Angels epithet for the Nephilim/Nephalim
cooked up by Andrew Perron.
 
All main characters created by Saxon Brenton are Ask First Before Use 
for the duration of this storyline, then they'll probably go to Usable 
Without Permission. 
 
----- 
Saxon Brenton     University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia 
     saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au
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