MISSING PERSONS - PART VI

As you can imagine, the Returns Agency is kind of like the Olympic Village.

You have a bunch of peak examples of humanity, and tangential humanoid races, all competing against each other to prove who is the most heroic.

They’re all stunning specimens of mind, magic, and/or might, so... it leads to a lot of coupling ip behind closed doors.

Some last, maybe retiring to a nice quiet peaceful dimension to live the slow life, start a family on their hefty pensions, and get the good ending they were denied the first time round before recruitment. Most are fleeting, lust filled, and fizzle out. The shift worker’s curse.

 “HOW COULD YOU FU-” ...and I’m about to completely upset the balance... “THINGS UP ON YOUR FIRST MISSION?!.”

We step back into Janus’ office, soaked to the bone.

He screams in despair then reaches into his bottom draw, taking out a bottle of whiskey and a revolver. The room that was the same brown as his suit turns purple with his expletives.

We’d not even been gone a minute, the Head of Recruitment barely having time to sit down before our return. His sobbing comes to an abrupt end as the door to clicks shut behind us.

Guess I finally broke him…

As I sheepishly walk through Missing Persons to me desk – this one will take a lot of diplomatic wording to complete the paperwork – I’m ambushed by Meganie and Nya’lah who’d both come to congratulate and commiserate over my promotion.

“Mrrrrrrr... is Nya’lah not enough for you?!.”

They both seem as dejected as they are obviously furious.

“I can explain!”

I cannot, in fact, explain.

biiiiiing-boooooong~

The soft jingle of our tannoy system interrupts the scene before things get more heated.

“Errrrrr... can, uh, Ken and the – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 – FIVE women around him come to HR please? Now!”

click~

Chris sounds exasperated over the speakers. He looks even more so when we all cram ourselves into his little beige oasis.

I sit while flanked by a semicircle of varyingly disgruntled ladies.

“So?” The Head of Human Resources stares at me.

“So?” I stare back at him, no idea how to explain things.

I really don’t know how to explain things.

“So...” he sighs and motions to my burgeoning harem, “...what happened?”

All eyes fall on me; a mix of tension, expectation, and-

“Would you believe me if I said we’re all in love?”

No, yeah, this... this is how I die.

The ratio of shocked grasps to frustrated groans tells me I didn’t win enough over with that one.

“Alright...” let’s try this again, “...so what happened was...” I plead my case to the jury.

“YOU MADE A DEAL WITH A DEMON?!.”

Seems like the consensus of the room is pretty hostile to that idea.

“But, what else was I meant to do? All three of us would have drowned or been possessed. Do you want a Demon using the Returns Agency to spread across the multiverse!” The hostility dies down at the gravity of my point.

“That is exactly what we were planning.” Daem pipes up – their name having come to me as if in dream, as unimaginative as it is from what they are – both helping and hindering my defence.

They lean forward and traces lines down my shirt front with their pointed nails.

I can’t see out the back of my head, but I know their black suit is falling forward enough to expose their bare chest. Androgynous curves giving only the impression of bust, “Our Demon Kin made the right choice...” they claim me in front of everyone “...he chose us and we gave him them.” A little hair flick to get their long fringe out of the way, and to motion at the others who is definitively in charge.

Daem’s jet black ponytail, long and loose, high set upon their crown, partially defying gravity as if afloat in liquid, tickles at my cheek. Reminiscent of the tentacles they mustered during combat.

 “So...”

Really?

“You, err...” Chris looks down at his notes, “found your missing person, encountered an unexpected crisis level enemy – again – subjugated it without equipment or injury, minimized casualties from total global population to 8, and...” he looks up at the six of us “...came back with two new recruits?”

“Well, when you summarise it like that, I sound kind of impressive...” I bashfully lean back and shrug.

Daem licks my ear with their black tongue; I flinch. Their alabaster skin and abyssal eyes making them look unreal – they're a Demon, so duh – like the monochrome creation from a surrealist silent film, “...but, there’s more to it than that.”

* * *

As my lungs burst with black waters, I felt my life slipping away. I embraced my death and the darkness gave way to a world of endless white.

While we hung upon the nothing, we negotiated terms.

“I’m not meant to be here...”

I begged and pleaded at the feet of a giantess that looked down on me from above her eclipsing breast.

“...I’d just finished at Clown Town with Bonny, I was in Generic Co. Office waiting for Kia, then I had an evening shift in the convenience store...”

I scrabbled forward on my knees and gripped her ankle.

“...I’m not some hero. I’m just some guy, a Temp-Worker. My parents named me after a video game character to win some freebies...”

In my hands she shrank and the delicate fingers of a young girl tousled my hair.

“...I was average in school, I had no career path, so I worked anything I could, just to find something I was interested in...”

She giggled and grinned and burbled with joy while making a mess of me, reshaping tufts as clay.

“...there’s just nothing I want to do. Nowhere I want to go. I can’t even decide on who I want to be with...”

As she pouted, the girl’s lips became plump and round. With a pop she broke apart into a school of fish.

“...I don’t know what you expect from me, what any of you see in me, but I’m not who or what you think I am...”

Flashes of scales flitted about me, winding and whirling in the void, stopping and starting at the edges of my being.

“...I’ve survived this far, but you’ve already shown you could kill me in a heartbeat, I can’t go on like this...”

Pressure formed around my body, the fish – moving in lines – grew in size, their scales fusing together, forming an unending chain.

“...I don’t want anyone to be forced to like me, I don’t need that from you, I just don’t want to die here...”

A snake squeezed me tight, more comforting than constricting, its forked tongue flicking at my ear and neck.

“...you don’t have to give me a harem, or charm my life so I can live in peace on Álfhildr’s home-world, or whatever else you offered in that vision...”

With the tip of its tail, a black apple was brought before me, the snake’s eye parallel with my own, inviting me to take a bite.

“...I just need your power.”

My teeth sank into the apple and the snake’s sank into me.

We became an ouroboros of ink in a floating world of white.

A perfect circle defiling a stark canvas.

* * *

“And that’s what happened...” Daem has been drawing a circle atop my heart over and over for a while with their talons, “...either I find something, somewhere, with someone that actually makes me fulfilled, or...” my voice morphs in my mouth – it aches like I’m talking around plasticine – and the Demon’s slithers out instead, “...or, we take the Demon Kin’s soul.”

Don’t like that!

There’s a haunting amount of silence from my friends.

I thought I heard Meganie squeak at one point, but it could also have been Álfhildr. Terror at remembering what it’s like to have Daem take over your body fresh within her.

“So...”

God damn it, Chris!

“...the Demon Kin finally formed a contract with a Demon, saved an entire planet from possession – as well as uncountented timelines from the same fate – and gained their powers in exchange for, like... a wager?” The head of HR almost sounds impressed if he didn’t still sound extremely exhausted.

“Yes...”

God damn it, Daem!

“...we will aid the Demon Kin to live up to his potential...” they side eye me while using my mouth to speak again, “...we will tempt the Demon Kin to take our full offering...” then switches to my own voice from their own lips, “...and then we will proliferate.”

I shrug. This really isn’t an easy situation to explain.

“You were never a hero?” Meganie meekly speaks.

Shit.

“The Daemahken is a just ny’ormal person?” Nya’lah drops the gun she’s been proudly brandishing at everyone since I gave it to her.

I forgot this wasn’t a normal debrief.

“Ara ara… and to think he charmed us so?” Merlin almost sounds affronted, as if her sultry voice could muster such a tone.

They’re all here.

“How am I going to explain I married a commoner?” Álfhildr, her throat still raspy from the possession, frets about… hang no, what?!.

They all just heard my secret, that I’m not a real Returner, I was recruited by mistake, and yet the atmosphere…

BANG!

A door forms in the wall, bursts open, and a dishevelled Janus flops through.

“M-m-m-management!”

He manages one word before the sopping great wound in his head has him pressed against the floor with pain, reeking of booze, and simpering unintelligibly.

Chris’ phone rings.

The first and only time I’ve ever heard any phone work in this place.

He answers, nods, and replaces the receiver with a profound click.

“Management…” he repeats his colleague’s utterance like a hex, “…has taken notice.”

With the exception of the Head of Recruitment, who continues to sob and bleed on the floor, the rest of the room holds its collective breath.

“Soo… in recognition of your – quote - ‘meteoric rise’ - end quote…” the Head of HR reaches down and snatches the Roman god’s scotch, takes a swig, and loosens his already loose tie, “…you have been named ‘Returner of the Year’ and will be promoted to Crisis Team along with your, err… subordinates.”

To my surprise, the girls all break out in a mix of sighs, giggles, and cheers.

Daem dissolves into my shadow with a sneer, “You didn’t need my power for this…” a barbed smirk trailing along their cheek.

A wisp of smoke dissipating in the commotion about me wtih a snicker.

This was inevitable?

“So, I’m a-”

“You’re a hero!” Meganie is the first to hug me, whispering her own sweet nothings before the others get in the way, “Now you can stay!”

The rest follow her lead, until all I can see are the two Department Heads passing a bottle between themselves, through a mesh of arms, to a chorus of praise.

Nearly a year to the day that I was first isekai’d.

A thousand worlds and universes hence.

Spending my time in fear and doubt.

After a lifetime of shame over a stupid name.

A million part time jobs, no university, no girlfriend, no path in life...

I finally live up to being the Daemahken, a hero with the power to control Demons.

I am officially a part of the Returners.

What the hell do I do now?!.