Episode 0: A new chapter

All thorough the city, rain poured like crazy. It wasn't anything new, as the weather hadn't let up in three days now. Still, no one was enjoying it: for some reason, the downpour had started right in the middle of summer.

For me in particular it didn't matter much, though. You see, I'd just graduated high school, and was still in the process of deciding which university to apply to, if any. None of my choices was particularly interesting, to be honest. Still, I had to choose something. I was going to turn nineteen soon, so I was expected to be doing something with my life by then.

But, let's not talk about that. It all began with a small, but distinctive feeling of being pulled both inward and outward. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but it was enough to attract my attention.

After a couple minutes of nothing else happening, I just tried to ignore it, and hoped it was actually nothing.

The peace lasted for all of one hour, until a way bigger pull happened. I lasted at most two or three seconds, but I definitely felt it. It hadn't gotten to the point of it being painful, but it was just on the edge.

At that point whatever calm I had shattered. I wracked my head trying to come up with something, anything to explain that! But to no avail. I considered trying to tell someone, but who would believe it?

I was in the middle of pacing around my room, when the third pull came: this time it hurt, a lot. It felt like hours, but in reality it was at most five seconds, before my vision exploded in myriads of colors. Flashing lights came from all around me, nearly blinding me. A cacophony of images and sounds were assaulting my senses, and all of a sudden the pain increased tenfold, occupying all of my mind.

I lost all concept of time, my world disappearing in pain. It felt like something was melting me, taking me apart piece by piece. When finally all ended darkness rushed to cover my sight. Without the energy to do anything else, I simply welcomed the unconsciousness, abandoning myself to it.

The last thing my eyes managed to see was a blur of white and yellow, before I collapsed. I was out cold before I even hit the ground.

A couple minutes before…

"Get a move on already, love freak! I can't spend my whole day waiting for you!" Laharl's loud complaints knocked Flonne out of her musings and made her jump, almost causing the giant book in her grasp to fall.

The blonde angel turned to the demon next her, looking miffed at the rude outburst. "Can you stop rushing me? There's a lot of options to consider when you're summoning someone, demon or otherwise!" Turning back to the tome, Flonne returned to studying its pages, trying to see which class would be a good addition to their group.

Or at least, she tried, seeing as the book was swiped from her hands from the other demon with them. "If we're waiting on you, we'll be here until the next century. Here," she then flipped to a certain page near the end of the book. "it'll cost you a bit more mana, but this summoning circle should bring whatever's most appropriate for you."

Flonne looked at the circle, then at the demoness in front of her. "Why, thank you, Etna! I guess I was taking a bit too much. Heh." Smiling sheepishly, Flonne used her mana to inscribe the circle on the ground, and then activated it. While she could feel the link forming, it seemed the amount of mana she had used wasn't enough. Pouring more mana in the process, she felt the link pulling, but something seemed to keep it from completing the summoning. Trying to keep the link from breaking, Flonne capitalized on the moment and flooded the link with as much mana as she could spare.

Her efforts were rewarded by the sound of a crack, and a flash of light emanating from the circle. After a brief moment, a dull thud was heard. Opening her eyes, Flonne saw a figure laying on the ground.

She rushed to his side, and turned him around, getting a good look at him. He had messy black hair, and a small goatee. His face looked slightly delicate, but not in a feminine way. He sported a pained grimace, but that wasn't what attracted her attention the most. What shocked her were his ears: round and in no way demonic. He didn't have angel wings either, so that left only one option left…

"He's a human."

Both of the demons in the room were rendered speechless. Never had they heard of a human being summoned! Of course, that didn't make it impossible, but still it should have been exceedingly rare if none of them knew it could happen.

None of that bothered the angel though, as her only concern was the wellbeing of the human in her arms. Slinging one of the man's arms over her shoulders, she looked at the demons with her. "Will you two stop gawking and help me get him on a bed?"

Laharl was insulted at that. "Why should I help some puny human? You've summoned him, it's your problem!" He was about to walk away, when Flonne's shout made him stop cold in his tracks.

"Oh, I don't think so! You'll stop being mean right now and help me, or I swear I'll—"

"Fine, fine! Give it a rest already, geez." With the help of Laharl, Flonne managed to get the young man in one of the castle's guest rooms. After that, the young prince left the angel to deal with the human, declaring the whole thing her problem. Etna, on the other hand stuck around a bit more, seemingly curios about the human.

Once also the demoness left, only Flonne was left to watch over her human charge. It wasn't too long after that that the effort of using so much mana at once actually hit her, making her slump in the couch she was sitting on. Soon, she was dozing off as well.

Some time later…

'My everything hurts…'

Shaking my head to get it in working order, I opened my eyes, an unknown ceiling greeting me. Needless to say, I was confused. Looking for answers, I sat up. Apparently someone had brought me in an unknown place and left me in a bedroom with no surveillance…

…No, wait. There was someone. Slumped over a couch near the bed was a little girl. She didn't look older than thirteen, or maybe fourteen. I stopped looking after ascertaining that she was indeed there. Wouldn't want her to wake up to me staring at her.

Studying the room some more, I came to a couple of conclusions: first, whoever owned this place was pretty well off, considering the quality of the furniture and the sheets. Admittedly, I was no expert, but it was kinda obvious. Secondly, the girl snored like a goddamn fog horn! Really, how can someone so small make such a loud sound, I'll never understand!

After a while of getting used to the noise, I managed to block it out of my head enough to think clearly. Thinking back to what happened to me, that was definitely nothing normal. The sight I got from the window definitely supported that idea. If hell was real, that was what I expected it to look like: scorched earth, lava pits, some geysers here and there for good measure too.

Laying back on the bed, I tried making sense of what I knew. Something forcibly ripped me away from my home, and possibly landed me in a whole other world. There was a chance I might be in hell, or in a hellish land. The girl next to me had nothing that would give away a demonic or devilish nature, so she might either be in my same boat -in which case I wondered why they'd put her on a couch and me on a bed- or she was supposed to watch over me, and just fell asleep. Nonetheless, all I could do was wait and see what happened for now.

Some more waiting later…

(Dang, that's a lot of time skips)

After some waiting, my patience was rewarded. The girl stirred, her eyes fluttering open. Once she righted herself, her sight settled on me, startling her a bit.

"Oh, you're awake! How are you feeling?" She looked genuinely concerned for my wellbeing, which made me slightly less wary towards her.

"Well, except for a lot of confusion and some aches, I think I'm fine."

She didn't seem to know what to say, so we both sat in silence staring at each other. After around a minute, I had enough of it.

"Alright, I'll get you started with an easy one: who are you?"

"Oh! I-I'm Flonne! Nice to meet you!" Her cheer was very contagious, as it caused me to grin as well, despite my current predicament.

"Well, Flonne, I suppose it's nice to meet you too. I'm Michael. Now, can you tell me what is this place?" The question seemed to fluster her a little, making her want to look at anything that wasn't me. As she was about to say something. A knock on the door interrupted her, as someone, or rather, something stepped inside.

"You're finally awake, dood! That's great!" The visitor was… something akin to a plushie. It looked like a stuffed penguin, but it was grey, had two small bat wings, walked on two peg legs, and had some sort of pouch on its belly. All in all, it looked kinda derpy and cartoonish.

"So… might I ask what exactly are you?"

"I'm a prinny, dood! A Captain prinny, to be specific! Name's Lutius, dood!" He even gave a military salute with his introduction. It would have even been kinda impressive, had he managed to shake away the dopey grin that seemed stuck on his beak. How could he even smile with a beak, I dared not ask.

"Anyway!" He piped up again, "I'd come here to get Flonne for dinner, but why don't you join us too, dood?"

Looking back at Flonne, she seemed to be expecting an answer too. 'If anything, they don't seem to be bad people.', I thought. And so, I accepted their offer.

As I got out of the bed, I couldn't help but notice that my body felt somehow lighter than I remembered. Chalking it up to my perceptions being out of whack, I followed my new acquaintances out of the room.

'…I take back what I thought about the owner being well-off. They're FILTHY RICH!' The place wasn't some mansion, but a honest-to-God castle! What I managed to gather from Flonne and Lutius was that the owner, some prince Laharl if I remember correctly, inherited it from his father, the former king Krichevskoy after he died a couple years ago. They weren't really willing to give many details, but that was already a good start.

Firstly, if everything else wasn't enough, that confirmed that I was definitely not on Earth. Secondly, it seems that demons roam around the world. I have a feeling at least one of my companions is one. Call it a gut feeling.

Along the way, a couple of beings that could only be considered 'demons' joined our little group, seemingly interested in me.

First, it was a DRAGON. Yep, you read that right. A real-life dragon. He had green scales with yellow markings, and to what I was told he was something akin to the prince's pet/bodyguard, although one wouldn't really notice the first part, given his surprising intellect. Apparently his name was Ryū. Very imaginative there, prince.

After the aforementioned Ryū, we met up with some weird guy with his head covered with a skull-shaped mask. His attire consisted mainly of blacks and greys, which according to Flonne, classified him as the highest rank of 'skull' possible, the 'Galaxy skull'. He then elaborated that Skulls are the male version of mages, and that the costume was designed to enhance a Skull's magic control. I decided to not argue with Trevor. Oddly human name, but then again, none of my business.

The last demon we met looked like a young woman, not much older than me. Her head looked like it was constantly bleeding due to the color of her hair. Of course, also the pointy ears and the red eyes gave away her demon blood. She'd introduced herself as Airi. Me and my big mouth were about to make a joke about carpets and drapes, but the way she almost crushed my hand while shaking it convinced me to stay quiet.

Once we reached the dining room, I realized just how many people- ahem, demons lived in this castle. The table was too long to make an appropriate estimation, but it was filled to the brim with demons. Most were humanoid, but there was a bunch of assorted beings. I could see a bunch of blue prinnies running around bringing plates and such, there was a separate piece of the table where Ryū joined another dragon, this one red. I even noticed a zombie there somewhere.

Lutius directed me towards one end of the table, while Flonne, Airi and Trevor went towards the other. Sitting down next to Lutius I quietly accepted the food offered to me by another prinny and ate my fill, having just realized how hungry I actually was. I stopped only because Lutius elbowed my arm to get my attention. Looking up, I noticed all the demons around us staring at me, stupefied.

"Um… Do you need something?"

"Dood… you just ate almost half of your own weight, don't act do confused."

Upon looking down again I realized what he was talking about: I had five or six plates stacked one over the other in front of me, and on top of the pile were a crapload of bones.

Having realized that I should stop eating, I just waited until everyone was done with their dinner to leave. Before I could take a step, someone grabbed my arm to stop me. The demon in question looked to be in his mid-twenties, and had wild hair held up by his bandana. A sword was strapped to his waist.

"I'll need you to follow me. The prince wants to talk to you."

With no other option, I kept quiet and complied. Some twists and turns later, we reached the throne room. As my eyes glanced up, I found myself disappointed. 'He looks even younger than Flonne! How's he supposed to be leading who-knows-how-many demons?'

As I was sent sailing through the doors of the throne room, I realized I'd voiced my thoughts without noticing. Next, I noticed that the impact with the doors, and the consequent wall, was far less painful than expected. Still, I had no time to wonder about that, as I was forced to roll away from the prince's sword. Just as I got up, I had to duck to escape another slash.

As luck would have it, Flonne had been there the whole time, and had decided to intervene.

While she was lecturing his ears off, I tried to feel if the impact had broken anything. Imagine my surprise when, apart from a slowly fading ache, I felt very much fine! A sharp poke in my side pulled me out of my thoughts, and I turned back to the prince.

"I'll let you off the hook, but ONLY THIS ONCE! If you disrespect me again, I'll make sure you'll be writhing in pain for the next century, understood!?"

I immediately snapped into a military salute. "Yes, sir!"

Considering that that kid managed to slam me into a wall with just one punch, I really didn't want to piss him off anymore.

He nodded at my reaction, deeming it satisfactory, and turned to another demon whom I'd seen for a second during dinner. She had red hair, but it was a more fiery red, unlike Airi's bloody red. She wore… very little, her attire consisting only of very long boots, a tube top, a very short skirt and a choker, all of which rigorously made of black leather.

While her attire, the small wings on her back and the tail gave her a succubus-like aspect, her body didn't really look the part, making her look more like a preteen pretending to be a hooker.

…please don't tell her I said that.

Ahem, anyway. The prince turned to the demoness, and motioned to her towards me. "He's all yours, Etna. You know what to do." And with that, he turned away and left.

Apparently none of us expected that, as we all stared at the retreating prince, stunned. When I got back to my senses enough, I asked: "What… was that all about?"

The question returned the two girls back to the ground, and they both exchanged a confused look, before Etna turned to me.

"Well, he was supposed to give you some sort of briefing on what you're doing here and the like, but I guess he got pissed and left me to do it. Again." By the end of it, Etna's expression changed to a mix of annoyance and boredom. She gave a short huff, and motioned for me to follow her.

After a short sequence of rooms, we reached what looked like the central hub of the castle, and Etna started pointing out things to me in quick order.

"There's Rosenqueen, you can buy stuff there, not important now. Dimensional gate, you use it to get to places. Item world, we'll get to that tomorrow. Hospital, should be obvious what it's for. And that's the Dark Assembly. Don't bother with it, you'll get to it once you're stronger. So," She then turned to me "Questions?"

The sheer speed of her 'explanation' got me reeling for a second, but I recovered easily enough. "I guess… what do you mean with 'I'll get to it once I get stronger'?"

She rolled her eyes at that. "You need a little thing called 'mana' to pay the Assembly. You don't have any. Tomorrow you'll get some."

'That makes sense… in a way.' I thought. Although, there was one last thing…

"Ok, and that's all fine and dandy, but the part that's got me confused is 'getting stronger'. Why do I need that?"

Etna slowly facepalmed, and let out a long, suffering sigh. "I got saddled with an idiot." She looked back, or rather up at me, visibly sick of me. "A tall idiot. You compensating for something?"

The sheer calm with which she asked that caused me to take an instant to process exactly what she said. Of course, my reaction was less than pleased.

"What the- First, how dare you. Second, speak for yourself!" I shouted, gesturing to the giant spear she was carrying around.

It seemed like I'd struck a chord, as she became absolutely furious. Unfortunately for me, I didn't notice every other demon around, especially the few prinnies cleaning nearby, inching, if not outright running away once I said that.

I, myself realized that I'd fucked up when Etna spoke again. Her voice seemed calm and sweet, but her strained smile promised a world of pain.

'Note to self: never, EVER, make fun of Etna in any way,' I thought to myself, as a demoness was healing my many injuries with some spell. 'Or at least, until I get strong enough to dish back just as much damage.'

While I was stuck in my own thoughts, I didn't realize that the 'doctor' was cursing under her breath. "Why the hell isn't this working? Even if he has too many Hp for the spell to do much, there should still be an improvement, no matter how small!"

I caught the tail end of that, and seeing that my wounds were still present, I managed to get the point of what she was saying.

"No effect, you say? Do you have any ideas as to why that might be happening?"

She glanced back up to me for a second, turning again to focus on a pretty large bruise on my chest. "Honestly? I might have one or two hypotheses, but nothing really decisive. Although, if a weak spell can't do it…"

Before I could even open my mouth to ask what she was planning, a bright green light enveloped me. It held for about five seconds, and then dimmed quickly. Once I could see again, my wounds were still present. Not like it was a question, considering I could feel the pain the entire time.

The doctor looked astonished, and just stared at my wounds gaping like a fish. After a good minute, she shook her head, and rose her arms in a surrendering motion.

"Alright, that's it! I tried, but if not even a Giga Heal can do anything, than I'm done! Just… deal with them like you usually do, I suppose." And with that, she just up and left!

Although I hadn't taken much notice of it before, my wounds actually hurt way less than before. At first I'd attributed the fact to the healing spell acting like a numbing agent, but if the doc said that it wasn't working at all, what could it be? Maybe the whole 'demon world' shtick had given me faster regeneration, at the cost of spells not working on me?

While I was stuck mulling on such thoughts, I felt the pain in my body lessen sharply. As I looked down on my body, my eyes widened, taking in the sight of my flesh rippling, mending, and clearing before my eyes in a vortex of red, with some black tints here and there. Needless to say, I was on the verge of a panic attack!

During my attempts to steady my breathing, someone picked me up and slung me over their shoulder, carrying me away. The jostling got me back to my senses easily enough. Turning behind me I saw a mop of bloody red hair. Recognizing the demon who was lugging me around, I couldn't help but call her.

"Hey Airi?"

"Mh?" She grunted, probably not wanting to deal with my crap. Too bad for her.

"Why are you carrying me? And where to, for that matter?"

"Your room. Flonne asked me." As I said, didn't want to deal with me. Again, too bad.

"Alright, next question. Why you of all people?"

Another grunt, this time long and annoyed. Maybe I should stop.

"Alright, fine. Don't tell me. But, you know, I think I'm fine enough to walk on my own-"

Not even giving me the time to finish, Airi shrugged me off of her, and left me to fall down on the floor.

"Ok, first off, rude." I said, as I got up. "Second, what'd I do to get you so pissed? We barely even spoke to each other at all!"

Her ticked off look slowly melted into something along the lines of sheepishness.

"You're right. I guess I was pretty rude. Just… I had a long day, and then I got asked to get you just when I was about to go to sleep, so I was pretty cranky. Sorry about that."

I shook my head lightly, both in amusement and empathy: I'd lost count of how many times that happened to me.

"Don't worry about it. I get it. Still rude, but I can relate somewhat. Anyway, goodnight." And thus, I started walking in the direction of my room.

Not even two seconds after, another set of steps started following me. Looking behind me, Airi had started following me. I realized it was better not to ask questions, and concentrated on finding my way in the veritable maze that was the castle.

After a multitude of wrong turns, I just let Airi guide me, while I was hanging my head in shame.

I wrote a thing.

Don't expect me to be updating this anytime soon, with all the other stories I have lying around, but I may do so occasionally. First, though, I want to point out that I wrote this about half an year ago; the writing style has some differences from what you'd expect from one of my newer works.

What did you think of this? It might not work as a one-shot, but I would dare say it's not that bad.